Why wouldn’t he have done a few weeks due diligence before making any changes? This seems like the worst way to do a management take-over.
Sabotage
+ Hubris
Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended
841–850 of 1001 posts
Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended
#842Earlier quoted context omitted.
So not only are they going to find a vulnerability on twitter’s backend that allows them to remotely execute code on the Twitter servers, but then they’re also going to find some vulnerability in the app that is accessible from the previous vulnerability on the backend that allows them to execute arbitrary code on my phone, without pushing any sort of app update to the Apple store, and then they’re going to use that…
I'm more worried about cold path logs. Like, what if Twitter just randomly has the past year's worth of geolocation data on so-and-so, and it happens to be exposed in an SQL query, and that query happens to get run and the results exfiltrated. It depends a lot on what Twitter keeps and for how long, but e.g. consider American soldiers being used to pinpoint nuclear silos, for example. Imagine being able to map where…
> consider American soldiers being used to pinpoint nuclear silos, for example.
The location of nuclear silos is known. Known to us and known to our adversaries.
You should work more on your techno thriller. :)
> Imagine being able to map where every journalist is in the world.
Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended
#843I don’t understand how anyone here can be supportive of the idea of the richest man in the world coming in, immediately firing half the staff, trying to get another significant portion of the staff to resign by demanding they switch from the promised permanent WFH to working from the office in 2 weeks, and then encouraging them to resign by giving them a highly fishy spammy/pushing email with an external link to a fo…
Do you actually believe he’s the wealthiest person in the world?
This is why the really wealthy own media corps.
Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended
#844Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not long, but perhaps not for the reasons you think. With the code base frozen, no new incompatibilities can be introduced. That's how software (including operating system) releases worked for many years, and they did work. VM/container images are still basically this way, and they tend to keep running quite well too. One problem with both of these models is that existing security vulnerabilities don't get fixed, but…
Dude, they use machine learning to tune JVM and OS scheduler, they'll handle restarts just fine.
"They didn't get run over the last two times they ran across the freeway, so running across the freeway is perfectly safe."
They developed those methods of dealing with JVM and scheduler issues because those problems rose in prominence against the background of a zillion other problems. They became the longest poles, most worth spending time and effort on. But those other problems still exist, with more appearing every day. Yes, even without code change, because environments and workloads change too. Anyone who has actually been responsible for large complex systems, not just in the sense of working at the same team/company and riding the coat-tails of those who actually understood it, knows that they require continued attention and always will. Entropy exists.
Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended
#845Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But seriously, how can someone burn down something he just bought for 44 billion so fast and consequently? The fan boys would say: It’s Elon, he is playing 3D chess and no one is smart enough to understand his end goal.
Yea, I think I’m still leaning in that direction, although I wouldn’t use those words or go all in on this. One thing that’s interesting about this shakeup is that it’s a very clear statement about where Elon sees value, right? Lazy “rest and vest” engineers? Just go home. Communications department? Get out. Perhaps what Elon wants to say is “look, this thing runs fine on 20% of the staff, and now that the 80% naysay…
> * “look, this thing runs fine on 20% of the staff*
Tech companies are growth-oriented companies. It doesn't matter if their current set of features "runs"; it's not the end of the story, it's only the beginning.
If the current featureset runs perfectly, but there is no R&D progress towards the next set of features to keep up with the competition, keep the current userbase onboard, and solicit the next generations of users: the company is dead.
Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended
#846I'm a little bit confounded that Twitter's current culture is such that a large number of people contemplate sabotage as an appropriate response to changing employment conditions. I mean, maybe the company culture really is broken.
"Changing employment conditions" is a supernaturally charitable phrasing.
Sabotage is an appropriate response to sufficiently terrible "corporate culture".
Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended
#847How does one follow a come-back-to-office police while being simultaniously being locked out from said office? Is this an employer lockout, the employer version of an employee strike? So many questions! Maybe one of those blue checkmarked Elon's on Twitter can answer! But seriously, how can someone burn down something he just bought for 44 billion so fast and consequently?
That's also my thought. I cannot believe someone could burn through cash possibly this fast in history. Surely, something to be remembered for...
Well, Twitter is not burning through as much cash anymore now that most of the people are gone…
Cutting the burn rate is a clear and sensible part of Musk’s strategy. The more he lowers Twitter’s expenses, the more time he gives Twitter to try new things.
He’s done a terrible job of executing it, but that part of the business strategy, at least, is sound.
Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended
#848Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a little strange that I have seen almost no Twitter stories on the front page in the last week. Has dang or anyone talked about why that might be? Is it getting caught in the flamewar algorithm? Are they treating this as one big story so any individual article gets removed as a repost?
Paul Graham and some of the YC partners have been surprisingly defensive of Musk's actions. It's been massively disappointing to watch since Musk's behaviour has been abhorrent and has resulted in a lot of unnecessary hurt and despair for innocent employees. The same employees who may end up running future startups.
> Paul Graham and some of the YC partners have been surprisingly defensive of Musk's actions.
Thing is, I agree that Twitter needed to be shaken up. But, Musk has made the wrong choices every step of the way. It's like he's giving a masterclass on how to be a terrible leader. It's amazing the miscalculations Musk has made. First, his longest tenure, most experience employees likely just got a huge payday on their stock/options - so of course they will peace out. Second, his antics are driving up the price of hiring new employees. Third, Musk still had a lot of goodwill before taking ownership that he's now squandered. I could go on...
The only thing I can think is he looked hard at the financials and the debt load he saddled the company with and panicked.
Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended
#849This will be an interesting experiment in large scale code rot. How long do you think twitter.com will work with the code base frozen?
Not long, but perhaps not for the reasons you think. With the code base frozen, no new incompatibilities can be introduced. That's how software (including operating system) releases worked for many years, and they did work. VM/container images are still basically this way, and they tend to keep running quite well too. One problem with both of these models is that existing security vulnerabilities don't get fixed, but…
I spoke to a HFT software engineer who said how useful the limited market opening hours can be - memory leaks are a non-issue, just kill it at the end of the day.
Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended
#850This will be an interesting experiment in large scale code rot. How long do you think twitter.com will work with the code base frozen?
Here's a crazy idea: 1) get rid of most of the existing code base and simply re-implement and migrate existing content and remaining users to the new thing. 2) get some small team together that does this. 3) stop bleeding cash while that plan is being set into motion. 4) keep the existing code base limping along while that is being put into motion. I'm pretty sure that that's the plan Elon Musk is executing. It's sim…
> simply re-implement and migrate existing content and remaining users to the new thing
You did warn us it was crazy