Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#121

Post by runarberg » Fri, Nov 18, 2022, 5:56 PM UTC

Moctogo wrote: post #72

Wild prediction: Twitter will continue to work as it did even after that ~80% workforce haircut. Make of that what you will.

I don’t believe workers are this expendable. Something is sure to go wrong at some point and there won’t be a worker with the correct knowledge to fix it. This can happen anywhere within the company. It can be an infrastructure problem (e.g. database failure), a software problem (i.e. a bug that could be fixed in minutes lingers for months), administrative problem, a payroll problem (and you’ll loose even more workers because payroll is flaky), PR problem, legal issue, etc.

With only 20% of your workers, there is no way these problems will be addressed with equal ease.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#122

Post by mustacheemperor » Fri, Nov 18, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

memish wrote: post #71

JohnTHaller wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80hr+ in-office work weeks with no equity and the threat of being instantly fired for appearing disloyal in Slack or correcting the CEO... sounds fun!

They don't have stock? Also maybe don't say your employer is a "petulant man child" in Slack or otherwise undermine them and you'll be fine. The idea that an employer should keep people that actively dislike like him or her is insane.

If you are a leading developer on Twitter's Android app and the company's new CEO is making verifiably untrue, denigrating public statements about the architecture of the Android app that make you look incompetent, what do you do? Accept the damage to your professional reputation and roll over? Or "undermine" the CEO by explaining your app does not in fact make >1000 poorly batched RPC calls to render the timeline in front of the community of your peers?

That's the example I'm thinking of, and I would guess that even if that dev fully expected to be terminated for making that correction they viewed it as a price worth paying to spare their professional reputation.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#123

Post by memish » Fri, Nov 18, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #89

Moctogo wrote: post #72

Wild prediction: Twitter will continue to work as it did even after that ~80% workforce haircut. Make of that what you will.

I very much doubt that. Twitter must have had some bloat, but there's no way that 80% of the workforce was bloat. I'd be extremely surprised if Twitter(as in, the website/app, not the registered legal entity) still exists and works by the end of this year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#124

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Nov 18, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #78

alfor wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect the opposite, massive growth and improvement in the next 12 months. There will be some hiccups, attacks and slanders pieces in the news. It will become the place where corruption get exposed if the government don’t manage to close it down. Quite a show for sure.

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#125

Post by bastawhiz » Fri, Nov 18, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

djanogo wrote: post #63

GenerocUsername wrote: post #5

I've always wanted to work for Musk, but never felt like I was skilled enough to work on spaceships or cars... But Twitter? I am thinking about applying, so go ahead and quit.

I think Musk played people who quit this week, he used some trigger words in his email to sus out people who are not committed to the company. And the heard mentality kicked in and more people quit.

What does "committed" look like to you? The promise of working more for the same or less? What upside is there for folks who "commit"? Besides personal gratification, is it even remotely likely that Twitter will do something at this point to pull untold riches from thin air that would somehow benefit these people? From the sound of it, no.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#126

Post by coldcode » Fri, Nov 18, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

PKop wrote: post #69

jcranmer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is collapsing so quickly and in such spectacular fashion that it would probably be better to have some sort of permathread that consolidates the latest updates on Twitter. At the rate it's going, Twitter may be spared all of the lawsuits coming its way simply by virtue of not existing by the time the lawsuits can come to fruition.

Website and app working fine for me. Don't really see this "spectacular collapse" everyone seems to wish would happen

It will until it stops. Then no one will be available to make it go again. Inertia eventually fails.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#127

Post by the_only_law » Fri, Nov 18, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #67

dougSF70 wrote: post #40

He is ingeniously driving up engagement with Twitter by using Twitter itself. Many people want him to fail, expect him to fail, are willing him to fail. Past evidence of his failures had yet to be found.

> past evidence of his failures have yet to be found It’s right there on his Wikipedia page, he was fired from the CEO job at x.com and again after it became PayPal. Not to mention the boring company, hyperloop, that time he called a hero cave diver a pedo for no reason, his relationship with his many children, etc.

Surely if you close your eyes you won’t see them eh?

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#128

Post by bdcravens » Fri, Nov 18, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

Moctogo wrote: post #72

Wild prediction: Twitter will continue to work as it did even after that ~80% workforce haircut. Make of that what you will.

Many tech companies are over-staffed: R+D pet projects, full time OSS devs, dev rel, etc. Some companies probably have staff who literally do one task like managing webpack config. I disagree with Musk about A LOT, but most companies have opportunities to trim fat before they even touch the core product.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#129

Post by GSimon » Fri, Nov 18, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #89

Moctogo wrote: post #72

Wild prediction: Twitter will continue to work as it did even after that ~80% workforce haircut. Make of that what you will.

I very much doubt that. Twitter must have had some bloat, but there's no way that 80% of the workforce was bloat. I'd be extremely surprised if Twitter(as in, the website/app, not the registered legal entity) still exists and works by the end of this year.

80% imo could so very easily be bloat. Features/services that are underutilized and haemorrhaging money don't need to be upkept, teams dedicated to curating content like twitter headlines and moderating content don't need to be there (at the scale it's currently at). Staffing for hospitality services at Twitter HQ and all the ancillary services that are unnecessary or under-utilized. As long as the servers are running, people will be able to post 240 chars of content and some rich media images, the Twitter platform is not ground breaking tech

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#130

Post by jcranmer » Fri, Nov 18, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

Moctogo wrote: post #72

Wild prediction: Twitter will continue to work as it did even after that ~80% workforce haircut. Make of that what you will.

You're assuming that someone leaving immediately causes things to break down. A lot of things will take some time to see the effects of people leaving.

Fire your entire payroll department. No one will notice... until the biweekly paychecks don't go out, and now your employees aren't getting paid.

Fire badge security. No one will notice... until you need someone to make a new badge for a new employee.

Fire your IT staff. No one will notice... until the server crashes and no one can reboot it.

Fire your system reliability engineers. No one will notice... until the World Cup is on and you have 10x regular traffic and now the site is crashing under the load.

Fire your lawyers. No one will notice... until you're now being sued for violating all the laws in all the countries for posting child porn (because you previously fired all the content moderators who were preventing that from being posted).