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

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

#261

Post by epistasis »

Yoofie wrote: post #236
epistasis wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These sorts of massive cuts, coupled with massively decreasing workplace quality, and with removing any chance of financial reward (no more liquidity in shares of the company!!), are going to cause the most talented people to go to greener pastures. The people who stay will be those with the least options. Musk has made employment at Twitter hugely risky, with no possibility of reward. Really boneheaded business, com…

> are going to cause the most talented people to go to greener pastures. People keep repeating this trope as if Twitter is some paragon of technical excellence and innovation. It is no such thing. It is a popular website with a textbox for user input. You don't need "talent", you simply need to people who get the job done.

Saying something like this just demonstrates that you have extremely limited technical knowledge, and are willing to say anything to defend Musk.

And defenses like this go a looooong ways towards destructing the myth that Musk had technical acumen, because the only people defending him are those that can't do the work.

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

#263

Post by firstSpeaker »

ibero wrote: post #183
pavlov wrote: post #68

It would be interesting to know what portion of Twitter employees are on work visas and can’t easily take the offer to quit. I’d guess an international company like Twitter had several hundred people on H-1B, L1 and similar visas. After these voluntary layoffs it seems like there might be 2,000 employees left, so at least 10% of them would be on work visas by this napkin math.

i won't link to them, but this is public information, at least for the H1-B. you can find the number for a given company and their respective positions.

Anyone else has a link to this public information?

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

#264

Post by stu432 »

lijogdfljk wrote: post #140
jcranmer wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sta…

Also imagine job postings. Ignoring Elon for sake of discussion, it would be a big a big boon for my career to work at Twitter.. but when 80% of the staff left? I'd be worried onboarding would be a mess. That i'd be handed several projects that no one knows how they work or what the ramifications are. Ignoring all the red flags and focusing solely on onboarding sounds like misery.. not sure i'd want to take that job.…

It probably would be an absolute hell-scape as you imagine, but for someone looking to make a name for themselves, it's an incredible opportunity to jump in, carve out a solid niche and then use that leverage to push your career forward. I can understand those who are leaving as that not what they signed on for, but there's a lot of people who would gladly roll the dice for that opportunity, I would've 5 years ago.

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

#265

Post by chasd00 »

standardUser wrote: post #56
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 could see working for an unstable egomaniac if it meant working on something big and meaningful like space travel or green energy or ending ICE cars. But to work on a glorified comment section? Hard pass.

I could not agree more. If I were single I could see giving most of my time to SpaceX because I believe in what they're doing and what they want to accomplish. Twitter? omfg no.

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

#266

Post by maxbond »

ineptech wrote: post #198
giaour wrote: post #13

At this point, I'm kinda wondering if Musk's deal to finance the Twitter acquisition included some Brewster's Millions -style clause where he gets to keep the company and the $44B if the company goes bankrupt within 90 days.

I had a similar thought - perhaps Elon was visited by a time traveler from the future who convinced him that the only way to stave off some impending disaster is for someone to drive Twitter into bankruptcy as quickly as possible, and he heroically offered to ruin his fortune and reputation to save humanity. That's a stupid idea, but it would elegantly explain his recent behavior...

Alternative explanation, things aren't that deep, he's just someone who is almost never held to account because of his wealth. He regularly displays appalling judgement but rarely has to suffer the consequences, which are bourne by those around him or the public at large. But in this particular case, he really stepped in it, and there was a group of people - Twitter employees - able to hold him accountable, and because he thoroughly burned his own bridges and denied himself any avenue of escape, he has to take it on the chin this time.

It isn't a difference in kind from calling a rescue diver a pedophile, or pretending he's going to take Tesla private, or any of the million bad decisions he's made over the years. It's just a difference in outcome.

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

#267

Post by SkyMarshal »

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.

If George Hotz joins Twitter, as he recently offered [1], you may be right.

I think people may be underestimating Elon's ability to bring in folks from the "secret guild of silicon valley" [2] to help him in this task. Of course, some of the Twitter employees who left are probably already part of it, but George coming on, even temporarily, might help bring in replacements.

[1]:https://twitter.com/realGeorgeHotz/status/159339146698169139...

[2]:https://medriscoll.com/2011/08/19/the-guild-of-silicon-valle...

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

#268

Post by memish »

epistasis wrote: post #261
Yoofie wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are going to cause the most talented people to go to greener pastures. People keep repeating this trope as if Twitter is some paragon of technical excellence and innovation. It is no such thing. It is a popular website with a textbox for user input. You don't need "talent", you simply need to people who get the job done.

Saying something like this just demonstrates that you have extremely limited technical knowledge, and are willing to say anything to defend Musk. And defenses like this go a looooong ways towards destructing the myth that Musk had technical acumen, because the only people defending him are those that can't do the work.

The projection on here is getting cartoonish.

John Carmack, "Elon is definitely an engineer. He is deeply involved with technical decisions at spacex and Tesla. He doesn’t write code or do CAD today, but he is perfectly capable of doing so."

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

#269

Post by gz5 »

Putting aside how this was handled, Elon is looking at a business which is losing money and doesn't have a clear path to make money, and acting accordingly.

His priority is not to preserve the business - the business is broken as defined by cash flows.

Can it be more 'broken'? Sure. Elon is taking that risk in exchange for increasing the probability (in his opinion) of reinventing Twitter as a sustainable business. That is a risk that each Twitter employee needs to decide if makes sense for their situation.

So this unfortunate in many regards, but I don't think the core of this is materially different in scope than the type of situations which could develop at just about any one of our employer's (albeit it at a much larger scale than most).

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

#270

Post by seti0Cha »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #160
lijogdfljk wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also imagine job postings. Ignoring Elon for sake of discussion, it would be a big a big boon for my career to work at Twitter.. but when 80% of the staff left? I'd be worried onboarding would be a mess. That i'd be handed several projects that no one knows how they work or what the ramifications are. Ignoring all the red flags and focusing solely on onboarding sounds like misery.. not sure i'd want to take that job.…

> it would be a big a big boon for my career to work at Twitter.. And I'm not even sure it would be a big career boost to join twitter at this point. The way things are going there you'd probably be burned out pretty quickly which would mean a shortish tenure.

The risk is large, but so are the opportunities. I don't do "hardcore" anymore but younger me would be tempted by the challenge of it. Plus, I imagine there would be giant buckets of money to go along with it. A short tenure with a big payout will be worth it to some people.
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