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If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to the HQ now

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Re: If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to the HQ now

#121
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a big part of SpaceX successes are due to Elon letting Gwynn Shotwell manage the company.

Apparently when they first met, she gave him a dressing down and told him a bunch of things he needed to do to be successful. He then tracked her down and hired her to do all the things.

He's got a mega case of "George Lucas Syndrome" it seems. He needs someone who can tell him "No."

Re: If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to the HQ now

#122
post #78

Imagine thinking you can judge anything about a developer (especially Senior/Staffs) from screenshots of code. Elon has truly lost the plot.

Of course you can? It's basically asking to see what you consider your best work. If you're earning 100k a year and the most important code you show is how you turned a link colour from light blue to blue -- then your $100,000 a year job has now become questionable. It's hardly losing the plot to ask someone "What have you achieved and what do you think your best work is?"

But people aren't paid based on the quality of their work, or productivity, but simple supply and demand. We're constantly told this justifies both the high wages of tech and the low wages of, say, Amazon warehouse workers and janitors, on principle. People at Twitter make $100,000 a year because that's what the market value of keeping an ass in that chair is worth.

Re: If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to the HQ now

#123
post #78

Imagine thinking you can judge anything about a developer (especially Senior/Staffs) from screenshots of code. Elon has truly lost the plot.

Of course you can? It's basically asking to see what you consider your best work. If you're earning 100k a year and the most important code you show is how you turned a link colour from light blue to blue -- then your $100,000 a year job has now become questionable. It's hardly losing the plot to ask someone "What have you achieved and what do you think your best work is?"

A lot of Seniors/Staff don't write "code". They're architecting/planning/guiding. If I'm a Senior Staff DevOps engineer who maintains our entire Kube infra, am I gonna show Elon some sweet YAML configs? "Oh here's my Go templating for our org wide Helm charts that isn't really novel but is really important?"

Re: If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to the HQ now

#124
post #16
post #10

I can barely believe this man started a spaceflight company. He must have had some incredibly subordinates to pull that off; not only did they have to deal with him, but they also had to bootstrap spaceflight.

I'm seriously wondering if this is drug related. I dont think he was always this erratic.

[deleted]

Re: If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to the HQ now

#125
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a big part of SpaceX successes are due to Elon letting Gwynn Shotwell manage the company.

Apparently when they first met, she gave him a dressing down and told him a bunch of things he needed to do to be successful. He then tracked her down and hired her to do all the things.

Right, you don't build a spaceflight / rocket company in a vacuum, or from scratch as a software engineer. He poached top talent and got the job done from the bank and his twitter account. Not that I'm knocking that (it worked!), but the "Elon is a great engineer" trope is questionable.

Look: http://larsblackmore.com/

That's the kind of person who makes spacex successful.

Re: If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to the HQ now

#126

Elon has this bizarre conspiracy in his head where he thinks software engineers don't do anything until he realizes they do everything. Btw, a dev build is in prod right now. Or someone forgot to minimize the JS. Tons of import map issues.

Is it really that bizarre of a conspiracy? If you browse Blind for a day you kind of lose the faith in software engineering as a profession. People proud for making $400k while working 5 hours a week.

I'd suggest the problem there is reading Blind uncritically. There's at least as many trolls as serious posters

Re: If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to the HQ now

#127
post #78

Imagine thinking you can judge anything about a developer (especially Senior/Staffs) from screenshots of code. Elon has truly lost the plot.

Of course you can? It's basically asking to see what you consider your best work. If you're earning 100k a year and the most important code you show is how you turned a link colour from light blue to blue -- then your $100,000 a year job has now become questionable. It's hardly losing the plot to ask someone "What have you achieved and what do you think your best work is?"

If the new link color brought in 0.1% increased engagement and $5M increased revenue then that engineer's salary is more than justified.

Re: If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to the HQ now

#128

Elon has this bizarre conspiracy in his head where he thinks software engineers don't do anything until he realizes they do everything. Btw, a dev build is in prod right now. Or someone forgot to minimize the JS. Tons of import map issues.

I think you're misunderstanding the situation. It's not that ALL software engineers don't do anything. It's that Twitter has so much staff, you start to question what can they all actually be doing.

If someone had 10 people cleaning a small apartment every day, you'd question what were they actually doing. That wouldn't make sense.

Re: If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to the HQ now

#130
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you can? It's basically asking to see what you consider your best work. If you're earning 100k a year and the most important code you show is how you turned a link colour from light blue to blue -- then your $100,000 a year job has now become questionable. It's hardly losing the plot to ask someone "What have you achieved and what do you think your best work is?"

Lots of jobs work precisely like that. If you want to argue whether the people who do them should get US$100k/yr, that's a different question.

It’s literally the question being asked, not a different question.
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