Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 683 posts

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

#161

Post by karaterobot »

haolez wrote: post #58

What if Twitter actually succeeds after this? I'm not saying that it's likely, but what if? Let's imagine it as a thought exercise. What will this say about the current state of software engineering in startups and big techs?

That's a really good question, and much more interesting to me than just commenting on an ongoing train wreck.

I suppose that we would need to first decide whether (in this scenario where he succeeded) Elon had actually fixed Twitter, or whether he tore it down to the studs and built a different company out of it, one which happened to be called Twitter, but did something completely different, with new people and new leadership. It feels like that's what he wants to do, and maybe that's why he's not backing down as everybody in the company leaves.

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

#162

Post by riskable »

jnwatson wrote: post #68
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does he get away with doing almost nothing? Why can't he be fired?

Lots of staff devs do nothing but coordinate and plan technology.

That's not "doing nothing" it's "doing bureaucracy" and IMHO it's a lot more mentally exhausting than coding.

Imagine if every hour of every work day in your calendar is full of various forms of "planning" meetings. How are you supposed to write code and attend all this nonsense at the same time? You can't.

To be fair it sure feels like doing nothing but employers consider it necessary and a job that only senior people can handle.

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

#163

Post by mint2 »

Teandw wrote: post #78
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #7

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?"

How is that the fault of the developer since in all likelihood a PM dictates what they do. If the PMs don’t prioritize important things and obsess over the shade of blue, fire the PM and give the dev a chance

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

#164

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

hello_friendos wrote: post #2

The world cup is in two days -- how will Twitter cope with the largest amount of traffic it sees all year? Why fire the majority of employees right before this major event?

The largest amount of traffic twitter has ever received was November 7th after his takeover.

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

#165

Post by NilsIRL »

butterlesstoast wrote: post #15

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.

> Btw, a dev build is in prod right now. Or someone forgot to minimize the JS. Tons of import map issues.

Not the first time this has happened: https://twitter.com/NilsIRL/status/1479065003684765697

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

#166

Post by flowerbreeze »

Tenoke wrote: post #113
butterlesstoast wrote: post #15

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'm a software engineer and I still suspect Twitter will be on average no worse (could be better even) with 1/3rd or less of its current engineer count.

Maybe true, but it could also be true that the ones who are smart enough to maintain it will leave and the ones who aren't will stay.

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

#167

Post by dagmx »

Tenoke wrote: post #113
butterlesstoast wrote: post #15

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'm a software engineer and I still suspect Twitter will be on average no worse (could be better even) with 1/3rd or less of its current engineer count.

I’m a software engineer too and I think software engineers are some of the worst at understanding the extents of a business outside their own niches.

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

#168

Post by qbasic_forever »

danrocks wrote: post #60
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #7

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

This simple method would weed out half of Microsoft. Lots of Principals and Architects who haven't coded in a decade.

I thought Microsoft got rid of the architect role? At least it was that way in the mid-2010s when I was there. After Vista/Longhorn there was a definite push to stop all the architecture astronauts and actually build and ship things.

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

#169

Post by kibwen »

Teandw wrote: post #128
butterlesstoast wrote: post #15

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.

Conversely, if you had 7,000 people cleaning an apartment occupied by a few million people across the globe, that might make some sense.

There's no doubt that Twitter could be leaner than it was as of September, but haphazardly firing employees at random and alienating the most employable of the remainder into resignation is not the way to go about it. He could have spent a few months getting to know the place, but deliberately chose not to.

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

#170

Post by khazhoux »

kibwen wrote: post #117
Teandw wrote: 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?"

From screenshots ? There's no way that Musk has any ability to judge the quality of a programmer based on "up to 10" screenshots of code entirely divorced from its context, especially since he is not a programmer and has no experience whatsoever with any of Twitter's codebases.

It’s probably more of a filter to see who can’t even come up with 10 examples of work they’ve delivered over the course of a year.

I do a lot of code reviews, and it’s very obvious who on the team barely churns out useful code —- even just from the low density and volume of their code.

Post reply on HN