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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

#171

Post by Macha »

winternett wrote: post #87
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.

There is a huge back end on Twitter even though the front end looks poorly thought out and over-simplified... The back-end reporting and tracking apparatuses built into that site are probably failing miserably, and pissing off a lot of undisclosed clients. Elon needs technical architects and technical direction more than just developers if you ask me. I don't think Twitter will completely fail, but I'm pretty sure it…

I think it will have outages/fail whales until stumbling into a new sale or bankruptcy because it's scared off the advertisers.

I don't think the majority opinion on engineers is that it'll crash and then they'll throw in the towel and that's it, but there's plenty of other ultimately fatal outcomes for twitter, and plenty of non-fatal technical issues they can encounter on the way there.

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

#172

Post by moolcool »

winternett wrote: post #87
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.

There is a huge back end on Twitter even though the front end looks poorly thought out and over-simplified... The back-end reporting and tracking apparatuses built into that site are probably failing miserably, and pissing off a lot of undisclosed clients. Elon needs technical architects and technical direction more than just developers if you ask me. I don't think Twitter will completely fail, but I'm pretty sure it…

> The back-end reporting and tracking apparatuses built into that site are probably failing miserably, and pissing off a lot of undisclosed clients

I guess every cloud has a silver lining

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

#174

Post by [deleted] »

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?"

[deleted]

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

#175

Post by chasd00 »

lijogdfljk wrote: post #103

I'd love to see some code snippets that he likes.. because i can't grasp what would make good screenshots in this context. If i were Elon i'd want to see "dumb" looking code which brings together a larger, complex thing in a simple way. The larger picture is complex, but composed of simple primitives. Every piece looks unimpressive because experience taught the right abstractions to write things in a simple, testable…

yeah how much can you derive from a screenshot anyway? code formatting, variable naming? any references to classes/data structures/whatever not defined in the screenshot can't be attributed to the screenshot owner. maybe everyone is getting fired for putting '{' on a newline??? i have no idea.

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

#176

Post by butterlesstoast »

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.

Very insightful. It is definitely a balance. They could get away with less devs. I guess I am curious what the specific breaking point will be. Sr Devs will only put up with so much (Even when making an incredible salary).

Side note: do we know how much Twitter Sr. Devs make for sure? I know the term "400k for 5hrs a week" keeps getting thrown around. However, that doesn't seem incredibly well researched and has some triggers baked in

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

#177

Post by xwdv »

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.

Software Engineers aren’t doing things all the time but there is a tremendous amount of company knowledge and experience locked up in them. You basically pay to keep them employed for when you need them. They are paid for value not hours.

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

#178

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#179

Post by greatpostman »

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?

This is what everyone is afraid of. His firings are an assault on the professional credibility among a lot of people

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

#180

Post by dboreham »

khazhoux wrote: post #153
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

In an org with thousands of software engineers, shouldn’t most of them be writing code? Feels like everyone wants to be the exception, and just assumes “someone else” should do actual hands-on work

> shouldn’t most of them be writing code

In an org of that size, there's much work just in stopping other people writing really bad code.

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