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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

#341

Post by curiousgeorgio »

golem14 wrote: post #297
curiousgeorgio wrote: post #237

Elon is a genius - seriously. Having worked at similar companies myself, I have a pretty good sense for how this went down (mostly speculation of course): • On day 1, Elon probably talked privately with some of the head engineers at Twitter. He told them he wanted to trim the fat, and asked them how much could be cut while basically keeping the lights on and the website up (accepting some risk of temporary outages).…

I don't think this is genius, it's hard nosed decision making. I personally think he wants to move Twitter mostly on maintenance mode until he has cleaned house, and then slowly rehire when new features are more clear. For that, running on 20% staff might be actually ok. The key would be to retain the right people. And I'm not sure which filter I'd use.

Agreed. To me, the genius is just his courage to actually do it while probably feeling like the entire world is against him. A lot of leaders might come up with similar plans, but execution in the face of so much opposition is what separates Elon from the rest.

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

#342

Post by hamburglar »

Teandw wrote: post #283
Barrin92 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally just some bizarre hazing ritual. Trying to evaluate whether code is good or bad from some screenshots without understanding the context and being familiar with the codebase makes no sense anyway. Anyone can show you ten screenshots of formally well written code and you have no idea whether it's useless or not.

Where did he say that he will evaluate if the code is good or bad? He didn't. It's more likely just a way to see what employees think is their most important work.

If the goal was actually to see what employees think is their most important work, that (and criteria) would be specified, instead of playing "what is he looking for" mind games.

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

#343

Post by guax »

curiousgal wrote: post #293
gigel82 wrote: post #225

Comments talking about how Musk will look at those screenshots of code and somehow determine an employee's worth are hilarious. This obviously has nothing to do with evaluating a developer's quality; this is a classic move dictators do to determine who has chugged the kool-aid all the way (who are the most loyal and subservient underlings willing to demean themselves to this level). Nothing more, nothing less.

> demean themselves to this level I guess we have different definitions of what's actually demeaning.

Your code must be very "salient" then.

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

#344

Post by postalrat »

jimbob45 wrote: post #52
DabbyDabberson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People I know at SpaceX are terrified of him. They all secretly track when he comes into the office, and actively hide from him.

Isn't that true of most CEOs though? When a CEO comes around, you have nothing to gain and your entire employment to lose. Edit: The point is not that we all reside in toxic workplaces. The point is that there is no upside to interacting with a CEO. A parallel situation might be giving a loaded pistol with a child. In that case, the upside is that they now have one thousand and one chew toys instead of one thousand.…

Maybe if you aren't contributing or are abusing your position.

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

#345

Post by wnevets »

gigel82 wrote: post #225

Comments talking about how Musk will look at those screenshots of code and somehow determine an employee's worth are hilarious. This obviously has nothing to do with evaluating a developer's quality; this is a classic move dictators do to determine who has chugged the kool-aid all the way (who are the most loyal and subservient underlings willing to demean themselves to this level). Nothing more, nothing less.

Screenshots of code, what a technical genius this man is!

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

#346

Post by tfehring »

331c8c71 wrote: post #193
MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #28

The thing I don't get is the hyper-focus on salient or "fancy" code. We're not all Jeff Dean and most code is bland and boring plumbing work anyways. Even in awesome ML powered systems, it's still 99% bland foundation, 1% cool algorithms. Hell, as a manager, you don't want only "rockstar" developers because they'll become bored working on the plumbing code, which again, is most work. From datascience there's the phra…

I am lost. Where did Musk say anything about fanciness of the code? Or is it your interpretation of what he said?

I think the point is more that most of the hard work behind Twitter isn't in writing the "fancy" code at all - it's in developing the infrastructure that allows that code to safely propagate across Twitter's massive network of servers, and abstracting that complexity away so that the developers who make the "fancy" user-visible changes don't have to worry about it.

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

#347

Post by jmull »

pifm_guy wrote: post #44
DabbyDabberson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People I know at SpaceX are terrified of him. They all secretly track when he comes into the office, and actively hide from him.

It's really noticeable that work on site at spacex really ramps up before an Elon visit, and then pretty much stops when he leaves again. If he doesn't visit for a few weeks, nothing gets done.

Here's a rather more likely reality:

The workers have noticed Elon likes to see everyone acting busy and has a propensity for causing a lot of trouble when he doesn't see what he likes.

Therefore, they act busy when he's around, and go back to normal, productive work when he's not.

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

#348

Post by reader_mode »

curiousgal wrote: post #293
gigel82 wrote: post #225

Comments talking about how Musk will look at those screenshots of code and somehow determine an employee's worth are hilarious. This obviously has nothing to do with evaluating a developer's quality; this is a classic move dictators do to determine who has chugged the kool-aid all the way (who are the most loyal and subservient underlings willing to demean themselves to this level). Nothing more, nothing less.

> demean themselves to this level I guess we have different definitions of what's actually demeaning.

If I'm basically expected to prove my value to a loudmouth that walked in a few weeks ago in a place I've worked in for >year because he can't figure out how to evaluate people - I'd rather do that in an interview for another company - sounds healthier.

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

#349

Post by qwytw »

Teandw wrote: post #271
buildbot wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shows how out of touch he is - fly, right now, possibly across the country, just to please me. He has no concept or care of how much that might cost or disrupt someones life.

He literally says if you can't, you're excused from needing to. It's important to not lie.

> those who cannot physically get to Twitter HQ are excused

Probably means that if there are no actual flights from where you're to SF and that you couldn't get there in time no matter how much you wanted. Not exactly the same thing...

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

#350

Post by crooked-v »

helen___keller wrote: post #309
gigel82 wrote: post #225

Comments talking about how Musk will look at those screenshots of code and somehow determine an employee's worth are hilarious. This obviously has nothing to do with evaluating a developer's quality; this is a classic move dictators do to determine who has chugged the kool-aid all the way (who are the most loyal and subservient underlings willing to demean themselves to this level). Nothing more, nothing less.

He's trying to build a culture of engineer abuse. I'm sure he'll succeed in building it. The game industry manages it, for example. You can abuse and burn out engineers if that's what you really want. That said, I wouldn't say abused engineers are particularly more productive. He can work them 9/9/6 while he's at it, I don't think that'll help Twitter succeed.

The problem for him here is that instead of boiling the frog, he's gone straight to chasing the frog around with a blowtorch.
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