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

371–380 of 683 posts

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

#371

Post by lamontcg »

errantmind wrote: post #223

I'm no Elon fan, but why does essentially everyone in these threads automatically assume he is wrong? Has no one here worked at companies where there was more dead weight than talent? Where 80% of the work being done is by 20% of the people, and there are whole teams that do almost nothing? What if there is no clean, efficient way to discover who should be fired and so Elon's fallback plan is to test for who really w…

> Where 80% of the work being done is by 20% of the people, and there are whole teams that do almost nothing?

Nope. Strongly doubt that Twitter is that kind of place either, bet its closer to no more than 20% that do almost nothing, and maybe 60% who work inefficiently because they have to. And firing more than half the people won't make them any more efficient, it just means that now you start doing things like using zero code review or oversight and everyone gets swamped with 40 hours a week of CI failures because it turns out that team everyone liked to hate on actually did a whole bunch of work nobody ever saw and now all the internal tooling is completely broken.

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

#372

Post by spookie »

chrisseaton wrote: post #11
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?

Are football fans really a big part of the Twitter user base?

I would guess so. As long as you are doing business outside North America, this is a fair concern to have.

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

#373

Post by ncallaway »

dsugarman wrote: post #303

Man, people are so assumptive and negative about one of the world's greatest innovators today. Hasn't he earned any respect? I know layoffs are really tough but does anyone really believe there was no reason for them at Twitter? He's got a tough task in front of him and getting to the barebones team of mission driven people seems like a plausible first step towards a better tomorrow. The assumption that only the wors…

> Hasn't he earned any respect?

In the past, I respected him a fair amount. He did, in my mind, earn respect.

However, his behavior over the last several years, has burned that respect to the ground. His behavior over the last several months has dug a deep pit into the earth. And his behavior over the last several weeks has dumped the ashes of that respect into the ground and covered it with concrete.

You can earn respect, but you can also lose respect. He's done so much to lose every ounce of respect he ever earned.

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

#375

Post by tgv »

l33t233372 wrote: post #138
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 a troublesome thought. It will mean that our profession is likely to get a lot more difficult. Perhaps a union or guild of some description would be in order.

There's a lot of cruft, wouldn't you agree? Now, software engineering has a hard time getting rid of it, because we don't know what's going to be cruft in advance. So many promising designs turned out to be just a waste of time. But as long as we can't predict success, we're going to have to go through the motions.

Once you have a working product, it's a bit easier. Maintenance is more predictable. But without R&D/innovation, you're slowly going to fall behind, and that's hard to overcome.

So it might not be impossible that Twitter can keep running with a much smaller staff, but even then it might be the beginning of the end. We'll know in a few years...

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

#376

Post by qwytw »

curiousgeorgio wrote: post #341
golem14 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It hardly offsets the fact that he massively overpaid for Twitter in the first place. For 44 billion he could have easily handpicked a team and built a new product without all the issues Twitter has.

He'd have to actually compete against Twitter but that should be too hard for a genius.

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

#377

Post by unsupp0rted »

qwytw wrote: post #262
ghufran_syed wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus he could just search for that code in the repo to get the overall context, he probably has access :)

Musk is the guy who couldn't figure out how to run a python script not so long ago so it's doubtful. Also it's really not something a CEO in a company of such size should be doing...

Running a python script is hard if you're a dev but not a python dev. I got into all varieties of dependency hell on macOS last time I tried to stand up a simple python project I git cloned.

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

#378

Post by user3939382 »

When you’re the richest guy in the world you have big enemies and friends, whose tentacles of power reach far and wide and can move populations for or against you.

I have enough executive experience to be 100% sure that none of us have a complete picture of what’s going on behind the scenes, with his political or business relationships.

It’s been fascinating to see how pliable public opinion is with the influence of these media stories. The generally more intelligent crowd on HN is clearly no exception.

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

#379

Post by mrloop »

pschuegr wrote: post #289

This is a great way to reduce the workforce to high-performing junior staff and people who like to build code castles. A better way to find high performers would be "send me an email summarizing the code that you've deleted and why". (Not saying that doesn't have it's own problems, there's ultimately no substitute for understanding)

I was thinking the same thing, screenshot of commits with most code deleted https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...

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

#380

Post by computerdork »

gizmo wrote: post #243
zamalek wrote: 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.

His ability to attract top tier talent and work them hard is second to none. And frankly, many great engineers want to work hard and want to work with other great engineers who want to work hard on something that matters for society. That rules out most Silicon Valley startups. Electric cars and SpaceX are intrinsically cool to work on, but it remains to be seen whether working on "Twitter 2.0" will be interesting en…

Agree with your sentiment, and think Elon did miscalculate here. Because, yes, how much innovation is left in social media company? Maybe some, but nothing compared to changing how the world drives and uses fossil fuels, or sending people to Mars.

I still think Elon is a brilliant person who (along with teams of other brilliant people) has accomplished incredible things. But as others are saying, think in this case, his ego got the better of him. I'm a software dev, and there is little chance I'd kill myself to build a different version of Twitter.

Post reply on HN