411–420 of 683 posts
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 the people who quit or got fired apparently created a very resilient system with easy to understand code.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
At my last exit interview, my CEO was asking me how he could improve his understanding of the engineering team. I threw out the idea that he could meet with people for 15 minutes on a rotation. He explained that he couldn't do that without terrifying people. Just because people are scared of the CEO doesn't mean most CEOs weaponize this into a tool of micromanagement.
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?
He's not doing anything unusual - he's just doing ti very aggressively and quickly. He dropped the bottom 50% as reported on by managers and now he has identified the best of that 50% and asked everyone else to either commit or get out. This is standard operating procedure but it is usually done over the course of many months to over a year instead of like 1 month in this case. If it works then I think senior manager…
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?"
That's like asking an artist to bring screen shots of the best 10 brush strokes.
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?
Look, Twitter was over-hired, no doubt about it. I have no clue how you would need as many engineers as they had. That said, Twitter did/does have hard problems. People joke about how simple Twitter is but it's just not. The ability to search across all tweets alone in realtime is a massive undertaking at their scale. Even with that they had more employees than they problem needed. My issue with how Elon has managed this is more about how ham-fisted these multiple rounds of layoffs/firings are coupled with how inconsistent he is. Just 18 hours ago they said not to come in till Monday and then with only a few hours notice you need to be in the building with a list of achievements and screenshots (!?) of your code.
I've produced a lot of code over the last 6 months, I'd want more than a couple hours (including traveling) to put together a "portfolio" of sorts. Though has I worked at Twitter I'd have taken the layoff yesterday rather than continue to be jerked around by this... jerk.
To me it matters less if Twitter survives this and more about what that means for the employees that are left. Are they going to see any of the "success" if they turn it around? As it stands they have been asked to work longer hours/weekends but their salaries aren't changing (that we know of). The company isn't public and I've yet to hear of any sort of profit-share/equity/etc that's being given out to those who are going to stay. Also Twitter succeeding != Twitter being a good place to work at. Currently the only person that benefits from Twitter succeeding is Elon. I can't imagine putting my life on hold to enrich a billionaire, especially since Twitter itself isn't a noble cause, no matter what some people deluded themselves into thinking.
I'm not anti-hard-work, I'm anti-hard-work if I'm not going to get something in return which as of now Twitter/Elon has not outlined any rewards other than "being part of Twitter 2.0".
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?"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Sure, you don't build it in a vacuum (I'll see myself out)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No sane infrastructure team will answer „easily“ to that question. Things break, all of the time. And infra will need developer input to figure out some of the breakage, let alone fix it. And that‘s not even considering deliberate attacks, fixes for critical security/stability issues etc.
I disagree strongly, and I currently run an infrastructure team. Things break because of changes to the system. Assuming the entire infrastructure team wasn't fired, it should be dramatically easier to keep the service online assuming all development has stopped.
If it was unstable, then I'd want several bottles of whisky on hand, because I'd have to work around the stinky pile of dung I'd been left with.
Given reports of debug and dev builds in production just before everything was frozen, I'd probably want to start stocking up on whisky.
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…
I understand wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt, but his decision making around twitter has basically been disastrous from the start. 1. Bought the company at an overinflated price and tried to back out, but was ultimately forced by the court to buy it 2. Half baked rollout of the twitter blue which caused brands to flee the platform after major reputation damage. 3. Laying off half the company, and then ha…
"You made me go through with the deal, now I'll destroy your toy after torturing it."
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.