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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

#461

Post by bb88 »

hamburglar wrote: post #326
curiousgal wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As a 30 year software veteran, I'd find it pretty demeaning to be called into a lineup where my CEO was going to judge me based on a verbal quiz about my past 6 months of code and 10 screenshots, and likely fire people based on that assessment.

I'm in that range too.

Not too many years ago, I was a fan of Elon. If I were a 5 year software veteran I might be a little different, particularly if I didn't personally know any VC's in the valley. It would literally be the opportunity of a lifetime.

Unfortunately, I think this era of the "Big Ego" (Trump, etc) has been very detrimental to leaders, much in the way the Jobs biography was to leaders about a decade ago.

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

#462

Post by scarface74 »

wellareyousure wrote: post #424
chasd00 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In my experience, things like code formatting and style were really predictive of the person’s contributions to a team. I’m not saying he’s making a strategically wise move. But there are potentially another 100,000 developers in this industry who are in meaningful jeopardy over their jobs, because they are truly bad at it.

> In my experience, things like code formatting and style were really predictive of the person’s contributions to a team.

How would you “measure my contributions to my team” based on my code when I spent weeks dealing with larger strategy issues as a senior developer and working with other developers and being involved in the sales process?

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

#463

Post by Tempest1981 »

DabbyDabberson wrote: post #114
jimbob45 wrote: post #52

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.…

I've never felt that way at the 3 tech companies I've worked at. More to the contrary, I'd want the CEO or CTO to know me, who i am, and what I've done.

Good to have an "elevator speech" ready, in case you bump into them.

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

#464

Post by glhaynes »

holyharvey wrote: post #301

I don’t know fellas, this Elon guy sounds pretty based to me. All snark aside, I can sympathize with his request. Every company does this, he’s asking for people to show they’ve been productive.

Every company doesn’t ask you to bring screenshots of your source code.

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

#465

Post by scarface74 »

DabbyDabberson wrote: post #114
jimbob45 wrote: post #52

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.…

I've never felt that way at the 3 tech companies I've worked at. More to the contrary, I'd want the CEO or CTO to know me, who i am, and what I've done.

Those tech companies must have been small. Don’t get me wrong. I spent most of my career at small companies. But, currently, my CEO is 7 levels above me in the hierarchy and I’m one of 1.6+ million employees.

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

#466

Post by prirun »

wellareyousure wrote: post #424
chasd00 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In my experience, things like code formatting and style were really predictive of the person’s contributions to a team. I’m not saying he’s making a strategically wise move. But there are potentially another 100,000 developers in this industry who are in meaningful jeopardy over their jobs, because they are truly bad at it.

For original code, might work. But if I'm making a bug fix to someone else's code, which is going to be most of the time in this situation, I'd try to adhere to the style of code that is already there. If it's shitty or I disagree with it, I'm not going to reformat the code and rename all the variables to do a bug fix. A: there's too much risk of me making a mistake and breaking something that works; B: I wasn't asked to reformat/restyle the code; C: what I prefer probably doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things

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

#467

Post by ryanwaggoner »

user3939382 wrote: post #378

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…

You don't need 100% certainty of everything behind the scenes to decide whether this is a disaster. Maybe Musk will prove us all wrong, but right now it looks like a disaster.

FWIW, what I've heard from friends inside Twitter matches the reporting.

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

#468

Post by alsodumb »

rich_sasha wrote: post #71
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…

It's simple, Elon Musk has no clue what he is doing. Can he code.to save his life? Does he know anything about engineering from Tesla or SpaceX, beyond catchphrases?

Everyone who actually worked for him say that he understands all the engineering intricacies. Karpathy said that.

Tom Mueller publicly defended Elon on multiple occasions: https://mobile.twitter.com/lrocket/status/151291923068914892...

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

#469

Post by CrypticShift »

bena wrote: post #459
CrypticShift wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is not just a corporation you buy. At the very least, it is also the life and labour of all it employees. So you can never have absolute control. There is always resistance.

Maybe the real Twitter was the friends we made along the way. If his goal was control of the hearts and minds of all the employees in the company, he's going about that poorly. The only people I see speak positively about what he's doing are people not working for Twitter at all.

> Maybe the real Twitter was the friends we made along the way.

+1

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

#470

Post by pyb »

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.

Are people downvoting you because they think it's untrue ; or because they don't like to hear it ?
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