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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

#671

Post by ryanbrunner »

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.

The most important work I've done in any company isn't obvious from some small snippet of code in isolation. It's a clever bit of modeling data or code architecture that would look completely unexciting without knowledge of the problem domain.

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

#672

Post by eternalban »

eternalban wrote: post #565
ncallaway wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the idea is to find folks who have nothing whatsoever to show, and yet have titles like "staff software engineer". Shouldn't that have been the idea *before* they laid off half the employees? How fucking idiotic of a leader do you have to be to lay off half the company and *then* try and figure out who is producing literally nothing of value?

First one was a loyalty/chump test.

QED: (1 AM):

https://nitter.net/pic/orig/media%2FFh70jwKWAAQd_WI.jpg

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

#673

Post by michaelmrose »

khazhoux wrote: post #669
michaelmrose wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>someone else who posted that they would not expect even half of software developers, to be actually writing code. I don't think anyone actually said that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33660042 I wrote: > In an org with thousands of software engineers, shouldn’t most of them be writing code? And this person's reply was: > no, I don't think most of them should be writing code

Read more than one word answer you expected to find.

> I wouldn't put any kind of quantifier on it. I'm willing to bet most, if not all Twitter developers were above average across the industry and were producing work of value.

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

#674

Post by genev »

wfaler wrote: post #486

I'm wondering if this erratic behaviour is Musk having some sort of breakdown over how things are unravelling? * Currently that revenue is cratering and things are not going well. Bankrupcy is a real risk with the high debt servicing cost for the take-over. * If the value is going quickly in the direction of $0, banks will call the loans. * If banks call the loans, he has to sell Tesla stock to pay the $44bn. * If Mu…

Can't he just let Twitter die and move on?

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

#675

Post by 6510 »

lsy wrote: post #402

I don't understand the strategy behind creating an atmosphere where the threat of termination is so regularly deployed to drive action. When I think of the best engineers I have ever worked with, I suspect every one would be turned off by Musk's behavior and leave, not just because of how they themselves were being treated unprofessionally, but because of a strong sense of decency regarding how their coworkers are be…

I'm no expert but I think the valuation of Twitter was based on how big they are in every sense: Have big buildings, have many employees, have many users, many readers.

Do you actually need thousands of people to run a blog engine? How does the website continue to work with so few employees left? Am I wrong to think the right person could write and run a blog service alone?? If we (like Musk) look at everything wechat does Twitter is rather silly. Specially in the US coders should be able to do the thinking for a company. It was not on its way to become a super-app, it took 2 years to do an edit button? He just wants people who can chop wood.

If he turns out to be right only time will tell. He made success from things that don't work often enough. We should expect that to be plan B?

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

#677

Post by khazhoux »

michaelmrose wrote: post #673
khazhoux wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33660042 I wrote: > In an org with thousands of software engineers, shouldn’t most of them be writing code? And this person's reply was: > no, I don't think most of them should be writing code

Read more than one word answer you expected to find. > I wouldn't put any kind of quantifier on it. I'm willing to bet most, if not all Twitter developers were above average across the industry and were producing work of value.

He literally says he doesn't expect most software engineers to be coding. That's outlandish, and his follow-up that thousands of Twitter engineers somehow can still be "producing work or value" without coding is ridiculous.

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

#678

Post by brokenmachine »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #671
Teandw wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The most important work I've done in any company isn't obvious from some small snippet of code in isolation. It's a clever bit of modeling data or code architecture that would look completely unexciting without knowledge of the problem domain.

No screenshot. You're fired.

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

#679

Post by roflyear »

scarface74 wrote: post #506
roflyear wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked for a top 50 company by market cap and the CEO and other execs we're pleasant people. Well one or two of the execs were assholes but not the 'ill get you fired' assholes.

And you knew the CEO personally at those companies?

I didn't "know them personally" but I interacted with them on a few dozen occasions.

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

#680

Post by qwytw »

khazhoux wrote: post #653
qwytw wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, they must be experts at what Twitter is doing. Industrial, electric, rocket engineering etc. is basically the same as frontend/backend development. To be fair I can't tell if your post is sarcasm or not.

Why would it be sarcasm? I read somewhere (?) that Elon brought in his eng leads from SpaceX and Tesla to help him sort things out. At any rate, I think you'd be mistaken to believe that there aren't top-notch software engineers at SpaceX and Tesla. They both have front-end tools, massive backend systems, data pipelines at huge scale, metrics and analysis systems, and so forth.

> help him sort things out

I doubt this could have a significantly different outcome than just firing people at random (or using some bizarre metrics like lines of code committed). That's probably irrelevant if Musk's goal is to simply drastically cut the number of employees at Twitter one way or the other.

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