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Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned out I’d been fired

economist.com

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Re: Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned out I’d been fired

#71

Post by mcrad »

kdmccormick wrote: post #46
ketralnis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of a weird situation. As told, this person enjoyed what they were doing and hanging out with their friends, and that happened to be on a project that benefited their employer. This sounds like it's not your problem. Except you're troubled by it because you're competing with them. You don't have fun hanging out late at work and living on Mountain Dew and Cheetos but you're competing for the same salaries and…

I appreciate that you represent both sides of argument here, but I've found a way to frame it for myself that removes all the dissonance: You work for a large, for-profit company. You have some free time outside of the typical 9-5 M-F work week and you would like to spend some of it working. Great! You could: * contribute to an an open source project or start your own * start a side project/business * volunteer somew…

If you get paid well and have a unique talent that further incentivizes you to step up and do extra on occasion, what's the big deal? Engineering salaries have never in the history of technology been geared toward clock-watcher/union-boss mindset.

Re: Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned out I’d been fired

#74

Post by GloriousKoji »

Raed667 wrote: post #31

This is why I tell everyone I ever work with: "Don't have any personal document on your work laptop that isn't backed somewhere personal" You never know when that bank statement, or rent agreement or whatever will suddenly become inaccessible. Edit: I know we're not supposed to mix personal data with work. But who hasn't downloaded some docs because you need them filled or printed or something.

I don't mix personal data and work but they sure can present enough gray areas. Things like digital copies of paystubs, ESPP details, and W4 can only be accessed while employed and on the company network. I leaned that one the hard way a year later when doing taxes.

Re: Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned out I’d been fired

#75

Post by telotortium »

beau_g wrote: post #51

>My boss was fired. So was his boss. And his boss’s boss. And their boss. At least 5 direct reports between a talented engineer working on a critical feature with huge media attention and the leadership? Seems like a lot.

I might expect that at Google, but Google also has 20 times the employees.

Re: Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned out I’d been fired

#76

Post by bsder »

spaced-out wrote: post #3

>My colleague, whom I liked a lot, was never going to get it done in time without help, so we all pitched in. I actually quite enjoyed it. I wasn’t really thinking about whether those changes were good for Twitter; I just really liked being part of that community, working together on a deadline. I even slept on a sofa in the office on Saturday night. It's not cool to paint pressuring employees to work long hours as a…

> It's great the author is fine wasting his weekend working on changes to a verification system that was launched for only a few days, but some of us have family and friends we like to spend time with.

No, it's great that the author helped out a colleague. The fact that it benefited Twitter is secondary.

Helping out your colleagues (who are now all over new companies as they've all been fired from Twitter) is how you build your network, get your next job, get people to give you nice recommendations, etc.

Corporations are amoral and greedy and should not be helped unless they are helping you, but that doesn't mean you should piss on everything and everyone around you either.

Re: Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned out I’d been fired

#77

Post by ElijahLynn »

> One day I created a tool that made it faster to download things from your work email that you might need if you were looking for a job: performance evaluations and that sort of thing. I posted the tool on Slack so that my colleagues could also benefit from it if they needed to. One hour and four minutes later I was fired.

Re: Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned out I’d been fired

#78

Post by fnimick »

tylersmith wrote: post #29
fnimick wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just that, but every employee who wants to work nights and weekends puts pressures on those who don't to catch up or be cut. It's a race to the bottom that leads to people who do have things they need to do scheduling emails to go out late at night, changing the times on their commits, etc to look like they are as "committed" as the rest of the team. It's harmful and damaging and I'm not at all surprised that peo…

If people are scheduling emails and faking commits to feign value then they should absolutely be cut.

So when your new teammate decides to start working through the weekend and suddenly you need to do so as well in order to match them in the performance review, what's your response? And notice that I didn't say anything about the quality of work being delivered - when you need to be visibly pulling overtime with the exact same work output in order to compete, what do you do?

Re: Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned out I’d been fired

#79

Post by defective »

Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: post #53
afavour wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels good to say stuff like that but it's not really true. A look over Pulitzer Prize winners from previous years will show deeply researched investigative stories and have had a real impact on public awareness.

I just took a look at the Pulitzer Prize winners for investigative reporting[0] and I havn't heard of any of them from the last ten years. Didn't look any further. If anything, corporate "news" spam drowns out these deeply researched investigative stories because, as GP said, the market conditions favor drama farming clickbait over an "exposé of highly toxic hazards inside Florida’s only battery recycling plant" whic…

Whoa, you didn't hear about Roy Moore?

Re: Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned out I’d been fired

#80

Post by azanar »

It seems many commenters in several threads are making the same point. I'll summarize it here:

> Creating an excessively competitive environment by working longer hours because of an ability and desire to do so is bad civic hygiene.

I can say I understand the sentiment. I personally very much dislike the bind someone puts me in if they do my job for cheaper. I dislike it _more_ when I see them suffering because of the choice they made. I think of the implications, and see a path toward everyone suffering. I want to hold that other individual responsible for increasing suffering in the world.

I take a beat. They've made a poor decision. Or maybe they haven't. Maybe they are suffering in ways I see, but not suffering in ways I don't see. Maybe they seem to be suffering more than they are. Can I do something else about my suffering _other_ than hold them responsible?

Example: are they _really_ normalizing mandated weekend work by voluntarily working weekends.

No? Then I think we can start talking about civic hygiene. I think civic hygiene is too complicated of a subject to shoot from the gut about. It is too complicated to reason about from a foundation of resentment.

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