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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

#81

Post by ketralnis »

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…

> Instead, you choose to

Uh huh. So? That's what choose means.

You only care because you're competing with them, but that's not really their problem. That doesn't resolve any of the dissonance at all. What if their motivation isn't enjoyment but money, so they're choosing to outcompete you. What if they're doing that because they have to feed their very hungry family and their family is hungrier than yours. Does that change the calculus? You're walking into this with a set of values and just assuming that everybody else has the same ones so you can throw them on the table and say, see? But that's exactly what makes it complex, that they don't have the same values and they live next to you in the same world you do.

I'm still just as split on how to feel about enjoyable overtime but I'm not at all conflicted that your take that anybody else is obligated to maximise your metric instead of their own is a bad take.

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

#82

Post by folkrav »

smoldesu wrote: post #50
VHRanger wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. Presumably any private equity firm would also have came to a conclusion of reducing headcount. They wouldn't have done so in a single week based on ridiculous analysis. And wouldn't have done so in a way to destroy the morale of remaining workforce.

I mean, the running joke in the industry was that you could fire 90% of Twitter's workforce and the company would still run fine. Judging by how few features they've shipped in the past few years, I'm still convinced that's the case.

We'll see when they actually start shipping stuff. Things tend to go smooth when nothing gets deployed...

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

#83

Post by Raed667 »

GloriousKoji wrote: post #74
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.

The scary wake-up call for me when I heard the story of someone who informed their manager of their 2-week notice. And instead of having 2 weeks to sort everything out, they got locked out immediately.

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

#84

Post by KMag »

retskrad wrote: post #42

It's fascinating how Elon Musk supporters on Twitter cheered, almost like a sports team, when the Twitter employees got fired in such inhumane ways by Elon Musk. Don't his supporters realize that Elon would do the same thing to them if they worked at Twitter? The stereotype about conservatives ring true - they don't care about others until it affects them personally.

The sad fact is that most people really care about their 150 or so closest acquaintances, somewhat care about people in their various tribes, and try and largely fail to have much compassion for outsiders. For the majority of people, their espoused political leanings are rationalizations they tell themselves to cover selfish underlying motivations.

Elon has his fanboys, who are going to fan. I think they probably skew fiscally and regulatorily laissez-faire, socially progressive, and middle-aged more than they skew classical conservative.

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

#85

Post by osculum »

cuttysnark wrote: post #34
smoldesu wrote: post #8

The "hacking" hook is simply that their Macbook went into MDM lockdown mode. That's completely normal for companies at-scale, and I can understand why they'd want to lock the devices before laying people off. If the opposite had happened, they'd be writing an article about how Twitter failed to protect their files and angle it as a "they're running out of staff" article. I still don't really understand what there is…

> don't really understand what there is worth talking about here. Elon Musk, previously adored by many for futurist technology advocacy and largely forgiven for quirky-billionaire-behavior is now on the "bad guy list". This is "public opinion", from my perspective. It is now common to hear people saying: "He didn't really build that" "His family had money" "His family had a mine" "He's a fascist" "He's a racist becau…

Those are not new comments about musk no? I’ve heard them for years.

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

#86

Post by telotortium »

fzeroracer wrote: post #61
smoldesu wrote: post #8

The "hacking" hook is simply that their Macbook went into MDM lockdown mode. That's completely normal for companies at-scale, and I can understand why they'd want to lock the devices before laying people off. If the opposite had happened, they'd be writing an article about how Twitter failed to protect their files and angle it as a "they're running out of staff" article. I still don't really understand what there is…

Normal according to who, exactly? Like where is your reference point for 'normal'? I've worked for companies at scale and have never dealt with these sort of problems before because usually there's an understanding that employees when laid off aren't going to do anything bad (unless you're perhaps cutting them out of severance and spiting them, which...). Do you have any reference points or reasons why you believe th…

Many, many companies, particularly larger ones (5,000+ employees, but Silicon Valley companies are more likely than non-tech companies of a given size to employ "advanced" IT features like MDM) are concerned with potential sabotage by suddenly laid-off employees, particularly in the U.S. Have you ever worked anywhere with MDM installed on your company-provided devices?

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

#87

Post by noahchumsky »

deltree7 wrote: post #40
throw8383833jj wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree. Here's my hypothesis as to why people are so glib about throwing away their lives for their employer: People depend on their employer for their entire livelyhood. This day and age, without a pay check, you can't have any basic needs: Shelter, food or water and you'd be out on the street or worse: the average homeless person (it's shocking) lives 30 years less than a housed one. So, it's no surprise t…

Can you apply your brilliant logic to Elon Musk who works 100 hours per week? or Warren Buffett who still goes to work? Many people enjoy work.

Do you seriously think Elon works 100 hours a week? What evidence do you have to support this?

Most people do find fulfillment out of work, many even enjoy it, myself included. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't fight to be compensated for what we put in, and doesn't mean we shouldn't practice solidarity with coworkers, many of whom don't have the time to work as much as we do (for example a working mother).

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

#88

Post by cuttysnark »

izzydata wrote: post #49
cuttysnark wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't really understand what there is worth talking about here. Elon Musk, previously adored by many for futurist technology advocacy and largely forgiven for quirky-billionaire-behavior is now on the "bad guy list". This is "public opinion", from my perspective. It is now common to hear people saying: "He didn't really build that" "His family had money" "His family had a mine" "He's a fascist" "He's a racist becau…

The only really important aspect here is that he is a bad business man and Tesla and SpaceX had to manage Elon rather than then the other way around in order to be successful.

Right? Such a liability. I read they had to tie him to his Roadster just so they could actually launch the SpaceX rockets. Unbelievable.

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

#89

Post by folkrav »

smoldesu wrote: post #47
cuttysnark wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't really understand what there is worth talking about here. Elon Musk, previously adored by many for futurist technology advocacy and largely forgiven for quirky-billionaire-behavior is now on the "bad guy list". This is "public opinion", from my perspective. It is now common to hear people saying: "He didn't really build that" "His family had money" "His family had a mine" "He's a fascist" "He's a racist becau…

It does seem to be the case, I'm just not sure what's worth reading into here. Billionaires do stupid and terrible things constantly, if any of these passionate sideliners actually cared about that stuff then they'd be out for Larry Ellison's head for buying Lanai, or asking Steve Jobs about his $40 million jet.

The whataboutism never fails to show up. It's entirely possible to attempt to address one issue and having missed, not looked into or plain having been wrong about another one.
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