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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

#91

Post by afavour »

JasonFruit wrote: post #69
afavour wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the statement "corporate media produces nothing of intellectual value" is false. I'm not defending the clickbait content a lot of outlets engage in but I'm concerned that if the "corporate media" disappeared tomorrow a lot of things would go uninvestigated. I'm also not sure that the number of stories published is a worthwhile metric either. Maybe one truly eye-opening investigative story is worth a hundred boring…

Would you be more satisfied with, "Only the tiniest fraction of corporate media's output has intellectual value?" People often make statements that make what is approximately true absolute, for simplicity of expression or for style: "Nobody should be out in this kind of weather!" "The oboe is an ill woodwind that nobody blows good."

Well like I just said, I'm not convinced looking at it through overall number of worthy/unworthy stories published is a metric that makes a lot of sense.

But sure, that statement is an improvement because it at least makes clear that if you were to remove the corporate media tomorrow something of important value would be lost. Something the original statement definitely does not convey.

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

#92

Post by jeffbee »

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…

> I havn't heard of any of them from the last ten years. Didn't look any further... I have never heard of

We get it, you are uninformed. It was in major newspapers, was on PBS Frontline, and was adapted for radio, and it won a Pulitzer. You haven't heard of it, that's on you.

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

#93

Post by alvarezbjm-hn »

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 Jet doesn't have a family to feed. Also, people complaining probably have been using twitter and have a little virtual skin in the game. Maybe you could call that entitlement.

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

#94

Post by hotpotamus »

Raed667 wrote: post #83
GloriousKoji wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I began disentangling things from my previous employer about a year before I actually left. 2 weeks notice would basically be a formality, I'd have effectively quit months before anyway.

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

#95

Post by subroutine »

throw8383833jj wrote: post #26
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…

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…

Just so I understand, your world view is that normality means disliking your job; anyone who enjoys their job is suffering from stockholm's syndrome. Even if you're making a quarter mil per year, if you stay after-hours with coworker buddies to implement a feature that augments the experience of millions of people, you're a total sucker.

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

#96

Post by aaa_aaa »

hungryforcodes wrote: post #48
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…

Though he is heading on the path of Dr Evil, let's just admit it.

Why so? Without control freaks, I think Twitter is a better cess pool now.

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

#97

Post by kelnos »

afavour wrote: post #28
infamouscow wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate media produces nothing of intellectual value. It merely continues to exist because their business model, advertising, allowed them pivot into being drama generating entertainment machines.

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 don't think the grandparent meant "nothing" literally. But I would agree that the vast majority of corporate media reporting is garbage. The Pulitzer Prize winners are unfortunately the rare exceptions to the norm.

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

#98

Post by MikePlacid »

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.

Yep.

>As soon as Musk became owner, there were always three things that had to be done by yesterday

Just when? Just three??

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

#99

Post by that_guy_iain »

> 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.

"I built a tool to allow people to copy corporate data so they could find a job easier."

To be fair, it seems like something you should only do if you don't care about getting fired and if you're already on the way out the door. Unless you're migrating from one email provider to another and your company isn't migrating all the data, most companies are going to take offence to that.

He is suing Twitter, I wouldn't be surprised if he lost because Twitter will successfully claim he wrote a tool to bypass security and allow people to steal trade secrets.

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

#100

Post by kelnos »

afavour wrote: post #36
concordDance wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast vast vast majority of content news media generates is not like that, its drama farming and reposts. The actual investigative journalism is a very small minority.

So the statement "corporate media produces nothing of intellectual value" is false. I'm not defending the clickbait content a lot of outlets engage in but I'm concerned that if the "corporate media" disappeared tomorrow a lot of things would go uninvestigated. I'm also not sure that the number of stories published is a worthwhile metric either. Maybe one truly eye-opening investigative story is worth a hundred boring…

Ugh, can we stop interpreting everything so literally? People embellish and use hyperbole for effect. Whenever someone says "always" or "never" (or similar terms), they very rarely actually mean those absolute terms, because most things in the world have exceptions, and most people actually do know that.

If you're genuinely confused by this kind of usage, and actually believe that those absolute terms are used sincerely, then I don't know what to tell you... maybe try to understand culture and language usage better?

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