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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

#121

Post by tyingq »

horsawlarway wrote: post #103
fzeroracer wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Across basically every company I've worked for - this is normal. And many of those companies are not 3k+ employee tech companies. Think 10 to 100 engineers. It's actually a requirement for many compliance certifications in the US - previously employed staff are not allowed access to your systems. If you're in an office - you can wait until you grab the employee and put them in a conference room to fire them before cu…

I think it's more the dichotomy of companies asking for high levels of commitment, loyalty & trust, but offering none in return.

It's funny that they would fire people in this way, then turn around and ask the remaining folks to sign up for "working long (uncompensated) hours at high intensity".

They are trying to have it both ways.

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

#122

Post by coffeeblack »

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…

It’s a news headline. So it’s less about accuracy and more about drama.

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

#123

Post by wwweston »

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."

I'd accept "Nobody should be out in this kind of weather!" or "Nobody can play the oboe!" as a kind of colloquial hyperbole that works in part because people know it's hyperbole and there's a shared sentiment ("we all would find being out in this weather or the difficulty of learning to play the oboe well relatable").

It's a poor contribution to a conversation about the value of media as business enterprise because it's really not clear what the hyperbole is or what the common relatable point is supposed to be. And it might even be subtly nihilistic or privileged ("who's to say I can't believe whatever the hell I want regardless of what them news people say, they're probably just pushing what they want to believe just I like I am anyway").

So "only some fraction of the corporate media's output has intellectual value" would be an improvement. Increased clarity often is.

And it could lead to actually useful understanding, which is that a LOT of things which have high rates of mediocre or even useless output still have value.

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

#124

Post by pessimizer »

KMag wrote: post #84
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 ske…

> The sad fact is that most people really care about their 150 or so closest acquaintances

Which is the best reason that upper-middle class people are screaming about Twitter layoffs. The worst reason is just because they repeat what they've read to each other as a proxy for conversation.

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

#125

Post by coffeeblack »

themitigating wrote: post #110
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…

Notoriously overstaffed based on what? The fact that you've heard this repeated in different ways over a long period of time?

Based on the staff they actually need.

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

#126

Post by factsarelolz »

EarlKing wrote: post #114

> 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. Gosh, I wonder these two incidents are related? PROTIP: Don't distribute tools to facilitate…

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought the same when reading those lines.

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

#127

Post by coffeeblack »

bottlepalm wrote: post #116
themitigating wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notoriously overstaffed based on what? The fact that you've heard this repeated in different ways over a long period of time?

Twitter had almost the same number of people as SpaceX. One of those companies launches a rocket a week, multiple manned missions a year to the ISS, operates a global satellite internet constellation, and is building a ship that can go to Mars. The other company.. does what?

*launched and landed

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

#128

Post by factsarelolz »

amrocha wrote: post #109
that_guy_iain wrote: post #99

> 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…

lol He wrote a JS script that clicks a a button in your inbox. That's not "bypassing security" in any way.

It's staging data for exfiltration. This is an attempt to take property and data not owned by the employee.

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

#129

Post by aks_tldr »

tylersmith wrote: post #25
ddellacosta wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the point being made, but this is fundamentally naive and counter-productive for everyone who wants to be working in this industry as a software engineer. Engineers are going to get exploited: just shrugging and saying "but we get paid well enough" means stuff like this: https://hirecloud.io/hr-and-recruiting-news/the-techtopus-ho... will continue to happen over, and over, and over. So, unfortunately, yo…

People like the OP are not fighting for scraps, they're doing what they love and enjoying their lives while getting scraps. People that don't enjoy doing that stuff resent them because they have to compete at stuff like they don't like to do for scraps. That's only a negative for one side.

Until people like OP wake up one day and see what they been doing in name of "love", it all comes crashing down. been there done that.

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

#130

Post by themitigating »

bottlepalm wrote: post #116
themitigating wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notoriously overstaffed based on what? The fact that you've heard this repeated in different ways over a long period of time?

Twitter had almost the same number of people as SpaceX. One of those companies launches a rocket a week, multiple manned missions a year to the ISS, operates a global satellite internet constellation, and is building a ship that can go to Mars. The other company.. does what?

I don't see how you can compare two unrelated companies staffing levels. You are simply implying complexity has a direct correlation to the correct workforce amount.

Walmart has 2.3 million employees but it's just a store. Why do they need that many when SpaceX has N employees and is launching rockets

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