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Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

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Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#281

Post by movingmove »

Solvency wrote: post #198
movingmove wrote: post #81

I had the "pleasure" working for Twilio for over 4 years. I cannot tell how much this showed me how you can fake it til you make it in SF. Twilio tried to expand into Europe and failed miserably. Customers (especially German ones) wanted exact locations of data, exact routes of packet transportation, wanted features Twilio promised on Slides but never delivered. I was part of at least 4 customer meetings (the biggest…

So: What big brain moves did you think Twilio should have made during your 4 year tenure there that they failed to do?

For starters, actually trying to deliver what they promised? Get the actual hard, boring job done bigger clients wanted. The not-sexy work behind the scenes. Main problem is that it doesn't look good on paper, and Twilio hired an absolute insane amount of people.

My guess is they profited _a lot_ from the crypto hype. Exchanges sprung up right, left and centre and they all needed customer call centres etc. So Twilio grew through that. Saw super high growth and thought: All is well. All the while the "real" customers didn't get the features they needed, and quit Twilio after a 6 month trial period.

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#282

Post by DanielHB »

itinerantwarble wrote: post #265
LewisVerstappen wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I tried to create a Twilio account 2 weeks ago and it was the worse developer experience I've ever had by far . Like seriously. They first make you deposit $20 to get started. THEN, they tell you to talk to customer support to activate your account (customer support took forever to reply). Oh and then I had to fill out like 3 applications and my text messages are still randomly getting blocked - I have n…

This is industry self-regulation. See A2P 10DLC. Dealing with it at scale has sucked. If you want to send SMS, it's the price of admission everywhere--not just at Twilio. I know you said you wanted to send yourself an SMS, but you can test without sending using test credentials and magic numbers: https://www.twilio.com/docs/messaging/tutorials/automate-tes...

it is not just SMS, I just recently set up some AWS SES for sending emails (never done this kind of thing before) and boy is it a nightmare to get emails to not be flag as spam these days.

Like SPF, DMARC, DKIM. What the hell how many layers of security do I need to go through to get some emails delivered from a domain I own?

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#283

Post by craigdennis »

shakes wrote: post #38

I worked at Twilio for nearly 10 years and it's hard to overstate what a gift it was to work there and see Jeff operate as CEO up-close. He created an environment where (at our best) we could have fun doing work that had a real impact, and we could it with people we enjoyed doing the work with. He pushed us to be creative to authentically empower and inspire developers. Wanna build a video game that teaches developer…

It's all fun and games till someone sucks Macklemore into the cloud.

Jeffiel kept the fun and weird alive and it was a helluva ride. Kudos Jeff!

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#284

Post by specialist »

karim wrote: post #112
movingmove wrote: post #81

I had the "pleasure" working for Twilio for over 4 years. I cannot tell how much this showed me how you can fake it til you make it in SF. Twilio tried to expand into Europe and failed miserably. Customers (especially German ones) wanted exact locations of data, exact routes of packet transportation, wanted features Twilio promised on Slides but never delivered. I was part of at least 4 customer meetings (the biggest…

One year into it you knew the company was going to fail yet you stayed on for 3 more years? What happened there?

Job mobility declines significantly with marriage, kids, and mortgage. I've toughed it out before, mostly to keep the good healthcare benefits. (This was prior to ACA eliminating the preexisting conditions BS. We didn't want the hassle, uncertainty of changing insurance during a pregnancy.)

Also, it's hard to job hunt when you're already over worked, both at home and the office.

Also, the devil you know. Every new job is a gamble. After a while, all the jobs kinda smell the same. So what's the point in playing frogger?

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#285

Post by dragonwriter »

dools wrote: post #269
dragonwriter wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If nothing else, your argument that monetary policy levers work exactly the opposite way that conventional economics says they do is amusing.

Even more amusing is that I’m right!

If you were right, Fed policy would drive the nation into an unbreakable positive feedback loop (irrespective, really, of preexisting conditions because the conventional economic levers would always drive the nation the exact opposite way intended) until conventional understanding of monetary policy was abandoned. The fact that this hasn't happened pretty clearly disproves your understanding: the conventional understanding may be wrong in some way, but its not inverted.

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#286

Post by eszed »

Solvency wrote: post #191
nativeit wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m personally not a dev, maybe amateur dev, but I am a professional I.T. consultant and sysadmin, and I have used and thoroughly enjoyed Twilio’s tools for years. They are accessible enough for even low-skill amateur devs like me to be able to spin up test programs and functions that do really cool things. I am heartened to hear that my longtime support has gone to a company whose culture and leadership have been wo…

Out of curiosity what cool test programs does a sysadmin make with Twilio? Custom system alerts over SMS?

> Custom system alerts over SMS?

Can't speak for the guy you asked, but I'm approximately his skill-set, and that's what I've used it for.

Long time ago, though; I can't speak to the developer experience now. $20 and contact customer support... What? It used to be easy. Like, create an account and ten minutes later your in business, easy. I used them for a number of (free-tier, I think) personal and (paid-tier) professional projects, and was a very satisfied customer.

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#287

Post by jijji »

danenania wrote: post #105
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I used twilio for years until in August of 2023 they started blocking all my text messages, New telco industry texting requirements came into play. In short, US biz are required to register with The Campaign Registry and pay regular fees if they want to do any (as in 1+) software text comms. It can be onerous for not-large biz. Twillo took point early-on (inserting themselves into the administration, IIRC) and Twil…

Somewhat surprising/disappointing to me was that now you can't even send SMS to a number that initiates the conversation--this would seem to be a pretty clear opt-in indicator. Because of that, I couldn't find a way (through Twilio) to get around the registration requirements just to send SMS to my own number for development purposes to try some things out. The registration workflow and UX is also comically terrible…

The time I wasted waiting for twilio to deny my reasoning for sending an SMS message to One of my customers, paying them to do this mind you, was about the same amount of time it took me to write an Android application that sent out SMS messages by reading from a custom API on one of my servers... I probably should have done that in the beginning it would have been a lot less money in the long run.

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#289

Post by rprospero »

gregorymichael wrote: post #288
rprospero wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations, Greg! You've come a long way from Mr. Shadiow's CS class

WHOA!!! Callback! Who's this!?!

I'm Adam Washington. I was a couple of years behind you, but we bumped into each other socially a few times over the years. As a refresher, I was also the sophomore with the glasses in Shadiow's class that accidentally kicked over the trash can while trying to explain how graphs work.

Back in high school, I thought you were the brightest and chillest guy on the planet. My first Linux install was because I overheard you talking about it in class and I wanted to see what the fuss was about. Anyway, it's been a treat seeing you pop up again after all these years and discovering that my nostalgia lenses were right - you really are that smart and cool.

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#290

Post by gregorymichael »

rprospero wrote: post #289
gregorymichael wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WHOA!!! Callback! Who's this!?!

I'm Adam Washington. I was a couple of years behind you, but we bumped into each other socially a few times over the years. As a refresher, I was also the sophomore with the glasses in Shadiow's class that accidentally kicked over the trash can while trying to explain how graphs work. Back in high school, I thought you were the brightest and chillest guy on the planet. My first Linux install was because I overheard y…

You are very kind Adam. This just made my day. Drop me an email -- would love to catch up.

Edit: I shared this story with three guys my year who were also in that class. You'll be happy to know:

1. They all remember you.

2. No one remembers the trash can.

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