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Twitter Android app dev fired: Guess it's official now.

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Re: Twitter Android app dev fired: Guess it's official now.

#111
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where have you been? I think you may be uninformed on this. Here's some details: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/26/technology/twitter-musk-b... . Later when Elon sought to pull out of the deal, Twitter threatened to go to court to enforce that $1B fee, which led to the buyout proceeding.

> Where have you been? I think you may be uninformed on this. I think you are victim to reading headlines and not understanding what Twitter went to court over. Elon paying the $1B wouldn’t have gotten him out of having to complete the deal. Here’s some details: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/13/elon-musk-cant-just-walk-awa...

I was aware that Twitter went to court to complete the deal, but I admit to being misinformed as much of the analysis I read stated both avenues ($1B fee or force the acquisition) were viable.

For example, Dan Ives, who is often quoted in articles about this deal, had this to tweet: https://twitter.com/DivesTech/status/1545527442491822089?s=2...

It appears that is incorrect.

Re: Twitter Android app dev fired: Guess it's official now.

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there’s a severance package for that. Employment suicide by cop.

Dangerous gamble for just a couple months of severance. Would make me hesitant to hire that person knowing they have such bad judgement as to publicly badmouth the CEO of their company on Twitter. Even hiring managers who personally hate Elon have to understand that this developer could easily turn the same energy on their own company at some point in the future and make them look terrible. Definitely a career limiti…

I’ll hire her. My skin is pretty thick, and I need competent engineers more than my ego stoked.

Re: Twitter Android app dev fired: Guess it's official now.

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're getting good stock awards to stay, and if they think they can turn Twitter around, then there's a good chance they can make a lot of money. Now that Twitter is private the stock is going to be a lot less volatile. Work hard. Acquire users. Enter new markets. Valuation improves (once or twice a year). Cash out during a purchase offer. If I were Elon, I'd be drowning the remaining loyal employees with RSUs.

> stock awards In what? I'm not sure I'd value private RSUs in current-Twitter _particularly_ highly, myself.

If you're an engineer who thinks with the right app or feature, that you could increase the value of Twitter substantially - then those current RSUs would be a great investment and could pay off handsomely in the future.

Re: Twitter Android app dev fired: Guess it's official now.

#114
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where have you been? I think you may be uninformed on this. Here's some details: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/26/technology/twitter-musk-b... . Later when Elon sought to pull out of the deal, Twitter threatened to go to court to enforce that $1B fee, which led to the buyout proceeding.

The $1b fine was not available to just use to back out of the deal. You are misinformed on this.

I agree, I was misinformed. Too many articles state both acquisition or $1B fine were viable routes for Twitter, but other sources with more solid analysis look to contradict that.

Re: Twitter Android app dev fired: Guess it's official now.

#115
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter's financial situation is mostly public, so no one needs to speculate. Here's one good analysis – https://twitter.com/EnergyCredit1/status/1591873061149614106 . Twitter was already losing hundreds of millions per year. They now have another $1.2-1.5 billion per year due in loan payments. Interest rates are rising. Advertising revenue is going down due to the recession and companies cutting Twitter spend due to…

It's funny when Elon companies are successful people say it was never him it was the engineers, and then when his companies are having trouble then it's not the engineers, it's him. The fact is it's a team. Twitter has more than enough runway to get through this transition and turn things around. It's up to the team to execute effectively.

Nowhere in this thread am I assigning any blame to anyone, so that's just a strawman diversion from the conversation on your part.

As for runway – that's public information as well. Twitter had $6B in cash and securities as of the last financial statement release. That has likely gone down a fair amount due to acquisition-related costs as well as severance payments. Keeping up with the ~$2B/yr burn rate, unless Twitter can turn things around fast (or get another cash infusion), it has about 2-3 years left in the tank.

Re: Twitter Android app dev fired: Guess it's official now.

#116
post #60
post #55

Folks, just to set expectations here, it’s gonna be like this for a couple years. He’s going to be nanomanaging the company and learning from scratch the entire business and doing wild shit until he figures it out. And it’s going to be chaos internally and leaks left and right and ten crazy stories like this a week. The signal to noise ratio is gonna be ridiculously low and everyone’s going to get whipped up in every…

The drama is literally the only reason I'm on Twitter right now. Better than any TV show. The moment things get back to "normal" I'm deleting the app.

For real. I deleted mine last week but I might have to make a new one so I can read the hilarious threads. They their up a modal if you scroll too far as an unregistered user

Re: Twitter Android app dev fired: Guess it's official now.

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related to this discussion, Elon made a tweet saying there are over 1200 microservices. Are there any tech talks or explanation videos showing a rough outline of what all these microservices do or how they're broken up? It's difficult to wrap my head around that amount.

I can’t speak to Twitter specifically, but Monzo are a company somewhat famous for their thousands of microservices which they’ve written about, so that might provide some insight to how a company could use so many: https://monzo.com/blog/2022/06/24/redefining-our-microservic...

Previously worked at Monzo and the way their monorepo is designed is in retrospect incredibly solid, there is pretty much zero feature overlap between different services which is something even Google never managed to solve completely when I worked there.

Definitely had issues with abandoned / zombie services, but nothing that ever actually got in my way.

Re: Twitter Android app dev fired: Guess it's official now.

#118
post #40

After seeing Elon mixing up all async services that happen in backend with Android client making as many requests, I wonder if I thought this guy is smart because I know nothing about building cars or launching space rockets. Edit: "guy is smart" probably should be "guy is technically competent". I am sure Elon is smart, I think he is being Phony while acting technically competent in every area.

I still believe that his insistence on only using computer vision for Tesla’s self driving was profoundly wrong. I got my ivy-league graduate degree in a related field right around the time when he probably was making the decision (2015) and it was obvious to everyone around me that we are not even close to having the kind of generic, reliable CV you would need for a car. Obviously, in grant proposals and papers we painted a much rosier picture, but on the inside everyone knew it’s just exaggerated, best-case scenarios that have little bearing on reality.

Re: Twitter Android app dev fired: Guess it's official now.

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there’s a severance package for that. Employment suicide by cop.

Dangerous gamble for just a couple months of severance. Would make me hesitant to hire that person knowing they have such bad judgement as to publicly badmouth the CEO of their company on Twitter. Even hiring managers who personally hate Elon have to understand that this developer could easily turn the same energy on their own company at some point in the future and make them look terrible. Definitely a career limiti…

I would hire anyone that called any C level person a dumbass for making bad decisions affecting the bottom-line of the company.
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