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Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

esthercrawford.medium.com

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Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#121

Post by indus »

itronitron wrote: post #102
indus wrote: post #35

My TLDR reading this: - everyone working in big tech is so so lucky. millions of people would do anything for these jobs. - contrary to what the narrative is set, the kitchen is dirty, shit is on fire, and barring a few no one has a clue. - recruiters perpetuate the candidate bias manifold. “Get me a dropbox PM” or “Get me a a google ML person” sheer laziness as talent is all around.

Also, weirdly, she references twitter's customers as being distinct group from their advertisers. The fact that she does not mention who those customers might be however is not surprising.

Yeah - I read that a few times to understand what she meant :/)

Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#122

Post by croes »

falcolas wrote: post #117
croes wrote: post #41

>I think of life as a game, and being at Twitter after the acquisition was like playing life at Level 10 on Hard Mode I may feel hard but it's still easy mode compared to poor people in third world countries or people in warzones, especially if it doesn't matter to you if you get fired or not.

The existence of suffering greater than your own does nothing to invalidate your own suffering. And it certainly doesn’t mean someone else should come along and shame you for expressing your own pain. That’s toxic to any form of discourse.

I don't invalidate suffering, but if your suffering isn't live threatening, you are definitely not on level 10 in Hard mode, that's more like level 8 in Medium. Especially if you can afford a sabbatical after you are fired.

Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#123

Post by croes »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #93
croes wrote: post #41

>I think of life as a game, and being at Twitter after the acquisition was like playing life at Level 10 on Hard Mode I may feel hard but it's still easy mode compared to poor people in third world countries or people in warzones, especially if it doesn't matter to you if you get fired or not.

The trouble with this line of thinking is that it negates almost any problem someone can suffer. Starving to death? At least you're not starving to death while being physically tortured every moment of the day! The problems people face and their suffering is real, and should be respected, even if there is someone who has it worse somewhere else.

No it doesn't.

At a certain threat level, you are on level 10 Hard Mode, especially if your life is in danger. So starving and starving and tortured are both level 10 Hard mode

If you can afford a sabbatical after you lost your job, you are not in Hard mode.

Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#124

Post by astrange »

ikekkdcjkfke wrote: post #19
astrange wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your plan is anything other what I said, it is either a crime or it will cause people to commit crimes by seeing the material in question. You need a lawyer, not your intuition.

Is there no room for journalism on the topic

There isn't any journalism that requires distributing child porn. Or even possessing it.

Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#125

Post by ergocoder »

lapcat wrote: post #18
ergocoder wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a questionable aspect to be honest. This is her experience and decision. > I don't think that we should ever allow capitalists to deprive us of the essentials, such as sleep Your strong claim is actually questionable. I can already think of one realistic scenario where pulling an all-nighter is a sensible choice like: you are on an H1B visa and, if you are fired, you would be beyond fucked with your life, so…

> It's not a questionable aspect to be honest. This is her experience and decision. I already addressed this point in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36887195 > I can already think of one realistic scenario where pulling an all-nighter is a sensible choice like: you are on an H1B visa and, if you are fired, you would be beyond fucked with your life, so you pull an all nighter. Perhaps. But this…

Abuse is a strong word for a situation where you earn 30x more than what you would earn back home, and the work culture is actually better even with some all-nighters.

We must either move back to our home country or avoid doing all-nighters. We have no free will to make our own decision. We are to be labeled as an abused person forever.

That is totally a sensible morality

Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#126

Post by lapcat »

ergocoder wrote: post #125
lapcat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not a questionable aspect to be honest. This is her experience and decision. I already addressed this point in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36887195 > I can already think of one realistic scenario where pulling an all-nighter is a sensible choice like: you are on an H1B visa and, if you are fired, you would be beyond fucked with your life, so you pull an all nighter. Perhaps. But this…

Abuse is a strong word for a situation where you earn 30x more than what you would earn back home, and the work culture is actually better even with some all-nighters. We must either move back to our home country or avoid doing all-nighters. We have no free will to make our own decision. We are to be labeled as an abused person forever. That is totally a sensible morality

> Abuse is a strong word

You said yourself: "if you are fired, you would be beyond fucked with your life, so you pull an all nighter." If you don't think that's abuse, I don't know what else to say.

> We must either move back to our home country or avoid doing all-nighters. We have no free will to make our own decision. We are to be labeled as an abused person forever.

I really don't understand what you're saying here, especially about "free will". My impression is that you seem to be implying with your response that bosses demanding all-nighters is fine, but a mere critical comment from a stranger on Hacker News has equal authority and power, somehow even worse and immoral. But that would be quite overdramatic, so maybe I'm misunderstanding.

Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#127

Post by kaba0 »

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #90
bloopernova wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

musk has a vast amount of power and influence due to his wealth, links to several corporations, links to other rich people, and his control of a social media site. I believe that someone with that much power has an obligation, a responsibility to improve the world for humanity. Whether elected or not. he instead chooses to do what he does. That is why I dislike him. he could offer so much more but messes around "trol…

Compared to average finance billionaire #293 bragging to their golf buddies how they got the Toys-R-Us bankruptcy to pay for their third private yacht he has definitely done his duty for improving the world, even if he's lately been acting like a major idiot while doing it. Yes I know there are other tech billionaires who do better, but for every one of them there's a mile of those who instead actively work to make t…

Yeah, he gave us fking paypal..

Also, we surely needed some more ass-licker for Russia, as if we don’t have enough already, or some high position person shittalking about covid. Definitely a good gal..

Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#128

Post by kaba0 »

nancyhn wrote: post #63
bloopernova wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

musk has a vast amount of power and influence due to his wealth, links to several corporations, links to other rich people, and his control of a social media site. I believe that someone with that much power has an obligation, a responsibility to improve the world for humanity. Whether elected or not. he instead chooses to do what he does. That is why I dislike him. he could offer so much more but messes around "trol…

Literally who has improved humanity more this century? I ask with all seriousness. Electric cars and rockets would not be where they are if he had chosen a different and much less difficult path.

What did he actually do with regards to electric cars and rockets, besides getting richer? I do give credit for being good at hyping up shit, less good at actually delivering that.

Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#129

Post by kaba0 »

bentlegen wrote: post #103
cjbgkagh wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I mentioned; they lacked the scale and scope required to be successful.

I disagree and here’s an example I would use. In the 20+ years Google has dominated search, who has come along and iterated a “better” version? Bing? Is the capital and scope required not approachable, as you suggest? Similarly, since Tesla helped demonstrate a valid market for electric cars, how many automakers have released competitive (and to some, better) EVs? If the capital requirements and scope were too large,…

Re SpaceX: it had massive government funds going for it. So surely, no one else could do it, because they don’t have the funds to lobby for taxpayer money that hard.

I still think we should have just given it to NASA, a private entity has no business in space.

Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#130

Post by thereare5lights »

bhauer wrote: post #57
bloopernova wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

musk has a vast amount of power and influence due to his wealth, links to several corporations, links to other rich people, and his control of a social media site. I believe that someone with that much power has an obligation, a responsibility to improve the world for humanity. Whether elected or not. he instead chooses to do what he does. That is why I dislike him. he could offer so much more but messes around "trol…

I don't care for his tweets or his political thoughts, but I personally think he has done more good through his companies than most others with similar resources. In my opinion, when Gates was still running Microsoft, he did considerably less "good" for humanity than Musk is doing now. And Musk's contemporaries (Zuckerberg, Bezos, et al) don't seem to be interested in doing much good either. It's easy to be an armcha…

> I am thoroughly disinterested in the unhinged vitriol I see so often from Musk's haters. The incessant lazy discourse about how Twitter is dying, for either technical or other reasons.

> but I personally think he has done more good through his companies than most others with similar resources.

It's always odd to me how people say Musk is doing good though his companies without backing it up while criticizing how people are critical of Musk as if it's unhinged.

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