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Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#201

Post by jupp0r »

jupp0r wrote: post #131
makestuff wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend who works in sales at a tech company and since all of this accounts are long term customers he really doesn't do much. They like the service so it is basically an auto-renewal. So I guess Elon thinks that advertisers will just auto renew because they like the ROI they get from their spend on twitter. However, what he fails to realize is the media buyers love to be wined and dined with fancy dinners. I…

Isn't this the definition of corruption?

Not sure why this gets downvoted. IANAL but it every compliance training I've ever done, basing company business decisions on being invited to fancy dinners raises all sorts of red flag when it comes to compliance with anti corruption laws.

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#202

Post by caeril »

Ancalagon wrote: post #157

What’s with the contempt for twitter employees in this thread? I really hope Musk doesn’t come for your job next

Because

1. Twitter, the core application, is literally a weekend junior dev project. The only engineers on the payroll who provide actual value, out of THOUSANDS, are those who scale the application and infrastructure. The vast majority of these people have been paid huge comp packages for doing effectively nothing. Sure, there are auxilliary applications like the ad platform, business intelligence, etc, but there is no world in which you need the enormous engineering staff they have to build or run these. Most of these people are useless.

2. Twitter employees have been complicit in curbing free speech, in a highly partisan manner, for years now.

> I really hope Musk doesn’t come for your job next

I suspect that if you provide actual, tangible value and you're not actively silencing people for using the wrong pronouns, you'll be safe.

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#203

Post by Ancalagon »

caeril wrote: post #202
Ancalagon wrote: post #157

What’s with the contempt for twitter employees in this thread? I really hope Musk doesn’t come for your job next

Because 1. Twitter, the core application, is literally a weekend junior dev project. The only engineers on the payroll who provide actual value, out of THOUSANDS , are those who scale the application and infrastructure. The vast majority of these people have been paid huge comp packages for doing effectively nothing. Sure, there are auxilliary applications like the ad platform, business intelligence, etc, but there i…

How is broadly laying off 25% of the org ever going to have the precision of pointed firings for excessive pronoun use? Even real-value is hard to measure at that scale.

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#204

Post by caeril »

lm28469 wrote: post #99
COGlory wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? What has Musk actually done? To date there's: - Reports that he had Tesla engineers with him when they interviewed some Twitter engineeers. Currently the biggest arguments against that are: Tesla engineers belong to Tesla (we have no idea in what capacity they were they) and "that's an ineffective strategy to review a codebase" (we have no idea if that's what they were actually doing. - Reports that he gave a te…

> Reports that he gave a team until Nov 7th to roll out a paid subscription > None of these things are particularly unreasonable Six business days to come up with a system to process $6m per month of income. Nothing unreasonable indeed...

Yes, by historical Twitter standards it may seem unreasonable to write a Stripe API integration with simple UI and account history in six days. In the real world, however, a single developer can do it in less time than that.

Twitter (and really, BigCo in general) engineers are accustomed to their foosball tables, catered meals, wine bars, beer taps, rooftop gaming session, and endless meetings and code reviews.

It's possible that Musk is trying to set the reasonable expectation that a total comp package worth $400k should be exchanged for actual productivity, rather than playtime and busywork.

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#205

Post by Ancalagon »

notacoward wrote: post #169
Ancalagon wrote: post #157

What’s with the contempt for twitter employees in this thread? I really hope Musk doesn’t come for your job next

> I really hope Musk doesn’t come for your job next Part of me hopes he does , because that's the only way the Tall Poppy Syndrome folks have any chance of learning. But most of me has more empathy than they do.

Feels like your painting a picture of these folks when you more than likely have no idea who they are or how they act.

More than likely they’re fairly normal employees. Granted they make more than most but that doesn’t mean they have “Tall Poppy Syndrome”.

The ONLY bad guys in this scenario are Musk and his yes-men

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#206

Post by fknorangesite »

jupp0r wrote: post #138
MentallyRetired wrote: post #63

This is exactly why we need a developer/designer union.

Nope, this is why there are labor protection laws (some at least in CA).

How do you think those labor protection laws got made in the first place?

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#207

Post by sangnoir »

lefstathiou wrote: post #116
brtkdotse wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the severance that’s the issue, it that a bunch of RSUs vest tomorrow.

I need to read into this more… My understanding is that this was a take private so all stock was acquired already (ie vested options get paid and unvested get terminated at Close). This is exactly what would happen if you acquired our company. It’s not like a purchaser would have the honor long term vesting schedules. They bought everything already that was available to be sold. Those who didn’t vest were dragged alo…

> This is exactly what would happen if you acquired our company.

That is a terrible deal. I've worked at a company where all outstanding RSUs would vest immediately at the time of purchase; was that an unusual arrangement?

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#208

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

MentallyRetired wrote: post #63

This is exactly why we need a developer/designer union.

Why, exactly?

1. It's not like this should come as a surprise to anyone at Twitter. If you work at Twitter and haven't been updating your resume and reaching out to other contacts, don't know what to say.

2. Remains to be seen what severance package laid off employees get, but with the California WARN requirements I think it's likely to be at least a couple months, which is fair. Looks like Musk tried to screw over some of the top execs by firing "for cause" (and note, in an exec's contract "for cause" can't just be "we don't like the job you did", it pretty much always has specific stipulations about breaking laws or company policy, e.g. sexual harassment), but they have more than enough resources to sue if necessary.

3. Is there anyone who reasonably thinks that Twitter has a lot of unproductive employees that should be let go? I think unions can do a lot of good, but not if it's the standard "once you're in the union it's nearly impossible to let you go" situation. Highly productive employees hate working with people who just "phone it in".

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#209

Post by kbelder »

yboris wrote: post #17
swozey wrote: post #9

Evidently Musk had Tweeps work all weekend on the new Verified feature lest they get fired, and some were fired "for cause" anyway. https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1587029446061686784

How is it legal to demand people work on weekends? How is it legal to (even threaten) firing if a new assigned task that takes a long time is not done on time?

That these questions are being asked makes me think software engineers are very detached from the other 95% of humanity.

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#210

Post by notacoward »

Ancalagon wrote: post #205
notacoward wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really hope Musk doesn’t come for your job next Part of me hopes he does , because that's the only way the Tall Poppy Syndrome folks have any chance of learning. But most of me has more empathy than they do.

Feels like your painting a picture of these folks when you more than likely have no idea who they are or how they act. More than likely they’re fairly normal employees. Granted they make more than most but that doesn’t mean they have “Tall Poppy Syndrome”. The ONLY bad guys in this scenario are Musk and his yes-men

You seem to be misunderstanding who I'm talking about, or even what TPS is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome

The Tall Poppy Syndrome folks are not those at Twitter. I know a few, and respect them, and have no problem with them making more than most (as I did myself when I worked at FB). No, the TPS folks are those right here bashing Twitter employees, as you yourself complained about. I don't know who they are, but I do know how they act because they're acting out right here in front of us.

> The ONLY bad guys in this scenario are Musk and his yes-men

So you no longer have a problem with the haters? What changed in the last two hours?

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