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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

#211

Post by sangnoir »

caeril wrote: post #204
lm28469 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> In the real world, however, a single developer can do it in less time than that.

Which single developer can rollout payments globally in 6 days? How much time do they set aside to ensuring regulatory compliance with dozens of jurisdictions that have occasionally conflicting rules?

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

#212

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #23

It seems that Elon thinks that there are too many managers (per coder) there https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586686935518498816

At least in a dev situation I think 10-1 devs-to-managers is actually a pretty sizable ratio - I think ideally it's more of a 6-to-8ish to one.

Now, this of course assumes that engineering managers are not solely doing employee management but also are serving some "tech lead" type roles. I.e. even if an engineering manager isn't coding I think it's essential that (a) a considerable portion of their time is spent doing code reviews, (b) they should be working closely with product managers to define stories and requirements before the dev team starts implementing, etc.

That is, having line engineering managers solely do "people management" is universally a bad idea in my opinion. They should be getting their "hands dirty" in the tech aspects as well in order to be effective.

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

#213

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

outside1234 wrote: post #41
datalopers wrote: post #30

Getting laid off and having your RSUs vest at 2021 prices is the best deal this year.

But I think Elon's goal is to screw the employees out of their next grant

1. Elon already tweeted that this is false.

2. As another commenter mentioned, I don't even think this would be possible given California WARN Act requirements, but I'm less sure on the legal requirements here.

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

#214

Post by Ancalagon »

notacoward wrote: post #210
Ancalagon wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

Apologies I misunderstood. And when I was remarking on Musk I meant those actually involved in the lay-offs.

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

#215

Post by dragonwriter »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #213
outside1234 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I think Elon's goal is to screw the employees out of their next grant

1. Elon already tweeted that this is false. 2. As another commenter mentioned, I don't even think this would be possible given California WARN Act requirements, but I'm less sure on the legal requirements here.

> As another commenter mentioned, I don't even think this would be possible given California WARN Act requirement

Large-scale labor law violations are not impossible, or even unprecedented for Musk-owned firms.

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

#216

Post by duxup »

cragfar wrote: post #187
duxup wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that’s cash flow, not profit and they need to at least maintain it while cutting staff… and maybe make a profit one day? They only have made a profit 2 out of the last 10 years.

for 2021, 1.2 billion was spent on R&D, 1.7 billion on cost of revenue (guessing a decent amount of this was salaries), and 765 million was due to a class action lawsuit they lost. With all of these, they showed a loss of 200 million. There definitely appears to be some fat that can be trimmed. This year is on track for a gain, but they sold some ad service for a billion which distorts things.

Be interesting if they gut it completely just to try to make debt payments and how that would work.

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

#217

Post by BaseballPhysics »

jdm2212 wrote: post #172
xnorswap wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the employer can demand whatever they want and fire you for whatever reason they want In the US. I'm glad I work in a country where workers actually have rights.

Everything in life is tradeoffs. American software engineers get paid more than basically anyone else in the world, but we also have less job security. What's preferable just depends on your risk aversion vs marginal utility of money.

> American software engineers get paid more than basically anyone else in the world, but we also have less job security. What's preferable just depends on your risk aversion vs marginal utility of money.

Of course, this comment is predicated on the assumption that America's loose labour laws are the reason for this salary disparity, and I'm not personally willing to follow you to that conclusion.

I think it's far more likely that American software engineers get paid more because the industry was effectively born there, and it was born there due to historical accidents like the US being where the transistor was invented, the advancement of technology due to government spending during World War II and the subsequent space race, etc, not to mention the US being the center of the VC world, which has its own deep history.

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

#218

Post by lm28469 »

caeril wrote: post #204
lm28469 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Ah yes, go ahead and create a stripe account that will allow $6m flow in less than a week, hit me up when you're done, that alone would probably require more than 6 days of back and forth with Stripe

I too thought I could rewrite twitter and instagram in 10 days with a few JS and PHP framework when I was fresh out of uni

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

#219

Post by jiveturkey »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #212
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #23

It seems that Elon thinks that there are too many managers (per coder) there https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586686935518498816

At least in a dev situation I think 10-1 devs-to-managers is actually a pretty sizable ratio - I think ideally it's more of a 6-to-8ish to one. Now, this of course assumes that engineering managers are not solely doing employee management but also are serving some "tech lead" type roles. I.e. even if an engineering manager isn't coding I think it's essential that (a) a considerable portion of their time is spent doin…

You read it backwards. He claimed 10-1 managers-to-devs.

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

#220

Post by cragfar »

duxup wrote: post #216
cragfar wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for 2021, 1.2 billion was spent on R&D, 1.7 billion on cost of revenue (guessing a decent amount of this was salaries), and 765 million was due to a class action lawsuit they lost. With all of these, they showed a loss of 200 million. There definitely appears to be some fat that can be trimmed. This year is on track for a gain, but they sold some ad service for a billion which distorts things.

Be interesting if they gut it completely just to try to make debt payments and how that would work.

Is the billion in debt payments actually confirmed? That would most likely require some increase in revenue which is probably why Musk is looking into the verified twitter payment thing.
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