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Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

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Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#291
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Elon was fired from PayPal. He failed at Boring Company and Neuralink. He faked his educational credentials and was in the country illegally. He failed at Full Self Driving, the Roadster is nowhere to be seen, the Cybertruck is MIA and the Tesla Semi is years late. 95% of predictions he has made has failed to pass. As far as I can tell, he lucked out during the .com boom, then invested in Tesla and almost drove i…

That may be true. But the guy also landed rockets from orbit (on ships!). And then flew them again. The implications of having easy access to space to our civilization really cannot be overstated. SpaceX is the real deal, and will probably be worth more than Tesla eventually. Musk clearly isn’t successful in everything he does, but he’s not a failure either.

> The implications of having easy access to space to our civilization really cannot be overstated.

I think that counts.

Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#292
post #133

Probably a good time to download an archive of your Twitter data: https://twitter.com/settings/download_your_data

Unfortunately it may no longer be an option as some have said the 2FA SMS needed to download the archive is not responsive.

Mine had an option for e-mail or SMS. Never got the SMS, but e-mail worked.

I love how it says "To protect your account" it can take 24 hours or longer for your data to be ready.

Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#293
post #157

>Hundreds upon hundreds of Twitter employees have technically resigned but still have access to Twitter’s internal systems, with some speculating it is because the employees tasked with managing that access also resigned. https://twitter.com/alexeheath/status/1593431420587761664

Aside: there is no "technically resigned" here, if they're referring to Musk's loyalty-pledge deadline. Those employees have been terminated -- and are entitled to unemployment and wrongful termination protections.

Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#294

I hope that the wheels stay on sufficiently to get an idea of where EM wants to take Twitter and find out what kind of value it can bring. Having said that, he really made it obvious to me as an eng that the severance is the option I would be taking. Going "hardcore" on things can be fun, at the right time in your life, for the right reasons, with the right people. But somebody who takes over the company and accrues…

> Going "hardcore" on things can be fun, at the right time in your life, for the right reasons, with the right people. I don't see what it is about the Twitter product that would require going "hardcore". It's a lose-lose situation; I don't think Twitter's problems would be solved by engineering harder; and you will spend 80 hrs/wk where you can end up fired because people aren't as deterministic as cars. It's a comp…

It makes sense if you just fired 50% of your workforce. Although I could never quite figure out what so many people were doing on the product I imagine, in that 50% of staff were some pretty important roles, that now need their hours covered.

I do not considered this fair, ethical or very smart. Just imagine all the tribal knowledge that just vanished. Twitter ought to hope they kept enough of the right infrastructure people around to actually keep the site up.

Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#295
post #159

Is there precedent anyone can point to where these sorts of wild dramatic moves under new leadership led to turning a large company around into success?

What is wild? Musk has said for a long time Twitter needs 75% less staff. What did you expect firing that many people to look like?

considering that Black Friday, Qatar World Cup and Christmas are all in the next 30 days, one might have thought he'd want to capitalize on the increased traffic and advertiser interest in his first week on the job.

It doesn't even look like there will be any advertisers left by the time the dust settles.

Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#296
post #228

I am chalking this up to Russia syndrome. Personality types driven to do great things aren't easily satisfied. Most are perpetually dissatisfied & they need to raise the stakes. They win the war of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th coalitions. For the first time, they find that things are going fine. All they have to do is nothing. Pull back and consolidate. Maybe refine some things, tinker a bit. But it's not enough. It wi…

But Elon was fired from PayPal. He failed at Boring Company and Neuralink. He faked his educational credentials and was in the country illegally. He failed at Full Self Driving, the Roadster is nowhere to be seen, the Cybertruck is MIA and the Tesla Semi is years late. 95% of predictions he has made has failed to pass. As far as I can tell, he lucked out during the .com boom, then invested in Tesla and almost drove i…

Doesn't it get exhausting to jump through so many mental hoops to minimize someone's accomplishments?

I don't understand what people get out of this, is it really that painful to admit that some guy has done some pretty cool things with his life? All the effort it takes to research all the negative things about someone could've been spent doing something productive. Being willing to admit that someone did something awesome could've been exciting or inspiring.

And yet people work so hard to think around all the good things, and take the most negative view possible. Ugh, I don't like this part of human nature.

Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#297

I hope that the wheels stay on sufficiently to get an idea of where EM wants to take Twitter and find out what kind of value it can bring. Having said that, he really made it obvious to me as an eng that the severance is the option I would be taking. Going "hardcore" on things can be fun, at the right time in your life, for the right reasons, with the right people. But somebody who takes over the company and accrues…

There is just so much irony all over this, at every level and every side. It’s hilarious. Musk wanted to buy it, then tried to back away. The board tried to prevent the sale, then sued to make it happen. Employees loathed the idea of Musk being their boss, but also wanted his cash for their stock. And as much good a pubic soapbox platform could have been for society, destroying the company seems to me to be the only…

I honestly want to see Twitter's financials before it goes. I have a suspicion that a lot of it's revenue was from government sources, especially after Arab Spring.

Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#298
post #53

I hope that the wheels stay on sufficiently to get an idea of where EM wants to take Twitter and find out what kind of value it can bring. Having said that, he really made it obvious to me as an eng that the severance is the option I would be taking. Going "hardcore" on things can be fun, at the right time in your life, for the right reasons, with the right people. But somebody who takes over the company and accrues…

>Going "hardcore" on things can be fun, at the right time in your life, for the right reasons, with the right people. And for the right financial upside. I completely understand going hardcore at a startup in which you have equity. But hasn't Twitter going private removed a lot of the incentive for employees? What is the upside for a Twitter engineer dedicating themselves to the company? Making one of the richest peo…

Most people working at a startup in which you have equity will make nothing from the equity. You do get to fantasize, like buying a lottery ticket.

I would say for me working hard at startups was mostly because I enjoyed the technical challenge, the culture, and the team I was working with. And I was paid pretty well. I placed $0 value on my equity (and for me that's also what it ended up being worth).

Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#299
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Elon was fired from PayPal. He failed at Boring Company and Neuralink. He faked his educational credentials and was in the country illegally. He failed at Full Self Driving, the Roadster is nowhere to be seen, the Cybertruck is MIA and the Tesla Semi is years late. 95% of predictions he has made has failed to pass. As far as I can tell, he lucked out during the .com boom, then invested in Tesla and almost drove i…

I love how the goalposts keep shifting all the time - "Tesla can never manufacture a mass production car", "Elon cannot run a hardware company", "Electric cars can only sell when subsidized". The truth is Tesla and Elon pushed an entire market forward. Tesla paid back their loans while other car manufacturers didn't. SpaceX was not the first in the launch business - they were in fact the only one who attempted to bre…

I can contribute one more data point: Space X invented a new alloy steel to drive down the cost of the surface material of Space X rockets to $4/kg. That's some serious science and engineering. And this improvement is probably a very small one compared with thousands of innovations made by Space X.

Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#300
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Elon was fired from PayPal. He failed at Boring Company and Neuralink. He faked his educational credentials and was in the country illegally. He failed at Full Self Driving, the Roadster is nowhere to be seen, the Cybertruck is MIA and the Tesla Semi is years late. 95% of predictions he has made has failed to pass. As far as I can tell, he lucked out during the .com boom, then invested in Tesla and almost drove i…

I love how the goalposts keep shifting all the time - "Tesla can never manufacture a mass production car", "Elon cannot run a hardware company", "Electric cars can only sell when subsidized". The truth is Tesla and Elon pushed an entire market forward. Tesla paid back their loans while other car manufacturers didn't. SpaceX was not the first in the launch business - they were in fact the only one who attempted to bre…

> I love how the goalposts keep shifting all the time

Which ones? The ones where cars would self-deliver five years ago? That Mars colonisation would have begun this year? That Cybertruck would deliver three years ago?

The goalposts are Elons.

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