Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#301

Post by fleddr » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 12:55 AM UTC

I think most are missing that this is a code review + loyalty review.

For sure a software engineer from Tesla, or even a manager, can get an idea of how valuable/productive a coder is without fully understanding the code in detail. How many PRs? What does the code do? How was it reviewed? What value does it bring to stakeholders (users, business revenue)? Sure enough this way you can get a rough idea of how much work somebody does and if it is of any importance.

The loyalty part is in the timing: 30-60 days. A period with a lot of uncertainty for Twitter employees. The Musk takeover in the air but even if that would not follow through, there were already severe job cuts in the pipeline by Twitter's board.

If under those conditions you kept your head down and kept coding like a stoic, then you're a keeper.

Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#302

Post by dh2022 » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 12:56 AM UTC

dzink wrote: post #261

Musk is a seller above all else. Every day he finds a new way to draw attention to his projects. The news about Twitter give him even more distribution and by nature more sales towards Tesla and his other companies. Tesla engineers on site for interviews is a great idea for Twitter and for Tesla as both get more PR than before. A lot of people have lost interest in Twitter for more than political reasons and I’m exci…

Maybe. But is all of this PR worth $44 billion?

Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#303

Post by voxl » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 12:56 AM UTC

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #253

lohii wrote: post #154

If someone completely new to my codebase came along and tried to evaluate my code I'd laugh. You can't jump in and "evaluate" without knowing context and being familiar with the features.

What’s more funny is how people commonly believe like this their code is so special or different than everyone else’s. Reverse engineering a large code base is not anywhere as hard as most software engineers somehow believe. I was tasked with analyzing a large code base from a company that my employer had been an investor in and as part of their investment had been given IP rights, the company employees were floored…

Depends on the codebase. Go read the source code for GHC and tell me how quickly you could add a new primitive type that consists of all twos-complement 7-bit numbers.

A pretty trivial change for someone whose steeped in the codebase, likely impossible without a few weeks (or even months) of effort for anyone else. Of course, this all becomes exponentially easier if you have an author of the code to point you in the right direction.

Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#304

Post by beachy » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 12:56 AM UTC

apavlo wrote: post #134

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla engineers don't just work on in-vehicle code though. The servers and systems needed to implement Tesla's telemetry and software updates would be in the same ballpark of expertise, albeit with much less scale and different requirements than Twitter. But Musk got started by confounding x.com/PayPal, which does have very similar engineering needs as Twitter. It's not like Musk is a newbie to this stuff, people pre…

> But Musk got started by confounding x.com/PayPal, which does have very similar engineering needs as Twitter. But PayPal was running Oracle on IBM bigiron machines even after Musk left them.

> But PayPal was running Oracle on IBM bigiron machines even after Musk left them.

Oracle on IBM big iron is a pragmatic (but expensive) way to achieve a highly vertically scalable database platform. Not trendy at all but also not a bad technology position to be in, even now.

Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#305

Post by colechristensen » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 12:57 AM UTC

braingenious wrote: post #151

All of this is so funny in general. It seems possible that Twitter might go the way of Tumblr in that goofy policy changes alienate the core userbase. I couldn’t imagine betting billions of dollars on a property that could basically just become a valuable-ish domain in the future.

Nah, there’s nowhere else for cable news to pull hot takes from social media.

Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#306

Post by deepsquirrelnet » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 12:58 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #21

I’m still looking for a concise term for “someone who claims to be an expert but immediately reveals beyond any doubt that they have no clue what they’re saying, simply by opening their mouth on the subject.” Having Tesla engineers over to review Twitter code is definitely that. It’s ridiculous.

Politician.

Nailed it!

Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#307

Post by la64710 » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 12:58 AM UTC

dh2022 wrote: post #302

dzink wrote: post #261

Musk is a seller above all else. Every day he finds a new way to draw attention to his projects. The news about Twitter give him even more distribution and by nature more sales towards Tesla and his other companies. Tesla engineers on site for interviews is a great idea for Twitter and for Tesla as both get more PR than before. A lot of people have lost interest in Twitter for more than political reasons and I’m exci…

Maybe. But is all of this PR worth $44 billion?

Yes it is (to spoiled toddlers).

Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#308

Post by Nicksil » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 12:58 AM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #292

dmak wrote: post #238

Comments are just full of people who want to bring down Musk for the most trivial things without acknowledging the amount of good he has put forth. FYI, I don't own a Tesla or own their stock or own any stock in Musk owned companies. I don't even follow his twitter account.

Ha, there's at least as many fanboys here. It's not a lopsided discussion.

>Ha, there's at least as many fanboys here. It's not a lopsided discussion.

In this particular discussion? Do you see the amount of vitriol? I am genuinely surprised to see the behavior in this thread. As if Elon Musk were some sort of rationality time-bomb implanted in the majority of those commenting.

Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#309

Post by morpheuskafka » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 12:58 AM UTC

nightski wrote: post #78

ipqk wrote: post #65

I'd be pissed off if I were a TSLA stock owner. Is Twitter paying Tesla to contract out these employees for their work? Otherwise, it's tons of thousands of dollars Tesla is pissing away on behalf of the CEO's side-hustle.

I'm not pissed and I am a stockholder. To me it makes a lot of sense. I doubt they are reviewing the entire code base. It seems like Elon is particularly interested in the automated systems that control content and detect bots. To that end, Tesla has a lot of expertise in AI systems.

The key is whether or not Twitter is compensating Tesla (and therefore its shareholders) at a fair market value for the time and resources used by Tesla employees for the benefit of Twitter (and therefore Musk as its owner). Not whether or not it makes sense to do so.

If its a dumb idea on Twitter/Musk's part but Tesla is fully compensated for their engineers' time, all is OK.

If its a great idea but Musk just assigned Tesla employees to do work that does not benefit Tesla and does benefit another company that he owns, that is an issue.

The scale of this is irrelevant. Absent fair compensation to Tesla, even one employee doing a day's work for Twitter is prohibited self-dealing. No one would bother filing a derivative suit over such a small amount, but SEC penalties could absolutely apply afaik.

Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#310

Post by dorkwood » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 12:59 AM UTC

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #253

lohii wrote: post #154

If someone completely new to my codebase came along and tried to evaluate my code I'd laugh. You can't jump in and "evaluate" without knowing context and being familiar with the features.

What’s more funny is how people commonly believe like this their code is so special or different than everyone else’s. Reverse engineering a large code base is not anywhere as hard as most software engineers somehow believe. I was tasked with analyzing a large code base from a company that my employer had been an investor in and as part of their investment had been given IP rights, the company employees were floored…

> Trust me if one is experienced enough they can understand your code perfectly fine, it’s definitely not as special as you think it is.

What if a large portion of the codebase is, for example, shader code? I chose this example because coding for the GPU isn't the same as coding for the CPU. Do you think that's a scenario in which you'd require more study, or are you confident your experience would spill over into this new domain, no study required?