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

washingtonpost.com

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

#411

Post by nr2x »

fleddr wrote: post #301

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…

Or you can command a senior position somewhere else and you were interviewing and ready to bounce after vest.

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

#412

Post by [deleted] »

ctvo wrote: post #249

What a fabulous time for security researchers. Hello IT? This is Bob from Tesla here. I require full access to audit data and source code per Mr. Musk’s request. You hadn’t heard? That’s because Mr. Musk fired your boss this morning now add my personal email to the system.

[deleted]

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

#413

Post by aroman »

alerighi wrote: post #393

This is a very stupid thing to do. First, code is not the issue. Code can be rewritten in not a lot of time, when you have clear what to write. Twitter is not something so complex, in principle, thus it shouldn't be that difficult (a team of 10 good programmers in a month can probably rewrite everything). The thing where is 99% of the complexity and you can't redesign in a month is the infrastructure, how data is sto…

> a team of 10 good programmers in a month can probably rewrite everything

unless you scope-down "everything" to the point of triviality, that is ludicrously underestimating the intrinsic complexity of twitter's product surface, and all the plumbing and necessary tools that lie beneath

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

#414

Post by ergocoder »

smt88 wrote: post #51
marstall wrote: post #26

I was thinking the "30-60" day time window may be a somewhat subtle way of catching out engineers who haven't written a thing in that amount of time. that would be one way to identify low-performers. not unproblematic by a long shot, but quick, and probably somewhat effective. and it wouldn't require any deep knowledge of twitter's codebase on the part of the reviewers.

Any slightly competent software leader would know that you can track every character of code written by any dev using version control. Printing it out as a mark of honor/shame is something a petty, arrogant tyrant would do. Musk has been around people who are afraid to say no to him for too long.

> Printing it out as a mark of honor/shame is something a petty, arrogant tyrant would do

I'll call it... after talking to a few twitter engineers who said they didn't hear anything about that.

"Printing it out" is fake news. "Reviewing code in the last 60 days" is probably real.

It seems fake news is okay as long as it fits our narrative.

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

#415

Post by [deleted] »

ozzythecat wrote: post #329

I’m honestly baffled with the obsession with Musk. Many folks here seem to despise him. But we can’t stop obsessing with the guy. At this point, to me it feels like envy. Musk, despite however he is as a person, is wildly successfully across several verticals. Rather than being a suit and tie corporate person, he literally posts memes, and has a IDGAF attitude. Does he owe this crowd anything? Twitter and its board m…

[deleted]

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

#416

Post by thrown_22 »

themitigating wrote: post #385
ozzythecat wrote: post #329

I’m honestly baffled with the obsession with Musk. Many folks here seem to despise him. But we can’t stop obsessing with the guy. At this point, to me it feels like envy. Musk, despite however he is as a person, is wildly successfully across several verticals. Rather than being a suit and tie corporate person, he literally posts memes, and has a IDGAF attitude. Does he owe this crowd anything? Twitter and its board m…

I'm confused because you said you were baffled about why people are obsessed then explained why people are obsessed. I hate him because he emboldens the worst of the right wing in the US and he's probably doing it for attention. I've seen many comments elsewhere where people are celebrating this as a political win.

[flagged]

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

#417

Post by Cupertino95014 »

themitigating wrote: post #373
MangoCoffee wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The note continues, “Please come prepared with code as a backup to review on your own machines with Elon.” Later, people inside the company reported that Tesla engineers were in fact reviewing the code." Can anyone verify this story?

Imagine I said I could. Why would you believe me if you don't believe the Washington Post?

I don't know you, but that's a low bar. WaPo has zero standards of journalistic integrity anymore. They will print anything that draws clicks.

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

#418

Post by dkarras »

pwthornton wrote: post #355

Tesla is a hardware company not known for stellar software. Both its self-driving/driver assist capabilities are suspect, and the functionality of the giant tablet UI could be better. You hear a lot of requests to be able to use Apple CarPlay in Teslas. Teslas are probably better than the vast majority of car companies, particularly the UI of the touch controls and system, but it still seems weird to me to have engin…

I think they are there to figure out "the lay of the land". I don't think they'd be assessing code line by line. Just there to figure out how everything is connected, what the ongoing projects are, what is on fire etc. done by people Musk personally knows and presumably trusts.

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

#419

Post by MangoCoffee »

themitigating wrote: post #373
MangoCoffee wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The note continues, “Please come prepared with code as a backup to review on your own machines with Elon.” Later, people inside the company reported that Tesla engineers were in fact reviewing the code." Can anyone verify this story?

Imagine I said I could. Why would you believe me if you don't believe the Washington Post?

"Later, people inside the company reported that Tesla engineers were in fact reviewing the code."

lets say you could. is your source = "people inside the company"?

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

#420

Post by nr2x »

vasco wrote: post #387
threeseed wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is actually a terrible way to measure the qualities of an engineer. The most valuable engineers to me are the ones that can bring a thoughtful, elegant, well-implemented solution to a business problem. And typically that doesn't translate to lots of PRs, often is not appreciable from non-engineers and can not be easily judged in a few days. But their work almost always stands the test of time. Before hir…

If I look at my company's gitlab statistics, the best engineers correlate with the top third of number of PRs not only in quality (perceived) but also in volume (number of open/merged PRs). I hear this a lot of the mythical top level engineer that thinks for 3 days and then bursts a small PR that changes the world, but I haven't seen it. Mostly because for good things to get pushed out in the real world, they are bro…

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