Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 458 posts

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#411

Post by snapplebobapple »

rem7 wrote: post #109

In my opinion Elon miscalculated the type of people at Twitter. These aren’t people like the ones in Tesla or SpaceX where there is some sort of idealization of Elon. The number of fan boys he has at Twitter must be super low. None of the Twitter employees signed up to work for him, it’s pretty obvious from the public tweets that most of the staff has posted that they don’t have much respect for him. On top of that,…

I disagree. I think he exactly calculated the kind of people at twitter, which is why he's trying so hard to get as many of them as possible to quit. He wants to make money off this purchase and to do that he needs to dramatically increase employee productivity, reduce headcounts to bare minimums to keep the current system running and then innovate something more on top of it to really make money. Work life balance people have no place in that kind of plan.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#412

Post by mustacheemperor »

rhacker wrote: post #388
spoils19 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually HN has taught me that CEOs generate the value for shareholders.

Well if you were to diagnose most companies there are probably 30-40 engineers that make the most value, like billions of dollars each. From there it starts dropping off like a long tail in search results. There's value, but a lot less than others. Cutting the long tail may still break huge areas of functionality - but the rest will patch and fix it over time. Heck there might be a team of 50 that has the sole respon…

Following along your theory, do you expect that Twitter will achieve meteoric profit successes once this damage is patched, and that there will be an epic staffing contraction across tech afterwards? If you are correct then Twitter is about to demonstrate to the entire tech market that their staff headcounts are factors of ten beyond what is necessary to achieve equal success, and we should expect a massive course correction in the industry as a result.

>there are probably 30-40 engineers that make the most value, like billions of dollars each. From there it starts dropping off like a long tail in search results. There's value, but a lot less than others. Cutting the long tail may still break huge areas of functionality - but the rest will patch and fix it over time.

If this is true, then have companies like Microsoft, Apple, all just missed the big insight Elon has caught onto first? If the best engineers are generating a few billion in value each and can completely patch up the long tail, then Microsoft ought to be able to cut its staff down to about 200 such engineers, 300 if they want a lot of extra margin. 1.8T / 3bn per high performer. There's over 100k SWEs currently employed there, needless to say that's a big reduction in salary overhead.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#413

Post by masklinn »

currency wrote: post #349
leereeves wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if [Steve Jobs] came in and bought my employer and then just started firing whole teams and fucking up the product while taking away perks and demanding more work Isn't that pretty much what Steve Jobs did when he came back to Apple as CEO? "Ultimately, Jobs axed more than 70 percent of Apple’s hardware and software products." "His product cuts resulted in the layoffs of over 3000 employees" "Jobs managed to force…

He did do the firing whole teams bit, but not the fucking up the product bit. I assume, for example that Apple didn't need as many finance people after the cuts, but he didn't manage to make the whole department quit in disgust.

> He did do the firing whole teams bit, but not the fucking up the product bit.

He kinda did in that he slashed entire product lines, but Apple was not a single-product company.

Apple was also going very very badly, Amelio had already done a lot of cutting (reduced headcount by a third), and the company was still sinking (because it had nothing to float).

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#414

Post by mustacheemperor »

rhacker wrote: post #379
diob wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to debate, define spoiled, we can start from there.

Well let's imagine that programming was like railroad work. Hammering in railroad spikes, getting called at 3am to prevent a possible collision. But it's not. I can't believe we need someone to define spoiled in this context.

Railroad work is destructive to the human body and the industry is constantly developing new machines and techniques to reduce the amount of human involvement. Why would hammering rail spikes be the yardstick for defining work by the non-spoiled? Should we have some puritan aspiration to that kind of work?

>Hammering in railroad spikes

Today hammering in railroad spikes is typically done by big machines like this one made by Unimog.[0] So do you think the SWEs are generating less value than the people operating the Unimog machines? And/Or that SWE jobs rely on less skill and effort than operating the Unimog machine? Should SWEs unionize like railroad workers so that a leader like Elon couldn't unilaterally declare changes to their working condition requirements and tell them to hit the curb if they disagree?

Are the Unimog operators too lazy and cozy in the machines? Should they be paid less than they would be to hammer the spikes, because hammering the spikes is harder work?

>I can't believe we need someone to define spoiled

Well, we do. I've walked through my attempt to grok your point above, and I can't. So if you can overcome your disbelief and post that definition, it might clarify what you are trying to say.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_fastening_system#/media/F...

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#415

Post by rsynnott »

spoils19 wrote: post #329
babelfish wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Twitter’s resiliency program is widely known to be one of the best in the world. They’ve been around so long that they’ve literally had to invent a lot of what we consider basic modern distributed computing from scratch. It will become a trash fire with everyone who maintained these massive systems gone, but don’t imply that they created bad systems, or failed at ‘just displaying text’, be…

It's far more likely that Elon consulted Twitter when they were having issues and just didn't take the credit. The distributed work of SpaceX and Tesla is far more important and hardened than what Twitter has achieved.

Parody, surely?

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#416

Post by mustacheemperor »

systemvoltage wrote: post #403
kenjackson wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Rationality and reason seems to have shifted from liberals to conservatives. We can't even say biological facts. Many others are leaving the woke non-sense," Isn't it the Republicans that are still saying homosexuality is a choice? Aren't they the ones aligned with QAnon woke-conspiracies? Aren't they ones that pushed that Obama was born in Africa? What biological facts do Democrats say you can't say? At worst, Dems…

I know how crooked some of the Republicans are and some of the conspiracy shit that's going around. But, it's not like Democrats are clean, this is what is cooking in the progressive circles, especially in colleges and academia: https://twitter.com/LPofDelaware/status/1583078489430798336 What would be helpful is if you try to, with good faith, head over to r/conservatives and see what the discussion is like. They wil…

>head over to r/conservatives and see what the discussion is like. They will welcome progressives and disagreeing views

This is absolutely untrue. I generally do not engage in political discussion on hackernews so politics entirely aside, from a reddit content moderation standpoint this is just a falsehood. It is one of the most tightly moderated subreddits on the website and users are banned rapidly and constantly for posting dissenting views or sharing information contradicting the prevailing narrative for any given issue. Anyone who attempts the exercise you suggest will learn that right away. There are certainly subreddits on both sides of the political aisle moderated in that manner but you are just making an absolute fabrication to say /r/conservative is not, and I'm assuming that's why you were downvoted. That and because you bring this falsehood up instead of answering the direct questions the user you're replying to asked you, and it doesn't address their questions at all.

For what it's worth, I didn't downvote you.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#417

Post by Apocryphon »

systemvoltage wrote: post #405
Apocryphon wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Carmack is still probably the greatest living hacker.

John Carmack on hard work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJitSreSL78 I can't see this going well on HN if he said the same thing, verbatim, but posted it as an anonymous comment.

That's because unlike anonymous commenters like you and I, he has actually substantiated his beliefs.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#418

Post by memish »

epistasis wrote: post #195
memish wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that not good? Twitter can communicate to people directly without the media middleman.

Lol, who is doing the communicating? I haven't met a single defender of Musk that has the slightest inkling of business or tech, and this is a great example. You want to have random engineers talking to the press through their Twitter accounts? Sounds great! Especially if there's no way to tell who actually even works at Twitter because verification is now purchased for a tiny amount of money, rather than reflecting…

"I have people skills, I communicate to the customers!"

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#419

Post by tently »

kenjackson wrote: post #408
systemvoltage wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know how crooked some of the Republicans are and some of the conspiracy shit that's going around. But, it's not like Democrats are clean, this is what is cooking in the progressive circles, especially in colleges and academia: https://twitter.com/LPofDelaware/status/1583078489430798336 What would be helpful is if you try to, with good faith, head over to r/conservatives and see what the discussion is like. They wil…

First, I didn't downvote you (actually I can't). I think that there are fringe elements on both sides. I do think there is a legit difference though in that the mass of the conservatives hold views that are to me far worse. For example, there might be a fringe of liberals that think that women and men are the same height on average -- or think there are no physical differences. But the VAST majority believe there are…

> For example, trans athletes. I think its unfair to women to compete against people who were born men. At the same time, I sympathize with people who really feel like they were born the wrong gender and are doing everything they can to change genders. I don't have a satisfactory solution, but I empathize with the liberal response. The conservative response doesn't even seem to recognize that trans people have any struggle at all.

There is a more balanced take than the standard conservative and liberal positions: the left-wing feminist response.

With this, trans-identifying people are supported with regards to universal rights, i.e. ones that everyone should have, according to left-wing viewpoints. For example, it should not be permitted for someone to be fired from their job for revealing their transness (or for being otherwise gender non-conforming). Same for access to housing, health care, and other public services, no prejudice must be imposed.

However, they should not be treated as if the opposite sex in law and policy. This is particularly important in areas where we have sex segregation for a good reason. You mentioned athletes, another example is the safeguarding of women in prisons - women's prisons should be female-only, and no males should be incarcerated there, no matter how they identify.

This overall approach helps to protect gender non-conforming people (including trans-identifying), while maintaining sex-based rights, particularly those that protect women.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#420

Post by dredmorbius »

PKop wrote: post #391
dredmorbius wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This both entirely misses the point of my own comment and negates your own previous statement. Contrast "it wasn't really a sustainable business" with "Don't really see this 'spectacular collapse'". Your comments lack both coherence and consistency.

Twitter is not in chaos or collapsing because of Musk's actions, which is the message of the main post. A certain cohort of the tech and media industry is in chaos because they fear Musk will get away with it.

Twitter is not in chaos or collapsing because of Musk's actions

That is not a universally accepted assertion, by any stretch.

Again, you're now ignoring my initial response in this thread.

I doubt further engagement will be fruitful for either of us.

Post reply on HN