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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

#511

Post by ghaff »

bombcar wrote: post #483
ghaff wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s the state of the employer but I’m not sure. After all that’s who is paying into the fund. At least that’s what I remember when I looked into it when I was living in a different state than my employer and things were looking precarious.

I'm out of state compared to my employer and they had to establish a "nexus" or something because I am here, which required them to do something like register as a business and withhold state tax; I assume they're paying into some sort of unemployment in my state for me. All of those things became much more important when Covid hit, but cross-border employment has been big in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, etc for a…

I was commuting across state lines at the time. Never looked deeply as I left before it became relevant and it was what it was in any case. MA would have been more than NH and I thought it would be NH but not sure why.

But the bigger point is that unemployment insurance is very little money compared to a good professional salary.

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

#512

Post by kingsloi »

masklinn wrote: post #399
kingsloi wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/cries in an at-will state/

Fwiw all states are at-will, though there are varying exceptions from state to state.

Yeah I know broadly they all are, but some states offer slightly more protection.

On a side note, what happens to health insurance for employees who're let go? Does it end the time of your last day or midnight? I was too afraid to Google it as I likely knew it's be pretty cut throat, but have always stressed about it regardless.

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

#513

Post by ghaff »

cercatrova wrote: post #344
beowulfey wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employees often depend on prior employers as references and for social connections. It is rare that anyone would actually walk out without notice, as doing so would almost always hurt their careers even if that job was truly shitty (the old adage to “never burn bridges” does apply!). Employers do not experience this same effect. Even if lots of people get laid off from a company without notice, there will almost alwa…

> Employees often depend on prior employers as references Not really. I have not once been asked for references from previous companies.

I’ve supplied references. Don’t know if they’ve ever been checked. But it’s either other people I know in the industry or a friend at my employer.

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

#514

Post by prions »

nharada wrote: post #469
saurik wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elsewhere in this thread, people are discussing a potentially-credible (but maybe you disagree) report on this from Gergely Orosz that does not paint this as "only the 3 senior executives". https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1587042365084209153?... > I talked with an engineering manager who was at Twitter for 5+ years, and got laid off on Sunday "for cause". They were too exhausted from working over the weekend…

I don't understand why so many people celebrate when Elon treats his underlings like trash. Is it because people hate Twitter and think if you work there you deserve this? Is it because they want to have Elon's level of power and fame where the rules don't apply to them? Something else?

Because the aggrieved aren’t satisfied only by Elon taking over twitter and taking it in a different direction, they also believe that those currently at twitter deserve harsh punishment for whatever role they had in twitter.

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

#515

Post by colejohnson66 »

pfisherman wrote: post #507
MichaelCollins wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've known that lines of code were no indication of code quality or developer productivity for well over two decades now You're severely overstating it. The difference between 500 loc and 5000 loc isn't a clear signal of anything. But zero lines of code certainly is. Firing people because the VCS shows they stopped working is common.

The true big brain 10x programmer is pushing -100 lines of code per sprint.

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Li...

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

#516

Post by furyofantares »

cercatrova wrote: post #328
simonw wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting commentary on this from someone who used to work at Twitter: - https://twitter.com/joshelman/status/1586812933043933184 > Changing the logged out home page of Twitter to show more content is likely one of those “easy fixes” that has symbolic effect but very little to no metrics effect. I ran A/B tests on this in 2010. Usually the best way to grow Twitter active users is make people sign up first

Technical people, especially engineers and those on HN, hate sign up forms but having grown a product to X thousand users, the more you push the sign up form, the more people sign up. You can even plot a linear relationship between the two, which I've done before.

I think when you're really good at using a computer, you expect things to be easy. When you get a sign up form instead, it's extremely frustrating. We're used to it being easy to use a computer and can see that someone is making it hard for their own benefit. And then we think, if it's hard for us, it's even harder for someone without a lot of skills.

And I think that's probably true! But the person without much computer skills comes in with an expectation that stuff is gonna be hard. The egregious signup page isn't a surprise in that sense, it's just one of the many things they have to struggle with to use a computer.

An A/B then doesn't show any benefit for removing the signup page, only downside, because an A/B test only tests what happens if one feature changes. Our intuition can still be right; if we could do all the work to make it so a website is actually easy to use for someone without a lot of skills, like how Apple radically simplified the state of affairs with the iPod, that will positively defy peoples' expectations and make the app more accessible -- even if just simplifying any individual component doesn't do that.

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

#517

Post by ghaff »

kingsloi wrote: post #512
masklinn wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw all states are at-will, though there are varying exceptions from state to state.

Yeah I know broadly they all are, but some states offer slightly more protection. On a side note, what happens to health insurance for employees who're let go? Does it end the time of your last day or midnight? I was too afraid to Google it as I likely knew it's be pretty cut throat, but have always stressed about it regardless.

It might be immediate, it might be end of month, might be some other period. In any case COBRA kicks in and can be paid for retrospectively if you need it.

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

#518

Post by cbtacy »

telotortium wrote: post #397
simonw wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how high quality journalism works. There's actually quite an involved skill to reading and fully understanding this kind of writing - and it's infuriatingly difficult to pick up that skill (I've been developing it by spending time talking to professional journalists, but I'm still not there yet). When you read "another person familiar with the deal who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive…

I could believe you, but unfortunately journalists have trashed their credibility with their turn to "moral clarity" post-Trump. With the effective merger of the opinion and news beats in this era, "another person familiar with the deal who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters" could refer to anybody at all with a grudge against Musk, and we as readers would have no way of knowing which of…

No post body was provided.

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

#519

Post by thinkindie »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #434
98codes wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've known that lines of code were no indication of code quality or developer productivity for well over two decades now -- why would it start to matter now, particularly for those at more senior levels?

> We've known that lines of code were no indication of code quality or developer productivity for well over two decades now You're severely overstating it. The difference between 500 loc and 5000 loc isn't a clear signal of anything. But zero lines of code certainly is. Firing people because the VCS shows they stopped working is common.

is code the only output of an engineer?

not everything is committed in a VCS: you have documentation, architecture, RFC etc etc depending on the size of the company and seniority of the employee.

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