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

#611

Post by alfor » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 4:28 AM UTC

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.

There is a lot of cross pollination between his companies, that’s is fine:

- new materials from SpaceX make it into Tesla cars

- productions techniques from Tesla goes into SpaceX rockets

- Semiconductor teams from Starlink probably connected to Tesla

It mean the best engineers get even more opportunities. win-win

Less red tape, more work get done. I think we should all embrace that.

Our goal should be to make things better first and then to make money second to help us out make things even better at larger scale.

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

#612

Post by plazmatic » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 4:30 AM UTC

jpgvm wrote: post #579

photochemsyn wrote: post #445

Twitter's core operation is running a massively distributed database, as I understand it, where concurrency issues are pretty important to get right. See Data-Intensive Applications (2017), Part II: Distributed Systems (Replication, Partitioning, Transactions, etc.) for an overview. https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/designing-data-intensiv... Just guessing, you'd think Starlink would be more experienced in that ar…

Tesla stores an absolutely silly amount of captured training data. They are very familiar with large distributed databases. What makes Manhattan special (Twitters internal database) isn't it's scale (FB, Google, etc operate DBs which much higher scale) but it's multi-engine paradigm and other cool features. The Tesla folk that are there probably aren't even DB specialists though, they are likely just there to evaluat…

No post body was provided.

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

#613

Post by heurist » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 4:30 AM UTC

jldugger wrote: post #581

johnnyAghands wrote: post #558

I don't see what the big deal here is. I feel like it's the obvious move. He wants a no nonsense review of the current state of things at Twitter, and isn't wasting time. I'm assuming these engineers he trusts and wants an objective review instead of some bs from folks too removed.

The big deal is that Tesla didnt buy Twitter, Musk did. Based on the Tesla engineers doing due dilligence on a non-Telsa acquisition seems like a conflict of interest.

It's not really a big deal though?

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

#614

Post by yalogin » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 4:30 AM UTC

What code is he reviewing? And why is he reviewing it? There must be millions of lines of code. Also, why bring in Tesla employees? Twitter employees are also his own, they could do they review for him. Just shows how musk feels about Twitter and the people there. Such disrespect.

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

#615

Post by dqpb » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 4:30 AM UTC

As someone who has always thought Twitter is stupid, I'm glad Musk bought it and is shaking things up. Both possible outcomes are interesting - either Twitter finally becomes not stupid, or even the worlds richest man and greatest tech entrepreneur couldn't make Twitter not stupid.

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

#616

Post by xiphias2 » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 4:31 AM UTC

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…

There’s one more thing: Elon uses interviews of people to learn about the code base / product. He surrounds himself with people who can answer the technical details, that’s why he knows so much.

Galileo’s interview at SpaceX shows his thinking and way of working quite well.

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

#617

Post by sangnoir » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 4:31 AM UTC

shantanu77 wrote: post #552

Musk has extraordinary capability of extracting every bit of potential a person can deliver. Either you work crazy at your 200% or you are worthless and the company is not for you. Twitter will see lots of layoffs, massive restructuring - some unknown people being promoted for top roles, but end result will be better financial. I am not sure Twitter will remain the same as it is. Lots of people think Elon is not good…

> Musk has extraordinary capability of extracting every bit of potential a person can deliver. Either you work crazy at your 200% or you are worthless and the company is not for you

I can see people working themselves to the bone after buying into the missions of SpaceX and Tesla ("fuck yeah, space!" and "AI-powered electric cars saving the world" respectively) - but not for Twitter. Musk may find himself with less eager employees than he's used to. If he cuts too deep, I suspect Twitter will enter a downward spiral on talent.

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

#618

Post by dumpsterdiver » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 4:33 AM UTC

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #75

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.

You'd arguably have a case that Musk is not acting in the interest of Tesla and is using his Tesla position to enrich himself rather than the Tesla company. Exactly what the "CEO is supposed to serve shareholders" is all about.

Curious, why would you think that a person who has trouble finding a group of banks (what is a group of banks called, a flight?) to produce the cash that he owns on paper, is solely interested in chasing more cash? Is it not more believable that he has a social agenda? At this very moment, I find it believable that Musk is drawing a line in the sand to be seen by folks who would have others irreparably silenced if their views aren't fashionable.

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

#619

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 4:33 AM UTC

chrismarlow9 wrote: post #608

Sounds fun on both ends, and I don't mean that sarcastically, assuming as a Twitter dev I get the chance to defend my code. But in the end I think this will just point to the same thing devs always holler about which is technical debt. I'd be more interested to see the difference between the code and the engineers signaling technical debt in areas via email or chat. No idea how to quantify that though.

[deleted]

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

#620

Post by smt88 » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 4:35 AM UTC

grogenaut wrote: post #104

smt88 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've been in a few situations where we printed it out. It's just a lot faster than granting someone access to internal systems. It's also a firewall of access if you need that legally. Also you can sort paper into "to look at later" and "seems fine" (like huge chunks of json), it's annoying but not terrible for diligence.

> a lot faster than granting someone access to internal systems

Why? Musk could order access for Tesla engineers in minutes. Large companies have automated on-boarding and access control.

> a firewall of access if you need that legally

There is zero chance Musk would care about this. He breaks laws publicly and exuberantly. He has never shown a respect for red tape.

> Also you can sort paper into "to look at later" and "seems fine" (like huge chunks of json), it's annoying but not terrible for diligence.

I just can't imagine paper being useful to understand even a small project with 40-50 files in it. I'm not really buying there being any reason for it except a legal one, and this situation at Twitter wasn't a legal issue.