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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

#751

Post by ajsnigrutin »

bigmattystyles wrote: post #226
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in a dev situation I think 10-1 devs-to-managers is actually a pretty sizable ratio - I think ideally it's more of a 6-to-8ish to one. Now, this of course assumes that engineering managers are not solely doing employee management but also are serving some "tech lead" type roles. I.e. even if an engineering manager isn't coding I think it's essential that (a) a considerable portion of their time is spent doin…

Isn't this another version of Chesterton's fence - lots of people may seem like they serve no apparent role, until they are gone. This is not to say there aren't some that in fact do serve no role, but careful consideration is required to determine who is who imho.

Sometimes those people change the work processes in a way to make their role important.. Need printer paper? You have to go through the old lady in the 3rd floor office, because noone else can order, store or give out office supplies, not even the office next door, where you can get ethernet cables and headsets.

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

#752

Post by sulam »

vxNsr wrote: post #583
sulam wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taylor Leese is a respected Twitter engineering manager who tweeted on Sunday that he was no longer working at Twitter. While it's remotely conceivable that he quit, it's much more likely he was fired. I had reports from friends who worked there that they were asked to stay available over the weekend, presumably for situations like this, or requests from the "war room" group that has been setup.

What is an engineering manager as it relates to actually writing code? One of the things Elon said was that there appears to be 3 managers for every engineer. I understand the need for a few PMs but if there really was a 3:1 ratio that’s just absurd.

There is literally no chance that Twitter has 10 engineering managers for every engineer. That is simply absurd. i worked there for over 4 years, and the ratio then was very comparable to every other tech company I've worked at, including large ones like Google and smaller ones (then) like Salesforce.

Maybe more interesting, there are a lot of roles that have "manager" in the name somehow. Product Manager is the obvious one, Program Managers exist, and I'm sure there are others, not to mention that every function has managers in one shape or form if they're at all scaled out -- there's managers for designers, lawyers, accountants, etc at a fairly predictable ratio at every company I've worked at.

Amusingly, Twitter was one of the most manager-lite companies I ever worked at when I started. In 2011 the ratio was a lot closer to 50:1 than it was 1:10.

Perhaps Musk is simply taking everyone with manager in their role and implying they're managing other people. This is not the case and is willfully misrepresenting people's work if so. Par for the course for this guy, though.

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

#753

Post by cpsns »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #737
cpsns wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The moment upper management utters the word 'layoff' in any context, or tries to reassure workers it's time to GTFO immediately.

Why would you GTFO because there’s a possibility you might be laid off? Why not wait and see if that actually happens and collect any severance?

Personally? Because I don't think the stress is worth it. I've been in this situation and find it unbearable.

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

#754

Post by skirmish »

watwut wrote: post #452
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.

Zero code situation is wishful thinking - poster just made it up.

I spent the last month prototyping code for a demo that will not be checked in. I have a few small unrelated CLs submitted (minor fixes) but I spent 5 minutes per each, my main work for the month is completely unaccounted for in version control.

Should I be fired?

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

#755

Post by fullshark »

themitigating wrote: post #669
fullshark wrote: post #488

Simply no other options really if you borrow billions of dollars to buy Twitter than to do this.

Well not buying it in the first place was an option

He tried that, didn't work.

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

#756

Post by chihuahua »

stusmall wrote: post #268
Balgair wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno. WaPo isn't the best of new reporting agencies [0], but it's certainly not the worst. They do have standards and they don't make up the large majority of their data. Meaning, they have actually talked to someone that is 'familiar' with the 'deal' at some point 'last week.' It's not pure speculation on WaPo's part, though it maybe pure-unrefined-grade-A speculation on the contact's part. If I had to bet, and m…

Honestly, that isn't a super convincing source. Every news outlet has a criticism section. For an almost 150 year old organization, that is pretty sparse. Even better some of things in there are non-issues like "Trump repeatedly railed against The Washington Post on his Twitter account." Who didn't he tweet "fake news" at? News agencies are organizations made of humans that have flaws and we should always treat with…

What you say is true, but you seem to be slightly missing the point of the comment you're responding to. That comment didn't say "WaPo is trash, should not be believed." It says "WaPo is neither perfect or terrible, and the information in this article is most likely somewhat accurate"

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

#757

Post by speed_spread »

tommica wrote: post #529
pessimizer wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> streamlining and flipping the profitable parts of the business Good luck finding some at Twitter.

Sell data?

You don't sell "data" if you can avoid it. If you have enough of it, you refine raw data in-house and _then_ sell "influence" for much, much more.

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

#758

Post by vore »

epgui wrote: post #721
vore wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there context beyond the "There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye" tweet he posted? I think if that's the only context reasonably you can interpret that a number of ways: it responding to a dubious claim with a dubious claim is not the only way.

That's exactly what I think: there's too much uncertainty around what he meant by that. So I refer to the principle of charitable interpretation.

At the level of Elon Musk's influence, if something you can say is so uncertain that there is an uncharitable interpretation you can drive a truck through, I think that arguing that he meant it the charitable way is kind of meaningless when it's just as easy for people to interpret it as his support for the conspiracy theory.

We don't live in Elon Musk's head and someone, at a personal level, can choose to take it as the GP's interpretation, but I think "Context is important" doesn't make sense at all when we all have the same context with different possible interpretations.

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

#759

Post by ClumsyPilot »

btilly wrote: post #549
hef19898 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stories like this make like the employee protection I enjoy even more.

TANSTAAFL. (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.) The downside of employee protections is that it makes companies more reluctant to hire. And also once hired, the salary to be offered is reduced to cover the estimated current value of the future employee protections. These are real downsides, particularly for young people who are trying to get a foot into the corporate ladder. I have even personally witnessed a…

We have already seen what the world is like with no employee protections - exploitation of children for labour, like in the British coal mines. Unsafe working conditions in Victorian workhouses, leaving men without hands and without means to feed their family, and with no compensation because 'you agreed to it'. Bosses extorting sexual favours from employees, i.e. Hollywood casting couch.

You can still see this in many developing countries, children on assembly lines in China, or how a clothing factory in Bangladesh caved in killing most women working there.

TANSTAAFL is obviously and demonstrably false - child labour leaves them without education and traps them in poverty. Their creativity and future potential is lost to society. Employees without hands are an obvious loss to society. But the employer doesn't care, he saved a few bucks on safety. He isn't paying the cost. This argument further extends to education and beyond.

The argument of TANSTAAFL was used by coal companies in the 1920's. At the time they used to hire assassins to murder Union leaders and even killed the local sheriff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg9xywAxb10

This also sometimes happens in developing nations today, sometimes at the behest of western companies.

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

#760

Post by type-r »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #217
jdm2212 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything in life is tradeoffs. American software engineers get paid more than basically anyone else in the world, but we also have less job security. What's preferable just depends on your risk aversion vs marginal utility of money.

> American software engineers get paid more than basically anyone else in the world, but we also have less job security. What's preferable just depends on your risk aversion vs marginal utility of money. Of course, this comment is predicated on the assumption that America's loose labour laws are the reason for this salary disparity, and I'm not personally willing to follow you to that conclusion. I think it's far mor…

interesting framing to use "historical accident" to describe the directed US gov funding that turned into today's tech sector.
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