Twitter is already improved IMHO: The "sign in or sign up" nag screen is gone for me!
Thank god, I stopped clicking twitter links due to this crap
Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans
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Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans
#782Earlier quoted context omitted.
Silicon Valley is not a documentary but entertainment.
not too far from reality though, with dramatic flair & exaggeration for comedy thrown in. BTW I did not realize it was directed by the same guy who did Idiocracy (Mike Judge). when it came out I thought 'not in a millennia' and now it seems .. passable ;-).
He did Office Space too, pretty cool set of projects to work on
Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans
#783Earlier quoted context omitted.
He doesn’t seem to be “reforming” Twitter, he seems to be trying desperately to recoup his lost investment. This wasn’t needed and will be looked upon with embarrassment by him and all of tech in a decade.
> After engineers, some of Twitter’s highest-paid employees work in sales, where several earn more than $300,000, according to documents viewed by The Post.
That seems incredibly normal for any tech company. Gotta pay commissions to get the best sales folks.
Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans
#784Earlier 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…
>the salary to be offered is reduced to cover the estimated current value of the future employee protections.
This is a fallacy. Companies will pay employees as little as possible. Why would they pay you more just because employee protections were removed?
Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans
#785Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is it legal to demand people work on weekends? How is it legal to (even threaten) firing if a new assigned task that takes a long time is not done on time?
That these questions are being asked makes me think software engineers are very detached from the other 95% of humanity.
These things would be illegal in the EU, which alone is ~10% of humanity.
Don't frame not wanting to take abuse as being entitled.
Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans
#786Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a result of bad management. Twitter is only non-profitable because they choose to spend all that excess revenue on R&D; Partly because, that's what tax law incentives, partly because that's what investors in tech companies want: Growth If you look at twitter's own financial filings, they could easily be profitable if they just dropped their R&D budget. The filings claims in the 2021 year it only cost about $…
> because they choose to spend all that excess revenue on R&D; And what do they have to show for it?
R&D covers all development that would qualify as more than “maintenance mode” for Twitter. It’s not necessarily a bunch of skunkworks teams making moonshot bets. It’s a very loosely defined tax category.
The dirty not so secret of “we could be profitable if we just dropped our R&D budget” is that maintaining your existing revenue depends on that new development work.
Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans
#787Earlier quoted context omitted.
This may be true in the short term but eventually more of these decisions begin to accumulate and cause more dissatisfaction. Each one on its own has barely any impact on the bottom line, it's just one more cut among a hundred cuts. In the end you end up with a product that is overall annoying to use. And the whole time you could be going along, measuring each decision and thinking that you're doing okay and no mista…
Agreed, just following data can be a dangerous path. You have to build things because they’re the right thing to build. You need a cohesive vision not scattershot A-B tests. Unless you only care about short term profit, of course. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. That’s why the Facebooks die and the Apples and Googles last.
So what kind of experiment do you run to capture that dissatisfaction? Doesn’t have to be a/b. Just anything qualitative that doesn’t boil down to making decisions purely based on feelings.
Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans
#788Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll note that a company that depends on a single employee like this has failed to plan and is already in trouble. No matter how well you treat them, your critical employees will leave. You might be able to pay them well enough to limit the risk on them taking another job (though few employers do) but even with that sooner or later they'll win the lottery, get hit by a bus, or just retire. A business can and must hed…
As GP said, sometimes, there is a cascade effect. One employee quits, and the whole team follows. Sometimes going to a competitor. In tech, it is relatively easy for an employee to hedge against getting fired. It is a well paid job, in high demand. It is not the same if the company fires its janitors, but I don't think I will stay in a literally filthy company that fires its janitors.
If one employee quitting takes out your whole team, the problem isn't the employee that quit. Something is seriously wrong with your working environment and the whole thing was balanced on a knife edge.
> In tech, it is relatively easy for an employee to hedge against getting fired. It is a well paid job, in high demand.
I have a friend who several years ago who was laid off with 3 months severance. They left feeling cheerful, telling people that if they couldn't find a job in 3 months, they deserved to be fired. Fortunately it only took slightly longer than 3 months and it's something we can laugh about now. The whole "it'll be easy to find a job with this skill-set" is true right up until it's not and is a risky backup plan.
Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans
#789Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans
#790Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd like to open up this question again after some decades. I don't think it will play out as you might think. Innovation hubs move. Historically, this has always been true. Right now those are SV and NY. It won't remain so.
Silicon Valley, New York, and arguably Texas have been the hubs of computing innovation as long as there has been a commercial computer industry. Other tech hubs have sprung up, but we're looking at forty years of unceasing domination here. Innovation hubs move when new industries arise.
That's a short time horizon.
Innovation hubs have been in China, Middle East, Venice, London, etc.
The printing innovation lasted around 300 years. Steam engine another 150 years. The industrial revolution less than 100.
How long do you think computers will dominate major innovation? And if it does, will the innovation hub stay in SV ?
What happens if biotech takes over? MRNA tech ? Driverless cars ? VTOL ? Rocketry or Space Tourism ? ML or low-code apps changing the dev of software as we know it today ?
Do you see any of those hubs in SV ? Are they in SV today ?