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

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

#991

Post by jldugger »

osigurdson wrote: post #915
jldugger wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suppose there is a small conflict of interest as Tesla is paying some of its employees to do this work which doesn't benefit Tesla. As long as Twitter compensates them for this in some form however, I think this conflict is eliminated. It's true though that a Tesla shareholder likely wouldn't want Tesla employee's focus to shift to Twitter too much I don't think.

> As long as Twitter compensates them for this in some form however, I think this conflict is eliminated.

Who negotiates that payment? Elon Musk?

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

#992

Post by Handytinge »

tgv wrote: post #786
TheChaplain wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like this makes me lose faith i humanity. If I were a engineer at Twitter, I'd do my absolute best up to the minute I have to leave the premises. Because I would care about the company, my colleagues and most importantly for the >200m people who use Twitter for fun, educational, business and those who depend on it. But it's probably because I'm an old beard, who value being honest and ethical, to be the bett…

> ... Twitter ... honest and ethical That's, IMO, an absurd contradiction. If you value honesty and ethics, you don't work at twitter. It's detrimental to mental health and society, possibly more so than facebook, just for the money. And now Musk might try to use it for his own political and financial agenda. If that risk is serious, running twitter into the ground might be the most ethical thing an employee could do…

> And now Musk might try to use it for his own political and financial agenda. If that risk is serious, running twitter into the ground might be the most ethical thing an employee could do.

I try not to flame here, but that viewpoint may actually be insane.

It's a job. You're not changing the world. If you don't like the politics of the CEO, leave.

You're not a freedom fighter. Real people in the world are actually fighting for their lives, their freedoms and the right to eat and live in dignity. Literally hundreds of millions. None of those people are based in Silicon Valley.

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

#993

Post by [deleted] »

sheeshkebab wrote: post #705
segmondy wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once reviewed code for a company that got purchased. I took less than a few hours to reach conclusion. There were 7 developers and in 2 months only one was writing code. The entire team but that one developer was fired. Twitter has grown a reputation for being slow and a rest and vest haven. Won't be surprised if they are looking for people not writing code. On a different note, If you're in a large org and all you…

> I once reviewed code for a company that got purchased. I took less than a few hours to reach conclusion. There were 7 developers and in 2 months only one was writing code. The entire team but that one developer was fired. Twitter has grown a reputation for being slow and a rest and vest haven. Won't be surprised if they are looking for people not writing code. I ran across some developers (in multiple orgs over the…

[deleted]

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

#995

Post by bertil »

eshch wrote: post #966
bertil wrote: post #871

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it’s less a complete review and more an interview of the senior technical manager, to get a sense of whether they are up to par. Do they think about observability, alerting, refactoring, service architecture, etc. reasonably well? Are there issues with how they motivate their teams or when they give them responsibilities? Are timelines challenging but doable? “Code” is most likely “architecture” and “archit…

Well, if only Tesla was an example for others in that.

I think it’s less about strictly better talent and more about trust and familiarity. Musk trusts Tesla software engineers to tell him what is good, what is better than Tesla, and what is concerning.

I’m not a software engineer (data scientist) and I’ve only managed up to 15 people, but if a friend who worked in a factory asks me to review a CTO of a team of 50, I feel confident I can say “Asking people to write their own unit tests isn’t abuse of power” and “Asking people to be behind their desk at 9 am or risk pay cut would not fly anywhere else” — things that he might not have the context to know.

Sure, there might be a new paradigm that I’m not familiar with where devs don’t write unit tests, but I’m fairly confident if I hear about that, I can ask questions and see why it’s more efficient.

A really good (reverse) example of that is James Douma. Several Tesla commentators rely on him to comment on Tesla’s AI announcements. He doesn’t work at Tesla and confesses that he might not be able to lead the AI team there, but he’s personable, clear, and familiar enough with ML to offer some judgment on why things are done in a certain way. He’s usually very positive but he could easily be asked which teams don’t seem to be executing as well, and what questions to prod them.

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

#996

Post by alfor »

baxuz wrote: post #782
alfor wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And how does Twitter fit into Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink?

Best engineers in machine learning go help self driving team.

Expert in data centers help Tesla build its cluster.

Experts on internet security help Tesla, SpaceX with their information security.

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

#997

Post by alfor »

riffraff wrote: post #623
alfor wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Has SpaceX developed any new materials? It was my understanding they use pretty standard steel alloys.

I heard that the advanced materials team of SpaceX went to help design the alloys used for the castings.

They needed a castable aluminum resistant to corrosion, rigid enough that didn’t need heat treatment.

From what I heard at Munroe they had to design a new alloy to meet all requirement and that is unheard of in the automotive market (off the shelf components culture)

It make sense that SpaceX had expert in that field (for turbine components)

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

#998

Post by xfallow »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #90
aaronharnly wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, very little of this seems to be operating by standard procedure. Have you seen the incoming CEO ask people to bring printouts of their code, ever?

Musk is reportedly looking to cut deadweight before Nov 1st when equity vests -- with layoffs possibly happening over the weekend. He might already have a basic idea of key teams and for non-key teams he might be looking to cut very fast. I absolutely have done things like this when acquiring companies - sat with people, asked them to basically interview for their own jobs while showing me the most important thing th…

That sounds awful. Interviewing sucks and is one of the main reasons I don't move elsewhere for a pay-rise if my employer wanted to nitpick my work and make me justify my existence at the company why would I not just move on to a place that isn't insane?

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

#999

Post by dkersten »

TheChaplain wrote: post #783
Tiktaalik wrote: post #46

I dunno why any Twitter engineers would be really trying that hard right now. Passively destroying Twitter from within by not trying, and trying to make a billionare lose 44 billion dollars is a significantly more fun and interesting challenge than making Twitter a better product.

Comments like this makes me lose faith i humanity. If I were a engineer at Twitter, I'd do my absolute best up to the minute I have to leave the premises. Because I would care about the company, my colleagues and most importantly for the >200m people who use Twitter for fun, educational, business and those who depend on it. But it's probably because I'm an old beard, who value being honest and ethical, to be the bett…

> Because I would care about the company

The company doesn’t care about you. I don’t understand this loyalty to companies and billionaires.

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

#1000

Post by SuoDuanDao »

osigurdson wrote: post #915
jldugger wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suppose there is a small conflict of interest as Tesla is paying some of its employees to do this work which doesn't benefit Tesla. As long as Twitter compensates them for this in some form however, I think this conflict is eliminated. It's true though that a Tesla shareholder likely wouldn't want Tesla employee's focus to shift to Twitter too much I don't think.

Tesla shareholder here - in my opinion it's greasy, but realistically I know that most of Tesla's marketing happens on Twitter and having the platform running smoothly is in my best interest.

I suspect that kind of influence-peddling is how a lot of platforms like Twitter got a lot of sweetheart deals up to now anyway, so it being in the open is more interesting than annoying. The worst part is that it probably opens Tesla up to more lawsuits from 'activist investors'.

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