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Well this part is very familiar: > its work was given prominence in the engineering operation by former Chief Technology Officer Michael Schroepfer, who annou
by wpietri 4y ago
Well this part is very familiar:
> its work was given prominence in the engineering operation by former Chief Technology Officer Michael Schroepfer, who announced last year that he was stepping down.
At the end of 2016, I joined Twitter to lead one of the anti-abuse engineering teams. My boss, who led the effort, was great: loved Twitter, hated abuse, very smart. 6 months later the CTO, who had been behind the creation of the anti-abuse engineering effort, left. My boss, previously gung ho, left in a way that made me think he was getting signals from his boss. And shortly after that, said boss's boss said that our team had succeeded so well that there was no need for us. He scattered the engineers, laid of the managers, me included, and declared victory. We all laughed bitterly.
What these have in common for me is a high-level executive launching a special team with great fanfare in a way that addresses a PR problem. But because PR problems are generally fleeting, as soon as do-goodery loses its executive sponsor, everybody goes right back to the short-term incentives, meaning things like "responsibility" go right out the door. At least beyond the level that will trigger another PR disaster.
And if you're wondering why you don't hear more about things like this, you're not supposed to. At least for the managers laid off, it was a surprise meeting and then getting walked out the door. In the surprise meeting, they offered a fair chunk of money (for me, $40k) to sign an additional NDA plus non-disparagement agreement. I happen to have a low burn rate and good savings, so I didn't sign. But I know plenty of people who have looked at the mortgage and kid expenses versus the sudden lack of income and eventually signed.
- epups 4y agoSounds like pretty standard big corp stuff. I honestly don't understand why a NDA is even required here.
- drdec 4y agoOut of curiosity, what do you feel you gained by not signing the NDA/non-disparagement that was worth so much to you?
- whatshisface 4y agoWe gained the story, they did it for the benefit of the community.
- jonas21 4y agoThe ability to write that comment?
- jonny_eh 4y agoAnd more importantly, not fearing being sued for accidentally saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.
- paganel 4y agoAnd having a cleaner conscience down the road.
- BoorishBears 4y agoMaybe I'm just the worst kind of person because I'd 100% sign that and still talk. I get that with tech salaries 40k is practically a relocation fee, but I see those agreements as being about as binding as an EULA. I'd revel in them coming after me and can't for the life of me imagine damages past the 40k they offered unless you straight up lie.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ipaddr 4y agoLeaving that kind of money on the table to share a story is not a practical action that makes sense to me without a six figure book deal in place.
- bhaney 4y agoI don't get a chance to read many comments that cost $40k to make. Thanks.
- darth_avocado 4y ago$40k is two months pay probably. Edit: To be clear I didn’t say this to shame the OP. I said this to highlight that the company didn’t offer up much. I say this because I have been in a similar position in the past where their “generous” offer was two months severance (same ballpark) which imo was insulting. Didn’t sign it either and told them to F off.
- nightski 4y agoI would of taken it and given it to a charity. Instead we get a silly HN comment.
- wpietri 4y agoEasy to say, but forgive me if I'm skeptical. That's an option I definitely considered, even discussed. But for reasons I mentioned elsewhere I decided to not sign, and have instead since mainly worked for non-for-profits at lower rates. So if we can count the salary difference as giving to charity, I've already given far more than that.
- avg_dev 4y agoIt’s hard to have integrity when you are hurting for money. I am glad the poster was doing okay and was able to stand up for what they believed in
- kwertyoowiyop 4y agoHow many month’s salary would the writer need to have lost before you unlock some praise?
- version_five 4y agoI'd look at it a little differently. The 40k puts him on the hook for something. He (or someone who signs sn agreement like that) is in a position where something he says could be construed as violating the agreement and he could get taken to court, even if he's in the right. No agreement, nothing to worry about. Why take an immaterial amount of money to be personally liable for something. Getting to tell the story is a minor perk
- astrange 4y agoI’m slightly surprised they’d just lay you off instead of trying to fill other internal positions first. That seems like it’d cost less than $40k for one thing.
- commandlinefan 4y ago> fill other internal positions first Not (necessarily) getting down on OP, but the sort of person who's attracted to anything that Twitter would call "anti-abuse" might not be the sort of person who's appropriate in any other role.
- wpietri 4y agoNo, that's exactly correct. I joined Twitter to solve a problem. A problem that my boss's boss, as well as plenty of other people, did not give two shits about solving. He certainly did not want me under him, and it was far easier for him to engineer a "layoff" than try to transfer me somewhere else. And I get the Machiavellian calculus. I cared about Twitter and its users, especially the marginalized ones that were facing a lot of abuse. He cared about his own career, and wanted people who would put his advancement first. I would not have done that, so pushing out me and anybody else who really cared about the problem was the correct move in his self-centered analysis.
- mkmk 4y agoFrom a feature/capability perspective, what would be the most impactful ways for Twitter to help those users?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- orange_joe 4y agoImo Ban images of tweets. It’s what allows the pile on to live forever.
- 4y ago
- ncr100 4y agoIs there a catchy term for this pattern? - "Pump and dump." - "Savior to villain." I see this pattern frequently - with corporations' power and influence, their ethics go checked only by law and public sentiment..
- TremendousJudge 4y agoI think that the mistake is thinking that corporations can have ethics in the first place. A person can have ethical and moral codes, a corporation can't. Execs can write as many documents as they want, a corporation is not a person and will never be able to have the same consistency that we'd expect from a normal person with morals.
- wpietri 4y agoCorporations don't have brains, but they do have cultures. Those cultures include ethics, just ones that often differ from what outside individuals would want. Or put more simply, "fuck the rich" and "fuck the poor" are both moral codes.
- _the_inflator 4y agoI experienced the change of tides first hand. Without proper Senior Management support, you are essentially non existing, no matter how good you do.
- 650REDHAIR 4y agoI’ve done the opposite of you and regretted it. Good for you for sticking to your principals. I appreciate your $40k comment here!
- wpietri 4y agoNo shame! I was lucky in all sorts of ways. One is that years of consulting work left me with habits of always having enough of an emergency fund that I could afford the time off. Another is living in a moment where my weird brain quirks made me a highly paid professional rather than that annoying car mechanic who might solve a hard diagnostic problem quickly but takes forever to get around to your oil change. And perhaps most importantly, early on I had a couple of dubious jobs that made me really think about my ethical standards for work. I'm glad to hear you learned your lesson!
- ak217 4y ago> a highly paid professional rather than that annoying car mechanic who might solve a hard diagnostic problem quickly but takes forever to get around to your oil change. There are so many of us who can relate. Huge kudos to you for your integrity and for staying humble.
- patcon 4y ago> my weird brain quirks made me a highly paid professional rather than that annoying car mechanic who might solve a hard diagnostic problem quickly but takes forever to get around to your oil change Thank you so much for being humble about your skills. I wish more of us took this perspective
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- elliekelly 4y ago> And shortly after that, said boss's boss said that our team had succeeded so well that there was no need for us. This is infuriating. The boss’s boss knew this wasn’t true. You knew it wasn’t true. Why lie? Especially with such an obvious and unconvincing lie? Twitter is so addicted to misinformation they’re even spreading it internally and off-platform.
- wpietri 4y agoI presume because there were enough people who either liked him or found that view convenient that nobody who mattered was going to double-check his words. Which is what happens all the time in power hierarchies. Some people enjoy that bad thing are happening, more are indifferent, and most of the rest are kept too busy to really think about it. Or too distant from power for any thinking to lead to action. E.g., America's history with slavery. But yes, if you are paying attention, it's fucking infuriating.
- jiveturkey 4y agosuch payouts can be negotiated. I would have asked for $400k. (then still not signed it!)
- piva00 4y agoAs someone who (after 15+ years of career) has been feeling alienated (or worse, mocked for) when bringing up ethical issues around tech I work or design I wanted to thank you for the integrity. It feels good to not be alone.
- lumost 4y agoIt's really hard to find a good metric for "Keeping a social network healthy". Most of the changes introduced by a responsibility team will inherently hurt short term metrics or block others from making a change. I wonder if there is room for a tool which tracked the rate at which users interact with negative or psychologically high risk content on a user generated site.
- Waterluvian 4y agoThank you for sharing this. An expensive comment but one worth making.
- yodsanklai 4y ago> our team had succeeded so well that there was no need for us > At least for the managers laid off, it was a surprise meeting and then getting walked out the door. I don't get it. Call me naive, but when a team is dismantled because of change in business priorities, people don't get fired. Unless the company is shrinking, valuable employees are reassigned to different teams.
- ska 4y ago> I don't get it. Call me naive, but when a team is dismantled because of change in business priorities, people don't get fired This really depends on the change in priorities and skillet the people represent. People aren't actually fungible, after all.
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y agoId wager that given the sizes of the organizations involved, there is enough breadth and surface area to have fungible roles. Even the CEO can be replaced with another key employee. So i think parent is onto something with comment. And I think that's also the elephant in the room that no one talks about. Why did this specific set of employees end up working in said team?
- ska 4y ago> In the surprise meeting, they offered a fair chunk of money People are getting hung up on the dollar figure in replies here, which I think misses the point. It's super common for companies to tie a severance package (assuming more than statutory requirement, ymmv with jurisdiction) to a non-disclosure, non-disparagement, non-compete that is often far more aggressive than whatever you signed at the beginning. It's definitely worth thinking about whether or not the agreement makes sense to you. This is one of the big differences with executive contracts; often all of this is already sorted out at time of hire, and everyone is pretty much open eyed about the failure modes.
- rogerkirkness 4y agoThis is called having a guardian angel.