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This is pretty standard procedure when a company gets bought. The new owners will conduct a review and decide who to keep and who to get rid of. They have proba

This is pretty standard procedure when a company gets bought. The new owners will conduct a review and decide who to keep and who to get rid of. They have probably been given a target of how many people they want to lay off and are evaluating who is worth keeping. It’s not worth staying at a company that gets acquired, you’ll either get laid off or be asked to do the same work with less people, and awful morale.

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aaronharnly 4y ago
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?
- crazytalk 4y ago
  Makes plenty of sense if said employees no longer have access to source code by the time the interview takes place. Red Wedding silicon valley edition
- renewiltord 4y ago
  A Twitter engineer walks into a programming interview. Interviewer: So this is just a quick question to warm up with. Imagine you have to write a program that is supplied a number n and prints out, for each number in order from 1 to n, the string Fizz if it is a multiple of 3, the str- Engineer: Okay, so first I'll install cups. What model of printer am I using?
- throwaway09223 4y ago
  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 they wrote in the last quarter. I've done this at a much smaller scale, one on one at the employee's desk, because the companies I've done this with have been 1/10 or 1/100th the size of twitter. I can see why it might make sense to just tell people to print stuff out to demonstrate competency, if you're otherwise planning to cut their entire department. Everyone gets a quick conversation with an engineer to talk about the code and gauge basic competency. If you don't suck, you stay. Seems not super crazy. It especially makes sense if you've locked out everyone aside from previously identified key personnel to prevent sabotage.
  - djur 4y ago
    Do you understand why people who aren't making lots of money from it might be angry and upset about this process?
    - Xeronate 4y ago
      The ability of the process to prune dead weight and the emotions of the people affected are kind of unrelated. It's a business not a charity.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - exadrid 4y ago
        [flagged]
        dagmx 4y ago
        And you know the same people would be shedding tears if they were being cut short in any way. It’s a total lack of empathy.
        jddil 4y ago
        You're on a board founded by a VC fund to market their investments, I would expect capitalists to be the majority here.
        lupire 4y ago
        Hacker News is a recruiting website for those capitalists' employees. (Look at the only ads that ever appear on HN).
        jjulius 4y ago
        You're both correct in this instance.
        uni_rule 4y ago
- abledon 4y ago
  you don't like comedy?
- Aeolun 4y ago
  I have definitely seen them replace whole systems without ever looking at or evaluationg the code. Doing that seems like an improvement.
- bagels 4y ago
  Do you have any references to this printouts of code? I saw this mentioned on another thread too. I asked about it and was mocked for asking about it. Is this something that literally is happening? Where can we read about it? edit: Apparently referring to this: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-27/tesla-engineers-visit-twitter-office-to-review-code-for-musk https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-27/tesla-eng...
Waterluvian 4y ago
I think what you’re saying is not untrue. But this isn’t that. There would be an entire process performed over many months (some of which should have happened during due diligence.) Imagine if Elon bought an airline and asked them to line up all the planes on the tarmac for review.
- arthurcolle 4y ago
  > Imagine if Elon bought an airline and asked them to line up all the planes on the tarmac for review. I could unironically imagine Elon doing this
  - regpertom 4y ago
    Hey, excuse me for using you as an example but there’s a lot of this rough idea in this comment section and I’m rather confused by it. I don’t mean to single you out. What would be wrong with that? In a search for low hanging fruit, the planes that can’t make it to the tarmac would be a group of their own. Of the ones that do, next to others some stand out as being noticeably different. Etc. Then patterns may emerge based on that, iterate iterate. Seems to depend on where you’ve set the bar. If you were an office space Bob, depending on the bar placement, you may just be interviewing to see if someone loses their cool when asked “what is it you do here?”. If you were a cop you might bring in every suspect just to see if someone stands out. So what am I missing? Is it the scale of the operation?
    - Joeri 4y ago
      In every field there are ways that things are done. To review a fleet of airplanes I assume “the way it is done” would be based on trawling through inspection reports, not looking at the actual planes. Elon Musk has a complete disregard for “the way it is done” to the point of not even trying to do things that way as a sane default to iterate from, and that makes him the sort of person who would line up the airplanes on the tarmac instead of going through inspection reports. That attitude is why people who are deep into conventional wisdom dismiss him as an idiot. That attitude is also why both his successes and his failures are spectacular. When you deviate from the beaten path and run as fast as you can in that new direction sometimes you reach a far better vantage point and sometimes you just get totally lost in the jungle. With Elon you never know which way things will go.
8cmj7A 4y ago
They were asked to print their code and typically this is done as part of diligence _before_ closing. This is not sop. It’s Elon making a show of things.
- snotrockets 4y ago
  Very rarely does due diligence involves actual critique of code on paper. Or code reviews at all, for that matter. Edited: technical review isn’t code review.
  - grogenaut 4y ago
    I've done 2 due diligence in the last 3 years. Both time I read a large part of the code base, and I read the code reviews of the engineers as well. Codebase to find issues with the code but also liabilities that we'd need to deal with. I read the code reviews to help level set for the engineers. I've done on paper reviews as well where it was just easier than getting access to the code repos. Sure it's like 50 lbs of paper but whatever. The nice thing with paper is you're basically sorting, you toss the interesting pages to one side and the uninteresting to the other. Both of these were 20 person companies so I could review the 200-500kloc codebases in around 8 hours. It's not the most fun day :)
    - x86x87 4y ago
      You need to write a book and/or explain how you can review 500kloc in 8 hours. That sounds ridiculous to me but I may be missing something
      - resoluteteeth 4y ago
        > You need to write a book and/or explain how you can review 500kloc in 8 hours. That sounds ridiculous to me but I may be missing something I feel like what you could do in 8 hours would be less "reviewing" and more "starting to get a basic sense of the codebase in the way a new hire would" but when you're the new CEO of the company maybe saying that doesn't sound cool enough?
threatofrain 4y ago
You say "the new owners" but Tesla is not the new owner. Is it really standard procedure for employees from another company of the same CEO to do labor on the CEO's new company? And is printing out code really standard? Like, if you have the prerogative to review company code, why wouldn't you rather just use code tools on a computer, such as Git? I wouldn't be quick to dismiss the idea that this is a show.
- code_runner 4y ago
  To your point, can’t they just poke around the recent activity across all of twitters repos? Surely these brilliant Tesla engineers can figure that out.
- apexalpha 4y ago
  It's pretty common for a new CEO or leader to bring in his own people, too.
zzzeek 4y ago
agree, the reason he wants it "printed on paper" is strictly so he can gauge output by lines of code measured in pages. Basically the dumbest metric in the world for judging the effectiveness of a programmer.
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matwood 4y ago
You're talking more about standard procedure after an acquisition. The new owners come in and look for redundancies and try to cut there. This was a change in ownership, not an acquisition. There's an assumption about a lot of dead weight at Twitter. There certainly may be, but it's not simple redundancies (ie, you don't need 2 accounting depts.). Instead they'll have to figure out if Twitter really needs that many people. My guess is Twitter isn't as over-staffed as people think. Content moderation and multi-country policy likely require a lot of staff. To quote Scott Galloway on his attempted company take overs, "I often find out I'm not as smart as I thought I was, and the existing management isn't as dumb as I thought they were."

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aaronharnly 4y ago

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?

crazytalk 4y ago
Makes plenty of sense if said employees no longer have access to source code by the time the interview takes place. Red Wedding silicon valley edition
renewiltord 4y ago
A Twitter engineer walks into a programming interview. Interviewer: So this is just a quick question to warm up with. Imagine you have to write a program that is supplied a number n and prints out, for each number in order from 1 to n, the string Fizz if it is a multiple of 3, the str- Engineer: Okay, so first I'll install cups. What model of printer am I using?
throwaway09223 4y ago
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 they wrote in the last quarter. I've done this at a much smaller scale, one on one at the employee's desk, because the companies I've done this with have been 1/10 or 1/100th the size of twitter. I can see why it might make sense to just tell people to print stuff out to demonstrate competency, if you're otherwise planning to cut their entire department. Everyone gets a quick conversation with an engineer to talk about the code and gauge basic competency. If you don't suck, you stay. Seems not super crazy. It especially makes sense if you've locked out everyone aside from previously identified key personnel to prevent sabotage.
- djur 4y ago
  Do you understand why people who aren't making lots of money from it might be angry and upset about this process?
  - Xeronate 4y ago
    The ability of the process to prune dead weight and the emotions of the people affected are kind of unrelated. It's a business not a charity.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - exadrid 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - dagmx 4y ago
        And you know the same people would be shedding tears if they were being cut short in any way. It’s a total lack of empathy.
      - jddil 4y ago
        You're on a board founded by a VC fund to market their investments, I would expect capitalists to be the majority here.
        lupire 4y ago
        Hacker News is a recruiting website for those capitalists' employees. (Look at the only ads that ever appear on HN).
        jjulius 4y ago
        You're both correct in this instance.
        uni_rule 4y ago
abledon 4y ago
you don't like comedy?
Aeolun 4y ago
I have definitely seen them replace whole systems without ever looking at or evaluationg the code. Doing that seems like an improvement.
bagels 4y ago
Do you have any references to this printouts of code? I saw this mentioned on another thread too. I asked about it and was mocked for asking about it. Is this something that literally is happening? Where can we read about it? edit: Apparently referring to this: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-27/tesla-engineers-visit-twitter-office-to-review-code-for-musk https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-27/tesla-eng...

Waterluvian 4y ago

I think what you’re saying is not untrue. But this isn’t that. There would be an entire process performed over many months (some of which should have happened during due diligence.) Imagine if Elon bought an airline and asked them to line up all the planes on the tarmac for review.

arthurcolle 4y ago
> Imagine if Elon bought an airline and asked them to line up all the planes on the tarmac for review. I could unironically imagine Elon doing this
- regpertom 4y ago
  Hey, excuse me for using you as an example but there’s a lot of this rough idea in this comment section and I’m rather confused by it. I don’t mean to single you out. What would be wrong with that? In a search for low hanging fruit, the planes that can’t make it to the tarmac would be a group of their own. Of the ones that do, next to others some stand out as being noticeably different. Etc. Then patterns may emerge based on that, iterate iterate. Seems to depend on where you’ve set the bar. If you were an office space Bob, depending on the bar placement, you may just be interviewing to see if someone loses their cool when asked “what is it you do here?”. If you were a cop you might bring in every suspect just to see if someone stands out. So what am I missing? Is it the scale of the operation?
  - Joeri 4y ago
    In every field there are ways that things are done. To review a fleet of airplanes I assume “the way it is done” would be based on trawling through inspection reports, not looking at the actual planes. Elon Musk has a complete disregard for “the way it is done” to the point of not even trying to do things that way as a sane default to iterate from, and that makes him the sort of person who would line up the airplanes on the tarmac instead of going through inspection reports. That attitude is why people who are deep into conventional wisdom dismiss him as an idiot. That attitude is also why both his successes and his failures are spectacular. When you deviate from the beaten path and run as fast as you can in that new direction sometimes you reach a far better vantage point and sometimes you just get totally lost in the jungle. With Elon you never know which way things will go.

8cmj7A 4y ago

They were asked to print their code and typically this is done as part of diligence _before_ closing. This is not sop. It’s Elon making a show of things.

snotrockets 4y ago
Very rarely does due diligence involves actual critique of code on paper. Or code reviews at all, for that matter. Edited: technical review isn’t code review.
- grogenaut 4y ago
  I've done 2 due diligence in the last 3 years. Both time I read a large part of the code base, and I read the code reviews of the engineers as well. Codebase to find issues with the code but also liabilities that we'd need to deal with. I read the code reviews to help level set for the engineers. I've done on paper reviews as well where it was just easier than getting access to the code repos. Sure it's like 50 lbs of paper but whatever. The nice thing with paper is you're basically sorting, you toss the interesting pages to one side and the uninteresting to the other. Both of these were 20 person companies so I could review the 200-500kloc codebases in around 8 hours. It's not the most fun day :)
  - x86x87 4y ago
    You need to write a book and/or explain how you can review 500kloc in 8 hours. That sounds ridiculous to me but I may be missing something
    - resoluteteeth 4y ago
      > You need to write a book and/or explain how you can review 500kloc in 8 hours. That sounds ridiculous to me but I may be missing something I feel like what you could do in 8 hours would be less "reviewing" and more "starting to get a basic sense of the codebase in the way a new hire would" but when you're the new CEO of the company maybe saying that doesn't sound cool enough?

threatofrain 4y ago

You say "the new owners" but Tesla is not the new owner. Is it really standard procedure for employees from another company of the same CEO to do labor on the CEO's new company? And is printing out code really standard? Like, if you have the prerogative to review company code, why wouldn't you rather just use code tools on a computer, such as Git? I wouldn't be quick to dismiss the idea that this is a show.

code_runner 4y ago
To your point, can’t they just poke around the recent activity across all of twitters repos? Surely these brilliant Tesla engineers can figure that out.
apexalpha 4y ago
It's pretty common for a new CEO or leader to bring in his own people, too.

zzzeek 4y ago

agree, the reason he wants it "printed on paper" is strictly so he can gauge output by lines of code measured in pages. Basically the dumbest metric in the world for judging the effectiveness of a programmer.

deleted 4y ago

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deleted 4y ago

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matwood 4y ago

You're talking more about standard procedure after an acquisition. The new owners come in and look for redundancies and try to cut there. This was a change in ownership, not an acquisition. There's an assumption about a lot of dead weight at Twitter. There certainly may be, but it's not simple redundancies (ie, you don't need 2 accounting depts.). Instead they'll have to figure out if Twitter really needs that many people. My guess is Twitter isn't as over-staffed as people think. Content moderation and multi-country policy likely require a lot of staff. To quote Scott Galloway on his attempted company take overs, "I often find out I'm not as smart as I thought I was, and the existing management isn't as dumb as I thought they were."