6 ms·

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...

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...