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I was thinking the "30-60" day time window may be a somewhat subtle way of catching out engineers who haven't written a thing in that amount of time. that would
by marstall 4y ago
I was thinking the "30-60" day time window may be a somewhat subtle way of catching out engineers who haven't written a thing in that amount of time. that would be one way to identify low-performers.
not unproblematic by a long shot, but quick, and probably somewhat effective. and it wouldn't require any deep knowledge of twitter's codebase on the part of the reviewers.
- smt88 4y agoAny slightly competent software leader would know that you can track every character of code written by any dev using version control. Printing it out as a mark of honor/shame is something a petty, arrogant tyrant would do. Musk has been around people who are afraid to say no to him for too long.
- grogenaut 4y agoI've been in a few situations where we printed it out. It's just a lot faster than granting someone access to internal systems. It's also a firewall of access if you need that legally. Also you can sort paper into "to look at later" and "seems fine" (like huge chunks of json), it's annoying but not terrible for diligence.
- smt88 4y ago> a lot faster than granting someone access to internal systems Why? Musk could order access for Tesla engineers in minutes. Large companies have automated on-boarding and access control. > a firewall of access if you need that legally There is zero chance Musk would care about this. He breaks laws publicly and exuberantly. He has never shown a respect for red tape. > Also you can sort paper into "to look at later" and "seems fine" (like huge chunks of json), it's annoying but not terrible for diligence. I just can't imagine paper being useful to understand even a small project with 40-50 files in it. I'm not really buying there being any reason for it except a legal one, and this situation at Twitter wasn't a legal issue.
- grogenaut 4y agoI wasn't defending their supposed use of paper, just pointing out reasons why you might find yourself doing so. I've also been at quite large companies that need 3-5 days notice to onboard contractors, background checks, etc. Besides, he wants to fire 70% of them... you think people are rushing to help him fire everyone themselves included?
- mhh__ 4y agoNot impossible he literally doesn't understand version control as a way of life. More likely just a power trip.
- jpgvm 4y agoElon is a tyrant, not an idiot. He fully understands VCS and is a pretty capable software engineer. My guess is he is planning to fire ~50%+ of the engineering team and this is just his way of letting each person get their chance to show their worth in a quick interview. Paper may be old school but it's fast.
- ergocoder 4y ago> Printing it out as a mark of honor/shame is something a petty, arrogant tyrant would do I'll call it... after talking to a few twitter engineers who said they didn't hear anything about that. "Printing it out" is fake news. "Reviewing code in the last 60 days" is probably real. It seems fake news is okay as long as it fits our narrative.
- fzeroracer 4y agoIt's not. There have been multiple twitter engineers that have shared that the print out stuff was real [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/leahculver/status/1586145696163373056 https://twitter.com/leahculver/status/1586145696163373056
- ergocoder 4y agoMultiple? I only see Leah Culver tweeting obscurely. In the next tweet, she responded to Musk's tweet about "comedy is allowed on twitter" that she "just followed order". Leah Culver is wealthy that she doesn't need a job. She bought the painted lady a few years back for $3m. This could easily be a gag from her. Your source is absolute bonker.
- smt88 4y agoThe article says only some engineers received the invite to print code, and Washington Post's sourcing (some engineers at Twitter) is the same as yours. Casey Newton is reliable and says the same: https://www.platformer.news/p/elon-takes-over-twitter https://www.platformer.news/p/elon-takes-over-twitter
- ergocoder 4y agoWhich engs? Apart from Leah's obscure tweet. The article is paywalled. Journalists were pranked just yesterday about twitter engs being laid off. Is there a better source? Casey talking to some engs is so vague. Where is the details? Screenshots of emails maybe? Why is our standard so low when the narrative fits what we like?
- yrgulation 4y agoAre we back to measuring performance in klocs? I can get you a bunch of incompetent devs that change hundreds ofines of code a day. All you need to do is change indentation and eols or just rewrite basic stuff too lazy to understand.
- convery 4y agoAccording to the engineers in the undercover interviews, a large part of the staff only work "when they feel like it", which would result in some taking months of paid time off or just hanging out in the office all day. kloc is not great as a general metric, but in this case it might make it obvious where you can trim a lot of fat..
- yrgulation 4y agoI see and the issue lies with the engineers? If thats the company’s policy the whats the problem? He should change the policy and only then review performance in that context.
- swader999 4y agoChange the formatting lol.
- quickthrower2 4y agoQuick! Force push branch with fake historic commits from everyone in the team!
- uerobert 4y ago20pt font sizes goes brrr!
- zzzeek 4y agoright, they'll fire the gurus who know how everything works and barely write a line of code anymore, and things will be pretty hilarious when they have their next outage.