20 ms·

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 bill

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.

uni_rule 4y ago
See also: Tumblr losing Yahoo/Verizon nearly a Billion dollars with it's own implosion.
- IgorPartola 4y ago
  Oh come now. Tumblr didn’t fail due to engineers sabotaging it. It failed because the new owners decided that they were too squeamish for porn and it turned out that porn was what sustained Tumblr. This was Yahoo simply not understanding what the product actually was.
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    > This was Yahoo simply not understanding what the product actually was. This is Yahoo's core competency though: not understanding what their product actually is.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    I mean there is still not porn on Tumblr and Automattic has been a good steward of it. Verizon lost a billion dollars because they bet on a growth play for a mature social network where their new owners are running it like a lifestyle business.
    - IgorPartola 4y ago
      I would argue that when Yahoo decided to remove all the porn off Tumblr that it caused a major brain drain that took a long time to recover. It also soured the relationship between bloggers and Yahoo. There was no way for the same entity to pull out of that nose dive but a bit of time and new ownership helped pivot Tumblr to a slightly different crowd.
newZWhoDis 4y ago
Twitter engineers already aren’t trying, unless you’re counting under flow or something HN meta to increase output while reducing effort.
scaramanga 4y ago
Because they don't have a union so they were excluded from all the big-boy negotiations at the sale, and they've no way to resist the demands of their bosses. They can put up, or shut up. Or just complain pathetically.
- lupire 4y ago
  Or they can join a competing social network.
  - uni_rule 4y ago
    Well it's not like meta is having a great time right now either.
    - lukewrites 4y ago
      Well then why don’t they go to Snapch…oh, never mind.
      - Tiktaalik 4y ago
        tbh Musk very lucky right now that he's doing this during a downturn when there's not a lot of recruiters banging on the door for his workers.
  - DeathArrow 4y ago
    Facebook is out of cash. And even if they were expanding, Facebook is orders of magnitude more complex, is not sure all ex Twitter employees would have been a good match for Facebook.
mikeryan 4y ago
If these numbers are right and they're laying off 50% the workforce, half of me wonders how much Parag could raise to build a new Twitter from scratch and just hire 500 - 1000 talented folks off the street for the venture, I mean if Travis K could raise almost a billion for his shitty ghost kitchen venture I'd have to think they could get enough runway to get something launched pretty quickly. There's so many "What we should do" moments that are too expensive or deviate too far from the core business that don't get developed in most enterprises that could be pursued when starting from a blank slate. Anyway, just a thought experiment.
- nmfisher 4y ago
  The success of most* social media platforms was largely unconnected with the developers who built it or the underlying software. You can't just hire a few hundred retrenched developers and expect to come up with a successful social media platform after some number of months. Timing, marketing, and user psychology are much more important. * I'd say TikTok is the exception, because delivering (a) instantaneous video and (b) useful algorithmic recommendations is a technically difficult proposition. But at the same time, I'd argue their success was driven largely by the music licensing deals they initially cut (and their insane marketing spend), which is what caused their early growth.
  - mikeryan 4y ago
    I agree with a lot of what you say, but in this hypothetical I'm envisioning this a bit differently then a completely new social network so much as Twitter 2.0 with a very direct focus on getting a large "Lift and Shift" of users directly from Twitter. I should also be clear that I'm assuming a relatively proportional level of talent across Product, Design etc too not just retrenched engineers.
    - DeathArrow 4y ago
      >getting a large "Lift and Shift" of users directly from Twitter Why would someone switch from Twitter? If anything, you might expect more freedom of speech and less bots on Twitter. On the parallel Twitter the maximum you can expect is the old Twitter minus some functionality, plus some offline time and some bugs.
sour-taste 4y ago
Maybe try for a month, get stock to vest, then take off.
dmingod666 4y ago
The new owner knows this, that the whole company is itching to self sabotage and crash twitter if they can..
gonzo41 4y ago
Isn't Peter theil launching a competing product. Maybe he tricked musk into buying twitter so this happens
- mantas 4y ago
  The crowd that isn’t happy with Musk probably wouldn’t be happy with Theil… Musk is asshat saying stupid things. While Theil is both further in the same political direction and much smarter.
williamsmj 4y ago
I wish Elon Musk all the best handling whatever this is with a skeleton crew of people who hate him on Tuesday: https://xeiaso.net/blog/openssl-3.x-secvuln-incoming https://xeiaso.net/blog/openssl-3.x-secvuln-incoming.
agilob 4y ago
>Passively destroying Twitter from within by not trying A code review? TL;DR; LGTM, straight to prod!
MarcoZavala 4y ago
TheChaplain 4y ago
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 better person even if I'm in a room of degenerates.
- tgv 4y ago
  > ... 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.
  - tourist2d 4y ago
    > It's detrimental to mental health and society Got a source for that? Sounds like you expanded that personal anecdote a bit too much.
  - plq 4y ago
    > ... running twitter into the ground might be the most ethical thing an employee could do. Is this what you said during your hypothetical interview with Twitter? If yes, be my guest. If not, you should abide by the promises you made to your employers. It's got nothing to do with "self-imposed honor code" or whatever terms people come up with to belittle people with integrity. You made a promise when you accepted that offer. You either stand by that or quit.
    - tgv 4y ago
      "Aye, sir!" It's not the navy. You're not under orders. They can fire you if they want. But if that's not enough for you: promises and loyalty works boths ways. Suppose you're a veteran at twitter. The company (you thought) joined is not what it is today. You're not bound to any original promises. Furthermore, you didn't make any promises. You signed a contract, which is only partly binding (check your jurisdiction for details; e.g., where I live, a non-compete clause is frequently overruled by a judge). You didn't promise to increase shareholder value on your mother's life. Finally, when the interests are substantial enough, ethics trump loyalty and honor. I don't think I have to substantiate that. Of course, this doesn't hold when you adhere to some kind of "corporatism", where the state and/or corporations decide what's good for you.
smk_ 4y ago
You are a psychopath.
nigerianbrince 4y ago
`git blame`

uni_rule 4y ago

See also: Tumblr losing Yahoo/Verizon nearly a Billion dollars with it's own implosion.

IgorPartola 4y ago
Oh come now. Tumblr didn’t fail due to engineers sabotaging it. It failed because the new owners decided that they were too squeamish for porn and it turned out that porn was what sustained Tumblr. This was Yahoo simply not understanding what the product actually was.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  > This was Yahoo simply not understanding what the product actually was. This is Yahoo's core competency though: not understanding what their product actually is.
- Spivak 4y ago
  I mean there is still not porn on Tumblr and Automattic has been a good steward of it. Verizon lost a billion dollars because they bet on a growth play for a mature social network where their new owners are running it like a lifestyle business.
  - IgorPartola 4y ago
    I would argue that when Yahoo decided to remove all the porn off Tumblr that it caused a major brain drain that took a long time to recover. It also soured the relationship between bloggers and Yahoo. There was no way for the same entity to pull out of that nose dive but a bit of time and new ownership helped pivot Tumblr to a slightly different crowd.

newZWhoDis 4y ago

Twitter engineers already aren’t trying, unless you’re counting under flow or something HN meta to increase output while reducing effort.

scaramanga 4y ago

Because they don't have a union so they were excluded from all the big-boy negotiations at the sale, and they've no way to resist the demands of their bosses. They can put up, or shut up. Or just complain pathetically.

lupire 4y ago
Or they can join a competing social network.
- uni_rule 4y ago
  Well it's not like meta is having a great time right now either.
  - lukewrites 4y ago
    Well then why don’t they go to Snapch…oh, never mind.
    - Tiktaalik 4y ago
      tbh Musk very lucky right now that he's doing this during a downturn when there's not a lot of recruiters banging on the door for his workers.
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  Facebook is out of cash. And even if they were expanding, Facebook is orders of magnitude more complex, is not sure all ex Twitter employees would have been a good match for Facebook.

mikeryan 4y ago

If these numbers are right and they're laying off 50% the workforce, half of me wonders how much Parag could raise to build a new Twitter from scratch and just hire 500 - 1000 talented folks off the street for the venture, I mean if Travis K could raise almost a billion for his shitty ghost kitchen venture I'd have to think they could get enough runway to get something launched pretty quickly. There's so many "What we should do" moments that are too expensive or deviate too far from the core business that don't get developed in most enterprises that could be pursued when starting from a blank slate. Anyway, just a thought experiment.

nmfisher 4y ago
The success of most* social media platforms was largely unconnected with the developers who built it or the underlying software. You can't just hire a few hundred retrenched developers and expect to come up with a successful social media platform after some number of months. Timing, marketing, and user psychology are much more important. * I'd say TikTok is the exception, because delivering (a) instantaneous video and (b) useful algorithmic recommendations is a technically difficult proposition. But at the same time, I'd argue their success was driven largely by the music licensing deals they initially cut (and their insane marketing spend), which is what caused their early growth.
- mikeryan 4y ago
  I agree with a lot of what you say, but in this hypothetical I'm envisioning this a bit differently then a completely new social network so much as Twitter 2.0 with a very direct focus on getting a large "Lift and Shift" of users directly from Twitter. I should also be clear that I'm assuming a relatively proportional level of talent across Product, Design etc too not just retrenched engineers.
  - DeathArrow 4y ago
    >getting a large "Lift and Shift" of users directly from Twitter Why would someone switch from Twitter? If anything, you might expect more freedom of speech and less bots on Twitter. On the parallel Twitter the maximum you can expect is the old Twitter minus some functionality, plus some offline time and some bugs.

sour-taste 4y ago

Maybe try for a month, get stock to vest, then take off.

dmingod666 4y ago

The new owner knows this, that the whole company is itching to self sabotage and crash twitter if they can..

gonzo41 4y ago

Isn't Peter theil launching a competing product. Maybe he tricked musk into buying twitter so this happens

mantas 4y ago
The crowd that isn’t happy with Musk probably wouldn’t be happy with Theil… Musk is asshat saying stupid things. While Theil is both further in the same political direction and much smarter.

williamsmj 4y ago

I wish Elon Musk all the best handling whatever this is with a skeleton crew of people who hate him on Tuesday: https://xeiaso.net/blog/openssl-3.x-secvuln-incoming https://xeiaso.net/blog/openssl-3.x-secvuln-incoming.

agilob 4y ago

>Passively destroying Twitter from within by not trying A code review? TL;DR; LGTM, straight to prod!

MarcoZavala 4y ago

TheChaplain 4y ago

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 better person even if I'm in a room of degenerates.

tgv 4y ago
> ... 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.
- tourist2d 4y ago
  > It's detrimental to mental health and society Got a source for that? Sounds like you expanded that personal anecdote a bit too much.
- plq 4y ago
  > ... running twitter into the ground might be the most ethical thing an employee could do. Is this what you said during your hypothetical interview with Twitter? If yes, be my guest. If not, you should abide by the promises you made to your employers. It's got nothing to do with "self-imposed honor code" or whatever terms people come up with to belittle people with integrity. You made a promise when you accepted that offer. You either stand by that or quit.
  - tgv 4y ago
    "Aye, sir!" It's not the navy. You're not under orders. They can fire you if they want. But if that's not enough for you: promises and loyalty works boths ways. Suppose you're a veteran at twitter. The company (you thought) joined is not what it is today. You're not bound to any original promises. Furthermore, you didn't make any promises. You signed a contract, which is only partly binding (check your jurisdiction for details; e.g., where I live, a non-compete clause is frequently overruled by a judge). You didn't promise to increase shareholder value on your mother's life. Finally, when the interests are substantial enough, ethics trump loyalty and honor. I don't think I have to substantiate that. Of course, this doesn't hold when you adhere to some kind of "corporatism", where the state and/or corporations decide what's good for you.

smk_ 4y ago

You are a psychopath.

nigerianbrince 4y ago

`git blame`