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Bye Twitter – Manu Cornet
- pelagicAustral 4y agoSeems to me like the guy was a nob. Tried to be funny with the new boss. Got sacked. Blog posts about it because, you know... people need to know.
- lm28469 4y agoB-bu-but Musk is a free speech absolutist, he should absolutely love this guy's take
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hortense 4y agoI would say he's trying to control the narrative so that his future prospective employers believe that he was not laid off because of his performance.
- dekhn 4y agoIf I had headcount for his particular role, I'd hire him in a second and let him know it's OK to continue making his cartoons (which are very on-point and useful to execs who want to learn more about their orgs than what their middle managers are telling them) but he should of course be aware that my abilities to protect him if an SVP gets annoyed are going to be limited.
- tschwimmer 4y agoHe will be effective in doing so because the email screenshot he included indicates exactly that: he was fired for non-performance related reasons. "Your recent behavior has violated multiple policies" is pretty unambiguous to me.
- prepend 4y agoThere’s likely a policy about having good performance. Lots of people got laid off, I don’t think it will be a problem to find a new job unless this turns into something crazy.
- karaterobot 4y agoThat's unambiguous to you? It's equivalent to "you were fired for reasons".
- za3faran 4y agoDo you think that will sit well with a potential future employer regardless?
- Firmwarrior 4y agoI dunno man, if I had a spare $300-$600k/year lying around I'd love to have this guy work for me even if he is a whiny smart aleck
- cmrdporcupine 4y agoSaid person could go back to working at Google anytime, likely. I don't think he needs to worry about covering for his reputation on this matter.
- tschwimmer 4y agoI think the operant phrase is “policy violations.” I’ve never heard that associated with anything but breaking a corporate rule: talking to the media unauthorized, leaking, harassment, etc.
- tayo42 4y agoWhat narrative is there to control? It's not like Twitter was about to put a big post out saying we fired him. He put all of this out their on his own. He wouldn't even need to bring up being fired in interviews, just say he left
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- cmrdporcupine 4y agoHe's a rather famous "nob" who worked at Google for years making much beloved cartoons and then went to Twitter. So a well-known (and apparently quite pleasant and smart) person in the industry. That Musk couldn't interpret this right, and acted in his usual rash and vindictive way says more about him than it does about Manu. Also consistent with the way he lashed back at Gary Kasparov, clearly unaware who he was speaking to ("what have you ever done" indeed). Any person truly laying claim to the crown of king of nerds would be respectful to both of these people and it says a lot about Musk that he wasn't. Taking over a Silicon Valley company without recognizing its culture and then firing someone who helped build it -- because they made jokes -- is beyond crass, it shows complete obliviousness to what he just bought. FWIW Google used to have his cartoons mounted on walls around campus. Including ones that were (gently) critical of leadership and culture. How come Larry&Sergey&Eric could handle his gentle critique, but Musk cannot? Leaders don't behave this way.
- andreilys 4y agoI highly doubt Musk was personally involved with the firing of an individual contributor, sounds like typical HR risk minimization
- jojobas 4y agoMore like a boarding party from Musk firing at shadows.
- CamperBob2 4y agoYou don't know much about Musk, I take it. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/03/elon-musk-blogger-tesla-motors-model-x https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/03/elon-musk...
- mc32 4y agoJobs was pettier than Musk and by most measures and opinions he was also very successful in leading his companies --and so is Musk. Successful leaders aren't usually nice. Some have been and some are, but that's more atypical. Often leaders in order to lead to best competitors at times have to be harsh.
- vintermann 4y agoReactions like these baffle me. Is it jealousy, resentment of people who are privileged enough to be above the norms of corporate feudalism? Manu Cornet worked for Google for a decade, making these comics and getting famous for both them and (by all accounts) being a very good engineer. One of the comics leaked and was read by Satya Nadella, who cited it as an inspiration to turn Microsoft's corporate culture around. So there's at least some people even in Big Tech who can tolerate a bit of very gentle chiding. Seriously, Cornet is very tame in his comedy. If he didn't actually work in Big Tech, most of his comics wouldn't be considered all that clever or funny - but they get that little boost from nervous laughter of his colleagues. It's transgressive by corporate standards, but barely. Who wants to work in a hellhole where even that isn't tolerated?
- tdeck 4y ago> I was one of the early layoffs after the Oct 2022 acquisition of Twitter > ... > On the same day, I was fired and that post was taken down. So were you fired or laid off? This seems like a relevant distinction in this case. Either way it's a shitty thing though :(.
- tschwimmer 4y agoHe was fired (at least as it's commonly referred to in the United States), see the image of his termination email at the bottom of the post
- nateb2022 4y agoYep. I've never been fired or layed off before (thank goodness) but I found it unusual that they fired him in the middle of a meeting and the "screen went blank." That seems a little dramatic.
- dekhn 4y agoThis is quite common in tech. There have been a number of situations where a person has been fired, but retained their access credentials, and did post-firing damage to production systems. It's not beyond the realm of belief that a corp would install an agent that would allow immediate remote power off for a terminated employee.
- simondotau 4y agoIt would be extraordinarily negligent if the corporation didn’t have something like this implemented. The information held by Twitter could place the physical safety of thousands of people at risk. It could place millions of people into other concerning situations, such as ostracism, bullying, and legal quagmires. Whether a fired employee loses access to internal systems at 2PM or 5PM is utterly irrelevant by comparison.
- kodyo 4y agoGetting laid off sucks in the moment. One time I was laid off with 2 hours’ notice and no severance. You pick yourself up and move on.
- rastignack 4y ago
- vlz 4y agoOh, come on. Stating pronouns can be really helpful at times. It’s not always just virtue signaling.
- rastignack 4y agoHow did we manage to live thousands of years without. I guess we had names.
- martin1b 4y agoThis!
- eddsh1994 4y ago
- vlz 4y agoWell, for thousands of years we lived in small homogenous communities with only a handful of names. We also had very rigid gender norms. As times change we now live in more open communities with thousands of different names and looser gender norms. I oftentimes cannot easily guess the pronoun from a name.
- halfmatthalfcat 4y agoWe lived a long time without having to use honorifics yet we do now and are even publicly shamed for not doing so. Humanity and the language we use is a constantly evolving thing.
- Macha 4y agoAre we? My impression was English language honorifics were going out of fashion. People are more likely to say Tom or Tom Smith than Mr. Smith these days
- 10g1k 4y ago
- wittycardio 4y agoDid you read the article ?
- 10g1k 4y agoYes. The one dude's belief has nothing to do with the mass layoffs.
- low_tech_love 4y agoFree speech loudmouths never fail to contradict themselves, it’s one of the few things that are always true. Anyone who thinks they have the secret for freedom in their minds (and nobody else has) is obviously too narrow-minded to have any interesting idea about the complex (and collective) subject that is “freedom”.
- monsecchris 4y agoIs free speech in the room with you now?
- phonescreen_man 4y agoNo but her brother l337 is biatch!
- 1270018080 4y agoI took a philosophy class on "freedom" in college. The entire semester on the word and simply trying to define it. And I had a few takeaways. My main takeaway is that no one has been able define freedom successfully, or even come close. Second, anyone who simplistically uses the word to forward their agenda is not qualified to use the word (Musk, "free speech" advocates, American nationalists). Lastly, I hate philosophy because I spent an entire semester reading and studying and still have no answer to what freedom really means.
- evronm 4y ago>Lastly, I hate philosophy because I spent an entire semester reading and studying and still have no answer to what freedom really means. "Computers are useless. They only give answers." - Pablo Picasso I think you missed the point of philosophy. It's pretty much all about pondering questions you can't answer. Once you manage to answer them, you're not doing philosophy any more but have moved into the realm of science.
- twiceaday 4y ago
- abeppu 4y agoNot the point of this post, but it would be nice if we normalized the practice of, giving people a digital copy of a range of relevant files when their employment ends for any reason (performance reviews, all the contracts and NDAs etc that you signed when you started, information about benefits, options etc). People shouldn't need to try to frantically save this stuff.
- faitswulff 4y agoBusinesses will never do this without legislation.
- diebeforei485 4y agoIn California you can ask current or previous employers for this info (I don't know how far back it goes, for example if you left 20 years ago I don't think this applies). https://mizrahilaw.com/california-personnel-file-request-labor-code-1198-5-226-432/ https://mizrahilaw.com/california-personnel-file-request-lab...
- bmurray7jhu 4y agoLimited to 50 employees per month per company. Se. LAB § 1998.5(p)
- deathanatos 4y agoYeah. While wholesale downloading when there is a retention policy in place does seem like a policy violation (… although, is it worth losing someone like this over? Corrective action would probably be more productive for everyone involved…) I have been in a layoff and the amount of emails regarding the terms of my layoff (including terms that I'm supposed to honor after departure) that only got sent to my corp inbox … it's ridiculous. If you want your employees to take your policies seriously, make sure your own house is in order first. Stuff as it relates to my employment at the company is, to me, sent to "me the person" not "me the employee" and crosses that threshold to "not corp" email. Next time CC my non-corp professional email. Also, the "Confidential: do not forward. We just shared on our public blog today … please help us by astroturfing on LinkedIn" emails.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dpweb 4y agoI find the 'not going to take further action' telling, not to mention the bad taste of making fun of your employer publicly. Seems mostly immature and passive-aggressive to me. Aside from the criticism of the company, if I'm a manager I'm probably saying we don't need immature, passive-aggressive people on the team. Personal opinion, but I'd probably not complain publicly about being terminated, unless the company broke the law regarding my termination.
- saagarjha 4y agoI see you are unfamiliar with who Manu is :P
- moralestapia 4y agoAgree 100%. Also, >I have better things to do Of course you do, pal. :^)
- matrix_overload 4y agoOh boy, this is so naive. Big corporations always prioritize minimizing risk over anything else. Because if you screw up and the risk doesn't pay off, your internal competitors will eat you alive. So the dude publishes a tool for downloading internal communications (and making the intended use of the tool very explicit). It reaches some legal person in the company who gets to decide what to do about it. So option A, do nothing. If in a month from now somebody uses it to leak a confidential email, others will remember your inaction, you lose your job. Option B, terminate the dude, block the tool. You get a pat on the back for doing your job, dude leaves. It's really a no-brainer. If a company has someone who is literally paid to minimize liabilities, painting a big red "liability" sign on your back in front of them is not a good idea. Might as well pull out a gun in front of a cop, and then complain about police brutality (if you survive). It is also a weird tantrum from the loyalty perspective. The corporate game is all about pretending to trust each other, while looking for multiple backstabbing opportunities at the same time. If you publish a tool saying "hey, if the corporate screws you over, here's how you fight back", you publicly show that you don't trust the company anymore. So unless the company immediately shows that they don't trust you, it's almost like they let you win the round, confirming that they shouldn't be trusted.
- MisterBastahrd 4y ago
- engineer_22 4y agoYour first sentence is an ad hominem attack against the CEO. Your argument can be dismissed right there.
- readthenotes1 4y agoStack ranking by raw number of lines of code? Hopefully it was scored like golf. My last real coding job, i was in tough competition with another guy for the most lines of code removed...
- culi 4y agoNo better feeling than sending up a PR and seeing the red number big than the green one
- Spivak 4y agoI would assume it’s absolute value of + and - per PR because otherwise jeez.
- atq2119 4y agoEven then it incentivizes useless churn. Lines of code is just awful as a target.
- slantedview 4y agoUnless you work at Twitter, apparently.
- stefan_ 4y agoTime to internalize dependencies.
- bigmattystyles 4y agoAnd set code formatting line width to 5.
- yellow_lead 4y agoThe guy who moved repositories around or submitted the autogenerated code/data is getting a huge raise
- Proven 4y ago
- andrew_ 4y agoSeems like a lot of people who have been very comfortable for a very long time in a sheltered bubble are about to become very uncomfortable.
- awb 4y agoIt's swapping one bubble for another. From the recent tweets it looks like Musk has a clear vision he wants implemented and isn't really looking to add a lot of diverse opinions to his thought process. He has more FU money than anyone else alive (even if Twitter goes to 0), so I'm pretty sure he'll turn it into whatever new bubble he wants.
- stoicjumbotron 4y agoSo hypothetically speaking if Twitter goes to 0 or close to it, no monetary penalty will be slapped to Musk as it is private? Damn!
- nearbuy 4y agoYou mean other than losing the $44 billion? What additional penalty would there be if Twitter were public?
- ghostpepper 4y agoOstensibly a CEO owes a fiduciary duty to shareholders to protect their investment
- asutekku 4y agoBut Musk took Twitter private, there’s no shareholders to please.
- throwawaylinux 4y agoPrivate doesn't mean no shareholders.
- bhawks 4y agoA big loss for Twitter, Manu will definitely be fine. Manu is exactly the kind of engineer Musk should want to retain. He's very product focused and a hard worker. Not surprised to hear that he was volunteering for the long hours and sleeping at the office. Of course he is very expressive but he's also extremely reasonable. Looking forward to seeing where Manu ends up going next.
- annexrichmond 4y ago> For example: statements from their stock broker (company goes private –> no more stock, which can be a big part of compensation), things from WorkDay (outsourcedd HR management), etc. Nonsense. This is standard stuff that can be accessed by reaching out to HR of your former employer
- nrmitchi 4y agoAs someone who has been laid off before, it’s not always as clear as you’d think when there’s a 50% chance the people you need to ask were laid off too.
- rlt 4y agoTL;DR either tried to get fired, or at a minimum didn’t care, or was incredibly naive.
- compiler-guy 4y agoUnderstood the risks, figured they were worth taking, not all that broken up that it didn't work out. Manu is anything but naive.
- midislack 4y agoIt's only $8 and you get more likes, shares, and mentions with blue checks.
- theonething 4y agoI don't think I've ever come across a situation where talking about your firing in the public square was a good idea. I just don't see any tangible benefit it can bring. I guess it's cathartic for the one fired, so there's that.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago> I don't think I've ever come across a situation where talking about your firing in the public square was a good idea. I just don't see any tangible benefit it can bring. A big quirk of firing situations is that the company can’t (or won’t) tell their side of the story. As a result, fired employees often feel like they can take control of the narrative by posting their version of events without worry about the company telling their side of the story. In this case, the author casually mentioned that they believed they were among the top 5-10% of stack ranked engineers at Twitter as a way to get ahead of any assumptions that they were laid off for performance reasons. I’ve seen other cases where fired people try to take advantage of this asymmetry to tell outright lies. A friend had a remote employee who gradually became less and less responsive until they couldn’t be reached for entire weeks at a time. They fired the employee, who immediately took to social media to fabricate a story about being unjustly fired for some other trivial situation at work that had no bearing on the firing. Of course, the failure to communicate or get any work done wasn’t mentioned at all, leaving readers to believe that the only contributing factor was the trivial, unrelated work situation stated in her posts. And it worked phenomenally well! She had a number of invitations to join other companies from people who thought they were helping right an injustice that had occurred to this person. (Note: I’m telling this story as a response to the parent comment, not implying it’s what’s happening in the linked blog post). So there can be some weird upside to taking control of the narrative if (and only if) one has a social media audience to share the narrative with.
- 23B1 4y agoI like this guy. I like troublemakers. I hope to fill my next venture with cheeky, subversive troublemakers.
- SanjayMehta 4y agoHis cartoons are great. https://twittoons.com https://twittoons.com
- aaa_aaa 4y agoHonestly, mediocre at best. Drawing style is even less so.
- throwaway675309 4y agoThese cartoons are the height of cringe, they're like the engineering equivalent of family circus.
- mamurphy 4y agoIronic that Manu's immediately previous blog post from 2022.04.27 is titled "Not Going Anywhere" (https://ma.nu/blog/not-going-anywhere https://ma.nu/blog/not-going-anywhere).
- awa 4y agoFyi.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manu_Cornet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manu_Cornet.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoThanks very much for posting that. I didn't realize the OP was the author of this comic, which is one of my favorite software-related comics of all time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manu_Cornet#/media/File:2011.11.15_building_software.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manu_Cornet#/media/File:2011.1...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- TobyTheDog123 4y agoI know this person is talented and well-known (though I'm not familiar with their work outside of the org charts comic), but the whole "tee hee I'm such a troublemaker!!!" focus makes me understand why some people are reacting the way they are here. To me, it would come off as insincere, passive-aggressive, and demeaning if someone talked to me like this, especially at work. And before I see a "you must be fun at parties" comment, there is a very distinct difference between friendliness and patronizing. However: >Survivor of late stage cancer [1] I have no idea what this sort of thing does to the psyche, outlook, and communication style of a human being, so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here. [1] https://twitter.com/lmanul https://twitter.com/lmanul
- throwawaylinux 4y agoNobody else seems to have mentioned it, I don't know if this is an unusual opinion or it's just the whole "billionaires and CEOs = bad" mob mentality has clouded opinions or he has a lot of fans here or what it is. His cartoons and the way he distributes them is really quite distasteful to me. Many of them criticize the organization he works for which okay is arguably not bad if it is measured and constructive, but I also think it can be destructive for morale and pointless. Everyone bitches and gossips and dramatizes about work, it's part of being in the trenches together, but you don't generally publish that on company-wide or public forums. Which is bad enough. But actually much worse is his singling out individuals for criticism. Repeatedly. This meets textbook definitions for workplace bullying, and I don't think that's okay. Setting aside the other subjects of his cartoons, I don't think it is okay even to target the CEO this way. He may affect the entire company, but imagine doing a weekly cartoon criticizing your line manager and sharing in among her direct reports. Horrible, and certainly bullying. Parag is a human too, and should not have to be subject to that in his workplace. So is Musk, whatever you think of him, and the other executives in the cartoons for that matter. Just because you're playing the whacky eccentric artist with hip cartoons that criticize those terrible corporations and hated billionaihs and CEOs and everyone on social media gives you lots of likes and shares... does not absolve you from the effect of your speech on others. And the calculus actually changes radically when you're not just some random comedian commentating on a public figure, but actually a colleague commenting from a position of knowing a lot of private details about these people. I'm actually amazed this person lasted as long as he did. I feel sorry for colleagues of people like this who are affected by them, because often people are scared to speak out, and often the companies themselves seem to be scared of the backlash from disciplining or terminating them because of their cult followings.
- emodendroket 4y ago> Q: What do you mean by stack-ranking engineers? What were the criteria? > > A: Raw number of lines of code over a certain period (a year I think). Here I've been writing code concisely like a sucker!
- JetSetIlly 4y agoFrom the article: "Q: What do you mean by stack-ranking engineers? What were the criteria? A: Raw number of lines of code over a certain period (a year I think)." Is correlation of line count and employee performance still a thing? I thought that went out of fashion decades ago.
- jrootabega 4y agoWhen the goal is to get rid of someone or some people, fashion doesn't matter. Anything that can be used to construct a case will be considered. The goal is to prevent being sued or losing the suit, not to look good. "No, your honor, here is our methodology for evaluating performance. As you can see, it is not violating any laws. These employees fell on the lower end of the scale." Also, in a situation where the owner is hostile to the employees, and the employees are hostile to the owner, how are you going to perform more accurate assessments? Code output may be the least bad heuristic they can use. And of course, let's not forget this whole thing is meant to be a spectacle.
- JetSetIlly 4y agoThank-you for the reply. I interpreted the original FAQ answer to mean that stack ranking by lines-of-code has been used by Twitter in the recent past, prior to Musk. But I can now see that this is a new criteria used to justify layoffs.
- mcculley 4y agoI am amazed that Twitter uses Google to manage internal email.
- chris_j 4y agoWhat's the reason you're amazed by that? Is there something else you'd expect them to use?
- mcculley 4y agoThey could host mail on their own servers or use a provider that is not a competitor.
- chris_j 4y agoThanks for expanding. I hadn't considered that Google are a competitor to Twitter at this point (at least, not since Google+ went away). And I guess they are happy to host some of their infrastructure on GCP as well...
- mcculley 4y agoYeah, even without Google+, they compete for advertisers’ budgets. I certainly would not give my email to my competitor.
- cmrdporcupine 4y agoClass action suit filed https://twitter.com/lmanul/status/1588440640534167552 https://twitter.com/lmanul/status/1588440640534167552
- pabs3 4y agoThat gmail extension sounds useful outside of Twitter too, I hope Manu publishes the source code on GitHub some day.