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I don't know why comments are so against these layoffs. Twitter is known for having a "chill" work environment and I have heard many stories of people just slac
by dmak 4y ago
I don't know why comments are so against these layoffs. Twitter is known for having a "chill" work environment and I have heard many stories of people just slacking off and doing other things while getting paid. I would actually like to see Twitter's team and culture rebuilt regardless of who bought it.
- seibelj 4y agoBigco software engineering has been quite chill / slack-off for some time. Rude awakening for a lot of devs if they have been resting on their laurels.
- fzeroracer 4y agoBecause you're not going to know who the 'slackers' are in the first week or so of owning a company and actions like these are a great way to ensure that your company doesn't get rebuilt. Despite how many Musk reply guys seem to exist, most of them aren't engineers and even fewer of them are dumb enough to work for a Musk-owned Twitter where you get to be overworked and underpaid.
- VirusNewbie 4y agoWhy not? If the rumors are true, there are people who don’t commit code (or design docs etc) for months on end. Wouldn’t it be pretty easy to identify those people?
- fzeroracer 4y agoBecause you and I both know those rumors aren't true. Upper management at any big company isn't going to let any of that slide no matter the culture. And implying that 50% of people are that level of unproductive is laughable by any metric. You could probably make some shit up by pointing at a technical manager that hasn't written code in a while but that's not indicative of their actual performance.
- dragontamer 4y agoI work with a pretty good QA tester guy who doesn't write any of code, but can configure an entire realistic test network across Windows / Linux servers, Android devices, IOS devices in a day. Are ya going to fire him after seeing his lack of GIT commits after one week as CEO?
- VirusNewbie 4y agoObviously I meant if their job duties involve writing code or something…
- Godel_unicode 4y agoYou might want to calibrate your view of what is obvious. Which is the point gp was making.
- dmak 4y agoWell the current events says Engineers were asked to print code which applies to only relevant parties (ex, people who are expected to commit code). If you are QA testing and aren't expected to commit code then it should be obvious that you are not subjected to that rubric.
- caminante 4y agoIt's dishonest to say they won't rank before firing. But worst case... These firing decisions are not irreversible! If you accidentally fire a 10x programmer, you can re-hire.
- fzeroracer 4y agoA 10x programmer isn't going to come back to a company that fired him for nonsense reasons.
- caminante 4y agoNo true scotsman fallacy aside, firms make this mistake all the time and have to rehire the star/legacy maintainer at contractor rates to keep things running.
- rootusrootus 4y ago> These firing decisions are not irreversible! If you accidentally fire a 10x programmer, you can re-hire. Ha! At a significant price premium, or that programmer is a moron.
- candiodari 4y agoAll of Musk's companies have a reputation for being really sucky places to work. Interesting, but poorly paid, authoritarian and very long hours. It's suffering you accept to learn stuff and then leave, I've heard it described. Not a place to have kids. Meaning Musk cannot rehire anyone who's left these companies.
- caminante 4y ago>At a significant price premium, or that programmer is a moron. You're stating the obvious as if it's not implied by my statement. Alternatively, they might be A-OK returning to their codebase/team without fuss. Edit: even if you pay an exorbitant premium, that could be cheaper than keeping N other 1x or -X programmers.
- jesuscript 4y agoIs it that simple? I doubt it. The man owns Starlink. Imagine that for a second. Imagine owning a social network that is a first class citizen to a global satellite network that no government can ever censor. He could be pivoting the company into something astonishing.
- soulofmischief 4y agoLet's build a better one that people control.
- jesuscript 4y agoThat’s the whole point, no one is supposed to control it. Ugh, I sound silly, but here’s the Batman quote: Not the hero we want, but the hero we deserve. Yes, reverse the bans and connect this shit to Starlink and tell governments “I got no clue where those damn satellites are, can’t help ya, Trump’s tweeting from somewhere in Somalia with a VPN”.
- nwiswell 4y agoWow, yeah, what a utopian vision you paint. Wait hold on a minute isn't there already some kind of amendment that makes this irrelevant? Although since the Saudis own such a massive chunk of this newly private company I guess the US government is no longer the only one that Elon needs to concern himself with.
- jeffbee 4y agoThe man bought the company using Saudi cash. It is much, much more likely that he's going the other way on censorship. Of course, astonishment might still be appropriate.
- type-r 4y agoDidn't realize the Saudis were such big shareholders -- apparently now second only to Musk in total percentage of ownership https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/31/tech/murphy-saudi-musk-twitter-cfius/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/31/tech/murphy-saudi-musk-twitte...)
- afavour 4y agoToo many people, too fast. There's no way these are going to be sensible, surgical layoffs. The service is definitely going to suffer.
- dmak 4y agoFair point. Agreed on the surgical layoffs. I assumed that Twitter's culture was rotting very deeply already since they haven't made much progress for a long time.
- jesuscript 4y agoThere’s an underlying fact that the committee of people didn’t care about Twitter as a company right? That if you believe in your company and the welfare of your workers, and you believe Elon is a threat to them and your vision of whatever modern communication Twitter serves, then you wouldn’t sell it to him. But they did right? As in the group lacks conviction. There was not a single stipulation in that sale that said “please keep our people on for X amount of time”. They took the cash and bounced.
- dmak 4y agoThat was a hard red pill to swallow.
- papercrane 4y agoThe board represents the shareholders, of course they were going to take an over market offer. If they hadn't they'd be mired in shareholder lawsuits til the end of time.
- lmm 4y agoOh sure. The board and upper management were inept and ineffectual, I don't think anyone will argue otherwise. But so what?
- drc500free 4y agoThe management and the shareholders are not the same thing. The board represents the shareholders, not the management. If they don't take the offer they get sued for breaching fiduciary responsibility.
- systemicdanna 4y agoMany big tech companies, especially in the social space, are extremely bloated. They could literally have 10x more employees and everyone would still find something meaningless to work on. On the other hand they could have had far fewer employees and the company would have delivered better results and built a better product. A lean, focused engineering culture will do wonders to a company like Twitter.
- dmak 4y ago1000%
- cmdli 4y agoI do agree overall, but it is very hard to achieve such a lean organization. Broad layoffs such as this tend to demotivate employees and cause your best employees to look for work where they don't have to worry as much about job security. I am fairly certain anybody with talent and drive would not be looking forward to continue working at Twitter in the coming days, at least without a significant pay raise (which Musk would want to avoid).
- Aeolun 4y agoI dunno, if 50% of the chaff gets cut, that would be good with me. It all depends on who they’re letting go.
- saagarjha 4y agoHow confident are you in Elon's ability to identify "chaff" within a week? What makes you think the remaining 50% will continue to work at full capacity after this?
- systemicdanna 4y agoOne way is to look at a few most recent perf reviews. Another way - look at some internal productivity metric that many companies introduced during Covid/WFH.
- yakaccount4 4y agoIt's not a good look to wish for people to lose their jobs.
- macksd 4y agoLosing jobs will eventually happen regardless for any business that loses money like they were. When the company has over-hired, layoffs at least mean they're taking corrective action now. Sucks for the people affected now, possibly impacts fewer people long-term though. I doubt many Twitter employees will struggle to find reemployment quickly.
- dmak 4y agoYou're mistaken. I am not wishing for it and my comment doesn't "wish for it". I am just not against the decision that I clearly have no say in. I'm just looking forward into a decision that was already made.
- menacingly 4y agoI see what you're saying, but I think this is a take that doesn't stand up to much analysis. The correct amount of employees is the goal, we wouldn't cheer their workforce growing by 10x as a universal good, it's not sustainable and likely to imperil the jobs of everyone. But it's the "good" that's the inverse of this "bad".
- dmak 4y agoI didn't really understand yakaccount4's take on this. If they are concerned about optics, what can one do to not layoff? would they just let the company continue to perform mediocrely and continue to bloat its burn just for the sake of not laying off people?
- throw_nbvc1234 4y ago> would they just let the company continue to perform mediocrely and continue to bloat its burn just for the sake of not laying off people? Who's more important the workers or the company? I bet the answer to that question will align with people's views on the layoffs.
- onetimeusename 4y agoI am speculating as a non Twitter user looking at it from the outside that the Twitter staff and primary Twitter user base shared the same views and culture. So Musk is probably going to alienate a majority of his users doing this and Twitter will probably go into disrepute and decline now. I have seen this happen to forums and boards I posted on where some moderators get de-modded which angers a lot of the users who leave or start posting less. Then the culture goes into decline and never returns. Maybe something like that is about to happen, or maybe not.
- rvz 4y ago> I would actually like to see Twitter's team and culture rebuilt regardless of who bought it. There you go. I don't think having giant operational costs at a company and having a head count in the thousands and sitting there losing more money without maximizing revenue it sustainable for any business. Perhaps Twitter itself was overdue a massive correction, hence the first step is drastic layoffs and cuts.
- blindriver 4y agoI had lunch there a couple of times. The food was fantastic! I'm curious how much damage all this negativity will have on Twitter culture going forward and what it will take to rebuild it. Is it just throwing money at the layoff "survivors" or is it really the mission of building the Internet's town square? I'm pretty interested to see how this plays out!
- dmak 4y ago
- systemvoltage 4y agoI've worked in Fortune 50 and in the Gov. Both are equally unproductive. Swaths of people doing nothing all day. Stagnancy is remarkable. Also, makes it incredibly easy to climb the ranks and get rewarded for it. Whenever there is malaise in workplace, I work twice as hard. Build tools for others, solve their problems, uplift folks and motivate them. What good is it to sit around sadly wasting away your life with a resentful attitude. It's not fun and these people make things worse for others that are around them. By far the worst is working in the Gov. Not only people slack off, but they don't even try to hide it. Openly and shamelessly. It's not my type of an environment at all. I wanna build shit with cool people and live a fulfilling life.
- diehunde 4y agoI’m having a hard time believing that a large number of people are doing nothing but slacking off at these companies. When people say their tech company has a “chill” culture normally they mean they don’t have to work overtime or during the weekends. Or they don’t get super stressed about hard deadlines. Not that they work 30 minutes a day. I worked for 2 big tech companies that have the “chill” culture label and never met somebody that was literally doing nothing or didn’t have a project assigned. I’m sure there are exceptions but that’s it. It’s not like in the TV show where they go and hang in the roof all day.
- systemicdanna 4y agoA very large number of people do slack off at these companies. Some engineers code only a few hours a week. They do attend meetings and such, but the actual task delivery timeline is very relaxed.
- diehunde 4y agoBut how do you know that’s actually true? They might be just posting that to sound cool in some social app. In these companies everyone has a manager and assigned to a project. I don’t think it’s like in the tv shows or in consulting companies where you can spend months waiting for a project and actually doing nothing.
- systemicdanna 4y agoMy friends in different size tech companies.
- aliqot 4y agoI've always heard these types of stories, and someone showed me a clip from a show once with some nerds on the roof. I can't help but wonder if that's real life for some people. I get nervous sometimes if I'm taking too long taking walks during my break, not that I'm going to get caught or scolded for going a few minutes over, but that mentally I'm harming my integrity by not honoring the commitment I made. I can imagine the type of person that embodies this type of developer is someone who clicks 'I agree' without reading the terms of service, or shows up late to personal engagements.