4 ms·

If you're going to lay off half the company, presumably you do it mostly by team, cutting parts of the org that are not a priority anymore. You're not reviewing

If you're going to lay off half the company, presumably you do it mostly by team, cutting parts of the org that are not a priority anymore. You're not reviewing everyone as an individual. So it's not surprising that there are people on laid off team X that are still desirable to the company, that they might try to get back. Another option would have been to take more time and do more of a re-org, moving the people they want to keep around. That has downsides too.

minimaxir 4y ago
It was rumored (not 100% confirmed IIRC) that the Twitter layoffs were done by stack ranking number of lines of code written, which disproportionately affected orgs that did not need to commit a lot of code.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  Wow, that's both believable and sad. So the new CTO of Twitter will be the programmer who went through and changed all the tabs to spaces, and then back again when yelled at, as an intern. Or backwards if Twitter favors spaces.
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    That might beat the CTO who is the founder's buddy from college and hasn't written a line of code in their life.
    - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
      Those guys are usually in charge of security.
      - Firmwarrior 4y ago
        Yeah, they should bring in a REAL security expert, like Rudy Giuliani
  - djmips 4y ago
    Maybe an integration monkey. They have the most commits sometimes.
  - papito 4y ago
    No, the problem is that it is UN-believable. Some tech reporters did a double-take when they heard it from others, and were unwilling to report on this until they got multiple corroborations of this madness. In addition, Tesla engineers were probing Twitter for "top talent", and also involved in reviewing the printed out on paper code. If I were at Twitter, I would be deeply humiliated by this treatment. A bunch of Tesla "stars" rolling in hard to rate the "Twitter clowns". Fuck. That.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - rsynnott 4y ago
      I don't think it's _literally_ unbelievable; notably, IBM used to use lines of code written for compensation purposes back in the 80s. It would indicate that whoever was making the decisions was pretty incompetent, though; even IBM eventually figured out that it was a terrible idea.
      - papito 4y ago
        Well, first of all, if the Tesla engineers are so brilliant, how come no one brought up the fact that LOC is a useless and even a bad metric? And print out? Printing code was acceptable and common in the 80s and even all the way into the late 90s. Who prints out code nowadays? Is there even a button to do that in most IDEs? Don't know, never cared to look. What kind of Mickey Mouse operation is this? It's like they literally pulled managers from the 1987 GE to do this "merger".
        rsynnott 4y ago
        > if the Tesla engineers are so brilliant Honestly, I'm not sure why anyone would expect them to be. AIUI the pay isn't great, and upper management is... well, see his behaviour on Twitter, so I'd kind of expect anyone who was any good to just leave.
- klyrs 4y ago
  Thinking about today, you're going to keep a small fraction of your 10x employees, the ones who implement a feature a week and don't need to look back on code that just works; also you're going to keep juniors who have no idea what they're doing and write pages of inefficient code where a senior would make a library call. You're going to lose the 10x refactor wizards who delete more than they write, the firefighters who don't really change linecounts, and your 1x developers who think before they type. Might as well just give everybody a typing test. Thinking about tomorrow: this establishes a hilarious incentive. A nonzero fraction of people who know that this was the criteria will change their behavior to suit. More lines of code, you say? Coming right up! I've met some people who work / worked in shops where the number of commits per day was the ruling metric. The smart ones wrote scripts to carve their commits into plausible but small chunks.
- sillysaurusx 4y ago
  Isn’t it a good idea to avoid spreading this until it’s 100% confirmed? It’s one of those ideas that we’d love to believe is true, but it’s pretty unbelievable anyone would actually do something so monumentally stupid. I agree that it’s possible, but this rumor has somehow become a little too close to “accepted truth.”
  - lovich 4y ago
    Eh, I’m not gonna partake in it, but I’m also not going to judge someone who treats stories about musk with the same reverence for the truth that musk holds
  - minimaxir 4y ago
    > it’s pretty unbelievable anyone would actually do something so monumentally stupid. tbh it's more monumentally stupid to try and rehire employees one day after laying them off.
  - KVFinn 4y ago
    Agreed. There are plenty of monumentally stupid decisions being made (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588676939463946241 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588676939463946241) that we don't need to pile on unproven ones. Threatening your potential advertisers is even more stupid and I wouldn't have believed it if if it wasn't an Elon Tweet made in public. Including the very thread IMO, firing and then saying WHOOPS.
  - x0x0 4y ago
    It's more than a rumor https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1588907407002185729 https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1588907407002185729 Gergely is respected and not in the business of repeating rumors.
- memish 4y ago
  What % confirmed is it?
JamesianP 4y ago
They probably did completely cut some teams entirely but also kept some entire teams deemed critical (or maybe that's the ones they want to return). Besides that it generally comes down to instructing every group to pick out X percent (in this case 50) to cut and get it done. I've been at places where they did the required layoffs even in critical groups that never stopped hiring people and had to even step up hiring afterwards.
jancsika 4y ago
If you're going to kick yourself in the balls, presumably you kick them both at the same time with your favored leg, making use of the increased precision of that leg's motor skills and balancing as needed on the other. You're not going to jump in the air and try to kick each individual testicle with both legs at the same time. So it's not surprising that there is outsized damage to the lowest hanging testicle due to undue force in an attempt to get both in a single kick. Another option would have been to kick one's balls "Tai chi style," moving the foot ever so slowly toward the groin. But if you're not used to doing that you're just as likely to strain a muscle or trip.
- Tainnor 4y ago
  I read that in Erlich Bachmann's voice.
- angelbar 4y ago
  This...

minimaxir 4y ago

It was rumored (not 100% confirmed IIRC) that the Twitter layoffs were done by stack ranking number of lines of code written, which disproportionately affected orgs that did not need to commit a lot of code.

HWR_14 4y ago
Wow, that's both believable and sad. So the new CTO of Twitter will be the programmer who went through and changed all the tabs to spaces, and then back again when yelled at, as an intern. Or backwards if Twitter favors spaces.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  That might beat the CTO who is the founder's buddy from college and hasn't written a line of code in their life.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    Those guys are usually in charge of security.
    - Firmwarrior 4y ago
      Yeah, they should bring in a REAL security expert, like Rudy Giuliani
- djmips 4y ago
  Maybe an integration monkey. They have the most commits sometimes.
- papito 4y ago
  No, the problem is that it is UN-believable. Some tech reporters did a double-take when they heard it from others, and were unwilling to report on this until they got multiple corroborations of this madness. In addition, Tesla engineers were probing Twitter for "top talent", and also involved in reviewing the printed out on paper code. If I were at Twitter, I would be deeply humiliated by this treatment. A bunch of Tesla "stars" rolling in hard to rate the "Twitter clowns". Fuck. That.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - rsynnott 4y ago
    I don't think it's _literally_ unbelievable; notably, IBM used to use lines of code written for compensation purposes back in the 80s. It would indicate that whoever was making the decisions was pretty incompetent, though; even IBM eventually figured out that it was a terrible idea.
    - papito 4y ago
      Well, first of all, if the Tesla engineers are so brilliant, how come no one brought up the fact that LOC is a useless and even a bad metric? And print out? Printing code was acceptable and common in the 80s and even all the way into the late 90s. Who prints out code nowadays? Is there even a button to do that in most IDEs? Don't know, never cared to look. What kind of Mickey Mouse operation is this? It's like they literally pulled managers from the 1987 GE to do this "merger".
      - rsynnott 4y ago
        > if the Tesla engineers are so brilliant Honestly, I'm not sure why anyone would expect them to be. AIUI the pay isn't great, and upper management is... well, see his behaviour on Twitter, so I'd kind of expect anyone who was any good to just leave.
klyrs 4y ago
Thinking about today, you're going to keep a small fraction of your 10x employees, the ones who implement a feature a week and don't need to look back on code that just works; also you're going to keep juniors who have no idea what they're doing and write pages of inefficient code where a senior would make a library call. You're going to lose the 10x refactor wizards who delete more than they write, the firefighters who don't really change linecounts, and your 1x developers who think before they type. Might as well just give everybody a typing test. Thinking about tomorrow: this establishes a hilarious incentive. A nonzero fraction of people who know that this was the criteria will change their behavior to suit. More lines of code, you say? Coming right up! I've met some people who work / worked in shops where the number of commits per day was the ruling metric. The smart ones wrote scripts to carve their commits into plausible but small chunks.
sillysaurusx 4y ago
Isn’t it a good idea to avoid spreading this until it’s 100% confirmed? It’s one of those ideas that we’d love to believe is true, but it’s pretty unbelievable anyone would actually do something so monumentally stupid. I agree that it’s possible, but this rumor has somehow become a little too close to “accepted truth.”
- lovich 4y ago
  Eh, I’m not gonna partake in it, but I’m also not going to judge someone who treats stories about musk with the same reverence for the truth that musk holds
- minimaxir 4y ago
  > it’s pretty unbelievable anyone would actually do something so monumentally stupid. tbh it's more monumentally stupid to try and rehire employees one day after laying them off.
- KVFinn 4y ago
  Agreed. There are plenty of monumentally stupid decisions being made (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588676939463946241 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588676939463946241) that we don't need to pile on unproven ones. Threatening your potential advertisers is even more stupid and I wouldn't have believed it if if it wasn't an Elon Tweet made in public. Including the very thread IMO, firing and then saying WHOOPS.
- x0x0 4y ago
  It's more than a rumor https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1588907407002185729 https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1588907407002185729 Gergely is respected and not in the business of repeating rumors.
memish 4y ago
What % confirmed is it?

JamesianP 4y ago

They probably did completely cut some teams entirely but also kept some entire teams deemed critical (or maybe that's the ones they want to return). Besides that it generally comes down to instructing every group to pick out X percent (in this case 50) to cut and get it done. I've been at places where they did the required layoffs even in critical groups that never stopped hiring people and had to even step up hiring afterwards.

jancsika 4y ago

If you're going to kick yourself in the balls, presumably you kick them both at the same time with your favored leg, making use of the increased precision of that leg's motor skills and balancing as needed on the other. You're not going to jump in the air and try to kick each individual testicle with both legs at the same time. So it's not surprising that there is outsized damage to the lowest hanging testicle due to undue force in an attempt to get both in a single kick. Another option would have been to kick one's balls "Tai chi style," moving the foot ever so slowly toward the groin. But if you're not used to doing that you're just as likely to strain a muscle or trip.

Tainnor 4y ago
I read that in Erlich Bachmann's voice.
angelbar 4y ago
This...