6 ms·

TLDR: * someone posts the picture of a coworker sleeping in the office at twitter, saying "that's how things work at elon twitter" * sleeping coworker replies

TLDR: * someone posts the picture of a coworker sleeping in the office at twitter, saying "that's how things work at elon twitter" * sleeping coworker replies "yeah we're awesome we're doing great things, hashtag SleepWhereYouWork" * Former Github and Xamarin CEO comments "yeah that's how we do it in the Silicon Valley!" * Former Xamarin CTO says "Duh at Xamarin I left every day at 5PM to set the tone of the company about work life balance, and people followed my lead" Edit: fixed some stuff as for the following comments

paulv 4y ago
The "someone else" in bullet point 3 is the co-founder of Xamarin (as well as the former GitHub CEO post Microsoft sale) with the person in bullet 4.
- cissou 4y ago
  Co-founder and CEO. Bullet 4 was actually CTO. Interesting divergence of opinion within the same (successful) company
poulpy123 4y ago
I don't even understand how they can sleep at work while the company is laying off half of its employees
- lultimouomo 4y ago
  Maybe they're trying to keep their job?
  - masklinn 4y ago
    Pretty much, musk has put everyone on crunch for his whims.
  - amrocha 4y ago
    They should try to get fired, get severance and look for something else
  - IshKebab 4y ago
    Why would you want to keep your job in an environment like that though? The only thing I can think is there will be a lot of openings above you... Or you're on an H1B visa? Or maybe you're being vastly overpaid.
  - kergonath 4y ago
    It still does not make any sense from a management perspective. They’re selecting slaves, not high performers.
- smt88 4y ago
  The implication is that they're working so many hours, it makes more sense to sleep in the office than to bother going home. It's sad and repulsive that there are people with such a cultish devotion to capitalism that they admire this behavior and culture.
  - subradios 4y ago
    It's not a cultists devotion. It's business. Your competitor can exceed you if you aren't willing to pull all nighters. Well run companies do all nighters, and aren't so cultishly devoted to a "work life balance" that implies 4 hour workdays on slack. Well run companies also understand sustainability. Max effort will need to be demanded to exceed current capacity, but it is important not to rely on it as a crutch to get past poor design, poor process, or other management misfires. This is something games are seeing now, most of the industry luminaries cut their teeth in an era where the whole game fit on one disk. They assume that the weekend long anger coding to bash that one bug is the same as what they're asking their company to do.
    - SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
      > Well run companies do all nighters Well run companies have adequate resourcing so that staff don't need to work all night
      - subradios 4y ago
        Adequate resourcing is irrelevant. Think of the holidays for retail - do you pay 2 to 3x the employees year round to support the November to December shopping season? If you did that, you would be very silly. Conditions will frequently demand that an "adequately resourced" company has to run overtime to take advantage of an opportunity, beat a competitor to a new feature, or other such situations. This happens all the time.
    - hazaskull 4y ago
      Honestly I think your comment shows part of the problem here, though I do understand your point. But if "mere" employees feel that they are personally in competition with basically the rest of the world it easily becomes a war of attrition and employees become kind of soldier-ants. I'd rather be my own person thank you very much. People can in fact be loyal and productive in 8 hours per day without being a slacker and maybe have some energy left to partake in society outside of work. Nobody likes people with a bad work-ethic but if a good work-ethic is considered to require regular overtime than maybe it's time to reconsider that concept.
wdb 4y ago
Not sure why you would make a photo of a sleeping colleague but besides that if I understand it correctly the person sleeping had managing role? I always like it when manager stay and be accessible when they asked you to work late. Nothing worse when a manager ask you to do overtime and then themselves go home. Quickly stopped doing overtime when that happened.
sgtnoodle 4y ago
When I worked at SpaceX, I slept in the office a handful of times. It wasn't out of an apparent obligation to work long hours, but because I was indeed doing something awesome at the time, like remotely flying a space ship. Of course, Elon Musk's expectation was for everyone to work themselves to their limit, and he praised the folk putting in 80 hours per week. I myself found success in confidently maintaining a sustainable work-life balance, and never felt pressured to work longer than I wanted to.
- waskip 4y ago
  did the `praised the folk` translated to anything other than `a pat on the back`?
  - sgtnoodle 4y ago
    Oh no, nothing as meaningful as that! More like, Elon would explicitly disqualify them from his scorn when addressing the company. :-) I don't think the people that are successful working close with Elon Musk are the type that need constant validation. In my experience of having occasional day-to-day interactions, he's awkward but means well. He's just laser focused on solving problems, and it never stops. Sometimes the solution is to pay for an employee's laser eye surgery on a whim. Sometimes the solution is to fire a dozen people. Are you specifically asking about financial compensation? There was the occasional token salary bump, bonus or stock option grant. Nothing to get too excited about. We would all laugh/cry about getting 0.7% raises and then go to the bar. I was never concerned about the details of my compensation while there, and I didn't spend any energy worrying about it. I just focused on making space ships. Financially and career-wise, it's embarrassing how positively fruitful my time there was. By far the best choice I could have made coming out of school.
- sschueller 4y ago
  When you get older you will realize that praise means absolutely nothing. All it did was make Elon and the stake holders richer while you skipped on family, fun, time off.
  - 4y ago
frogulis 4y ago
Thanks. I had no idea what most of the comments were even responding to!

paulv 4y ago

The "someone else" in bullet point 3 is the co-founder of Xamarin (as well as the former GitHub CEO post Microsoft sale) with the person in bullet 4.

cissou 4y ago
Co-founder and CEO. Bullet 4 was actually CTO. Interesting divergence of opinion within the same (successful) company

poulpy123 4y ago

I don't even understand how they can sleep at work while the company is laying off half of its employees

lultimouomo 4y ago
Maybe they're trying to keep their job?
- masklinn 4y ago
  Pretty much, musk has put everyone on crunch for his whims.
- amrocha 4y ago
  They should try to get fired, get severance and look for something else
- IshKebab 4y ago
  Why would you want to keep your job in an environment like that though? The only thing I can think is there will be a lot of openings above you... Or you're on an H1B visa? Or maybe you're being vastly overpaid.
- kergonath 4y ago
  It still does not make any sense from a management perspective. They’re selecting slaves, not high performers.
smt88 4y ago
The implication is that they're working so many hours, it makes more sense to sleep in the office than to bother going home. It's sad and repulsive that there are people with such a cultish devotion to capitalism that they admire this behavior and culture.
- subradios 4y ago
  It's not a cultists devotion. It's business. Your competitor can exceed you if you aren't willing to pull all nighters. Well run companies do all nighters, and aren't so cultishly devoted to a "work life balance" that implies 4 hour workdays on slack. Well run companies also understand sustainability. Max effort will need to be demanded to exceed current capacity, but it is important not to rely on it as a crutch to get past poor design, poor process, or other management misfires. This is something games are seeing now, most of the industry luminaries cut their teeth in an era where the whole game fit on one disk. They assume that the weekend long anger coding to bash that one bug is the same as what they're asking their company to do.
  - SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
    > Well run companies do all nighters Well run companies have adequate resourcing so that staff don't need to work all night
    - subradios 4y ago
      Adequate resourcing is irrelevant. Think of the holidays for retail - do you pay 2 to 3x the employees year round to support the November to December shopping season? If you did that, you would be very silly. Conditions will frequently demand that an "adequately resourced" company has to run overtime to take advantage of an opportunity, beat a competitor to a new feature, or other such situations. This happens all the time.
  - hazaskull 4y ago
    Honestly I think your comment shows part of the problem here, though I do understand your point. But if "mere" employees feel that they are personally in competition with basically the rest of the world it easily becomes a war of attrition and employees become kind of soldier-ants. I'd rather be my own person thank you very much. People can in fact be loyal and productive in 8 hours per day without being a slacker and maybe have some energy left to partake in society outside of work. Nobody likes people with a bad work-ethic but if a good work-ethic is considered to require regular overtime than maybe it's time to reconsider that concept.

wdb 4y ago

Not sure why you would make a photo of a sleeping colleague but besides that if I understand it correctly the person sleeping had managing role? I always like it when manager stay and be accessible when they asked you to work late. Nothing worse when a manager ask you to do overtime and then themselves go home. Quickly stopped doing overtime when that happened.

sgtnoodle 4y ago

When I worked at SpaceX, I slept in the office a handful of times. It wasn't out of an apparent obligation to work long hours, but because I was indeed doing something awesome at the time, like remotely flying a space ship. Of course, Elon Musk's expectation was for everyone to work themselves to their limit, and he praised the folk putting in 80 hours per week. I myself found success in confidently maintaining a sustainable work-life balance, and never felt pressured to work longer than I wanted to.

waskip 4y ago
did the `praised the folk` translated to anything other than `a pat on the back`?
- sgtnoodle 4y ago
  Oh no, nothing as meaningful as that! More like, Elon would explicitly disqualify them from his scorn when addressing the company. :-) I don't think the people that are successful working close with Elon Musk are the type that need constant validation. In my experience of having occasional day-to-day interactions, he's awkward but means well. He's just laser focused on solving problems, and it never stops. Sometimes the solution is to pay for an employee's laser eye surgery on a whim. Sometimes the solution is to fire a dozen people. Are you specifically asking about financial compensation? There was the occasional token salary bump, bonus or stock option grant. Nothing to get too excited about. We would all laugh/cry about getting 0.7% raises and then go to the bar. I was never concerned about the details of my compensation while there, and I didn't spend any energy worrying about it. I just focused on making space ships. Financially and career-wise, it's embarrassing how positively fruitful my time there was. By far the best choice I could have made coming out of school.
sschueller 4y ago
When you get older you will realize that praise means absolutely nothing. All it did was make Elon and the stake holders richer while you skipped on family, fun, time off.
- 4y ago

frogulis 4y ago

Thanks. I had no idea what most of the comments were even responding to!