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I'm coming at this from a different angle. It should be possible to have a heated disagreement, even in public, and not have it result in a same-day firing. In

by sho_hn 4y ago

I'm coming at this from a different angle. It should be possible to have a heated disagreement, even in public, and not have it result in a same-day firing. In fact, some countries have it explicitly on the law books. All this does is create an environment where people are afraid to voice opinions and address issues, e.g. because they're afraid of shoot-the-messenger. In my line of work (I make cars), dysfunctional discourse environments like that can get people killed.

david927 4y ago
Sure, and I'm a big proponent of labor. Musk is certainly not. That said, Twitter's architecture is a Rube Goldberg contraption and Musk is clearly on a warpath to fix it, so to come out publicly and yell, "It's fine," is kind of crazy. It's not fine and you're saying you're not interested in fixing it.
- sho_hn 4y ago
  Looking at the exchange, he did confirm that it's slow on Android/iOS. He claimed it's for other reasons and gave examples. He might be wrong (I haven't looked at Twitter's architecture, commentary on the technical content of the exchange would be interesting), but I wouldn't say he said "It's fine".
  - david927 4y ago
    He said it's "net spend" and that's another way of saying, "It's fine." It's the equivalent of admitting the engine is running hot, but saying, it's not a problem with the engine, it just needs lots of oil." Frankly, I think the developer is embarrassed. There's no reason for it to be as slow as it is, other than he and the other engineers simply don't know what they're doing. I think Musk is calling it out because he wants to see who wants to fix it and who wants to defend it.
    - sho_hn 4y ago
      I think you misread "Ad spend" as "net spend" in his tweet (I can't locate any using the phrase "net spend"). He mentioned that performance work correlates well with "UAM and Ad spend", which to me reads as "it's worth working more on this problem" and is indicating the willingness you're looking for. From what I can see, he offered an opinion that the number of client requests (he gives a number of 20) and the number of internal RPCs (he gives 200) is not the primary reason the app is slow. I can't tell you whether he's right or wrong.
      - david927 4y ago
        Thanks for the correction. You're right, and I can't tell you either, so I shouldn't really argue.
        sho_hn 4y ago
        FWIW, if he actually had written "just throw more money at it to make it go faster", I would understand your more negative opinion. :-)
        david927 4y ago
        I mean how does he know it's not "thousands of RPC calls" -- he spent six years and never got it to perform, so he doesn't know. "You're wrong!" ? Based on what? If I worked for six years on something and it still didn't work and someone came in and said it's "x", I would say, "I'm excited to see that data because I really want to fix this." I think I'm more upset at his attitude than anything. In all honesty, I think what he meant was "I spent six years and failed to fix something that is fixable, and then outside consultants came in a clearly found clear problems in a couple weeks, and now I'm humiliated," but he has too big of an ego for that.
        jurassic 4y ago
        The guy's job was not specifically performance; he didn't fail at anything. Product managers drive roadmaps so even if you know there's been a performance problem for years, you might not get to invest time in fixing it. That's exactly what Eric was advocating if you read the whole thread.
viig99 4y ago
Clearly these engineers have never done customer feedback for developing nations, twitter interactions clearly provide evidence for what musk said, but some engineers seem to be in denial, imho the firing is cause worthy.
- sho_hn 4y ago
  I think that's misreading the exchange. He was challenging Musk on the fact that "1000 RPC calls" isn't what's happening and isn't the reason for the slowdown in his opinion, but did not deny that there are performance issues - and even cited other reasons it's slow. I don't see the denial you see.
  - viig99 4y ago
    Said engineer, said 1000 RPC calls are not the issue, and when questioned further on proving a tracepath / perf result casually exited the conversation, to me it looks like they are not ready to do better or listen to valid criticism, leading conversations on semantics is just creating noise instead of acting on signals. Also 1000 RPC's are a very valid performance bottleneck, 1000 * latency caused by serde+ network can compounds easily based on data locality + container network orchestration, no data was provided otherwise even when asked for.
    - fragmede 4y ago
      Except that you can open the dev console in a browser and load Twitter.com yourself and you won't find 1000's of XHR requests.
      - sho_hn 4y ago
        That's client-side requests. Musk was talking about internal RPC calls to microservices needed to ultimately respond to the client-side requests. If the internal arch is heavy on microservices and you're putting together, say, 50 tweets you're at 1000 RPC calls with just 20 per tweet. It's not inconceivable. The developer puts the real number at 200.
FormerBandmate 4y ago
Good thing Musk isn't in charge of a car company

by sho_hn 4y ago

david927 4y ago

Sure, and I'm a big proponent of labor. Musk is certainly not. That said, Twitter's architecture is a Rube Goldberg contraption and Musk is clearly on a warpath to fix it, so to come out publicly and yell, "It's fine," is kind of crazy. It's not fine and you're saying you're not interested in fixing it.

sho_hn 4y ago
Looking at the exchange, he did confirm that it's slow on Android/iOS. He claimed it's for other reasons and gave examples. He might be wrong (I haven't looked at Twitter's architecture, commentary on the technical content of the exchange would be interesting), but I wouldn't say he said "It's fine".
- david927 4y ago
  He said it's "net spend" and that's another way of saying, "It's fine." It's the equivalent of admitting the engine is running hot, but saying, it's not a problem with the engine, it just needs lots of oil." Frankly, I think the developer is embarrassed. There's no reason for it to be as slow as it is, other than he and the other engineers simply don't know what they're doing. I think Musk is calling it out because he wants to see who wants to fix it and who wants to defend it.
  - sho_hn 4y ago
    I think you misread "Ad spend" as "net spend" in his tweet (I can't locate any using the phrase "net spend"). He mentioned that performance work correlates well with "UAM and Ad spend", which to me reads as "it's worth working more on this problem" and is indicating the willingness you're looking for. From what I can see, he offered an opinion that the number of client requests (he gives a number of 20) and the number of internal RPCs (he gives 200) is not the primary reason the app is slow. I can't tell you whether he's right or wrong.
    - david927 4y ago
      Thanks for the correction. You're right, and I can't tell you either, so I shouldn't really argue.
      - sho_hn 4y ago
        FWIW, if he actually had written "just throw more money at it to make it go faster", I would understand your more negative opinion. :-)
        david927 4y ago
        I mean how does he know it's not "thousands of RPC calls" -- he spent six years and never got it to perform, so he doesn't know. "You're wrong!" ? Based on what? If I worked for six years on something and it still didn't work and someone came in and said it's "x", I would say, "I'm excited to see that data because I really want to fix this." I think I'm more upset at his attitude than anything. In all honesty, I think what he meant was "I spent six years and failed to fix something that is fixable, and then outside consultants came in a clearly found clear problems in a couple weeks, and now I'm humiliated," but he has too big of an ego for that.
        jurassic 4y ago
        The guy's job was not specifically performance; he didn't fail at anything. Product managers drive roadmaps so even if you know there's been a performance problem for years, you might not get to invest time in fixing it. That's exactly what Eric was advocating if you read the whole thread.

viig99 4y ago

Clearly these engineers have never done customer feedback for developing nations, twitter interactions clearly provide evidence for what musk said, but some engineers seem to be in denial, imho the firing is cause worthy.

sho_hn 4y ago
I think that's misreading the exchange. He was challenging Musk on the fact that "1000 RPC calls" isn't what's happening and isn't the reason for the slowdown in his opinion, but did not deny that there are performance issues - and even cited other reasons it's slow. I don't see the denial you see.
- viig99 4y ago
  Said engineer, said 1000 RPC calls are not the issue, and when questioned further on proving a tracepath / perf result casually exited the conversation, to me it looks like they are not ready to do better or listen to valid criticism, leading conversations on semantics is just creating noise instead of acting on signals. Also 1000 RPC's are a very valid performance bottleneck, 1000 * latency caused by serde+ network can compounds easily based on data locality + container network orchestration, no data was provided otherwise even when asked for.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    Except that you can open the dev console in a browser and load Twitter.com yourself and you won't find 1000's of XHR requests.
    - sho_hn 4y ago
      That's client-side requests. Musk was talking about internal RPC calls to microservices needed to ultimately respond to the client-side requests. If the internal arch is heavy on microservices and you're putting together, say, 50 tweets you're at 1000 RPC calls with just 20 per tweet. It's not inconceivable. The developer puts the real number at 200.

FormerBandmate 4y ago

Good thing Musk isn't in charge of a car company