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There's some interesting discussion in this thread about whether this is the right or wrong move for Twitter. However, after the debacle last night, I think it'

by aquova 4y ago

There's some interesting discussion in this thread about whether this is the right or wrong move for Twitter. However, after the debacle last night, I think it's a moot point, I simply don't see twitter.com still running within the next few months, possibly within the next few weeks. He's fired 50% of the company, reports seem that conservatively 50% of the remainder just quit yesterday, their subscription service had to be cancelled in the process scaring off their primary revenue source. They don't seem to be in any position to moderate, develop features, or, if some ex-employees can be believed, even keep the service running with who they have left. I honestly think within the next week or two we'll see a significant outage of the platform, and it'll never be brought back up to 100%, if at all. It's a stunning display of incompetence from the once admired richest man on Earth. So he can make all the policy changes he wishes, I don't think anyone will be around to see them happen.

abzolv 4y ago
This is the correct take. Without the staff and institutional knowledge of a 16 year old service, no amount of hand waving will keep the service healthy. It’s a stunning display of what not to do.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dilap 4y ago
  Perhaps the Twitter code is convoluted and messy, but really, you think to such a degree that even a small team of highly-motivated, skilled engineers could not figure it out and keep it running?
  - fzeroracer 4y ago
    Any motivated, highly skilled engineers that's worked on long running global software systems will tell you that maintaining systems is hard, and coldbooting a system is even harder.
abzolv 4y ago
https://ez.substack.com/p/the-fraudulent-king https://ez.substack.com/p/the-fraudulent-king
guynamedloren 4y ago
> I simply don't see twitter.com still running within the next few months, possibly within the next few weeks Aside from the staffing changes, what unique insight do you have, that Elon Musk does't have, that makes you so confident that the platform is doomed? And so quick at that.
- shadowofneptune 4y ago
  'Aside from the staffing changes' could be like asking why Germany lost WWII, 'aside from the Allied armies.' Any company is bound to struggle and forget how to run itself when the staffing cuts are that deep and unhappy.
- threeseed 4y ago
  Because the former Twitter engineers who literally built it have said so. And I've personally worked on a few "web-scale" apps before and I believe them. No system I've ever seen is 100% automated. Especially for occasional tasks eg. hot patching emergency security fixes or refreshing expired internal certificates.
hsn915 4y ago
This is delusional. When you have a big tech company with thousands of employees, the pareto principle comes into play in a huge way: proably only 10% of these people are actually doing any work that directly impacts the platform. At least half the employees are probably not doing anything really useful. This applies even to tech companies with a mere 100 total employees. At 3000 employees it's probably even more so. Specially with the majority "working from home". There are probably only about 10 key engineers who understand at a deep level how things are working. On the other hand, Musk is bootstrapping a hardcode engineering culture where a lot of the platform can be implemented from scratch in a few weeks by top engineers if he can hire them, and I'm pretty sure he can. His "Fork in the road" email is actually brilliant, many just don't realize it. He is good at making engineers a "high status class"; see this analysis by Samo Burja: https://samoburja.com/how-elon-musk-is-making-engineers-cool-again/ https://samoburja.com/how-elon-musk-is-making-engineers-cool... There are many top teir engineers who are eager to work for him.
- camdat 4y ago
  >He is good at making engineers a "high status class" From what I've seen, Elon's companies pay below-market for most roles. Levels.fyi indicates that, on average, engs take a 10-15% pay cut by deciding to work for Tesla. I'm sure there are a handful of engineers that exist that could save Twitter single-handedly, but none that would do it for the pay he's offering.
  - seti0Cha 4y ago
    He can get away with paying below market rates to Tesla engineers for the same reason video game companies can do it: people think it would be cool to work there. It doesn't seem plausible to me that if Musk can't get people to work at Twitter for cheap he wouldn't just offer more rather than let it die.
    - sidibe 4y ago
      Waymo is working in the same "cool" field as many of the Tesla SWEs and pays much better than equivalent positions at Tesla, with less stress from impossible constraints and deadlines. He can get away with it because either he doesn't think he needs the top talent or some engineers are willing to make sacrifices to work for their idol
seti0Cha 4y ago
I agree that there will likely be a serious outage, probably several, but there's too much money on the table for twitter to just go away. The product, although poorly monetized, is immensely successful and widely loved. If Musk and all remaining twitter employees just disappeared, somebody would pick up those pieces. Granted, it's likely impossible to maintain stability on a totally alien system of that scale, but it's not impossible to figure out how to run it at all. Stability will come with time, and because of twitter's importance to our society, they'll probably have the time.

by aquova 4y ago

abzolv 4y ago

This is the correct take. Without the staff and institutional knowledge of a 16 year old service, no amount of hand waving will keep the service healthy. It’s a stunning display of what not to do.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dilap 4y ago
Perhaps the Twitter code is convoluted and messy, but really, you think to such a degree that even a small team of highly-motivated, skilled engineers could not figure it out and keep it running?
- fzeroracer 4y ago
  Any motivated, highly skilled engineers that's worked on long running global software systems will tell you that maintaining systems is hard, and coldbooting a system is even harder.

abzolv 4y ago

https://ez.substack.com/p/the-fraudulent-king https://ez.substack.com/p/the-fraudulent-king

guynamedloren 4y ago

> I simply don't see twitter.com still running within the next few months, possibly within the next few weeks Aside from the staffing changes, what unique insight do you have, that Elon Musk does't have, that makes you so confident that the platform is doomed? And so quick at that.

shadowofneptune 4y ago
'Aside from the staffing changes' could be like asking why Germany lost WWII, 'aside from the Allied armies.' Any company is bound to struggle and forget how to run itself when the staffing cuts are that deep and unhappy.
threeseed 4y ago
Because the former Twitter engineers who literally built it have said so. And I've personally worked on a few "web-scale" apps before and I believe them. No system I've ever seen is 100% automated. Especially for occasional tasks eg. hot patching emergency security fixes or refreshing expired internal certificates.

hsn915 4y ago

This is delusional. When you have a big tech company with thousands of employees, the pareto principle comes into play in a huge way: proably only 10% of these people are actually doing any work that directly impacts the platform. At least half the employees are probably not doing anything really useful. This applies even to tech companies with a mere 100 total employees. At 3000 employees it's probably even more so. Specially with the majority "working from home". There are probably only about 10 key engineers who understand at a deep level how things are working. On the other hand, Musk is bootstrapping a hardcode engineering culture where a lot of the platform can be implemented from scratch in a few weeks by top engineers if he can hire them, and I'm pretty sure he can. His "Fork in the road" email is actually brilliant, many just don't realize it. He is good at making engineers a "high status class"; see this analysis by Samo Burja: https://samoburja.com/how-elon-musk-is-making-engineers-cool-again/ https://samoburja.com/how-elon-musk-is-making-engineers-cool... There are many top teir engineers who are eager to work for him.

camdat 4y ago
>He is good at making engineers a "high status class" From what I've seen, Elon's companies pay below-market for most roles. Levels.fyi indicates that, on average, engs take a 10-15% pay cut by deciding to work for Tesla. I'm sure there are a handful of engineers that exist that could save Twitter single-handedly, but none that would do it for the pay he's offering.
- seti0Cha 4y ago
  He can get away with paying below market rates to Tesla engineers for the same reason video game companies can do it: people think it would be cool to work there. It doesn't seem plausible to me that if Musk can't get people to work at Twitter for cheap he wouldn't just offer more rather than let it die.
  - sidibe 4y ago
    Waymo is working in the same "cool" field as many of the Tesla SWEs and pays much better than equivalent positions at Tesla, with less stress from impossible constraints and deadlines. He can get away with it because either he doesn't think he needs the top talent or some engineers are willing to make sacrifices to work for their idol

seti0Cha 4y ago

I agree that there will likely be a serious outage, probably several, but there's too much money on the table for twitter to just go away. The product, although poorly monetized, is immensely successful and widely loved. If Musk and all remaining twitter employees just disappeared, somebody would pick up those pieces. Granted, it's likely impossible to maintain stability on a totally alien system of that scale, but it's not impossible to figure out how to run it at all. Stability will come with time, and because of twitter's importance to our society, they'll probably have the time.