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Twitter has fired more software engineers
- neilv 4y agoThis HN post has been buried: 194. Twitter has fired more software engineers (twitter.com/gergelyorosz) 139 points by r721 3 hours ago | flag | hide | 242 comments
- r721 4y agoToo many comments (and a couple of user flags probably): >The FAQ notes that submission rank is impacted by "software which downweights overheated discussions." A good rule of thumb for this effect is when the number of comments on a submission exceeds its score. https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented I recommend checking https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active ("Most active current discussions") once per day to find these discussions.
- taolegal 4y agoITT: liberals saying it's cruel that Musk changes the company. As though any company has an obligation to employ people. And most importantly, even though Twitter basically just employs PhDs, and other smart people, to hijack our monkey brains into mindlessly scrolling, engaging toxic emotional provocations and consuming advertisements. Musk lives rent-free in so many peoples' minds. Another sort of derangement syndrome.
- taylodl 4y agoThis should serve as a warning to everybody working at any of Musk's companies. Musk is unstable and unpredictable. You can't afford to put your career in his hands. The time to leave is now.
- r721 4y agoRelated discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33733843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33733843
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- prepend 4y agoI’m curious about “not satisfactory” standards and how they are evaluated. I’ve met many earnest engineers and architects who were trying to do good and ended up making stuff worse by creating conformant code that still sucked. I’ve met many more “witch-hunt” reviews that were just a reason to thin the company to please VC or shareholders. The article/tweet doesn’t mention it, but I assume they have the same severance package of a few months as the rest. If so, it could be a lot worse
- gttalbot 4y agoIt does mention it. 4 weeks severance. The people who decided not to sign up for "hardcore Twitter" got 3 months.
- purple_ferret 4y agoWell they can get unemployment now too.
- smugma 4y agoIt’ll be at least 60 Days, as required by California law.
- voakbasda 4y agoSo, punish the true believers? Yep, this can only end well.
- rob74 4y agoOr the thinking went "Wow, these guys really signed that thing?! They must be desperate to keep this job, if they would be any good they would have gotten the hell out, let's take another look at their code!". By now the only thing stopping me from being convinced that Elon intentionally wants to drive Twitter into the ground is Hanlon's razor...
- runarberg 4y agoHanlon’s razor neglects the fact that there are people in the world that are actually seeking to cause harm. I also ignores harm as a byproduct of serving one’s self interest—or in this case megalomania. When there is this much power-imbalance, I actually consider Hanlon’s razor to be harmful. It does not matter to the workers being fired whether Musk is acting out of ignorance or malice. The action speaks for it self.
- hello_friendos 4y agoSimply vile behaviour from Musk here. Nobody except delusion fanboys would be willing to work for such a company -- maybe that's the point of this cruelty?
- cinbun8 4y agoMaybe it's self selecting, like those Nigerian scams
- dandanua 4y agoThere is no point in cruelty in civil societies. The man just seeks more and more power, abusing the others gives the feeling of it. That's sadism, in essence.
- npteljes 4y agoAs I see it, cruelty is often a byproduct, not the goal. Most often born of ignorance, or simply because the incentives differ. Therefore, I think it's natural to expect people to be cruel to the other. So what we can do, to be more civil, is to regulate our way of doing things - either by culture, law, or in other ways.
- dghughes 4y agoEarth may send Musk to Mars...involuntarily.
- cloutchaser 4y ago> Nobody except delusion fanboys would be willing to work for such a company This is the point. It's by design. Musk wants that level of loyalty right now. You can hate his methods or decisions, but I think the entire point is he wants 100% dedicated people right now at Twitter. Given the magnitude of resistance from so much of the staff about the entire acquisition, and the bloat of silicon valley companies on top of it, I can see his reasoning.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
- r721 4y agoUpdate: https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1595772983733354499 https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1595772983733354499
- b3lvedere 4y ago"Twitter's management STILL trying to recruit back experienced software engineers who left Twitter last week, opting in to not be part of the "hardcore" Twitter 2.0. Wonder how many of them return, knowing they also can be fired at any time based on a single code review." Why would you return to something that will try to spit you out at the first sign of trouble? Or have those poor people working on a visa no choice?
- JohnTHaller 4y agoWhy would you give up your 3 month severance to come back for 80hr work weeks for the same salary with the risk of getting fired at any moment based on a weekly screenshot of 'salient' code and then only getting 1 month severance?
- evanelias 4y agoRelatedly, I really wish people would stop calling this a "code review". That term already means something different than "shallow performance evaluation used as a justification for completely arbitrary firings with no notice". It's horrifying to allow well-established industry concepts and terms to be redefined overnight by a single incompetent individual.
- smcl 4y agoYeah I imagine it's probably not exactly a traditional code review by any stretch of the imagination. It would be interesting to know exactly what it involved though, the previous instructions (print out X pages of code, present Y "salient" lines of code) do not fill me with confidence that they are prepared to accurately assess anyone's competence or lack thereof. I honestly wonder if it's as farcical as some of the jokes about it: https://twitter.com/mnateshyamalan/status/1593723670396018691 https://twitter.com/mnateshyamalan/status/159372367039601869...
- peterkelly 4y agoAll I can do is express my sympathy to those affected. None of you deserved to be treated like this.
- taolegal 4y ago> None of you deserved to be treated like this. Give me a break. This sector of the economy is literally the upper echelon of humanity. They won the lottery compared to most people and act like this is some affront. What a bunch of baloney.
- mint2 4y agoPrayers is not technically all we can do, we can push for more labor organization which would be able to prevent that type of mistreatment, among other things. We could also boycott Twitter.
- socialismisok 4y agoIf Twitter had unionized they could have protected themselves from the whims of Musk. It's still likely Musk would have massacred the company, but maybe people wouldn't be getting fired the day before Thanksgiving. How any engineer looks at Twitter and doesn't say, "We should consider a union..." is beyond me.
- maigret 4y agoHe would have disregarded the unions as well. In the EU the workers have probably been illegally fired and the lawsuits are coming soon.
- socialismisok 4y agoYou are probably right, tbh.
- javagram 4y agoA union could have used a strike or other type of organized labor action to fight back immediately. Not typically pro-union in tech, but Twitter is making the best case for one I’ve seen yet.
- pimlottc 4y agoOuch. The timing is really rough for H1B visa holders. With Thanksgiving and then the end of year holidays coming up, it effectively burns half the 60 day period to find a new job. That’s brutal.
- reacharavindh 4y agoI mean if I were working at Twitter, and on H1B (at the mercy of the US Gov), I would have started my job hunt and jumped off the moment all this drama with Elon started. So, I don't think anyone smart would be _starting_ their job hunt now..
- Tozen 4y agoTruth. People in that situation would likely be in a mad scramble.
- tester756 4y agoIsn't TikTok getting those people hard? btw. what happens if you start your own company?
- realce 4y agoAt this point you either stand with SWEs or you stand with Boss Musk. Fuck Boss Musk.
- concordDance 4y agoNot a productive way of thinking about it, this isn't some tribal conflict where its about having more guys to go beat up those other guys.
- realce 4y agoInteresting - worker solidarity to you is equal to "tribalism" and violence? So unions are actually violent tribal groups in your mind?
- erik_seaberg 4y agoThe rightful way to handle a bad deal is to peaceably walk away saying “I’m better off elsewhere.”
- wittycardio 4y agoIt's actually a pretty clear labour vs capital conflict. Elons just a regular PE style investor who's hoping to gut the company and sell it off without actually changing anything
- socialismisok 4y agoLabor solidarity is an extremely common, useful, and productive way to think about boss vs worker concerns. It's why we don't cross picket lines, why we unionize and support other unions, etc.
- realce 4y agoQuickest route to downvotes and comment flagging I've ever experienced here is this comment. It's bizarre and eye-opening.
- scarface74 4y agoWho are these people who are clicking yes to longer hours except for H1B visa holders who would have to leave the country if they don’t find a job in 60 days? On another note, in any major city in the US, a software developer is making above the local average income and has no reason to not have a “go to hell fund”.
- pmg102 4y agoHaving an above average income may be a necessary but is far from a sufficient condition to being able save up such a fund. If you have above average income, most likely you will have above average outgoings, including on things you can't instantaneously cut like housing costs, car finance and school fees. The only way I managed to create savings is by earning like a wealthier person but living like a less wealthy one, but there's a social cost to this course of action.
- scarface74 4y agoThen don’t have above average outgoing expenses that put you at the mercy of a tyrant? I’m 48 now and I learned a long time ago after my first job to always live in a position of f*^k you (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfeXqHFmPI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfeXqHFmPI). I believed in living like that from 1999 when I was making $60K a year, for the next 20 years when I was bumping around as your bog standard journeyman CRUD Enterprise developer and after that when I pivoted slightly to get into BigTech. You are seeing the consequences right now of what happens when you let lifestyle inflation happen.
- vocram 4y agoWhat do you mean with social cost? Ranking lower in status?
- pmg102 4y agoStatus, yes. If you earn good money similar to your peers, your social opportunities will often be commensurate with those earnings. If people know you earn less you may find them sympathetic eg suggesting cheaper social options. But if they know you earn as much as or even more than them, they may not look upon you so happily. They feel in a way cheated that instead of spending your money on time with them, you save it for future-you. Kind of selfish, it could be argued.
- voidfunc 4y agoNone of this is surprising. It's not about the code it's about figuring out a reason to fire people to cut costs dramatically since the company isn't profitable at its current footprint or with its current Chief Moron making it a toxic asset for advertisers.
- Whatarethese 4y agoEven if they fired everyone but 1 person they still would not make a dent in those payments.
- hourago 4y agoYou are right. We are firing you to cut costs could put the blame on the company, we are firing you because your code is ugly puts the fault on the employee. It is all about blaming.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> It is all about blaming. No, its all about costs. A layoff for cost reasons gives the employee unemployment and costs the employer higher UI tax rates (which are based, in part, on the cost of UI paid to their employees vs. past payments.) A firing for failure to meet performance standards other employers met doesn’t give the employee unemployment and doesn’t result in additional costs to the employer. Of course, a pretextual firing might be the subject of an unemployment appeal, but at the pay of a Twitter software engineer, while people might take UI they are entitled to, they aren’t likely to bother fighting it based on need (but might just to make a point.)
- BaseballPhysics 4y ago> since the company isn't profitable at its current footprint or with its current Chief Moron making it a toxic asset for advertisers. And the enormous amount of debt that Musk heaped on the company as part of the LBO. Let us not all forget that Twitter's debt service increased by a factor of ten thanks to the acquisition. This is a problem of Musk's own making.
- socialismisok 4y agoThe absolute cruelty of Musk through this whole process is astounding. One has to assume he's like this at his other companies as well, which is absolutely shredding their reputation in my eyes.
- hourago 4y ago> The absolute cruelty of Musk through this whole process is astounding. That is by design. There is a mindset were powerful people feels that they need to show up their power, otherwise why do they have it? That is one of the reasons inequality causes many illnesses in society as the rich few feel the need to be cruel on people with less power. If it was not Musk it would be someone else.
- SQueeeeeL 4y agoYeah, but didn't you know Musk is a "special person", so therefore can abuse the fuck out of anyone he wants. He isn't just some random emerald mine heir with some interest in technology. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/elon-musk-texts-twitter-trial-jack-dorsey/671619/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/elon-...
- concordDance 4y agoHow much money do you think he got from that mine?
- SQueeeeeL 4y agoIdk, emeralds are worth what, $10. And there are like, 1,000 of them in a mine, so $10,000
- hectorlorenzo 4y ago> If it was not Musk it would be someone else. This is an argument that needs to be done really carefully: its logical conclusion is that his cruelty is deterministic and there is nothing he can do about it. People have a certain degree of agency, he actively chooses to be cruel amongst other options at his disposal.
- sethd 4y agoToo bad the Mars colonization effort is just another Musk PR scam. It would have been great to eventually see that guy leave this planet and hopefully never return.
- frumper 4y agoNow he can have starlink orbiting mars and still tweet to his minions from the colony!
- hcarvalhoalves 4y agoTime to unionize.
- smcl 4y agoMight be a little late for Twitter workers at this point
- b3lvedere 4y agoNot impossible, but highly not possible. If everybody (and i mean everybody) would walk out and demand better terms, things would get pretty tense very quickly.
- tartoran 4y agoThat’s how you fight battles. Being soft gets you stomped on.
- hcarvalhoalves 4y agoWell, hopefully the rest of the industry learns a lesson. The next years we’ll see layoffs, even more unpaid extra hours and decreasing standards. Without unions or any kind of labour organization SWE will be just exploited even more.
- npteljes 4y agoI agree. The situation really shows how little the law protects the workers.
- moistly 4y agoSeriously, how far can they take it? Some of these people could lose 99% of their wealth, and then 99% of what was left over, and still have tens of millions of dollars. These abject displays of cruelty are really pushing the limits.
- sys_64738 4y agoWho is judging the code not being satisfactory? Can we see example of the code in question? Can we also see examples of the code written by those who say other folk's code isn't satisfactory? In other words, are the evaluators even competent? Usually not.
- decafninja 4y agoWasn’t he bringing Tesla SWEs to do this?
- fhd2 4y agoWhat else was Musk gonna proclaim about why they were fired? That he needed to scare the remaining staff into submission by getting rid of a few more without any rational selection criteria? It already stopped making sense at "10 most salient lines of code". He's trying to spread his truth that he knows anything about software (or tech at large), a fiction that was probably always a big reason for why people gave him money. Enough seem to buy it. Probably the one thing he is an actual genius at: Marketing.
- matthewdgreen 4y agoIf you want some hair-raising stories of Musk mistreating his employees and generally being self-destructive, this article was a pretty good warning. There’s a story halfway down about Musk firing a competent engineer just because he was pissed off and that engineer was nearby. You can’t read the entire thing without thinking either (a) it’s all lies, nobody could be that cruel and inept, or (b) holy crap he’s the worst boss ever. This Twitter debacle has been illuminating. https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-tesla-life-inside-gigafactory/ https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-tesla-life-inside-giga...
- ProjectArcturis 4y agoGood God, why would anyone work for him?
- matt-attack 4y ago
- decafninja 4y agoMaybe petty and I know it will hurt Musk as much as slingshot against Godzilla. But we’re looking at an EV purchase next year and my wife and I have ruled out Teslas. We also want to liquidate our Tesla stock position as soon as possible. Perhaps we should have done so when Elon himself did at its peak early this year, but that’s bridge under the water. Really want nothing to do with this guy anymore.
- concordDance 4y agoI'd wait to change opinions based on recent stories, those tend to be heavily distorted. Instead look up events that happened months ago and judge based on those (eg calling Thai diver a pedo). Might give you the same result in this case, but it's a good rule to follow.
- mc32 4y agoIt wasn’t a Thai diver it was a Briton.
- dekhn 4y agoand he wasn't just a diver- he was the recognized expert on the cave, having mapped it. He was also in close communication with the people organizing the rescue and was one of the few people who could say to Musk: "Thanks, but you're not helping"
- concordDance 4y agoI wonder why Richard Stanton, leader of the international rescue diving team, urged Musk to facilitate the construction of the vehicle as a back-up, in case flooding worsened. (Quoting from wiki here)
- dekhn 4y agoBecause in an emergency, you sometimes don't have time, so you solicit options from many people, have them all work on their solutions in parallel, then choose the best one? If you go back and look at Musk's tweets, it's pretty clear he didn't know what he was talking about it in terms of what would work.
- draw_down 4y ago
- devonallie 4y agoI’m not well versed in California/USA labour laws but does the haste and lack of cause for firings seem like grounds for civil suits?
- rco8786 4y agoCertainly, but the cost of what those inevitably settle for will be far less than keeping the employees on payroll or paying severance.
- ViViDboarder 4y agoCalifornia is At-Will. You can fire for “no reason”. Someone could try to claim your reason was a lie and that it was actually based on discrimination against a protected class though.
- pjc50 4y agoNot all Twitter employees are in California; you generally can't do this in Europe, so it'll be interesting to see how that pans out.
- anonymousab 4y agoMy guess would be either ignoring the problem altogether or "pulling out" of Europe employment-wise and then ignoring any ramifications of that for as long as possible.
- pjc50 4y agoYeah, while twitter does have European business entities e.g. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/07653064/officers https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c... , I'm not sure what happens if the subsidiary goes bust or gets shut down before you've finished suing it. Probably have to take the case to Delaware.
- tjpnz 4y agoHow do you make that kind of determination when you're missing the wider context which led to the code being written? Same goes for the code printouts and screenshots he was requesting people send. Did Elon write any code during his time at PayPal?
- smcl 4y agoMy understanding is that Paypal was largely implemented @ Confinity before the merger with (Musk-founded) X.com
- tod222 4y agoExactly. To recap for folks unfamiliar with the history: Peter Thiel co-founded the electronic payments company that developed PayPal. Musk co-founded an online bank which had massive security holes. The two companies merged and Musk was fired before the name was changed to PayPal. See part 1 of Common Sense Skeptic's video on YouTube: Debunking Elon Musk
- pjc50 4y ago> How do you make that kind of determination when you're missing the wider context which led to the code being written? Dartboard. Musk believes that, having fired 80% or so of the staff already, it's still overstaffed. He wants to reduce it to a group of people he can fit in a room and shout at directly. It's the literal implementation of "firings will continue until morale improves".
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- p4bl0 4y agoTwitter is not working anymore. I got errors after errors. My timeline won't load on mobile at least four times over five. I don't get most of my notifications on the website even when the interaction are right there before my eyes. It is quite amazing/awful to me how it is possible to break a platform that has been working pretty well for 15 years in a matters of weeks. This is quite fast. Anyway, most of all I sincerely hope the layed-off people will find another, better job as quickly as they were fired.
- tamersalama 4y agoMany World Cup updates do not show up in time (usually delayed by 10-120 minutes). So, Twitter isn't broken but is essentially useless.
- bilsbie 4y agoWorks fine for me.
- wittycardio 4y agoIt mostly works but it's clear that some features are slowly breaking. Maybe it won't matter that it's starting to look rough around the edges but I would love for a real competitor to show up
- Mouthfeel 4y ago
- piva00 4y agoGood for you, I'm experiencing the exact same issues as the parent comment. Tweets don't load taking multiple refreshes to load, on mobile I get an error every 2nd or 3rd request. Notifications definitely are not popping up anymore and when I click on the tab I do see them but then the next refresh they disappear. Sometimes completely failing to load. It's not completely broken but I've been definitely experiencing a degradation the past 5-7 days.
- 4y ago
- jliptzin 4y agoAstounding to me that this is what the leadership at twitter wanted, even forcing Elon to go through with the deal when he tried backing out, knowing full well that this is what would happen to their employees. All for like 20-30% premium on the stock price.
- matwood 4y agoBy the time the deal closed, it was speculated Twitter should have been trading ~$25/share or less. So more like 100%+ premium.
- jlangenauer 4y agoWhy is it astounding? Leadership is there to serve the interests of shareholders, not employees. For obvious reasons, this truth is usually elided behind talk of "company families" and "valued employees", but it never ceases to be the truth.
- Pigalowda 4y agoWhy astounding? They got paid a lot more than they should have so it made sense. Money makes people mean but that’s business as usual.
- b3lvedere 4y agohttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094012/quotes/qt0466959 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094012/quotes/qt0466959
- bfgoodrich 4y ago>Astounding to me that this is what the leadership at twitter wanted If they didn't accept and try to finalize his offer, they could have been successfully sued by shareholders: You don't turn down a premium offer unless you think you can get better, and you absolutely finalize that deal if the market takes a sharp downtown after getting it.
- kasey_junk 4y agoLeadership didn’t necessarily want this, shareholders did. Musk paid a huge premium in perhaps the worst takeover deal in a decade. If the ceo and board had not taken the deal they would have been (rightly) ousted by the shareholders who lost tons of money.
- jmull 4y ago> Those fired got 4 weeks severance, by the way. A slap in the face, given that if they chose to not click "yes" to stay just a week ago, they would have gotten 3 months. Can this be real? That’s seriously f-ed up.
- prirun 4y agoI was thinking, why did they give the first round 3 months and this time only 1? Why didn't they give the first round 1 month? Only thing I could come up with is that more people who were on the fence for the first round might have stayed, so giving them 3 months encouraged more people to leave, which is the ultimate goal, to save money. This is why not getting to review severance (if leaving) and employment contracts (if staying) before having to make the "commit to hardcore" decision was unreasonable.
- ProjectArcturis 4y agoUnfortunately this is often standard procedure when companies do layoffs. The first round gets generous severance. In subsequent rounds, the company's death spiral has become obvious and they no longer spend on niceties like unnecessary severance. Lesson: if your employer offers you a buyout, take it.
- coredog64 4y agoFirst round got 3 months because a no-notice mass layoff requires at least 60 days according to various state and federal WARN acts. Once you get down to actually firing people for cause, you can (usually) skirt WARN acts.
- buzzdenver 4y agoTwitter's only argument could be that this wasn't a mass layoff assuming the numbers check out, IIRC less than 50 employees at a work location (whatever that means with all remote work). Musk bought the company about 30 days ago, so it couldn't have given a60-day notice since. And I doubt that these employees were laid off "for cause", otherwise all layoffs would be for “not satisfactory” and avoid severance. Of course you're screwed if you're here on a visa that doesn't let you fight this.
- petesergeant 4y agoI once worked at a very high-end online fashion retailer, and as a programmer, it was a decent place to work, and I look back fondly on my time there. However, if you were in the fashion industry, and especially if you wanted to work at a company founded by an inspiring woman, it was absolutely the place you wanted to work. HR were inundated by applications for non-tech positions by highly capable and motivated people, and HR acted like it. It was very selective, and the best people fought for jobs there and worked hard. But for tech workers, it was simply an decent place to work, and was perpetually a little bit short-staffed. HR couldn't wrap their minds around the fact that this one segment had choices and weren't really that fussed about working there, and so it took a lot of work for engineering managers to free up basic recruitment marketing money, to streamline recruitment processes etc. I wonder if there's some of that going on. For people who want to work on the cutting edge of space-tech, SpaceX has to be very high up on the list of places you'd want to work. For people who want to build electric cars, ditto Tesla. But for software engineers who are good enough to do the work that needs to be done at Twitter? meh, there are choices. There are companies with much more interesting problems, companies with larger scale, companies who'll pay better. Are there that many Twitter True Believers? My understanding is the big draw beforehand for Twitter was that they had a great working environment, and that's evaporated. I wonder if Musk will be able to get his head around that.
- leetrout 4y ago> I wonder if Musk will be able to get his head around that. Doubtful based on how this is going.
- Schweigi 4y agoThere is a certain amount of people who like to work in a “Elon Musk” company no matter what. Like him or not, but he is a guy who has a certain pull which let’s people overlook a lot of stuff. So Twitter will still bee able to hire from that pool - despite all the negative firing news.
- tester756 4y agoIf I had an opportunity to join Twitter now then I'd definitely do it It could be interesting story to tell after years
- activitypea 4y agoA lot of people who stayed did so because of H1Bs, and a lot of those people were sacked last night. Imagine having to find a new job in 60 days, starting the night before Thanksgiving. My heart goes out to those poor folks.
- flandish 4y ago“How much do twitter devs have to take?” - before a union vote, I hope?
- sidcool 4y agoAt this point Musk seems to be doing things just for attention and losing least money with Twitter.
- incomingpain 4y agohttps://twitter.com/maddoxrules/status/1594110328647794688 https://twitter.com/maddoxrules/status/1594110328647794688 Maddox is so funny. I wonder if it's true.
- arpa 4y agoTo be fair to Musk, indeed he is delivering on the "hardcore" twitter promise. Edit: not condoning his practices.
- fhd2 4y agoSorry for going so off topic, down vote if you think it's too far. But: Does anyone else think he's gearing up for running as president for the Republicans at one point in the future? I'm not a US citizen so I just have my armchair criticism to go on, but it's the most rational explanation of his behaviour I can come up with. Haven't read this from anyone else so far though. If Trump can do it, why not him? Edit: Thanks for clarifying! So I guess that doesn't make sense.
- zach_garwood 4y agoHe wasn't born in the US, so he can't run for president.
- zimpenfish 4y ago> He wasn't born in the US, so he can't run for president. It's "natural born citizen", not "US born". cf [1] which says via a Congressional Research Service report, > it appears that the most logical inferences would indicate that the phrase "natural born Citizen" would mean a person who is entitled to U.S. citizenship "at birth" or "by birth" Hence e.g. Ted Cruz being eligible for President even though he was born in Canada because he has an American mother. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural-born-citizen_clause_(United_States)#Foreign_soil_and_territories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural-born-citizen_clause_(U...
- zach_garwood 4y agoI apogize for not being pedantic enough: Elon Musk was neither born on American soil nor to American parents, so he can't run for president.
- bikingbismuth 4y agoOnly natural born citizens can run for president, and Elon was born in South Africa.
- zimpenfish 4y ago
- youknowthis33 4y agoPowerful people are always targets of propaganda campaigns, just like political parties. There are many people who want to see them fail because they profit from that. Or are just jealous.
- andy_ppp 4y agoI heard the FSD code was a chaotic disaster too. I think numerous inexperienced programmers find fault with other people’s code and sometimes those criticisms are valid, but more often there is a huge amount of context the person sitting in their ivory tower is unaware of. Doing things like this with kindness and wisdom would be better than swinging the axe with incomplete information. Especially H1Bs who are reliant on an employer to remain in the country are hopefully exempt from such extreme punishment and are at least given a shot at doing what Musk wants in terms of code quality. From my point of view there’s no need to treat people as disposable commodities who cannot improve given the right environment. And I don’t like anyone thinking their opinions are that much better than anyone else’s, but these are the times we live in…
- beeboop 4y agoIt’s cool that you’re wishing a product fails in a way that could kill people
- rich_sasha 4y agoIf I were to guess what's going on, it is that Elon Musk is seeing losses and not profits. He now owns a significant chunk of the firm (not quite 100%, there were some other buyers, etc. but close enough). So now every $1 expensed by the loss-making company, he sees as a dollar he personally loses - and that's after overpaying through the nose for the company (he got hit by a double-whammy: Twitter value crashed along with other Tech stocks, and he had to sell more Tesla stock to cover the over-inflated valuation). This is quite different from the perspective of a, say, 5% owner. For every dollar spent by the firm, that's only a $0.05 "spend" out of the minority stake owner. It's easier to justify such expenses to yourself, emotionally. Basically, the more of your personal wealth is locked into an enterprise, the more risk-averse you become about it. If you have a diversified portfolio of small stakes, you're more likely to be bullish on them individually and encourage investment for high-risk / high-reward profile, but not if you basically have one massive bet. So I'm guessing, he's thinking he not only overpaid for Twitter, he is now paying through the nose just to keep the office open, and he's not clear what it's all for. So without an idea for profits, he is desperate to cut the losses. Obviously the human cost - collateral damage to Musk - is tremendous and it makes me so sad to see people's livelihoods shattered on a whim like this.
- mcphage 4y ago> the more of your personal wealth is locked into an enterprise, the more risk-averse you become about it If Musk were risk-averse he wouldn’t be rocking the boat. None of what he’s done since the sale qualifies as “risk averse”.
- rich_sasha 4y agoAu contraire, it seems to me he is desperately trying to cut cost. Plus his usual megalomania. I think he bit off more than he can easily chew this time.
- davidg109 4y agoElon begone. I am so over this megalomaniac and his pompous, man-child behaviour.
- papito 4y agoUnhinged tweeting at odd hours, erratic decisions, irritability, lack of sleep, extreme defensiveness, vengefulness ("let's shame the advertisers"!), demands for unquestioned loyalty. Where have we seen this before? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/business/elon-musk-interview-tesla.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/business/elon-musk-interv... "But this has worried some board members, who have noted that sometimes the drug [Ambien] does not put Mr. Musk to sleep but instead contributes to late-night Twitter sessions, according to a person familiar with the board’s thinking." This man is a walking zombie on no sleep. I just wonder if he is naturally this wired or he is crashing on upper/downer pills, like Trump did.
- Balgair 4y agoWith 33% of the severance that the 'non-clickers' got just last week too. Why would anyone re-join Twitter2 or get hired there? Why are the people that got put on the PIP doing anything but trying to find another job? You know Elon's just going to abuse you and not much else, he's proven it a few times now. It's very clear, he thinks you're a chump and he's going to keep treating you like a chump.
- q1w2 4y agoThey would join for the same reason you join any company - salary and experience. It would be odd to expect more from other employers.
- dekhn 4y agoI could imagine some young hackers/CS grads would see Twitter2 as an opportunity to come in, work hard, launch product that succeeds, and use that to parlay to a more sustainable career in the future. Such people will tolerate a fair amount of abuse (similar to grad school) because the expectation is that it will pay off long-term.
- koonsolo 4y agoIf it was me, I would re-join for normal working hours, a huge upfront payment and a 10x wage.
- whywhywhywhy 4y agoCan't take criticisms of where Twitter is heading from bluechecks like this, I mean they're not a celebrity, they're not a politician, no one is trying to impersonate a author of books about coding mobile apps... why do they have one? Only reason I can see is they likely had a friend at Twitter at the right time. These people have everything to lose under Elon's plan because they had special privileges on the network and now those will be open to everyone so they're bound to be salty about the whole thing. Only so many times I can be told the sky is falling at the app via the app itself.
- MartnMay 4y agoDoes anyone think these decisions are best for Twitter at this time?
- tartoran 4y agoHow come this post is now unsearchable on HN and yet it’s not flagged? I looked over back for about 10 HN frontages pages and it was nowhere to be found. I had to look through my browsing history to get back to it. This is really uncool soft censorship on HN we can’t talk about
- smeyer 4y agoI found this post by searching, and saw your comment when it was 1 minute old. I don’t think the post was removed from searches.
- r721 4y agoSee here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33733310 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33733310 It's also not "unsearchable", just sinking much faster than other posts: https://hnrankings.info/33730985/ https://hnrankings.info/33730985/
- danielspace23 4y agojoinmastodon.org
- _hyn3 4y agoHow many engineers did Instagram have when it was acquired by FB? (answer: 6 engineers with 30 million users: https://www.fastcompany.com/3047642/do-the-simple-thing-first-the-engineering-behind-instagram https://www.fastcompany.com/3047642/do-the-simple-thing-firs...) Obviously, those were highly competent engineers, but perhaps Elon Musk is just trying to get to roughly the same proportion (~60?). If so, he's still got a long, long way to go, so expect a lot more cutting.
- raydev 4y agoInstagram, at the time, was significantly limited in functionality. IG didn't have Android and web support until 2012, it was iOS only until then. The more features you offer, the more complex your system needs to be, the more people you need to maintain and build on top of the system.
- ctvo 4y agoInstagram, when it was acquired, wasn't too concerned about making money: It was still VC funded, and was looking at raising another round. The founders controlled the small set of features available, and weren't beholden to, say, trying to include targeted ads or adding shopping to the platform. They certainly weren't concerned about bots, child pornography, state sponsored actors, data warehouses to store and analyze data for FCC decrees, the list goes on. It's very easy, looking in, to handwave away complexity that creeps into a business and its technology and assume it's a lack of engineering skill. Do a reality check: Compare Twitter to other similar companies e.g. Facebook, Spotify, Netflix, Bytedance, Snap ... are these companies ran by 6 10x engineers? 60? Do you think EVERYONE is stupid or is unaware of how to do software engineering or is there complexity here you may be ignorant of? It's obvious Elon thinks the former here.