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I was a consultant at Twitter. The engineers there love complexity. They created layers and layers just to justify their positions so they can have fuel to burn

I was a consultant at Twitter. The engineers there love complexity. They created layers and layers just to justify their positions so they can have fuel to burn to climb up the ladder. Most of the stuff they built is unnecessary and that effort could have been spent elsewhere. The managers enabled this because they needed the efforts to climb up as well. There was an in-group bias there that kept opposing voices away which creates deep valleys of blindness that crack the company eventually. Which is what happened, Twitter was dead weight for a long time. Glad Elon is there to shake things up. Jack was not effective anymore. Actually the culture he enabled is what brought Twitter to the point it was. This happens everywhere so nothing new here. Especially when tech investment has been free for such a long time. Maybe even this economic downturn wont disrupt the tech investment machine. We will see next year. If Twitter goes public again. I will be the first to buy shares. Since it will actually be a good play going forward.

dangue_fever 4y ago
- danaris 4y ago
  "Some people at Twitter were dead weight" does not logically lead to "therefore all Musk's firings at Twitter are A Good Thing, Actually." Anyone going into nearly any company and firing 3/4 of the staff is practically guaranteed to result in some nontrivial number of people being fired who were not pulling their weight. People aren't hating on Musk specifically for firing people. We're hating on him for firing people indiscriminately, treating the remainder like shit (demanding people work long hours constantly is unjustifiable, no matter what you think of the personalities of those workers), and making himself the center and focus of Twitter.
  - _djo_ 4y ago
    Also interesting that both of those comments were from brand-new users.
salad-fan 4y ago
So then explain why the first people to go were in content moderation, trust & safety? That _is_ Twitter’s product after all (brand safety for advertisers), and he gutted that faster than the engineering teams.
jasmer 4y ago
"Engineering is complicated -> I will buy shares" I don't think this logic works. The company is not made or broken whether or not the software is a bit more complicated than it has to be. Making it a bit simpler will not change the company. Moreover, it's very doubtful if they are in a position to magically untangle all of that and make things a bit simpler. Most of the value of Twitter will come from revenues, growth and other things. It's entirely possible that Musk could turn things around, but it's also very risky. It's debatable whether the people will perform in a coherent manner for him, that advertisers will come back, that his ideas will pan out. And after all of that - he bought Twitter at the peak! He's holding the bag! Twitter would be worth maybe 40% of what it was at the peak, just by market forces alone - so he has to climb up to that big valuation to break even. It's entirely plausible, but there is nothing obvious about this situation, and it's not an 'architectural' issue. Finally, I will say that just because you thought things were overly complex, does not mean they were. Things are sometime a bit more complicated. Maybe, maybe not.

dangue_fever 4y ago

danaris 4y ago
"Some people at Twitter were dead weight" does not logically lead to "therefore all Musk's firings at Twitter are A Good Thing, Actually." Anyone going into nearly any company and firing 3/4 of the staff is practically guaranteed to result in some nontrivial number of people being fired who were not pulling their weight. People aren't hating on Musk specifically for firing people. We're hating on him for firing people indiscriminately, treating the remainder like shit (demanding people work long hours constantly is unjustifiable, no matter what you think of the personalities of those workers), and making himself the center and focus of Twitter.
- _djo_ 4y ago
  Also interesting that both of those comments were from brand-new users.

salad-fan 4y ago

So then explain why the first people to go were in content moderation, trust & safety? That _is_ Twitter’s product after all (brand safety for advertisers), and he gutted that faster than the engineering teams.

jasmer 4y ago

"Engineering is complicated -> I will buy shares" I don't think this logic works. The company is not made or broken whether or not the software is a bit more complicated than it has to be. Making it a bit simpler will not change the company. Moreover, it's very doubtful if they are in a position to magically untangle all of that and make things a bit simpler. Most of the value of Twitter will come from revenues, growth and other things. It's entirely possible that Musk could turn things around, but it's also very risky. It's debatable whether the people will perform in a coherent manner for him, that advertisers will come back, that his ideas will pan out. And after all of that - he bought Twitter at the peak! He's holding the bag! Twitter would be worth maybe 40% of what it was at the peak, just by market forces alone - so he has to climb up to that big valuation to break even. It's entirely plausible, but there is nothing obvious about this situation, and it's not an 'architectural' issue. Finally, I will say that just because you thought things were overly complex, does not mean they were. Things are sometime a bit more complicated. Maybe, maybe not.