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Speaking from very painful, personal experience, few things are more agitating than being forced to execute on something you fully know is a horrible idea, espe
by Topfi 3y ago
Speaking from very painful, personal experience, few things are more agitating than being forced to execute on something you fully know is a horrible idea, especially when you tried and failed to communicate this fact to the individual pushing you to go against your best judgement.
Even more so when that person later loudly proclaims that they never made such a request, even when provided with written proof.
I can of course not say whether the people currently working at Twitter did warn that the recent measures could have such major side effects, but I would not be surprised in the slightest, considering their leadership's mode of operation.
Even as someone who very much detests what Twitter has become over the last few months and in fact did not like Twitter before the acquisition, partly due to short format making nuance impossible, but mostly for the effect Tweets easy embeddability had on reporting (3 Tweets from random people should not serve as the main basis for an article in my opinion), I must say, I feel very sorry for the people forced to work at that company under that management.
- Waterluvian 3y agoAt least once have I done a CC blast as a form of insurance when being asked to do something absolutely boneheaded.
- 7thaccount 3y agoYou gotta get executives in writing sometimes or they'll throw you under the bus later.
- Waterluvian 3y agoIf executives are throwing you under a bus, make an exit. There’s no coming back from a clown show like that.
- jaggederest 3y agoI have a general rule that I make proactive, diligent efforts to inform and correct, and I do it 3 times to 3 different groups in leadership, and if that doesn't work, I'm out. I'm about 2 for 8 but you gotta try sometimes.
- steveBK123 3y agoYeah more often than not people just really really want to touch the hot stove. Being the bearer of bad “stoves are hot to the touch” news makes you a downer.
- Waterluvian 3y agoAnd in some absolutely bizarre anti-logic, I’ve seen some decide that the person trying to warn is somehow responsible for the inevitable outcome. Not enough of you believed and now this balloon is adrift and will never make it to Imaginationland.
- inpdx 3y agoSchrödinger's logic. If only they'd kept their mouths shut.
- Aeolun 3y ago> I’ve seen some decide that the person trying to warn is somehow responsible for the inevitable outcome. You should have warned me about this more convincingly!
- steveBK123 3y agoI worked for a guy whose boss was trying to throw him under the bus constantly. In one scenario after being reminded of something, he said "I don't recall that conversation, you need to put this kind of stuff into email". So in a following scenario where he did send an email, boss man said "I get lots of email, you can't send an email and assume I read it." This is why I find if you don't already have good relations with management and trust each others judgement, it really doesn't matter. They will do as they wish, and throw you under the bus as needed.
- jefftk 3y agoTalk verbally, and then send an email afterwards with notes. This means that they definitely were informed, because you talked to them, and you have something to point them to if they don't remember, because you send notes. This is protection in adversarial scenarios, but is also just a great habit In general. Verbal discussion is really good for getting people on the same page, but without notes it's very easy for details and decisions to get lost.
- LiquidSky 3y agoFrom previous stories about Elon, telling him he’s wrong is a guarantee you’re going under that bus.
- WalterBright 3y agoEvery person in power is told he's wrong every day, all day, by most everyone. Heck, I've hired people to teach me things, told them they were wrong, and learned the hard way, many times.
- LiquidSky 3y ago>Every person in power is told he's wrong every day, all day, by most everyone. Not those who just punish anyone who dares. Then they're just not told anything but "yes, sir" until disaster strikes.
- cgio 3y agoNot in Musk’s defense, I guess there are enough signs that his posture is authoritarian and therefore bound to end up with yes-men, but people in power also sometimes are willing to listen in the proper context. I.e. as long as it is in private or in a trusted forum, where being the Cassandra does not link the warning with their leadership. Of course the really powerful will also react to potentially uncomfortable feedback in a proper forum or in person, rather than in public.
- BearOso 3y agoThen you haven't heard about about Vladimir Putin.
- chrisweekly 3y ago> Every person in power is told he's wrong every day, all day, by most everyone. Wait, what? That's a ridiculous assertion, even taken as hyperbole. A huge percentage of people in power surround themselves with "yes-men", and are allergic to (even constructive) criticism, let alone direct disagreement.
- yawaramin 3y ago> or they'll throw you under the bus and they'll throw you under the bus
- madaxe_again 3y agoI have usually just produced a disclaimer and asked the relevant party to please read and sign it, indemnifying me against any consequences of the decision they have made. That usually gets them to sit up and reconsider. Occasionally they sign the damned thing, and then it’s popcorn “I told you so” time.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- choppaface 3y agoWell "forced to execute" is somewhat subjective. If you are convinced leadership is doing the "wrong thing," then best to either leave or accept that you're just collecting your paycheck. In the case of Twitter, the new owner has thoroughly broken the advertising business and is trying to aggressively pursue a new version of the data business Twitter once had-- E.g. Google's Caffeine, which Twitter also eventually lost https://searchengineland.com/google-search-algorithm-change-for-freshness-to-impact-35-of-searches-99856 https://searchengineland.com/google-search-algorithm-change-... ... The statements about "too many scrapers" are almost certainly as illegitimate as the previous pre-acquisition statements about "too many bots." The nature of business is that there's no judiciary or referee... the purpose of a business is to make money. Tech businesses just happen to hire lots of academically-oriented engineers who developed their skills in a different environment. It's possible to build a culture of "fairness" in a business, but at the end of the day even Google dropped "don't be evil."
- pavel_lishin 3y ago> Well "forced to execute" is somewhat subjective. If you are convinced leadership is doing the "wrong thing," then best to either leave or accept that you're just collecting your paycheck. Я, Unless your visa is sponsored by your employer.
- threeseed 3y agoAnd you have a young family. And it's a tough market where 5% of IT engineers across the board have recently been let go. Even non visa holders at Twitter have had to wait it out, sometimes months, until a suitable job was found.
- Dma54rhs 3y agoCry me a river, IT workers especially the ones working for SV companies are one of the most privileged people out there.
- curtisblaine 3y ago
- beebmam 3y agoA union vote is the only way to save that platform. Either unionize or let the company die.
- skymast 3y ago[flagged]
- Chinjut 3y agoDo you enjoy having weekends off from working on somebody else's goals?
- macintux 3y agoAre you by any chance working 40 hour weeks?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- froggychairs 3y agoYou can disagree with workplace organizing or the political positions of socialism, but this type of generalization is anti-intellectual, lazy thinking, and just wrong. Although yes. I don’t think Twitter unionizing will save the site.
- xenospn 3y agoHope you’re enjoying your weekend!
- M2Ys4U 3y agoAre you an employer, or do you just really like the taste of licking boots?
- medium_spicy 3y ago
- lrvick 3y ago[flagged]
- roughly 3y agoThat will be the case once H1-Bs are reformed and universal healthcare becomes real. Until then, this is an unrealistic and cruel position.
- lrvick 3y agoFair point. I was only considering the perspective of US citizens. It does make me wonder how much the ratio of forced labor H1B situations has gone up at Twitter as US citizens all bail from the fire. I cannot imagine why anyone would work there if they had a choice at this point.
- neilk 3y agoAccording to some recent articles from mainstream media: There are about 550 full-time engineers at Twitter. [1] There are about 625-670 H1-B holders working at Twitter.[2] This isn't quite the full story since of course H1-B holders might be doing other jobs than engineering; many of those 550 engineers are not US-based; there are other visas for foreign workers in the USA than the H1-B; and Musk has reassigned some workers from his other companies to work at Twitter. But it sure looks like the answer is: a lot! [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/20/twitter-is-down-to-fewer-than-550-full-time-engineers.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/20/twitter-is-down-to-fewer-tha... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2022/11/04/twitter-and-other-tech-layoffs-raise-h-1b-visa-employment-issues/?sh=20e4f5a14db6 https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2022/11/04/twitt...
- TheCoelacanth 3y agoMore accurately there were that many H1-B holders before the layoffs. After getting rid of 80% of employees, that number has surely dropped.
- deleted 3y ago
- sanderjd 3y agoI'm curious about this: When you were experiencing this, why didn't you quit? I truly feel bummed for the people remaining at Twitter who are miserable but for whatever reason feel they can't just quit.
- nicolas_17 3y agohttps://www.vice.com/en/article/n7z5px/twitter-employees-on-visas-cant-just-quit https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7z5px/twitter-employees-on-...
- rs999gti 3y agoIt's still not forced to work, unless going back to your home country is worse than working at Twitter?
- Scalene2 3y agoWould anyone get a visa to work in another country if it would not be better than being in their home country?
- lanstin 3y agoMaybe if they were unsure about which they preferred.
- dawnbreez 3y agoFor some people, "going back to your home country" means going back to a place where basic human rights are not protected by law. Further, I'm not sure what having your visa revoked would do to your future immigration prospects--not to mention that, once that visa is revoked, you're technically "in the country illegally", and you may have heard about how badly our legal system treats people, both with and without citizenship.
- amf12 3y agoHave you moved to another country across the world, made it your home, and had to choose between doing stupid things for a corporation bought by a new CEO or uproot your life and go back home? As much as it's sounds like an easy decision, most people won't uproot their life for Twitter.
- praisewhitey 3y ago>Speaking from very painful, personal experience, few things are more agitating than being forced to execute on something you fully know is a horrible idea, especially when you tried and failed to communicate this fact to the individual pushing you to go against your best judgement. In this case the horrible idea is being forced to push changes to production at a moments notice
- tbrownaw 3y ago> push changes to production at a moments notice Isn't that one of the DORA metrics?
- BirdieNZ 3y agoYes, but so is Change Failure Rate (and a good team will use feature flagging anyway for gradual rollouts, so you don't roll out a DDoSing broken feature to 100% of users, just a tiny subset).
- Topfi 3y agoYes, that is very much true. Even if, as some have commented, the people remaining at Twitter lack oversight over the entire codebase to predict that this specific change could have such a knock-on effect, not having testing and staging environments, pushing something straight to production, would give even an inexperienced person pause for thought. As said, I don't want to speculate whether someone raised their voice on this being a likely outcome specifically, as not having testing prior to release is the much more obvious and significant issue here, driven by leadership.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- martincmartin 3y agoThe people at Twitter who understood the system and could predict the side effects were all fired or left. My guess is Elon said "the site's too slow!" Engineers noticed that the home feed request was slow. They didn't understand how it worked, had no tools to profile it, and were given an unrealistic deadline to fix it. So about the only thing they could do was issue multiple, parallel requests and hope that at least one of them was fast. I worked in the games industry for a while, and came to understand how they could spend so much money and so much time, and yet release a game where even basic functionality was broken. It's exactly this sort of extreme schedule pressure that, ironically, makes a huge morass where changing one thing breaks 10 other things, so progress grinds to a halt.
- trevioustrouble 3y ago[flagged]
- anonymousab 3y ago> and needs to be rate-limited for unregistered users It seemingly needs to be rate-limited for not just registered users, but registered paying premium users as well. And the rate limits for them are enough to be passed in less than an hour of average idle use! > if you think you’d do a better job than Elon with Twitter, you wouldnt. Doing nothing and not saddling twitter with unnecessary extra debt would have already been doing better than Elon.
- bbreier 3y agoI have no experience managing a company at that scale so I won't challenge the assertion that Elon is doing a better job than I would but... the feed has not been rate limited for unregistered users for the history of the site as far as I know, and its been pretty damn stable and snappy!
- pkulak 3y agoI can see your perspective, up to the last bit. Elon is objectively incompetent.
- 3y ago
- trevioustrouble 3y ago[flagged]
- WalterBright 3y ago[flagged]
- 7e 3y agoIf they’re on an H1-B, they practically are.
- WalterBright 3y ago[flagged]
- howinteresting 3y agoHonestly your attitude here and in other comments over the years has turned me off using D forever. No one in power in the Rust community would be able to get away with the sorts of comments you're making. (The Rust community has its own very serious issues but no one would even try to say "boo hoo if they don't like it they can just uproot their lives and go back to a place they specifically got away from, nbd")
- WalterBright 3y ago> they can just uproot their lives and go back to a place they specifically got away from, nbd What I said was they were not forced to stay. I've read a number of history books, and what forced labor is is very clear. Besides, when one comes to the US on a Visa one chooses to accept the terms, and they do not include a guarantee of lifetime employment. What I actually believe in is freedom and individual rights, and my posts are consistent with that. At least I hope so! As for D, it is Boost licensed. It is the most free license I could find. You can do whatever you like with the code, as long as the copyright is included. (I would have made it public domain, but that isn't recognized in many countries.) Each member of the D community has their own reasons for contributing, and many (myself included) do not receive any compensation. It's just our gift to you and everyone else. It is your right to use it, or not, as you please. P.S. The D Foundation also discourages politics of any sort in the discussion forums. I don't even know what the politics of the other contributors are. It's not relevant.
- ezoe 3y agoIt's like stupid boss asking to turn off the air conditioner of server room to save power.
- goalieca 3y agoI’ll play the devils advocate here but frontend devs need to smarten up. This is basic error handling that should have been in place for years. Blocking tweets with 403 or whatever they chose shouldn’t trigger endless retries on short intervals.. ever!
- jlund-molfese 3y agoI’d bet (not that much, but like $20) that someone has a .ifClientError() or if responseStatus === 4xx somewhere. If you’ve never had to handle authorization in a particular area, it might have been safe to assume that any 4xx error should have been retried when the code was originally written and someone didn’t write them all out
- wongarsu 3y agoBut wouldn't responseStatus === 4xx indicate that the problem is on your end and retrying is unlikely to fix the issue. A 5xx is worth a retry, a 4xx should imho just produce an error message. And even if you do retry, exponential backoff has been the standard for a long time (and is mentioned by the Twitter API documentation as a good solution to 429 responses)
- cratermoon 3y agoThere are libraries, usually under the general heading of "circuit breaker", that handle 429 and other reasons to retry in a sane manner. I'm not a JS expert but I believe either yammer/circuit-breaker-js or nodeshift/opossum would work in the browser. Even a hand-coded exponential backoff with jitter is simple enough to do for most cases.
- giovannibonetti 3y agoMaybe the frontend team and QA were never made aware that 403 errors could be triggered like this.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
- cyanydeez 3y agoOk, but the only people left are either hostages or sycophants. Doubt either care at this point.
- agentgumshoe 3y agoOr they're just people trying to earn their pay. Why must everything be a political divide these days...
- wpietri 3y agoYou say that in a tone of contradiction, but sycophants are absolutely trying to earn their pay. They've just decided that their true job is what their context rewards.
- agentgumshoe 3y agoSo what though? They existed before and they'll continue to exist, they didn't magically appear 'because Musk.'
- wpietri 3y agoNothing magic about it. When you fire all the people who contradict you, you create yes men and a culture of sycophancy. At that point it's self-perpetuating. Twitter had many issues as a company, but one of its strengths was a lot of independent thinking and honest speech among staff. That's surely gone, and once gone it's very hard to get back.
- agentofoblivion 3y ago[flagged]
- minimaxir 3y agoIt's been atleast 10 hours into this outage with no fix. Advertisers, the one group Elon is desperately trying to accommodate, will care.
- wpietri 3y agoOoh, good idea. People can go build something against the Twitter API! Oh wait! I'm absolutely going to keep enjoying Musk's comeuppance. In this, consider me a traditionalist. As the Greek tragedies show, people have been enjoying the just punishment of hubris for thousands of years.
- transcriptase 3y agoYou can relish in the idea of Twitter having technical issues as if it hurts Elon in some tangible way, but the fact is he could pull the plug on it tomorrow… simply shut Twitter down entirely. Take the entire value of the company as a personal loss, and give everyone working there $1m for their service. And still be the wealthiest individual on the planet. He could do it another 5 times and still be a billionaire. Yes, I’m aware his net worth doesn’t mean liquid assets but the point remains.
- minitoar 3y agoI imagine after he did that once or twice his net worth would fall considerably more than the value of Twitter.
- therouwboat 3y agoSo why does he worry about advertisers and bills? Why did he fire most of the employees? Why is he pushing changes to production without testing? Why rush things when you can fail 5 times and still try again?
- epups 3y ago
- tomcam 3y agoHow do you force someone to work at Twitter?
- AbraKdabra 3y ago> I feel very sorry for the people forced to work at that company under that management. Forced? You know slavery was abolished a long time ago no?
- oddevan 3y ago"Forced" could also mean holding someone's visa hostage, threatening consequences in addition to losing a job, or just in general being in a situation where, while they are not physically or legally required to keep a job, they have no other viable options.
- sh34r 3y agoUnless you are in prison. You think I'm BSing then read the 13th amendment.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- r00bot 3y agoI'm going through this right now in my job, having built a tool to manage vulnerability tickets for my team, and having it's first use be deleting every vulnerability ticket, despite my protests. The person executing this is more concerned about looking good on paper than actually improving security.
- Shorel 3y agoIt's just another requirement. I don't see anything terrible or even bad with the requirement itself. Rate limiting is the new normal, in a post ChatGPT world. The implementation, of course, is atrocious and should be corrected. You are putting your opinion over the requirements of the job, and basically guaranteeing a bad outcome and an atrocious implementation. Maybe you can share your stories about real bad decisions, so we can judge properly, but so far this is not a good overview.
- maxlin 3y agoThat's nothing. Instead hopping on the bandwagon hating on the thing we all use and care about, a situation where you would know a solution but are not allowed to act because of fear of even trying anything is so much worse. Especially when you know of it for a very long time and are not even allowed to try, while also being ostracized and being "that guy" for suggesting it repeatedly. Talking of different technical and business approaches to things where the "original" still somehow works but is slowly killing the company. Been there, done that. But when a higher-up so clearly takes responsibility of something that is risky but deemed necessary, it provides for a lot better space to also respond to any potential problems that pop up, while not needing to suffer snarky comments in hindsight as a dev. Of course something like this is easier to hate on ...
- WeylandYutani 3y agoDon't use Twitter and don't care in the slightest if it goes down. Will admit that seeing a billionaire go mental is funny. Petty I know.
- maxlin 3y agoDidn't ask and go stuff your worthless ignorance somewhere else. It's people like you why we can't have nice things.
- isaacremuant 3y agoThis is all speculation. The push to "make the content less user friendly" and push then to our app/logged in experience is similar to reddit's push and it doesn't really present an insurmountable challenge on the technical side. These technical hurdles are temporary. Not the end of the world. The "only in our app/only logged in" requirements are bad on a philosophical level of user choice, not on the "this is terrible technically" side. Attacking it on that note is just perpetuating the narrative where elonmuskmanbad (which is more political than consistent with the treatment others get) above more specific truths.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> the effect Tweets easy embeddability had on reporting This is something I don't get. They say that Twitter is now blocking embeds and I've seen an author respond by... including a screenshot of a tweet in their piece. Except that's obviously better than embedding a tweet in the first place. It's better in every possible way. It's easier to write your article with an included image that you provide than to hotlink content from some other website. And when the tweet vanishes into the mists of history, your captured image of it will still be around, illustrating your article the way you were hoping the embedded tweet would do. There are so many articles out there with dead embedded tweets illustrating... something. So, all that said... what was the effect that embeddability had on reporting? Why hasn't it been screenshots the whole time? What did easy embeddability enable that wasn't just as easy anyway?