5 ms·

I dunno. We are several months out after the major layoffs. Maybe some very recent bad decisions were made internally that pared back too far, but I think Musk

I dunno. We are several months out after the major layoffs. Maybe some very recent bad decisions were made internally that pared back too far, but I think Musk has long since been proven correct that the core platform could function on a fraction of the workforce it had at the time of takeover.

polygamous_bat 3y ago
Do you think if we fired every civil engineer tomorrow, the bridges and the highways they built would fall apart right afterwards, or even in a few months? Engineering isn't like service positions where the lack of competent personnel is felt immediately; the debt keeps growing until your whole system collapses under it one day, how far the day is in the future depends on what system you're working on.
- oittaa 3y ago
  Did you forget how people were saying that Twitter would stop working within days?
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    Maybe "Twitter would stop paying it's bills within days" was too brash a prediction and it was stepped back.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
firesteelrain 3y ago
Agree. Plus it’s easy to crap on Elon but it’s also the poor Twitter architecture and quality of people they have working for them that caused this despite Elon’s desire to require login to read Twitter. He didn’t write the code.
- simonw 3y ago
  Elon is responsible for the quality of the people who work for Twitter. That's what a CEO does.
  - firesteelrain 3y ago
    I understand the sentiment. He also has managers who might get fired next
simonw 3y ago
Complex systems like Twitter don't break overnight when you lay off the talented engineers. They deteriorate piece-by-piece, potentially over the course of many months, until the compounding effects of these problems and the growing technical debt overwhelms the team that they have left.
- qwerasdf5 3y ago
  Which pieces have deteriorated?
  - jtode 3y ago
    Those who could know are working at other places now.
  - hyperpape 3y ago
    - Spam protection is non-existent. An NFL post showed an explicit sex act as the top response for over two weeks before it was deleted. https://twitter.com/schuh_dan/status/1657777263817940996 https://twitter.com/schuh_dan/status/1657777263817940996 this was the tweet, though I don't have an exact record of when it was deleted. You can also look at https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1674876982260273152 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1674876982260273152 for another example, though the porn spam has only been there for 24 hours this time. - Outages really are common: https://twitter.com/altluu/status/1577806809217503232 https://twitter.com/altluu/status/1577806809217503232
    - qwerasdf5 3y ago
      Thanks for the reply. The twitter post you linked to was from October of last year; I'm not sure how to draw any conclusions from it.
  - terminatornet 3y ago
    I currently can't read any tweets from https://twitter.com/elonmusk https://twitter.com/elonmusk because it's just said "something went wrong. try reloading" for the last 8 hours or so. I'd consider that deteriorated service. also just out of curiosity while trying to find historical outage data I found this article. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/14/twitter-experiences-longest-global-outage-in-years https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/14/twitter-e... Last july (before elon took over), the site was apparently down for 45 minutes and "one of the site’s longest outages for years". Today it's been basically barely usable for most of the day.
Marazan 3y ago
It is a testament to the engineers of old Twitter that their systems stayed standing for as long as they did.
anders_p 3y ago
>I think Musk has long since been proven correct that the core platform could function on a fraction of the workforce it had at the time of takeover. It REALLY sounds like you don't understand how any of this works. Tech products don't stop working when you fire most of the staff. But bugs stop being fixed and problems begin to add up, until a critical point is reached,m where the whole house of cards collapses. Thinking that "Elon was proven right" simply because Twitter didn't implode the second he announced the layoffs, makes me think you don't understand how tech and software works.
- firesteelrain 3y ago
  Pretty sure parent does Plus there’s always technical debt and even the ‘best’ engineers at Twitter made mistakes Maybe if the architecture wasn’t so brittle and more easily testable by these engineering ‘gods’ then we wouldn’t have this problem

polygamous_bat 3y ago

Do you think if we fired every civil engineer tomorrow, the bridges and the highways they built would fall apart right afterwards, or even in a few months? Engineering isn't like service positions where the lack of competent personnel is felt immediately; the debt keeps growing until your whole system collapses under it one day, how far the day is in the future depends on what system you're working on.

oittaa 3y ago
Did you forget how people were saying that Twitter would stop working within days?
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  Maybe "Twitter would stop paying it's bills within days" was too brash a prediction and it was stepped back.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

firesteelrain 3y ago

Agree. Plus it’s easy to crap on Elon but it’s also the poor Twitter architecture and quality of people they have working for them that caused this despite Elon’s desire to require login to read Twitter. He didn’t write the code.

simonw 3y ago
Elon is responsible for the quality of the people who work for Twitter. That's what a CEO does.
- firesteelrain 3y ago
  I understand the sentiment. He also has managers who might get fired next

simonw 3y ago

Complex systems like Twitter don't break overnight when you lay off the talented engineers. They deteriorate piece-by-piece, potentially over the course of many months, until the compounding effects of these problems and the growing technical debt overwhelms the team that they have left.

qwerasdf5 3y ago
Which pieces have deteriorated?
- jtode 3y ago
  Those who could know are working at other places now.
- hyperpape 3y ago
  - Spam protection is non-existent. An NFL post showed an explicit sex act as the top response for over two weeks before it was deleted. https://twitter.com/schuh_dan/status/1657777263817940996 https://twitter.com/schuh_dan/status/1657777263817940996 this was the tweet, though I don't have an exact record of when it was deleted. You can also look at https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1674876982260273152 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1674876982260273152 for another example, though the porn spam has only been there for 24 hours this time. - Outages really are common: https://twitter.com/altluu/status/1577806809217503232 https://twitter.com/altluu/status/1577806809217503232
  - qwerasdf5 3y ago
    Thanks for the reply. The twitter post you linked to was from October of last year; I'm not sure how to draw any conclusions from it.
- terminatornet 3y ago
  I currently can't read any tweets from https://twitter.com/elonmusk https://twitter.com/elonmusk because it's just said "something went wrong. try reloading" for the last 8 hours or so. I'd consider that deteriorated service. also just out of curiosity while trying to find historical outage data I found this article. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/14/twitter-experiences-longest-global-outage-in-years https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/14/twitter-e... Last july (before elon took over), the site was apparently down for 45 minutes and "one of the site’s longest outages for years". Today it's been basically barely usable for most of the day.

Marazan 3y ago

It is a testament to the engineers of old Twitter that their systems stayed standing for as long as they did.

anders_p 3y ago

>I think Musk has long since been proven correct that the core platform could function on a fraction of the workforce it had at the time of takeover. It REALLY sounds like you don't understand how any of this works. Tech products don't stop working when you fire most of the staff. But bugs stop being fixed and problems begin to add up, until a critical point is reached,m where the whole house of cards collapses. Thinking that "Elon was proven right" simply because Twitter didn't implode the second he announced the layoffs, makes me think you don't understand how tech and software works.

firesteelrain 3y ago
Pretty sure parent does Plus there’s always technical debt and even the ‘best’ engineers at Twitter made mistakes Maybe if the architecture wasn’t so brittle and more easily testable by these engineering ‘gods’ then we wouldn’t have this problem