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> the pandemic gave too much power to white collar wage workers It's quite interesting to look at job listings right now. Go have a look at some tech companies
by jwestbury 3y ago
> the pandemic gave too much power to white collar wage workers
It's quite interesting to look at job listings right now. Go have a look at some tech companies, and compare job types which currently allow remote work. You'll find that there are plenty of places offering remote work for most roles... but not for engineering.
How interesting. I'm sure it's not an concerted effort to get us back under control.
- markhalonen 3y agoI would say Elon cutting 80% of Twitter to no real consequence is the real driver. Everyone is asking "are we Twitter 1.0?" Edit: actually increased engineering velocity
- airstrike 3y agoagreed that's the driver—I've heard as much from a couple people the jury is still out on the "no real consequence" piece, however managers seem to ignore the fact that Twitter is private, so who knows how bad it's really doing these days
- happymellon 3y agoThis is key. No observable impact. Until the whole thing implodes.
- markhalonen 3y agoElon's algo is to push hard enough such that consequences are observed, then pull back a little. In twitter's case, moving an entire data center over christmas break was a too fast.
- ryandrake 3y agoTwitter seems to be at that point where Wile-E-Coyote has already run off the cliff and is still treading thin air. Airplanes can glide a great distance even after the engine has been turned off. I'd be willing to bet Twitter is basically gliding now that all that staff that powered the engine is gone.
- foderking 3y agonice cope
- nvm0n2 3y agoWe were hearing that the day he bought it and started layoffs. Twitter will be crashed within a few days, we heard. Clearly that never happened. Twitter is still online, making changes and executing. That's what executives are responding to here. They aren't going to draw a strong link between fewer people and less ad revenue when attacks on Twitter by advertisers are so clearly politically motivated, it's just not relevant for most companies business models. Overstaffing is.
- candu 3y agoI'm not sure I would call losing 30-60% of your US + Europe ad revenue year-over-year [1] the same as "to no real consequence". Not that I'm a fan of ad-supported social media platforms, mind you, but that sort of drop would be an existential threat to many companies. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/technology/twitter-ad-sales-musk.html?partner=slack&smid=sl-share https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/technology/twitter-ad-sal...
- gadders 3y agoI don't think that was due to firing workers, though. That was more driven by left wing pressure groups like the ADL.
- gorbachev 3y agoThe actual reason for advertisers fleeing Twitter was because they kept seeing their ads next to actual Nazis posting on Twitter. The reason they were seeing that was because Twitter fired most people weeding hate speech from Twitter.
- gadders 3y agoWell and the ADL calling major advertisers pre-emptively to tell them to pull their ad spend. You'd think, though, in these days of AI there would be a way for someone to post what they like but be segregated from adverts.
- EdwardDiego 3y agoOoh no, it's the ADL! Seriously, if hate speech wasn't resurgent on Xitter, do you think the ADL would have had any sway?
- gadders 3y agoYes. I think they would broaden the definition of hate speech until they found some, and then ask for donations to make the problem go away.
- radicalbyte 3y agoOnly Twitter is an unusable mess nowadays, it's unstable and you can't post anything there without receiving bot spam. That was very rare before.
- markhalonen 3y agoWorks fine for me and a lot of other people. What other site gets used for official announcements? Democrats still use it
- _djo_ 3y agoThat's simply inertia and the lack of another platform with the same level of critical mass. There's no reason it will continue to last.
- indigodaddy 3y agoAlso the fact that you cannot see any tweet or essentially even visit the website without a forced login prompt drives potential visits/eyes/views/users away— this is probably the stupidest thing they have done.
- abeppu 3y agoI dunno, Twitter demonstrated that a company which has failed to grow and achieve its goals can drop a lot of staff and ... do significantly worse than before but without totally dying. It hasn't shown that the resulting skeleton crew can succeed and pursue ambitious goals. Their performance since all the layoffs is not a story that people necessarily want to recreate.
- addaon 3y ago> Twitter demonstrated that a company which has failed to grow and achieve its goals can drop a lot of staff and ... do significantly worse than before but without totally dying Haven't we known that for decades from the performance art piece that is Hewlett-Packard?
- rtkwe 3y ago"No real consequence" is a big lie. mDAU are down so much they switched to mMAU instead and by his own tweets they're bringing in less ad revenue than before the take over.
- markhalonen 3y agothey don't care about mDAU anymore, that was for public markets. Elon's metric is "unregretted user minutes", however that is measured idk
- rtkwe 3y agoThey care, they have to to make money. Take any supposed new metric pushed by Elon with a big grain of salt especially something completely unmeasurable like "unregretted user minutes" that's supposed to be their new guiding light.
- singleshot_ 3y agoAre they counting all the minutes we spend talking about this regrettable dumpster fire against the net number?
- rtkwe 3y agoGiven it's a completely impossible to measure metric I'm betting it's going to always be improving no matter what's happening on the platform to please the new ownership.
- darth_avocado 3y ago> No real consequences The daddy of no consequences, Elon, himself admits the company is worth way less now. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/technology/elon-musk-twitter-value.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/technology/elon-musk-twit...] Which means the company is probably worth even less than that. [https://apnews.com/article/twitter-fidelity-musk-value https://apnews.com/article/twitter-fidelity-musk-value]
- markhalonen 3y agoHe admits he overpaid for it, not that cutting tons of people was a mistake
- darth_avocado 3y agoI don’t know about you but if a publicly traded company, which was trading fairly to the market expectations (way cheaper than peers like FB, Snapchat, Pinterest etc) went private and is now worth less than a third of what it was worth, mostly because usage and advertising revenue are both down, even if you don’t admit it, it was most definitely a mistake.
- matmatmatmat 3y agoUnless you're just a dyed-in-the-wool Elon Musk fan, in which case it's 5D chess.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoHis goal was never to pay for it at all, but to make a lot of noise to cover cashing out of the insanely-overvalued TSLA stock. Then he got held to it and they wouldn't let him back out, even after 3 attempts to break free of it. So now he's got lemons and is making lemonade the only way he knows how.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoEngineering is viewed by business as a cost center to be moved to India. The only value viewed by business is themselves. Everyone else is a cost.
- moneywoes 3y agoas an engineer how do i escape being part of this cost center? seems becoming a SDM would be included
- tcoff91 3y agoWork for a SaaS company then you are a profit center.
- RajT88 3y agoBecome a sales engineer. You become part of the profit center.
- tnel77 3y agoHow has this worked out for you? When I graduated college, I had an offer for a software engineering position and a sales engineer position. I went with the software engineering position as it paid better and I felt like it would be a safer career path, but I’ve always wondered what it was like for people in that line of work.
- RajT88 3y agoI did not take this path. I know a Principal engineer who did, and he says it's been very lucrative. This was a guy who ran his own business for many years, wrote a few books and everything, before being hired as principal engineer where I worked at the time. He stuck it out as a principal for a few years before going to sales engineering. I asked him why the switch and he just said, "You make a lot more money in sales engineering".
- 3y ago
- asdajksah2123 3y agoOne of my greatest frustrations over the past few years was seeing any class of workers in the US gaining significant leverage over their employers for the first time since the 90s, and then spending all that leverage towards making it easier for companies to replace them with cheaper options abroad.
- gedy 3y agoBecause there was a pandemic, urban unrest, and incredibly high housing costs? That's what the leverage was needed for in going WFH/remote.
- ActorNightly 3y agoYou are not fully wrong, but there is a good business reason why that is. Engineers salaries are still super inflated.I really don't think there is another position that comes close to software engineering in US in terms of salary/actual hours worked. New college grads are making six figures for effective 6 hour days.
- jwestbury 3y agoSure -- but why require engineers to come into the office, but not every other role?
- triceratops 3y ago> I really don't think there is another position that comes close to software engineering in US in terms of salary/actual hours worked Plenty of people make more than software engineers on an hourly basis. It's impossible for anyone to work more than 16h/day.
- kridsdale3 3y agoHigh-End Prostitutes might make the highest money/minute (many charge like $1200/hour, obviously fully tax-free), short of things like pro-football players if you only count the minutes that the game clock is ticking.
- triceratops 3y agoThere are close to 9000 total hours in a year. Someone who makes $11m a year makes more than that for every hour they're alive. There are thousands of people who make that much money in the US alone.
- MockObject 3y agoThat's right. Someone's happily paying those $5000 rents in New York, and it's not largely engineers doing so.
- 3y ago