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This is LITERALLY the twitter layoffs playing out again. They fired people who had credentials and other things they needed so had to hire them back. Everything
by sour-taste 2y ago
This is LITERALLY the twitter layoffs playing out again. They fired people who had credentials and other things they needed so had to hire them back. Everything else aside why repeat the same mistakes? Just go a little slower and give agencies time to compile accurate lists of necessary employees
- vkou 2y ago> Everything else aside why repeat the same mistakes? Because good governance is not the goal.
- fiftyacorn 2y agoIt's the tech bro way
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kjrfghslkdjfl 2y ago[dead]
- PaulRobinson 2y agoProblem is, it’s not backfired - the example you cited “worked”, because it rapidly identified key personnel without weeks or months of subjective analysis and political posturing by workers and their supervisors. I think in federal government the risks are much higher, and Musk is being an idiot by exposing the America public to those risks, but the feedback loop for him on these previous experiments has been positive, not negative.
- d--b 2y agoMove fast and break the nuclear weapon arsenal.
- PakG1 2y agoMove fast and break the nuclear weapons arsenal. edit: OK, so parent edited to match what I wrote and now I'm being downvoted because I look like I copied parent?
- boricj 2y agoIt only "worked" because the key personnel decided to come back. Had they decided to move on to greener pastures, the end result would've been very different.
- vasco 2y agoThat isn't much of a point because federal employees are much more likely to return than Twitter technical staff. Interesting approach, specially because it's not my country.
- itronitron 2y ago>> federal employees are much more likely to return Not necessarily. It's generally understood that federal employees accept a lower salary in exchange for career stability. If a career as a federal employee now has higher risk then at least some people will be expecting a higher salary.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- glimshe 2y agoThe advocates of Musk's firings will say that if these people could command a higher salary, they should be in the private industry producing goods and services for the population rather than the inherently wasteful government positions.
- throw0101d 2y ago> […] they should be in the private industry producing goods and services for the population rather than the inherently wasteful government positions. In this particular case, the government positions were maintaining the US's nuclear arsenal. Not sure how "wasteful" having a nuclear deterrent is.
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- adra 2y agoI'm still waiting for file upload API v2. V1 was only made EOL like what, 9 months ago.. Its totally fine to gut your company when all you need is maintenance mode.
- andy_ppp 2y agoAmerica won’t even have maintenance mode when these guys are done. Except for the billionaires.
- cgcrob 2y agoThis is horribly naive. It’s not twitter. There are safety outcomes which need to be considered in safety critical agencies. I mean can you even claim to make the assumption that the actual key staff were rehired? Can you make the assumption that they are working safely with the resources they need? Can you make an assumption that they have covered the entire scope of the organisation? Probably not. Chess is played one piece at a time, not smashing all the pieces off the board.
- jimnotgym 2y agoUnless you are playing against a selfish child who can't bear to lose.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tossandthrow 2y agoIt only works because you allow yourself to sorely disrespect human beings, their livelihood and their feeling of safety. A strategy that seems to be hot in the US, but is an utter ethical abomination and shameful.
- ThinkBeat 2y agoThat is sadly life in private sector for a majority of all workers.
- xg15 2y agoYeah, I mean that's pretty much at the core of Musk's (and Trump's) philosophy.
- m_fayer 2y agoI thought that a reasonably free, vital, innovative, and prosperous society was compatible with a fundamental respect for human dignity. That's why I moved to Europe. Now it seems I was overoptimistic, but that doesn't mean we should wholly embrace backsliding right into the 19th century version of "progress".
- surgical_fire 2y agoIt is the same reason I moved to Europe. I don't think I was overoptimistic. It was literally the best decision I ever made, in every aspect I can think of.
- throw0101d 2y ago> I don't think I was overoptimistic. It was literally the best decision I ever made, in every aspect I can think of. A lot of folks mention the lower salaries in Europe (generally, and especially for tech): has mattered much in your (personal) experience for quality of life and happiness?
- holowoodman 2y ago
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoDid the twitter employees come back at the same pay or did they ask for much more expensive packages since they'd been identified as crucial to operations? Sounds like the kind of thing that could end up increasing costs rather than reducing them.
- setr 2y agoIf it ends up being something like 80% non-crucial and stays fired, the other 20% return with double-pay, you’re probably still running a net-positive with better resource allocation
- joshstrange 2y agoExcept in reality the 20% coming back are probably not the best. Some will be but at least some of your best employees are going to be smart enough (or have enough self-respect) to go elsewhere. And/or those are the people skilled enough to find a new job quickly (or know they can find one quickly) and aren’t willing to come back.
- jeltz 2y agoI don't know about Twitter but for the companies I know of that have done this people generally can't vack for 1.5x to 2x their old pay.
- nobunaga 2y ago[flagged]
- motoxpro 2y agoThey are not supporting the decision in this comment, they are just pointing out that Elon had a positive experience with the twitter layoffs which led him to want to run that playbook again. I would even venture the guess that they DONT support Elon's decision here.
- watwut 2y agoIt takes pretty advance level of self deception to frame "loosing money" as "positive experience".
- somenameforme 2y agoA difference with government is that you and I pay the salaries of these people. With Twitter a lot of it was just schadenfreude. Many of the employees were acting in a way perceived to be partisan and vindictive, which left a rather sizable number of people somewhat less than upset when the tide turned. It's one reason we should all endeavor to treat each other, perhaps especially those we disagree with, with some degree of respect - even if your sole and only motivation is your own interests.
- nobunaga 2y agoIf a company gets too big, its not the employees fault, why should they be the first on the chopping block? If a government is too big, is it again the employees fault? Or is it someone elses? The concept that some dude with more money than another can make screwups, then happily go off and impact thousands of lives thinking this is the way forward with no impact on them is utterly mind boggling. Similarly, we, the people who pay the salaries of government employees, are the ones who are at fault for voting in people who keep making mistakes. So why should the employees be suffering for this? Do people not realise all of this is a smoke screen to push attention away from the conversation that existed to tax billionaires? To make them pay their fair share? This has all been nothing but an act to divert attention away. And its working. We are arguing about nothing when the solution is so obvious. The people that should suffer are the ones in control. Not the ones who just want to live day to day.
- ThinkBeat 2y agoGetting bureaucrats to fire each other is met with every delay tactic possible. Might be able to put it off for two years which is all they need. Going in crazy like they are doing now, may serve the administration if they start having department do their own layoffs in a hurry, because they know otherwise it will be done for then.
- bloomingkales 2y ago[flagged]
- derangedHorse 2y ago> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jimnotgym 2y agoDid it work? Is Twitter profitable now?
- dralley 2y agoNo.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoMaybe? They went private so that's not a good sign usually. There's more of a surge on wall street, but similar to tesla a lot of this is upheld by an undeserved hype. If Elon Musk died, I suspect these valuations would plummet harder than '29. TSLA is informally called a meme stock for a reason.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoMakes sense. And isn't this the ol' military trick, that in software dev / project management parlance is now called a "scream test"? I.e. if your unit feels like it's doing nothing but endlessly filling out all kinds of reports, and no one knows which ones are important, the solution is to stop submitting any reports at all - and wait until calls and angry letters from higher-ups begin. That will quickly reveal which reports you need to keep filing, and which you can ignore.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- TheJoeMan 2y agoThe Scream test is very valuable for time efficiency, in general. In this application though, I think they’re realizing sometimes it’s difficult to reverse, such as firing the new blood who just moved to DC and have been there only a year… like I would feel so abused, why go back?
- cloverich 2y agoIf they tell you it was a scream test, and it turns out your team was actually pretty important and also gives you a raise, you might. Especially if you have nothing else lined up.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoAnd especially if you're not a tech worker, so you can't exactly chill out and wait for a better gig to fall on your lap. (Though recently, even in tech changing jobs is much more precarious than it ever was.)
- johnnyanmac 2y agoYeah that's the thing, the government can't unilaterally give raises like that. reason #20 this was a horrible move. >Especially if you have nothing else lined up. Sadly, yes. I do find the irony here that the FEDS said the economy was recovering and Trump promised to fix inflation and make jobs. Then he's taking advantsge of the bad market to force people he abused back.
- msie 2y agoYes, using this tactic in the govt is much riskier than a private company. And we won't know in this case if it "works" until after many months. And then deciding whether it "works" is very subjective depending on whether the collateral damage on human lives is acceptable or not.
- mesk 2y agoYes, and the personnel rapidly identified that their new boss is a jerk that has no respect to their work and their life, so why should they work for him, when any boss in random fastfood is probably more capable to their job better that this one idiot, plus private sector pays more...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- samus 2y agoThat's like popping your tires to figure out that you need them for driving, and then discovering there is only one spare in the trunk.
- riffraff 2y agoValid point, but Twitter's development post acquisition stalled and the company was massively devalued, so I'm not sure that can be considered a positive case.
- bigbaguette 2y agoThe point was never to turn it into a profitable venture, but to acquire a widely adopted and established communication channel, turn it into an echo chamber and make it run with the least cost possible. It became what was expected of it.
- ok123456 2y agoThere's a big difference between a website that shows you posts, and the federal government. Degrade the service of a website, and maybe it loads a little funny; degrade the services of a government and people die.
- vharuck 2y ago>Rapidly identified key personnel without weeks or months of subjective analysis and political posturing by workers and their supervisors. This doesn't make sense to me. The federal government isn't a company making Widget X, where you can gut, tweak, and repair it until you minimize the cost per widget and maximize the number of widgets sold. The government does a lot of things, often in the hopes of results in one or more decades, and there's rarely an easy and immediate way to measure success. For example, the Surgeon General announced tobacco's link with cancer in 1964. It wasn't until the 1990s that smoking rates really started to fall in any significant way. The federal and state governments have spent decades and billions of dollars to reduce smoking rates, and they've been wildly successful. The tax revenue generated by any person-years alive which were won through that effort will never make up for the billions spent. But those people will contribute more to the economic and social life of the US, and the tobacco settlement deterred other companies from causing so much harm.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago"works" implies that they are able to a) find those personnel and b) win them back over. It seems like they shokingly cannot do either. It's also still weird because a lot of the firings focused on probationary workers.Very few would prove themselves in a year, so they did have to defer to key personell in he end to figure out "hey, he needed those people". Except he may not get those worers back. > but the feedback loop for him on these previous experiments has been positive, not negative. Sure, positve for his ego. He didn't care about recovering the supercharger conractors, he didn't care about repairing his adverts' relationships on Twitter and even threatened to sue as if they are obligated to advertise on his plaform. Call me treachorous but I don't think he really cares about making an efficient government. He's just funding his tax cuts.
- adtac 2y agoPeople should read Elon Musk by Walter Issacson. Here's an excerpt from the chapter on his "algorithm": > [Step 2] Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn't delete enough. He thinks this is a feature, not a bug. Is he wrong? I don't think so.
- ackbar03 2y agoI was going to mention this as well. This is pretty standard musk, delete large swaiths of stuff, see what breaks, and put the essential pieces back. It's supposed to be much faster than meticulous planning.
- nobunaga 2y agoYes all with no regard for the impact on people, families and their needs. Lets just make sure to focus on the need of a billionaire to create more wealth. The only reason you think like this is because you think it wont happen to you. Oh boy, I hope it does, then I hope you remember this comment. I so hope the people in here defending this bs end up on the street and impacted like the many innocent people are today. I love hearing the stories of regret from MAGA people, only more to come.
- jimnotgym 2y agoWeb company world 1) Delete a system 2) 404 error 3) add the system back with a simple git command Nuclear world 1) Delete a system 2) Nuclear meltdown causes the abandonment of the Atlantic coast 3) Add the system back over the next 20 years
- TZubiri 2y agoMove fast, break things. Didn't facebook end up changing that? There's some things you can't undo once they break.
- bryanrasmussen 2y agosurely a nuclear arsenal isn't one of those things.
- silisili 2y agoNo agency is going to admit to fraud, which is not totally different than paying employees they didn't need. I'm also not a fan of the fire and rehire method, either. It does feel like more time should have been spent, from an outside agency, watching and deciding. What they're doing now is an old trick, and I'm surprised more people don't tell them to screw off.
- watwut 2y agoYeah, baseless accusations of fraud just to hide own incompetence ...
- Quarrelsome 2y agothe accusations of fraud are probably mirror politics. Given the lack of respect for process its plausible that in 10 or 20 years or whenever we'll find out this government was the most corrupt out of any in the past century.
- prox 2y agoAnd the lack of respect for process breaks trust. Some people might not care about this, but you can’t magically summon trust. It takes years for trust to rebuild. I don’t care which party you are from, you have take into account the other side, if only for that trust reason. Inform them of what you are doing, and your process. This is a public institution build upon the foundation of the Constitution.
- vkou 2y ago> No agency is going to admit to fraud Which is why Congress employs an army of auditors, who audit and report their findings to them. The difference is, they are largely non-partisan appointments, who are expected to actually do their job, instead of rubber-stamping propaganda pieces. Their work can be verified, and there are consequences to them engaging in fraud, and there's a chain of custody for the evidence they find. Which is more than can be said for giving a bunch of politically-appointed teenagers read/write access to every single system in the government... Paired with a blanket immunity from prosecution.
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoVery similar to the story about the Supercharger network. Apparently the boss of the team was told to make layoffs, she did some but not enough to please Musk, so Musk in a face to face meeting demanded she make more. She said they couldn't without affecting delivery. Musk fired her. Then fired the team. Then hired the team back because she was correct. But not before lots of ongoing projects got stalled because contacts just disappeared and stopped answering phones. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/inside-story-elon-musks-mass-firings-tesla-supercharger-staff-2024-05-15/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/inside... > The meeting could not have gone worse. Musk, the employees said, was not pleased with Tinucci’s presentation and wanted more layoffs. When she balked, saying deeper cuts would undermine charging-business fundamentals, he responded by firing her and her entire 500-member team. and > The contractor said he had expected Supercharger projects to provide about 20% of his 2024 revenue but now plans to diversify to avoid relying on Tesla.
- anon7000 2y agoWhy people think it’s a good idea to put this wealthy dickwad in charge of one of the most (allegedly) important projects in the current admin is beyond me. Move fast and break things is a stupid policy to apply to public policy.
- scarab92 2y ago[flagged]
- CogitoCogito 2y agoWhat do you mean when you say "it's an effective strategy"? It's hard to say for certain since Twitter is now private, but it certainly seems to have lost value since Musk took over. What would "work in the public sector" entail for you?
- ty6853 2y agoThe value wasn't lost, it was consumed. You're looking at what it was consumed to achieve, in the election results.
- timewizard 2y ago> fired people who had credentials I agree. Federal credential management and safekeeping is not particularly well crafted.
- NicoJuicy 2y agoIt's to let people fear that they could lose their job, so they won't speak up.
- belter 2y agoExpect this story to be flagged soon... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43061481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43061481
- 2-3-7-43-1807 2y agoi don't see how this is (technically) related to the twitter layoffs - and even less how it could be "literally" given that the twitter layoffs where about LAYOFFS and this news item is about reHIRING ... or are you maybe a little challenged with language and what you actually want to say is that in both cases Elon Musk is involved?
- krapp 2y agohttps://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/96439 https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/96439
- throw0101d 2y ago> Everything else aside why repeat the same mistakes? "Move fast and break things." /s Then try to move fast to fix the things you just broke. (Perhaps government tend to moves slowly for a reason: when a company breaks things customers can go to a competitor, when government breaks where can you go?)
- thisisnotauser 2y agoAlmost all government employees are necessary.
- rsanek 2y ago> Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized. more guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- gdhkgdhkvff 2y agoWhy is that a guideline?
- theli0nheart 2y agoMy bet is that using using all-caps looks like you're yelling, and yelling isn't exactly conducive to effective conversation.
- mschuster91 2y ago> Just go a little slower and give agencies time to compile accurate lists of necessary employees It's not about achieving results primarily, it's a public perception game. Trump and Musk are going for the perception of "they do what they say from day 1" - it doesn't matter if what they plan succeeds at all (and if it's struck down by judges, it's just additional fodder for "un-American judges!!!" propaganda), or if what they do actually has the outcome they promised. The GQP voter base no longer cares about anything but the appearance of "winning", and it's aided by completely off-the-rockers media and influencers.
- cynicalpeace 2y agoIt worked with twitter though. The site did not implode like all the naysayers predicted, it's at least as good, if not better than it was, just going off of usage statistics. This is basically 0 based budgeting, where you get rid of everything and then only add back what you deem to be absolutely necessary. I expect good results.