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Problem is, it’s not backfired - the example you cited “worked”, because it rapidly identified key personnel without weeks or months of subjective analysis and
by PaulRobinson 2y ago
Problem 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.
- ty6853 2y agoCould we privatize the arsenal to increase efficiency?
- johnnyanmac 2y agoIf you're not joking: what private entity would you trust to not start WW3?
- adtac 2y ago> Had they decided to move on Why didn't they?
- sour-taste 2y agoH1B
- adtac 2y agoAll key personnel were immigrants? Why did the others come back? Also, since the H1B were key to operations and therefore smart, couldn't at least some of them have found a new employer? 61% of the H1B population switched jobs that year, so why did all key H1B come back? I think key personnel came back because they wanted to. It's the simplest explanation.
- bigmattystyles 2y agoWith h1b i think you have 60 days to find someone else to sponsor you or you have to leave the country. 60 days is no time at all to find and start a new job. Even if you’re smart.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoEven in the best markets, I still had a 6 week interview to offer stage (5 stages). 45 days and if they decided someone else is better I may be out of luck restarting the process. With a Visa, I would not take such a risk. Given the job market, they either need to extend the period, or somehow mandate companies decide on a full time candidate within 30 days of first conact. It's gotten beyond out of hand.
- Obscurity4340 2y agoWhat a giant scam the whole program is. Corporations need a good finding out phase again
- jimnotgym 2y agoI don't live there, but weren't other tech companies laying off at a similar time?
- kelnos 2y agoRight, but that's all Musk sees: they came back, and so it worked. He seems like the kind of person whose ego would make him believe that any other time he tries this, it would work too.
- 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.