6 ms·

At Twitter

55 points by daigoba66 13y ago

AznHisoka 13y ago
Awesome pictures! (wish I worked there :) How does Twitter view their API? is it treated as a profit center or a cost center? It seems there are lots of companies using it to build Twitter clones, and nobody is paying for it since it's free. And they've been offloading the "hose" to companies to Gnip/Datashift so they can resell the data. Is their API still a top business area for them?
- _stuart 13y ago
  I think Twitter is moving towards advertising with their MoPub acquisition. Twitter has your identity and users have no expectation of privacy (unlike facebook or google), so people think that they have a unique advertising advantage. I think the license restrictions on its firehose partners will become more strict as Twitter realizes it can go vertical and use the data itself to create platforms for social media analytics and advertising.
nawitus 13y ago
>There are no offices at Twitter. Everyone sits out in the open, even the executives, who freely roam about the floors, taking up residence on couches, at long tables, or in the cafeteria. Sounds like a horrible place to work for me. I can't work optimally with people hovering behind me and getting distracted with noises.
- Touche 13y ago
  No kidding, not a chance I would get anything done in such an environment. Also, although well intentioned, that a company serves 3 meals a day, has snacks and recreation, makes me a little fearful that I'm not accepting a job but rather a lifestyle. Hopefully this gets cleared up in the interview process. Because I'm leaving at 5 unless there's a fire to put out.
  - seiji 13y ago
    I'm not accepting a job but rather a lifestyle. It's called over-engineered culture fit. You've failed the culture fit portion of your hiring interview. Please find your own way out. Remember (like, eight years ago) when you could get a job by doing good work and tolerating coworkers for a few hours a day? Now jobs mean you have to do good work, buy in to the koolaid, love your coworkers, and spend time with them before and after work too (or else you're not a "team player" or you're not "fitting in here"). You should definitely not hire people you can't stand, but there's a continuum between "this person has an abhorrent personality" to "no mad skillz pongpinging? NO HIRE!" The startup tech industry is freezing out the leave-me-alone-i'm-working computer person archetype in favor of cheerleader/frat/bro/übersocial/drinkydrinky people. Who are you leaving behind?
    - Touche 13y ago
      The media has brainwashed (very smart) software engineers into believing that working as a programmer in San Francisco is like being a painter in Paris in the 1920s; that for $116,000[1] in one of the costliest cities in the U.S. you should forgo a meaningful personal and family life and instead make it easier for brands to surface their tweets in people's feeds. That having an interesting job and work/life balance are mutually exclusive things. [1]http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Twitter-Software-Engineer-Salaries-E100569_D_KO8,25.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Twitter-Software-Engineer-Sa...
    - thwest 13y ago
      buy in to the koolaid, love your coworkers, and spend time with them before and after work too A nice term for this is Affective Labor.
      - pdenya 13y ago
        That term doesn't seem to fit here >Affective Labor is a term identifying work carried out that is intended to produce or modify emotional experiences in people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affective_labor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affective_labor Seems to imply that the work will be changing the emotional experience of a 3rd party rather than the parties doing the work.
- donretag 13y ago
  Your reaction was identical to mine once I saw the fourth picture of the open layout. I can't imagine having to work so close to others.
- jonnathanson 13y ago
  Agreed. And "just wear headphones" isn't a solution for those of us who'd rather not have to trade one type of background noise for another. My current startup follows the "open floor plan" model epitomized by Twitter. To be honest, it's great when I want to socialize, and pretty terrible when I want to put my head down and concentrate on something. After realizing that I wasn't the only freak/outcast/weirdo who preferred to work in a quiet(er) environment, we implemented a "quiet room" at our office. Basically, we converted a conference room into the equivalent of a library. So far it's working out pretty well. I know offices are pretty much relics of a bygone era at this point, reserved only for the likes of Apple, Cisco, Oracle, and other tech giants who came of age before the 2010s. But there's something to the office that we've lost in its passing. Offices may not be cost efficient, and they may not inspire "collaboration" or foster "culture." But it's nice to have a place to go to get shit done. [For the record, I suffer from a condition known as misophonia, which is sort of like a hypersensitivity to certain sounds. I have exceptional hearing, but I can't tune out background noises the way most people can. For those of you who've seen the new Superman movie: those scenes in which Clark Kent suffered from all the background noises involved in "super hearing" really hit home with me. I know I'm not alone here, but unfortunately, people like me are kind of screwed in the new workplace paradigm.]
  - mccolin 13y ago
    As a fellow misophonia sufferer and veteran of a few open floor plan startups, I feel your pain. The quiet room sounds like a good offering on your company/team's part to strike a balance between open/collaborative workspace and quiet/get-shit-done space. Glad you have that option!
    - jonnathanson 13y ago
      Thanks! And yeah, I'm pretty lucky we created that option. And it's only because I wasn't the only person annoyed with what was starting to feel like working in a high school cafeteria. Had I been the only one, I'm sure I would have gotten some variation on "Just wear some headphones," or "I don't hear anything," or "That's weird," etc., which is basically what I've been told my whole life. :)
- RogerL 13y ago
  Yes, I would really like to hear from people that program in this type of environment. It strikes me as a madhouse. On the other hand, I have worked in labs on things like embedded computers, and sometimes having a lot of people around really helped you zero in on a difficult problem consisting of code touching more modules than one mind could ever keep track of. But by and large it is pretty tiring, and extremely hard to do anything that does not require constant communication. I don't know - when I viewed those pictures I just got the sense of slaves or prisoners, shackled in their galley^H^H^H^H^H^H workstation, looking longingly out windows to the outside world, etc. I recognize I am just looking at a few photos and my impression is likely to be completely wrong.
- Thereasione 13y ago
  For me the biggest problem wouldn't be noise and distraction, but the lack of privacy.
  - hnriot 13y ago
    for what exactly? What are you doing at work that needs privacy?
    - blah32497 13y ago
      Well whenever you take a break from coding you would know that everyone around you knows you are not working. This can be needlessly stressful and would probably lead to people overworking themselves and burning out.
      - hnriot 13y ago
        this is ridiculous, unless your co-workers are a really immature bunch they would be doing exactly the same things, taking breaks, reading news, etc.
        blah32497 13y ago
        no no, it's not an issue of people actually caring how much you work. I agree that people aren't going to call you out or tell you to work more. It's more of a self-consciousness about taking breaks. People are much harder on themselves than they should be. We try to project an image that we are hardworking and that we don't waste any time at work. If people were always looking over my shoulder I wouldn't be comfortable having HN open in a window/screen for half the day
    - Domenic_S 13y ago
      Really? You never log into your bank's website to take care of something? Or pull up your personal email, or read a sleazy blog once in a while?
      - 13y ago
AliEzer 13y ago
"Grow our business in a way that makes us proud" - Executives and Shareholders.
- AznHisoka 13y ago
  HA... "Hey boss, I finished a feature that will allow Syrians to go to Twitter and voice their displeasure!". Boss: "Does it increase revenue?", You: "No.. it might increase traffic costs a bit though. But think about what this will do for democracy, human rights and freedom! doesn't that make you proud?" Boss: "You crazy"
  - jamesaguilar 13y ago
    Ignoring the fact that Twitter has been very helpful to dissidents in a number of places in favor of cheap cynicism. Not cool.
    - AznHisoka 13y ago
      Easy for you to not to be cynical on a Monday morning. You work at Google. I work at a dead end, boring job :(
      - jamesaguilar 13y ago
        Sorry for your troubles, but they don't excuse being a jerk.
        AznHisoka 13y ago
        Being a jerk = taking a seat away from an old lady. Making a cynical remark = just the internet.
  - rcoder 13y ago
    Having been a part of similar conversations to this at Twitter, I can say with complete confidence that you are wrong. The "...in a way that makes us proud" part of that company value is taken very, very seriously.
bnycum 13y ago
Not to sound stupid, but this question has been on my mind. Why does Twitter have so many employees? Wikipedia says it's 900+ as of last year. Instagram had 13 when being bought out by Facebook, I think I read recently they are up to 50. I'm kind of a small town guy, with the 2 biggest software shops in town being ~50-60ish people that are WAY established compared to Twitter or Instagram. It's never made sense to me why they are so large. But they have cool offices, and seems like a place I would want to work.
- Einherji 13y ago
  I've been thinking this too. Would love to know what they do all day?
  - teddyh 13y ago
    Data analysis, maybe?
- goblinfoblin 13y ago
  I don't think you can compare a software shop to one of the most used websites globally that has become recognized by major media. I don't know why they need 900+ employees though, there are probably good reasons for it.
  - bnycum 13y ago
    Well I used the term software shop loosely. Both are fairly large in their reach nationally. The one I worked at did hosting in the building as well. No more than half a dozen on the IT staff, hosting hundreds of clients who had numerous employees. Obviously no millions, but they had what I would say is a lot more complicated product.
- Touche 13y ago
  Probably sales people. Twitter is an advertising/media company after all.
- citricsquid 13y ago
chrisgd 13y ago
Great article, I appreciate you sharing. I don't want to sound presumptious, but sometimes in articles like these where we are looking back at our original thoughts on something, they can be clouded by our current beliefs. I really am struck by this line: "But I went home that day and realized that Twitter, and the ensuing social media explosion, would dramatically alter the landscape of not only what I do through my blog, but design, fashion, lifestyle, culture, everything. I later voiced my concern to our staff meeting, but no one else seemed to think Twitter an issue." But when you click on the link about Twitter from 2007, there is one line about it. There isn't much point to my comment besides, I wish the author had written more about how Twitter was going to change things in the past.
qdpb 13y ago
> I went home that day and realized that Twitter, and the ensuing social media explosion, would dramatically alter the landscape of not only what I do through my blog, but design, fashion, lifestyle, culture, everything. Sounds about right.
scottmcleod 13y ago
I had to double take that Bobby Hundreds was on Hackernews..My worlds have merged.

55 points by daigoba66 13y ago

Awesome pictures! (wish I worked there :) How does Twitter view their API? is it treated as a profit center or a cost center? It seems there are lots of companies using it to build Twitter clones, and nobody is paying for it since it's free. And they've been offloading the "hose" to companies to Gnip/Datashift so they can resell the data. Is their API still a top business area for them?

_stuart 13y ago
I think Twitter is moving towards advertising with their MoPub acquisition. Twitter has your identity and users have no expectation of privacy (unlike facebook or google), so people think that they have a unique advertising advantage. I think the license restrictions on its firehose partners will become more strict as Twitter realizes it can go vertical and use the data itself to create platforms for social media analytics and advertising.

nawitus 13y ago

>There are no offices at Twitter. Everyone sits out in the open, even the executives, who freely roam about the floors, taking up residence on couches, at long tables, or in the cafeteria. Sounds like a horrible place to work for me. I can't work optimally with people hovering behind me and getting distracted with noises.

Touche 13y ago
No kidding, not a chance I would get anything done in such an environment. Also, although well intentioned, that a company serves 3 meals a day, has snacks and recreation, makes me a little fearful that I'm not accepting a job but rather a lifestyle. Hopefully this gets cleared up in the interview process. Because I'm leaving at 5 unless there's a fire to put out.
- seiji 13y ago
  I'm not accepting a job but rather a lifestyle. It's called over-engineered culture fit. You've failed the culture fit portion of your hiring interview. Please find your own way out. Remember (like, eight years ago) when you could get a job by doing good work and tolerating coworkers for a few hours a day? Now jobs mean you have to do good work, buy in to the koolaid, love your coworkers, and spend time with them before and after work too (or else you're not a "team player" or you're not "fitting in here"). You should definitely not hire people you can't stand, but there's a continuum between "this person has an abhorrent personality" to "no mad skillz pongpinging? NO HIRE!" The startup tech industry is freezing out the leave-me-alone-i'm-working computer person archetype in favor of cheerleader/frat/bro/übersocial/drinkydrinky people. Who are you leaving behind?
  - Touche 13y ago
    The media has brainwashed (very smart) software engineers into believing that working as a programmer in San Francisco is like being a painter in Paris in the 1920s; that for $116,000[1] in one of the costliest cities in the U.S. you should forgo a meaningful personal and family life and instead make it easier for brands to surface their tweets in people's feeds. That having an interesting job and work/life balance are mutually exclusive things. [1]http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Twitter-Software-Engineer-Salaries-E100569_D_KO8,25.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Twitter-Software-Engineer-Sa...
  - thwest 13y ago
    buy in to the koolaid, love your coworkers, and spend time with them before and after work too A nice term for this is Affective Labor.
    - pdenya 13y ago
      That term doesn't seem to fit here >Affective Labor is a term identifying work carried out that is intended to produce or modify emotional experiences in people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affective_labor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affective_labor Seems to imply that the work will be changing the emotional experience of a 3rd party rather than the parties doing the work.
donretag 13y ago
Your reaction was identical to mine once I saw the fourth picture of the open layout. I can't imagine having to work so close to others.
jonnathanson 13y ago
Agreed. And "just wear headphones" isn't a solution for those of us who'd rather not have to trade one type of background noise for another. My current startup follows the "open floor plan" model epitomized by Twitter. To be honest, it's great when I want to socialize, and pretty terrible when I want to put my head down and concentrate on something. After realizing that I wasn't the only freak/outcast/weirdo who preferred to work in a quiet(er) environment, we implemented a "quiet room" at our office. Basically, we converted a conference room into the equivalent of a library. So far it's working out pretty well. I know offices are pretty much relics of a bygone era at this point, reserved only for the likes of Apple, Cisco, Oracle, and other tech giants who came of age before the 2010s. But there's something to the office that we've lost in its passing. Offices may not be cost efficient, and they may not inspire "collaboration" or foster "culture." But it's nice to have a place to go to get shit done. [For the record, I suffer from a condition known as misophonia, which is sort of like a hypersensitivity to certain sounds. I have exceptional hearing, but I can't tune out background noises the way most people can. For those of you who've seen the new Superman movie: those scenes in which Clark Kent suffered from all the background noises involved in "super hearing" really hit home with me. I know I'm not alone here, but unfortunately, people like me are kind of screwed in the new workplace paradigm.]
- mccolin 13y ago
  As a fellow misophonia sufferer and veteran of a few open floor plan startups, I feel your pain. The quiet room sounds like a good offering on your company/team's part to strike a balance between open/collaborative workspace and quiet/get-shit-done space. Glad you have that option!
  - jonnathanson 13y ago
    Thanks! And yeah, I'm pretty lucky we created that option. And it's only because I wasn't the only person annoyed with what was starting to feel like working in a high school cafeteria. Had I been the only one, I'm sure I would have gotten some variation on "Just wear some headphones," or "I don't hear anything," or "That's weird," etc., which is basically what I've been told my whole life. :)
RogerL 13y ago
Yes, I would really like to hear from people that program in this type of environment. It strikes me as a madhouse. On the other hand, I have worked in labs on things like embedded computers, and sometimes having a lot of people around really helped you zero in on a difficult problem consisting of code touching more modules than one mind could ever keep track of. But by and large it is pretty tiring, and extremely hard to do anything that does not require constant communication. I don't know - when I viewed those pictures I just got the sense of slaves or prisoners, shackled in their galley^H^H^H^H^H^H workstation, looking longingly out windows to the outside world, etc. I recognize I am just looking at a few photos and my impression is likely to be completely wrong.
Thereasione 13y ago
For me the biggest problem wouldn't be noise and distraction, but the lack of privacy.
- hnriot 13y ago
  for what exactly? What are you doing at work that needs privacy?
  - blah32497 13y ago
    Well whenever you take a break from coding you would know that everyone around you knows you are not working. This can be needlessly stressful and would probably lead to people overworking themselves and burning out.
    - hnriot 13y ago
      this is ridiculous, unless your co-workers are a really immature bunch they would be doing exactly the same things, taking breaks, reading news, etc.
      - blah32497 13y ago
        no no, it's not an issue of people actually caring how much you work. I agree that people aren't going to call you out or tell you to work more. It's more of a self-consciousness about taking breaks. People are much harder on themselves than they should be. We try to project an image that we are hardworking and that we don't waste any time at work. If people were always looking over my shoulder I wouldn't be comfortable having HN open in a window/screen for half the day
  - Domenic_S 13y ago
    Really? You never log into your bank's website to take care of something? Or pull up your personal email, or read a sleazy blog once in a while?
    - 13y ago

AliEzer 13y ago

"Grow our business in a way that makes us proud" - Executives and Shareholders.

AznHisoka 13y ago
HA... "Hey boss, I finished a feature that will allow Syrians to go to Twitter and voice their displeasure!". Boss: "Does it increase revenue?", You: "No.. it might increase traffic costs a bit though. But think about what this will do for democracy, human rights and freedom! doesn't that make you proud?" Boss: "You crazy"
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  Ignoring the fact that Twitter has been very helpful to dissidents in a number of places in favor of cheap cynicism. Not cool.
  - AznHisoka 13y ago
    Easy for you to not to be cynical on a Monday morning. You work at Google. I work at a dead end, boring job :(
    - jamesaguilar 13y ago
      Sorry for your troubles, but they don't excuse being a jerk.
      - AznHisoka 13y ago
        Being a jerk = taking a seat away from an old lady. Making a cynical remark = just the internet.
- rcoder 13y ago
  Having been a part of similar conversations to this at Twitter, I can say with complete confidence that you are wrong. The "...in a way that makes us proud" part of that company value is taken very, very seriously.

bnycum 13y ago

Not to sound stupid, but this question has been on my mind. Why does Twitter have so many employees? Wikipedia says it's 900+ as of last year. Instagram had 13 when being bought out by Facebook, I think I read recently they are up to 50. I'm kind of a small town guy, with the 2 biggest software shops in town being ~50-60ish people that are WAY established compared to Twitter or Instagram. It's never made sense to me why they are so large. But they have cool offices, and seems like a place I would want to work.

Einherji 13y ago
I've been thinking this too. Would love to know what they do all day?
- teddyh 13y ago
  Data analysis, maybe?
goblinfoblin 13y ago
I don't think you can compare a software shop to one of the most used websites globally that has become recognized by major media. I don't know why they need 900+ employees though, there are probably good reasons for it.
- bnycum 13y ago
  Well I used the term software shop loosely. Both are fairly large in their reach nationally. The one I worked at did hosting in the building as well. No more than half a dozen on the IT staff, hosting hundreds of clients who had numerous employees. Obviously no millions, but they had what I would say is a lot more complicated product.
Touche 13y ago
Probably sales people. Twitter is an advertising/media company after all.
citricsquid 13y ago

chrisgd 13y ago

Great article, I appreciate you sharing. I don't want to sound presumptious, but sometimes in articles like these where we are looking back at our original thoughts on something, they can be clouded by our current beliefs. I really am struck by this line: "But I went home that day and realized that Twitter, and the ensuing social media explosion, would dramatically alter the landscape of not only what I do through my blog, but design, fashion, lifestyle, culture, everything. I later voiced my concern to our staff meeting, but no one else seemed to think Twitter an issue." But when you click on the link about Twitter from 2007, there is one line about it. There isn't much point to my comment besides, I wish the author had written more about how Twitter was going to change things in the past.

qdpb 13y ago

> I went home that day and realized that Twitter, and the ensuing social media explosion, would dramatically alter the landscape of not only what I do through my blog, but design, fashion, lifestyle, culture, everything. Sounds about right.

scottmcleod 13y ago

I had to double take that Bobby Hundreds was on Hackernews..My worlds have merged.