Nobody_Important
āAww, itās so...average,ā she said to him in a cold brick of passion
K.
You keep going after me instead of my point so that kinda tells me where you are at as well.
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You keep going after me instead of my point so that kinda tells me where you are at as well.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
You are not a victim.K.
You keep going after me instead of my point so that kinda tells me where you are at as well.
Nobody_Important
āAww, itās so...average,ā she said to him in a cold brick of passion
Was stating a fact. Do with it what you will.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
As was I.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
I love it too. I dont even like Musk's products. I hate EV cars, space exploration is such a money pit, hyperloop looked like a dream waste of money. I dont even have a Twitter account. Although I got to admit, Teslas did take off. I thought that was going to disappear when they were losing shitloads of money churning out 5000 cars per quarter years back and the stock was $100 presplit. Some people like me thought they'd go belly up before it ramped up to critical mass, but Musk proved us wrong.
The trolling is such as good tit for tat thing because if techies love to rag on Musk, then hey, he'll do it back. Musk will shame people when he thinks it's worth doing and fun. There were times he ragged on Tesla too (I remember things about working long hours or coming to the office or get lost). So he'll do it to his own Tesla as well. I never saw him rag on Hyperloop or Space X or Starlink people. So maybe those guys are doing a good job.
Maybe it just comes down to Musk being a hardcore workaholic and he wants others to do the same. Like it or leave. He even boasts he stays over and sleep on site. He totally said this during the Tesla ramp up days. And how many regular employees are going to do that? Hardly any (if any) Who knows. He might be telling the truth. Maybe he's lying and stays at a nearby 5 star hotel and only pretends to sleep at the office. I dont know. But he doesn't seem like a BS exec golfing all day. He just seems like a loud in your face boss who expects a lot out of employees. And lets face it, I dont think the typical Tesla or Twitter workers gets paid dirt cheap. Work hard, play hard.
The biggest thing to prove whether Musk is right or wrong about Twitter is he gassed 50% of people. Now it turns out he hired some back. WHo knows how many he rehired. But there's zero chance he hired them all back.
Give it a year. If it turns out Twitter is humming along fine and makes profits despite going down from 7500 to lets say 4500 employees, it'll show he was right the whole time. Loud and tactless? Yes. Business wise cutting the fat? Yes.
Jack Dorsey even said he hired too fast. But he did nothing about it. Musk is as new owner.
If it turns out Twitter sinks to the bottom of the ocean much worse than it was previously doing for 10+ years, then Musk will be wrong.
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NickFire
Member
I'm not about to call his approach perfect by any stretch. But the above is something I can definitely understand in this case. It's just telling people (still there) that the workplace culture is changing and you can take severance if you aren't going to be a team player. That lets the employee know the new expectations while giving them 3 months of pay if they don't feel the expectations are for them. So it's fair warning, and even generous (IMO) to the employees who aren't willing to get on board with new expectations. And on the company's end it probably protects them legally with some employment laws. Even if it does not, the big win is knowing that the people still there understand the new expectations are are saying that they are willing to get on board by declining severance. There will be some outliers who refuse to get on board but don't quit because they are afraid of not finding a new job, but by and large its fair to everyone.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
The 3 month lead time is insane. Most people getting fired get no warning. Walk in one day to the office, manager calls you in for a 9 am meeting. HR person might be there too. Get handed a letter you're gone. If you're lucky they give you 10 minutes to clean out your desk and take home any valuables and family pics. Out you go. If they are hard asses, they escort you out the door with a guard. If they are chill, you let yourself out. If you company items at home bring them back. No point trying to sabotage the company because IT will already lock you out of your laptop.
I got a 3 month lead time too when fired. But they added a bonus kicker at the end if I stuck around...... to train my new grad cheap replacement! I didnt go apeshit. I had to go to the office every day too to still work.
My dad and brother way back go fired the traditional way (my first paragraph).
(Edit: If you're lucky, you do get a warning.... If your boss emails you after dinner saying he needs you to meet you at 9 am in person, thats your heads up you might be fired tomorrow morning)
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SJRB
Gold Member
Turns out all this drama about "disabling bloatware is a catastrophic mistake that'll wreck Twitter" wasn't such a big deal after all.
Almost seems like Elon isn't completely clueless and some of these devs do tend to overdramatize and overcomplicate their work for clout?
I'm definitely noticing a trend with all these vocal [and fired] employees that they're all acting like their work is the most complicated hyper intellectual stuff imaginable as if everyone fired from Twitter is some Mensa-level galaxy brain IQ.
A resource for keeping up with this.
Twitter is Going Great!
Twitter is Going Great is a project inspired by Web3 is Going Just Great to track the latest examples of how Twitter is actively falling to pieces thanks to its current owner Elon Musk (with special guests Jack Dorsey and the Saudi Arabian royal family).twitterisgoinggreat.com
Thanks. Got this article from it just now.
Elon's paranoid purge
Q&A with Twitter engineer Eric Frohnhoefer, fired for correcting Elon Musk
www.platformer.news
The firings were jarring in part because they represented such a sharp departure from the Twitter of old. Under Jack Dorseyās leadership, Twitter tolerated criticism to a fault ā at times paralyzing the company. But under the mantra ācommunicate fearlessly to build trust,ā employees posted candid feedback and even criticism of their bosses under the expectation that it would be received as constructive.
Moreover, the company is still at least nominally operating under the code of conduct that it had before Musk took over. That policy does not prohibit employees from criticizing company leadership, sources said. And so some of those fired on Tuesday said they had been fired for violating a āmystery policyā that no one had been aware of until today.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
There's always fear mongering especially in techie stuff because 99% of people dont understand how it works. If someone said every car should reduce parts by 80%, a car is something physical. The average person and the millions of car mechanics will say that's a BS statement. The car wont work.
It's like when 2000 rolled around and every device with a clock in it will break down and crash because programs werent designed to handle year 2000 roll over. I didn't experience one hiccup. And it's not like every piece of software in the world got reprogrammed before 2000 hit. So it goes to show even the programmers didn't even knolw whats going on with the electronics they programmed themselves. Stuff still worked.
There's always room for improvement. I make shitloads of spreadsheets including super big complicated ones. If I had the time, I could sit there and streamline it more and make it better looking. I know there's some junk in there. But I dont. Not because I cant, but because I got other shit to work on where no boss is going to say keep hammering at that old spreadsheet till it's 100% efficient with the least amount of useless formulas in it. Nobody cares. Ive moved on. But if Musk is asking for reworking code because he says you got the greenlight to go in and adjust it better, I'm sure some shit can be tweaked to make it better.
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akimbo009
Gold Member
Your spreadsheet sheets also aren't needed to run services.... So there's that too - as in - shit doesn't break cause they are ugly.
And even though Musk's stupid graphs aren't meaningful for the story he was trying to tell, even the 1% growth was 2M additional DAU over 3 months. That's a lot more scaling required. That could be as easy as adding more server capacity or the need to refactor code across a number of systems to be more efficient. It's a constant effort of operations and building but you can't stop the car when replacing the tires.
So it's not really fear mongering, it's just facts.
Maiden Voyage
Goldā¢ Member
Musk wants to weed out the mediocre. Is he going to lose a lot of talent? Yes. But he's going to gain workhorses who are loyal to a fault. He knows exactly what he's doing here.
It makes sense to cut headcount and costs. There's been no noticeable hit to the user base, so obviously the threat of people leaving is now a called bluff. He's operating under lower overhead to buy time to find ways to make Twitter profitable while being streamlined. $8/month isn't going to cut it long term, but it will help in the interim. He really needs to get creative on how to monetize the user base or the whole thing will collapse.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Musk is chopping fast. It's his way of doing shit (not surprising).
But I dont think some people know that many big companies have mandatory firings. Even if the company is super profitable, every one is super chill and a great guy, and they all seem to be doing a good job it doesn't matter.
Some companies (including ones I worked at in the past), rate employees every year based on performance. There's always some kind of algorithm the VPs and directors know about and no matter what some people get banished to the 1 star box a shitload in the 2-4 box, and a small number in the 5 star box.
If you're a 1 star dude, youre either fired or put on probation with training. Chances are good he'll be gone or leave for another job.
It's the company's way of perpetually weeding out the bottom performers while looking to replace them with someone better (or nobody at all).
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
To put things into perspective in the tech world, Facebook let go 11,000 employees recently.
Maiden Voyage
Goldā¢ Member
Yeah this is how my company works. We avoid layoffs by just never replacing vacant positions. In fact, I learned just yesterday that my portfolio is expanding to the entirety of north america because the previous guy left. No mention of increased wages either, while we are having record profits. It's the unfortunate reality in big business.
gaming_again
Member
Elon is chadding out hard and making utter fools of the entire expert class. Fuggen lol.
a multicultural team of v
Member
the idea that elon has no idea how to put a world class team of engineers together has to be one of the dumbest takes i have ever heard.
gaming_again
Member
The first few pages of this thread are hilarious.
IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
Or he's full of shit and they didn't actually shut down 80% of their microservices.
To be honest, I don't feel bad in the slightest that some of these people are being let go because they are "criticizing" Musk. There's a difference between privately discussing matters with him to see if he'd like to communicate something that they feel is more accurate, versus being a condescending attention-whore who needs to publicly post "LOOK AT ME I DID THIS, MUSK IS WRONG, LOOK AT HOW WRONG HE IS (DESPITE ME HAVING NO EVIDENCE TO MY CLAIMS EITHER) IM SO SMART AND IMPORTANT". Regardless of whatever job policies are in place that'd get you fired anywhere. That's called being a jackass. Musk has his ego too but he is the boss so ultimately the smartest thing to do would just to be an adult and respect it.
Unfortunately we live in times now where everybody thinks they are the star of their own movie, so of course they need to have the last word and sound like the smartest person in the room. The hiring/firing shit is really Jack Dorsey's fault, when he admitted guilt that should have taken pretty much all of the heat from Musk. Dorsey staffed Twitter horrendously and now these employees are paying the price because it turns out many of these positions are likely not that important. Its just the way the world rolls.
I dont know why people are focusing so much on this when both Amazon and Facebook are laying off a metric-fuckton of people too. The economy is in the shitter so it only makes sense, Elon just has the added spice of being the new boss.
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DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Got to love the media headlines though.
Elon Musk tells Twitter staff to work long hours or leave
Elon Musk says workers at the social media firm must be "hardcore" if they want to stay, reports say.
www.bbc.com
If those already fired were the world class engineers for that team, who were fired only after going through business communications because they spoke mean Elon in an attempt to keep those that idolize him might not work out. There's no certainty and it might look good if he wants mooks to cover his ass. Then engineering isn't the highest qualification, but loyalty - the authoritarian's downfall. It also consolidates all those people in one place which might present business vulnerabilities. The main things keeping twitter together is inertia(moving a lot of accounts and browsing habits) and there still isn't an attractive viable alternative. Musk putting Twitter behind a paywall in a sudden move for money might do the trick to make some of the less attractive ones gather momentum.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Some of you are looking way too hard to find things.
IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
Elon saddled the company with $13 billion in debt the day he bought the company, because of leverage buyout loans. There is no reason to think Twitter would have had any mass layoffs w/o Elon taking over He CREATED their dire financial scenario with the purchase itself. Twitter was a company with positive cashflow and a year and a half worth of revenue in cash before he took over.
He also is just constantly insulting the work of the employees of the company he just bought. While I tend to be on the side of "don't be an idiot and insult your boss" I can somewhat understand it in this scenario where your brand new boss just instantly is crapping all over the codebase of the site. Not to mention instantly forcing people to work over weekends and all the other absolute nonsense he's throw their way.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Fair enough.
However FB/Meta makes $20 billion profit per year, yet still laid off over 10,000 people. Havent seen much of anything about it.
Twitter before Musk has been around for 15 years and barely made money. Some years they still lose money even to this day. Despite huge users, the company some reason has issues making money when Zuck's Meta makes $20 billion, and that's even with him losing billions a year into VR goggles division.
ReBurn
Gold Member
To be honest nobody in a technology field should have felt that way about Twitter before Elon's management, either. I'm sure that there was some cool work happening, but it wasn't ever technology that was going to change the world. Twitter the company was heavily Influencing social discourse, but the tech stack driving it was just a means to that end and could have been done by half a dozen open source technologies.
Where I think Musk is struggling in regard to Twitter is that he's used to driving technology solutions that result in things that people can touch. Twitter as a concept is much more esoteric than "build a battery powered car" or "build a rocket that can land itself" or "build a robot that can do brain surgery." Telling some smart people to "make a digital platform where people can interact without censorship or overbearing content moderation" is a thing that can be done. Getting humans to set aside differences and use the platform to discuss their differences and grievances with each other in a civil way is not something Musk can will into existence with the power of technology.
a multicultural team of v
Member
Even if Elon's number 1 requirement for an engineer is loyalty then apparently that is a very, very good skill to have given the previous accomplishments of engineers Elon has hired. He should probably continue hiring the way he has always hired because in 16 years SpaceX did this:
And in 16 years Twitter has done this:
Edit: and remember, Elon also forced out Tesla's original founder back in 2007 as well.
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Nobody_Important
āAww, itās so...average,ā she said to him in a cold brick of passion
Well that didn't take long 
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Well that didn't take long
Did you expect the rocket man to stay there full time like a Zuckerbot or Dorsey? I didn't. I expected an initial shakeup and vision to be set, and let someone else run the show as you return back to providing internet to the 9 celestial bodies.
Not like he doesn't have plenty of things on his plate.
RoadHazard
Gold Member
Living and working in America seems like it can really suck if you're not one of the people in charge. In Sweden you by law have one month of "termination time" if you've been at the company for less than 2 years, two months if you've been there 2-4 years, 3 months for 4-6 years, etc, up to a maximum of 6 months if you've been there 10 years or more. This can be changed in union agreements or individual employment contracts, typically for the better for the employee.
You also can't be let go just because the employer feels like it or whatever, there has to be a valid reason (such as bad behavior, lack of work, etc).
I understand not all countries have this model, but the way you can be arbitrarily fired and asked to leave immediately in America seems crazy to me.
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Twitter was never really that financially strong, it was on borrowed time even before the buyout. The financial scenario would have came eventually with or without Musk, especially given tech companies in general right now are going through some thorough layoffs.
Also, a boss kicking a team's shit in for poor work is absolutely nothing new. Its pretty notoriously known that a lot of silicon valley companies have an extremely lax work ethic, so if anything it serves as a wake-up call to what most other industries have had normally for centuries. Forcing people to work over weekends over shit work is extremely common in most other sectors (I'm an accountant so I would know lol), just like crapping all over poor work. Also, these higher ups will do it in front of clients or public seminars, so its not like Musk doing this on Twitter is that different. Only difference is that one is on a computer screen and the other will be in front of a crowded room or stage.
Again, people just lack the maturity to understand that regardless of how crappy a boss may seem, it doesn't make it any more right or justified to just snap back like a child. You either fix your shit, calmly talk afterwards in a respectful manner, or you just leave the company. Completely burning bridges by being passive-aggressive or condescending back is the most immature way to accomplish anything. There really is no defense, people have just gotten more childish to believe behavior like that is acceptable. Whether you like Musk or not, it was only a matter of time before someone else would come in and not be nearly as leanient in leadership. They ultimately had it very lucky compared to most other large businesses.
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While US law does allow for at-will firing, unions serve almost exactly the same role in the US. You can be effectively protected by a union, its really not that much different.
RoadHazard
Gold Member
Yeah, but unions aren't nearly as strong in the US I think? Here in Sweden it's more or less a given that every workplace (except for very small ones) has a union agreement in place.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Canada and US are pretty similar (I think). You can get fired at any time. Ya, as you said maybe some union agreements pre-empt it), but assuming youre a non-union worker, you can get zero lead time. No reason is needed.
The severance you get legally by the government policy is actually small. In Canada, I think it's shit like 1 week per year of service. But companies may top you up well. There's some kind of stuff where the payment you get pends on how much you make, how hard it is to get a replacement job, how many years etc..... I dont know. But labour lawyers will fight for you to get a pay out. All I know is for my kind of job (and peers who Ive know forever in similar jobs) if I get fired I'll get about 1 month pay out per year of service. But it tops out at a limit companies offer. Typically I've seen 30 year tenure people capping out at maybe 12-18 months. None of them had been offered 30 months severance.
Typically you get paid more if it's last minute firing, no cause for dismissal, and the above I wrote.
Take all that shit and mix it in a bowl and that's the payout.
IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
And that's all having to do with Zuck tanking the value of the stock, which is based on expectations and the future, not purely profit.
Twitter is just not that big of a company, and had never set expectations that they would suddenly be profiting massively, or that they created a new side business that would be massively profitably by now and renamed their entire company after it (META lol).
The bottom line is we don't know what their position would be w/o Musk, as the buyout was announced before an economic decline, and that buyout announcement pretty much set in stone that the stock price would be a function of that buyout, not the companies performance.. But there's zero reason to think half the company would be laid off. 10-15% like a lot of SF area tech companies? Sure.. maybe? It's hard to say.. Twitter isn't anywhere near as established/massive/has high expectations on wall street. They were a functional company making some money.
What we do know is Twitter would be $13 less billion dollars in debt, and not be about to be financially insolvent because of it, without Musk lol
This is one of the dumbest purchases in the history of company purchases in the end. Musk saw all of those boring financials from Twitter before agreeing to his childish $54.20-broooo share price lol
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They may not be as prevalent but they are still very strong even in the US. Its seriously downplayed how much unions can get away with, especially ones like teachers unions. Union agreements may not exist in every business in the US but they definitely exist and hold a lot of power, just depends on where it is.
Nobody_Important
āAww, itās so...average,ā she said to him in a cold brick of passion
Yeah America is a pretty shit place to be an employee unless you are at the top or at least close to it. Everyone else is just seen as expendable and to be replaced on a whim. Lower employees more often than not have little to no rights or protections when it comes to being fired.
Some states are worse than others.
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Now everyone is wondering if Twitter will gone every 16 minutes. There's no earlier reports being bandied about of social media messages being carefully scanned for loyalty to the man as a requirement in the past. Something to keep an eye on.
Well that didn't take long
He expects a lot of things. Now it's fun to speculate over who would want to take on the liability of a bunch of Elon mooks at a failing social media company.
Nobody_Important
āAww, itās so...average,ā she said to him in a cold brick of passion
Oh I'm sure Musk will find some yes man to plug into the role. Musk will have his hand up his ass of course though.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Roadhazard,
Also, vacation sucks too. I googled Sweden is 5 weeks standard. Canada is 2 weeks, 3 weeks after 5 years service, 4 weeks after 10 years service at the same company. There is no legal requirement to hit 5 weeks like Sweden.
Every company I've worked at offered 3 weeks standard, with week 4 after a bunch of years like 5+.
Also, vacation sucks too. I googled Sweden is 5 weeks standard. Canada is 2 weeks, 3 weeks after 5 years service, 4 weeks after 10 years service at the same company. There is no legal requirement to hit 5 weeks like Sweden.
Every company I've worked at offered 3 weeks standard, with week 4 after a bunch of years like 5+.
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IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
It's actually federal law here for any company over a certain size to give you 60 days pay for an immediate layoff.
The other option is they have to give 60 day's notice of a layoff.
So the whole 90 day thing is generous comparatively, but we do have some protections if we work for at least a medium sized company. If you work for a small operation you have next to no federal protection though.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
RoadHazard
Gold Member
Ah cool.
strange headache
Banned
The people who only join this thread in order to convince others to hate Elon need to f*ck right off.
I think the hyperloop is a scam and Starlink an unnecessary pollution of lower earth orbit, but at the same time Musk has revolutionized the space industry and made electric cars commercially viable. He also pioneered several other industries.
Visionaries and skilled entrepreneurs tend to be highly divisive people who don't play be the rules. Say what you want about Musk, he is many things but certainly not stupid or overly concerned about his ego. If you truly believe that, you need to lay off the kool-aid. Do you truly think reforming a platform like Twitter would go smoothly? Heck, most governmental transitions are more chaotic and take way longer than what Elon is achieving in such a short time.
I'll take a persona like Musk over 99% of politicians, celebrities and pundits. If anything, this world needs more people like him. He makes most other politicians looks utterly incompetent, I'm not surprised about the manufactured hate directed towards him.
I think the hyperloop is a scam and Starlink an unnecessary pollution of lower earth orbit, but at the same time Musk has revolutionized the space industry and made electric cars commercially viable. He also pioneered several other industries.
Visionaries and skilled entrepreneurs tend to be highly divisive people who don't play be the rules. Say what you want about Musk, he is many things but certainly not stupid or overly concerned about his ego. If you truly believe that, you need to lay off the kool-aid. Do you truly think reforming a platform like Twitter would go smoothly? Heck, most governmental transitions are more chaotic and take way longer than what Elon is achieving in such a short time.
I'll take a persona like Musk over 99% of politicians, celebrities and pundits. If anything, this world needs more people like him. He makes most other politicians looks utterly incompetent, I'm not surprised about the manufactured hate directed towards him.
akimbo009
Gold Member
strange headache
Banned
This is the reason why the media wants you to hate Musk for taking over Twitter. He is outright telling the world how little real influence they have. Their social media presence is fake.
You don't have an opinion, you have a script.
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Bitmap Frogs
Mr. Community
Considering your posting history in this thread, accusing people of "following a script" is surreal since you do seem to be following one yourself:
a) praise musk
b) discredit via personal attacks those who criticize musk
c) repeat
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