Support NeoGAF

[Unknown Soldier]

There is a quote that comes to mind.

“I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was 50 or 100 to 1. Given that, you’re well advised to go after the cream of the cream … A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.”

I said the other day that I don't think Twitter's mission has the same kind of pull that elevated Tesla and SpaceX into ultra desirable engineering hubs where millions of people apply for the chance of getting in and they select the handful of best and brightest. But we'll see how it shakes out. Elon has some personal pull.

Of course, that will be moot if all the users leave Twitter, but you can't build a scaleable replacement overnight. Current drama may not be indicative of anything significant.

Elon is trying to run Twitter like one of his companies that he started but it's already a mature company and not a startup. So we'll see what happens now.

I suspect that while 7,500 people was pretty bloated, there actually were people at Twitter who were the only ones that knew how the site worked. How that will go when all of those people are gone is a mystery but we'll soon know the solution!

 

[Esca]

Is this the remake of Brewster's Millions? How to burn through 44 billion dollars in less than a week ?

Legit what i was thinking was is this brewers billions now?

 

[AtomicStarving]

Do Elon Musk care about people leaving Twitter? This guy

 

[Trazyn the Infinite]

Hard time readin’?

(Just to be safe, this is all just a jest. Not mad/annoyed or any such)

I don't think this works here. Systems break, whether in the physical data centers (Twitter runs their own infra), or need to be on call, or otherwise crank than random wheels to keep lights on. This isn't just a coding problem, it's an operational problem that operates at the edge of computer science. You can't just hope you can get 1/10th of the people to handle things when sleep and eating are a real factor. It's also dismissive to assume that there is 90% overhead in the org - that's just not reasonable no matter how smart the people you bring in.

I actually personally know a few of these folks - and while I squint at their problem with a little skepticism (it's a data streaming/analytics problem at the end of the day) - it's not going to be immediately improved with 1 or 2 random engineers - cause it's all about leadership, breaking down the problem, and leading through others. If you are just a crony - a smart one - of the boss, no one will listen or challenge you to find the right answer which is mandatory for a good engineering culture.

Get the best - for sure - but you catch more bees with honey than vinegar all I see is vinegar from this approach.

I don't think you understand how engineering works or the culture involved.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

All these people leaving twitter won't be missed. Twitter is just going through it's own change similar to what happened to NeoGaf and will be better for it just like NeoGaf is.

GAF is a small Internet forum about video games. It's on scale multiple orders of magnitude smaller than Twitter which had over 250 million daily users. You can't compare a nice little site like GAF to a massively scaled social network like Twitter.

Would Twitter be better if all the mentally deranged users there left? Sure, it would. But we're not talking about the user base here, we're talking about the actual people at the company who make the platform work. If you fire everyone who knows how to make the platform work, you're going to have issues keeping the platform working.

 

[akimbo009]

I don't think you understand how engineering works or the culture involved.

Fine - EviLore - wanna vet me?

Edit: ban me if I'm wrong.

 

[ReBurn]

I don't think this works here. Systems break, whether in the physical data centers (Twitter runs their own infra), or need to be on call, or otherwise crank than random wheels to keep lights on. This isn't just a coding problem, it's an operational problem that operates at the edge of computer science. You can't just hope you can get 1/10th of the people to handle things when sleep and eating are a real factor. It's also dismissive to assume that there is 90% overhead in the org - that's just not reasonable no matter how smart the people you bring in.

I actually personally know a few of these folks - and while I squint at their problem with a little skepticism (it's a data streaming/analytics problem at the end of the day) - it's not going to be immediately improved with 1 or 2 random engineers - cause it's all about leadership, breaking down the problem, and leading through others. If you are just a crony - a smart one - of the boss, no one will listen or challenge you to find the right answer which is mandatory for a good engineering culture.

Get the best - for sure - but you catch more bees with honey than vinegarand all I see is vinegar from this approach.

It doesn't run on all of it's own infrastructure. They run a lot on Google's cloud platform. They were talking it up early in the year.

Twitter modernized its approach to data processing using Google Cloud services like Big Query. | Google Cloud Blog

Twitter transformed its approach to data processing using Google Cloud services. In this blog, Pradip Thachile, cloud adoption lead at Twitter, shares how BigQuery and Dataflow helped the team modernize the way they process data, uncover insights, and develop offerings that delight advertisers...

cloud.google.com

Elon said he wants to lower that cost. I don't think he can do it for less running it on his own servers. But maybe he can.

 

[Dee Dah Dave]

You probably don't need 100 top tier programmers for that. I've built things more complex with way fewer people. Twitter doesn't have that many features. Some backend and API folks, a couple of front-end devs and a couple of mobile devs, some data and networking folks and you could probably build out one that looks just like it of it in a couple of months, admin interfaces included.

A technology team of 50 could build it and keep it running. The challenge is keeping it viable as a business. That's where he's going to continue to struggle. Elon has been looking at Twitter as a technology problem. Twitter's business is people and Elon isn't good at people.

Well yes I was being extra generous to be on the safe side.

The huge cut in highly paid staff should be enough alone to make it profitable. Or at least a significant start.

 

[Trazyn the Infinite]

GAF is a small Internet forum about video games. It's on scale multiple orders of magnitude smaller than Twitter which had over 250 million daily users. You can't compare a nice little site like GAF to a massively scaled social network like Twitter.

Would Twitter be better if all the mentally deranged users there left? Sure, it would. But we're not talking about the user base here, we're talking about the actual people at the company who make the platform work. If you fire everyone who knows how to make the platform work, you're going to have issues keeping the platform working.

Let's be honest. Many of them were one and the same.

 

[akimbo009]

It doesn't run on all of it's own infrastructure. They run a lot on Google's cloud platform. They were talking it up early in the year.

Twitter modernized its approach to data processing using Google Cloud services like Big Query. | Google Cloud Blog

Twitter transformed its approach to data processing using Google Cloud services. In this blog, Pradip Thachile, cloud adoption lead at Twitter, shares how BigQuery and Dataflow helped the team modernize the way they process data, uncover insights, and develop offerings that delight advertisers...

cloud.google.com

Elon said he wants to lower that cost. I don't think he can do it for less running it on his own servers. But maybe he can.

They haven't really moved to GCP fully - and it is a path to reducing their costs, but it's a shit ton of work for them. It's gonna take years, and even then they still have a lot of legacy to deal with. Totally possible over time, and they need margins so the better they are here the better they will be but it's not material yet - chatter or not (and frankly they have come up with a bunch of OSS and other contributions here so it's a loss to lose them to our clouds (even when it makes sense)).

 

[jdtemp]

Sounds like he's getting rid of lazy over priced devs and keeping the H1Bs. He's saving at least a Billion in head count, the R&D department was 400 million alone.

 

[EviLore]

Elon is trying to run Twitter like one of his companies that he started but it's already a mature company and not a startup. So we'll see what happens now.

I suspect that while 7,500 people was pretty bloated, there actually were people at Twitter who were the only ones that knew how the site worked. How that will go when all of those dpeople are gone is a mystery but we'll soon know the solution!

Yep. Can't assume the internal documentation is any good either, obviously, so you're definitely going to run into problems if there is an explosive transition like the one we're currently witnessing. Can't grok a complex codebase overnight, never mind without guidance from senior devs.

I don't think this works here. Systems break, whether in the physical data centers (Twitter runs their own infra), or need to be on call, or otherwise crank than random wheels to keep lights on. This isn't just a coding problem, it's an operational problem that operates at the edge of computer science. You can't just hope you can get 1/10th of the people to handle things when sleep and eating are a real factor. It's also dismissive to assume that there is 90% overhead in the org - that's just not reasonable no matter how smart the people you bring in.

I actually personally know a few of these folks - and while I squint at their problem with a little skepticism (it's a data streaming/analytics problem at the end of the day) - it's not going to be immediately improved with 1 or 2 random engineers - cause it's all about leadership, breaking down the problem, and leading through others. If you are just a crony - a smart one - of the boss, no one will listen or challenge you to find the right answer which is mandatory for a good engineering culture.

Get the best - for sure - but you catch more bees with honey than vinegar all I see is vinegar from this approach.

Certainly it's unlikely and against conventional wisdom. Will be interesting to see if it can be done.

Fine - EviLore - wanna vet me?

Edit: ban me if I'm wrong.

If you'd like.

 

[-Zelda-]

GAF is a small Internet forum about video games. It's on scale multiple orders of magnitude smaller than Twitter which had over 250 million daily users. You can't compare a nice little site like GAF to a massively scaled social network like Twitter.

Would Twitter be better if all the mentally deranged users there left? Sure, it would. But we're not talking about the user base here, we're talking about the actual people at the company who make the platform work. If you fire everyone who knows how to make the platform work, you're going to have issues keeping the platform working.

The only thing I use it for is for sharing my screencaptures from playstation and switch so I can save them to my comp. Other than that, if it did go under it would not be a real loss for me. I upload those captures to my facebook page where I only have a few real life friends, not a thousand random idiots that I do not know in real life like so many other people do.

 

[jdtemp]

Looks like Hotz wants to work there, could be interesting.

 

[Kraz]

LOL

Sounds like making excuses ahead of time. Undoubtedly there's people leaving saying they want to see it tank, but no reason to sabotage when it could be teetering to crash on its own.

After weeks of changing policy, firings, resignations, uncertainty, legal worries, and derision it's possible that employees with an opportunity to reject Musk's management/vision would do so as a group to make the strongest statement.

 

[-Zelda-]

 

[Maiden Voyage]

 

[Trazyn the Infinite]

California needs to set a curfew for petulant children already.

 

[ManaByte]

Rumors flying that it's dying this weekend.

 

[akimbo009]

California needs to set a curfew for petulant children already.

Freedom of speech is weird when you can't fire or ban people, eh?

 

[Maiden Voyage]

Rumors flying that it's dying this weekend.

Critical staff refused Musk’s offer. He’s down to 10-15% staff according to rumors. Office shut down until Monday in response.

 

[Kraz]

Musk seeing if he can burn bridges or money faster. It's genuinely hard to guess which he'd run out of first.

 

[Trazyn the Infinite]

Freedom of speech is weird when you can't fire or ban people, eh?

 

[Valedix]

Rip bozo

 

[EviLore]

 

[ManaByte]

Critical staff refused Musk’s offer. He’s down to 10-15% staff according to rumors. Office shut down until Monday in response.

 

[Swift_Star]

Elon is the stupidest man alive

 

[Valedix]

R

Still working here unfortunately

 

[nush]

Critical staff refused Musk’s offer. He’s down to 10-15% staff according to rumors. Office shut down until Monday in response.

 

[EviLore]

Fine - EviLore - wanna vet me?

Edit: ban me if I'm wrong.

^ Can confirm that akimbo009 is a tech industry veteran and domain expert.

 

[Trazyn the Infinite]

^ Can confirm that akimbo009 is a tech industry veteran and domain expert.

Sounds good.

Apologies akimbo009 .

 

[EviLore]

Doesn't seem like a desirable outcome:

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Doesn't seem like a desirable outcome:

Hey guys let's have China come in and control social media instead of American companies. This is a brilliant idea which could not possibly go wrong!

 

[jdtemp]

Elon will undoubtedly find as many people as he needs to work the hours he wants them to work. whether they are sexy Indian dude indentured servants or chud coders, people are going to jump at the money or the chance to take one of the largest platforms on the internet and shove it up the establishments ass.
anybody who pretends otherwise is either

A: salty their team no longer has total ideological control of twitter
B: dumb enough to listen to the salty r-slurs in category A

that is all.

 

[Nobody_Important]

Hey guys let's have China come in and control social media instead of American companies. This is a brilliant idea which could not possibly go wrong!

Tell that to Elon. Nobody wanted that outcome, but it's his fault everything has gone tits up this fast.

 

[a multicultural team of v]

I wonder where those outages are happening geographically?

Oh

 

[Kilau]

Seeing all these dramatic "goodbye" tweets feels eerily similar but no less stupid.

 

[akimbo009]

All good. I'm an idiot too, in general. Just been around this block a few times is all.

 

[EviLore]

Seeing all these dramatic "goodbye" tweets feels eerily similar but no less stupid.

Vaguely recall something along those lines...

 

[-Zelda-]

Not out for me yet. Is it 100 percent going to happen or are people just talking out of their asses?

 

[EviLore]

 

[Valedix]

Dudes on copium

 

[Trazyn the Infinite]

Not out for me yet. Is it 100 percent going to happen or are people just talking out of their asses?

People are talking out their asses. There are issues though, but we have no idea if that means the site will go down or otherwise.

 

[PonyStation4]

How does Elon know who the best people are? Apparently he hasn't been talking to staff and has been laying people off by the usefulness of their department

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Vaguely recall something along those lines...

I remember the dinosaur porn. That was wild, I thought I would never see anything like that again but now Twitter is happening

 

[Valedix]

I fucking died lmfao

 

[SlimySnake]

This guy is such a moron. Cant be stated enough. Why spend $44 billion on a company you're just going to gut anyway?

Once the recession is over. If there is one. They are gonna want to hire all these employees back and they will have to overpay. What a fool.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

This guy is such a moron. Cant be stated enough. Why spend $44 billion on a company you're just going to gut anyway?

How much is 44 Billion to a billionaire?..like .44 cents to a normal person?

 

[ManaByte]

 

[nush]

Why spend $44 billion on a company you're just going to gut anyway?

Smoke the cockraoches out and rebuild, I don't think we are looking at a Yahoo! speedrun just yet.