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Comment by saurik | Hacker News Reader

6 months ago it was all painted (maybe seemingly, though, by prior executives who weren't speaking for Musk) as if this wouldn't be a big deal for employees, which to me makes this idea that people are being rapidly fired "for cause" after a suddenly-imposed weekend work shift deadline extra shitty :/. (Even if I do sometimes claim that Twitter is incompetent as an organization or bloated with idle staff, these are humans that deserve some basic respect with how they handle a transition plan.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/25/technology/twitter-employ...

> At the meeting with employees on Monday [April 25], executives tried to assure employees that they wouldn’t be shortchanged by Mr. Musk’s acquisition. Mr. Agrawal told employees that their stock options would convert to cash when the deal with Mr. Musk closes, which he estimated would take between three and six months. Employees would receive their same benefits packages for a year after the deal was finalized and there were no immediate plans for layoffs, he added.

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Mr. Agrawal told employees that their stock options would convert to cash when the deal with Mr. Musk closes, which he estimated would take between three and six months. Employees would receive their same benefits packages for a year after the deal was finalized and there were no immediate plans for layoffs, he added.

So, really those two long sentences should be rewritten:

Mr Agrawal, as an officer of the company, engaged in rampant speculation, perhaps to reassure employees (or himself) that their jobs were safe for three months to a year, even though Mr. Musk had repeatedly indicated otherwise.

I think he would have known he was out the door since part of the reason Musk was saying he was buying Twitter in text messages was that he thought Agrawal wasn't up to the job. With a 52 million payout, I also think he wasn't overly worried about how he would do after Twitter.

"no immediate plans for layoffs" means "layoffs in a few weeks".

Exactly. The moment upper management utters the word 'layoff' in any context, or tries to reassure workers it's time to GTFO immediately.

Why would you GTFO because there’s a possibility you might be laid off? Why not wait and see if that actually happens and collect any severance?

1 - Layoffs mean either your workload is going up, or you're getting fired.

2 - Depending on size of company and location, mass layoffs mean a ton of people looking for jobs at the same time.

Better to get ahead of such things, in my experience.

Personally? Because I don't think the stress is worth it. I've been in this situation and find it unbearable.

Firing 25% of the workforce "for cause" looks like a very hard sell to me, and would open up Twitter for a barrage of lawsuits - and rightly so.

Even laying off 25% of the workers would be hard to justify at this point. I'm certainly curious where this all is going.

Stories like this make like the employee protection I enjoy even more.

/cries in an at-will state/

Unions. Not just for fancy Europeans and factory workers.

If your colleagues gets fired for some bs reason you and your other colleagues can stand for each other by striking.

... and codetermination. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany

I read this as "code termination" instead of "co determination" and was about halfway through the wikipedia article and quite confused before I figured it out.

Yeah, its what happens when you get fired but everyone wraps their arms around you in a big group hug so security can't get to you: de-termination.

exists in most northern and western european companies aswell.. Unions in europe also seem far less militant than those in the US.

> Unions in europe also seem far less militant

That's because unions are an integral part of the way many of the countries socio-political systems work. In Norway, for instance, the trades unions and the employers get together once a year to hammer out what is called tarriflønn, essentially the going rate for each broad type of job. The state provides a referee for the meetings whose job is to keep them on track and to encourage both sides to compromise. Unions and companies work together rather than fight each other, most of the time.

But this can only work if there is a broad consensus that we are all in the same boat and that we will all be better off if we work together.

The attitude, that appears to be common, in the US that employers are always exploitative, employees are always lazy and thieving, that the government is just a parasite, and that the aphorism "Good enough for government work" is a synonym for delivering shoddy work means that no one trusts anyone so you end up fighting all the time.

It should be noted that European unions were no less militant originally. Being militant (and strong enough) is what gets you concessions - including better arrangements for future deals.

Of course, no argument there. But European society even then wasn't quite so polarised as the US seems to be now. So being militant was effective. Somehow unions in the US seem to have got such a bad reputation that even those who would benefit from them don't join.

I presume because their functional existence is already a given. America still hasn't quite gotten over the Pinkertons.

Unless some of your colleagues don't go along with it and are willing to train recruits enough to keep the ship afloat. Unions: the anti-anti-trust weapon in the war to win the balance of power.

Fwiw all states are at-will, though there are varying exceptions from state to state.

Yeah I know broadly they all are, but some states offer slightly more protection.

On a side note, what happens to health insurance for employees who're let go? Does it end the time of your last day or midnight? I was too afraid to Google it as I likely knew it's be pretty cut throat, but have always stressed about it regardless.

It might be immediate, it might be end of month, might be some other period. In any case COBRA kicks in and can be paid for retrospectively if you need it.

Generally the end of the month that you were terminated in, unless you pay the same company to keep the same plan via COBRA. It's the same plan, you're just paying what you paid for it before plus whatever the company was paying for your share, which is generally much higher.

Montana is the biggest exception. It's only at-will for a 6-month probationary period, and after that, you can generally only be fired for "good cause".

Good cause could be Twitter is losing money and has massive debt.

A redundancy is different to being fired, and comes with a payout depending on length of tenure with the company.

Fire for cause means "you aren't doing your job properly."

Redundancy means "your job is no longer required."

If twitter restructures to save money, the jobs that no longer exist have been made redundant.

Layoffs are not firings.

Yes that’s what I’m saying. Layoff == redundancy.

Maybe I misunderstood the point you were trying to make?

> A redundancy is different to being fired, and comes with a payout depending on length of tenure with the company.

In US usage, the general term here is “layoff”. And severance is not a legal requirement, and practices vary considerably by industry and, within industries, by individual firm. Layoff is eligible for unemployment, while firing may or may not be. (The line is also looser because the US has at-will employment, so there are very little general rules–other than those in particular employment contracts of unionized or high-status employees–around termination other than for prohibited purposes, or–mostly around warning periods–mass terminations, but there are conditions for unemployment assistance.)

TANSTAAFL. (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.)

The downside of employee protections is that it makes companies more reluctant to hire. And also once hired, the salary to be offered is reduced to cover the estimated current value of the future employee protections. These are real downsides, particularly for young people who are trying to get a foot into the corporate ladder.

I have even personally witnessed a situation where a company evaluated a legal change to increase employee protections, and decided to layoff almost everyone in a particular country before the new law took effect. (The company was Pictage, the country was Argentina, and this was a bit over a dozen years ago.)

So I'll take the up front downsides of at will over the hidden downsides of employee protections.

Indeed! Harder to hire, harder to fire. Like most such schemes, it advantages those already inside at the cost to those looking in from the outside; see also rent control.

If increased employee protection causes you to layoff almost everyone in a country -- you probably had little good business reason to be in that country.

Employee protection exists because there's a huge power imbalance. A company who can constantly just say, "we'll fire you if this doesn't get done" and colludes with other companies on such matters makes it very difficult for workers. This is why employee protection, unions, etc... exist.

Whether it does or does not protect them, employees will pay for these protections in the form of lowered salary and fewer jobs available.

Nothing comes for free.

That's absolutely true, but in practice most people would experience substantial hardship if they suddenly lost their job.

I wouldn't, but being in a country with employee protections means the people around me are almost never placed in a desparate situation, and I am meaningfully safer because of that.

Since you'd get more pay without these protections, you can save the excess for a rainy day.

People should save for a rainy day, anyway. Why must the employer be their parents?

I don't buy the idea that people in a free country like the US somehow found the one and only job they could ever have.

You likely won’t get more pay. In times without protections against collusion and without minimum wages, and laws against child labor — wages don’t typically go up. But you will have more workers in labor. Just not protected and poorer.

Pay for workers is set by Supply&Demand, just like everything else. Adding worker protections increases costs to hire, which reduces demand, and so salaries drop.

It's inevitable.

> Since you'd get more pay without these protections, you can save the excess for a rainy day. It sounds like you are speaking from a position of extreme privilege, more than 165 million Americans (over half) do not have a spare ~$400 for an emergency, much less savings to pay rent after a sudden job loss.

And when people get desperate some turn to crime. Which then increases your costs through increased taxation for policing and incarceration and secondary effects such as reduced safety and increased personal costs due to crime, such as increased insurance costs and the greater threat of being targeted.

So when all costs are internalized, worker protections pay dividends at making a society better for all involved, for example the many northers European countries with very low crime and very strong worker protections.

> It sounds like you are speaking from a position of extreme privilege, more than 165 million Americans (over half) do not have a spare ~$400 for an emergency

"Extreme"? What nonsense. I know many middle class people who don't have a spare $400 for an emergency. They also have a boat in the driveway. They don't have an income problem, they have a spending problem.

> And when people get desperate some turn to crime.

Or sell the boat. I remember one couple I counselled that couldn't pay the rent, but had a new car. I suggested they sell that, and buy one they could afford. I was surprised to find out that's just what they did.

It's not a poverty problem, it's a financial management problem. Don't conflate that with being actually poor.

> when people get desperate some turn to crime.

Crime causes poverty, not the other way around.

The downside to treating employees like children is a lower standard of living.

Most people _don’t_ save for a rainy day. That’s an objective fact; imagining it would be otherwise if you gave them a bit more money is a fantasy not supported by anything observed in reality.

As to finding another job: of course they will, but switching costs are pretty high for job changes.

Maybe fewer jobs, but probably not lower salaries. Collusion would likely would cut into salaries a fair bit.

Yeah you are absolutely right. Here in germany a lot of companies pay a decent premium on temporary/loan workers and freelancers just to not be bound to then.

> If increased employee protection causes you to layoff almost everyone in a country -- you probably had little good business reason to be in that country.

This kind of directly speaks to the commenters point. There may have “little good”, but enough reason until the legal change to increase employee protections created “no good reason”.

Sure, it's a spectrum.

People use the same argument to justify removing minimum working age laws, weekend laws, OSHA laws, EPA protections, retirement, healthcare etc.

In a pure unregulated market, employers would be able to offer employees much higher salaries!

The reality is somewhere in the middle. Though what America thinks is reasonable is very different than what the rest of the developed world thinks is.

> TANSTAAFL. (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.)

Maybe not, but the world isn't zero-sum. Some things really do raise or lower the overall average.

> I have even personally witnessed a situation where a company evaluated a legal change to increase employee protections, and decided to layoff almost everyone in a particular country before the new law took effect. (The company was Pictage, the country was Argentina, and this was a bit over a dozen years ago.)

What was the law change? And how long would it have been before those employees were laid off otherwise? That's an interesting datapoint to hear about, but "employee protections" can mean many different things.

> So I'll take the up front downsides of at will over the hidden downsides of employee protections.

Unfortunately you don't get to skip out on the hidden downsides of at will either.

The law change would double the period for which severance had to be paid. This additional liability would have been a significant fraction of the net worth of the company.

The 2008 financial crisis had left the company in a position where it needed to downsize anyways, and the board of directors gave the CEO the choice between covering that liability by making the US layoff bigger, or avoiding the extra liability by getting rid of basically the whole Argentinian operation. The CEO chose to preserve US jobs.

The Argentinian operation would have seen a layoff either way. But nowhere near as dramatic as the one that actually happened.

Yes, free lunches exist but to see them you have to measure in utiles rather than straight-up dollars.

At-will is a huge risk for the individual, since they're going from roughly 100 % employment to 0 % employment.

On the other hand, in a decently sized organisation (where employee protection is typically enforced), being stuck with a bad employee and asking them for meaningless work that bothers nobody else means paying for 100 % capacity and only getting, say, 94 % of it. Over a large number of employees, the organisation can be fairly confident of what this percentage will be. Much smaller risk.

In other words, the utility cost for the employer of employee protection is smaller than the utility cost of at-will for the individual.

(Homeowner's insurance is a similar type of situation. Makes no sense to the individual if you look at the dollar costs, but in terms of utiles it does actually work out for both parties in most cases. Another case is hedging major business expenses -- costs more, but you and the counterparty both lose fewer utiles from it.)

>The downside of employee protections is that it makes companies more reluctant to hire. And also once hired, the salary to be offered is reduced to cover the estimated current value of the future employee protections.

Yep, that why software engineers in California and New York, where there are a lot of employee protections, don't get paid as much as SWEs in the Midwest or the South, where there are less... Right?

Or maybe the real economy is more complex than the kiddie models you were taught in Econ 101?

I'd like to open up this question again after some decades. I don't think it will play out as you might think.

Innovation hubs move. Historically, this has always been true. Right now those are SV and NY.

It won't remain so.

Silicon Valley, New York, and arguably Texas have been the hubs of computing innovation as long as there has been a commercial computer industry. Other tech hubs have sprung up, but we're looking at forty years of unceasing domination here. Innovation hubs move when new industries arise.

Massachusetts was a power player too, at least in the earlier days

That's a short time horizon.

Innovation hubs have been in China, Middle East, Venice, London, etc.

The printing innovation lasted around 300 years. Steam engine another 150 years. The industrial revolution less than 100.

How long do you think computers will dominate major innovation? And if it does, will the innovation hub stay in SV ?

What happens if biotech takes over? MRNA tech ? Driverless cars ? VTOL ? Rocketry or Space Tourism ? ML or low-code apps changing the dev of software as we know it today ?

Do you see any of those hubs in SV ? Are they in SV today ?

Now you're moving the goalposts from decades to centuries, across which it is slightly absurd to pretend that 'innovation hubs' have anything to do with workers' rights. Changes in culture happen regardless of where the innovation is, and when you start talking about centuries it's pointless to try to measure the effect of worker protections on salaries. There are just too many variables over that amount of time. Pretending you can effectively isolate one is ridiculous.

Regardless: yes, all of these things are in SV today. If any of them proves to revolutionize society in our lifetime I think you'll find SV will retain its status.

Absolutely.

My only note it is that isn’t 40 years. For SV it’s more like 60 years (going back to the founding of Fairchild) or even longer if you want to go back as far as HP and other radio shops.

For NYC, it’s even longer. IBM has had a major NYC presence since at least the 30s (and obviously its main HQ is less than 40 miles from midtown)! Bell Labs/AT&T was based in Manhattan before moving to New Jersey and obviously is still in the NYC are. And that goes back to the 20s I think.

Not to mention other NYC and NYC adjacent companies like GE. So we’re going back 100 years or more for NYC and 80 for SV.

Xerox’s history combines both areas.

And as you said, Texas has a strong history too with the Motorola stuff and Silicon Prairie.

Historically speaking, Seattle is a relatively new entrant in computing and innovation, only really being a hub for 40 years or so (unless you count Boeing and then it back over 100 years), but is the home of two of the biggest companies of the last 50 years, Microsoft and Amazon.

Dozens and dozens of cities all over the world have tried to be the Silicon Valley of X and none have succeeded. And New York is extremely unique as a global center in dozens of different industries from finance to media to fashion to the arts.

Obviously things could be disrupted. But both of these areas have been innovation hubs for over 100 years, which given the short history of this country, is remarkable.

What employee protections are you talking about in California and New York?

Both are at will states. So easy to hire, easy to fire.

The WARN act for one, which Musk may have violated. California also mandates sick leave and family leave for both parents of a newborn child.

When California says you can fire an employee for any reason, what they really mean is any reason except for a bunch of reasons we've decided are unacceptable.

We have already seen what the world is like with no employee protections - exploitation of children for labour, like in the British coal mines. Unsafe working conditions in Victorian workhouses, leaving men without hands and without means to feed their family, and with no compensation because 'you agreed to it'. Bosses extorting sexual favours from employees, i.e. Hollywood casting couch.

You can still see this in many developing countries, children on assembly lines in China, or how a clothing factory in Bangladesh caved in killing most women working there.

TANSTAAFL is obviously and demonstrably false - child labour leaves them without education and traps them in poverty. Their creativity and future potential is lost to society. Employees without hands are an obvious loss to society. But the employer doesn't care, he saved a few bucks on safety. He isn't paying the cost. This argument further extends to education and beyond.

The argument of TANSTAAFL was used by coal companies in the 1920's. At the time they used to hire assassins to murder Union leaders and even killed the local sheriff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg9xywAxb10

This also sometimes happens in developing nations today, sometimes at the behest of western companies.

What is the 'argument of TANSTAAFL' here? It just means there are hidden costs to things that appear free. From that coal video, when the coal companies gave the miners the clothes and gear for 'free', but there were all the hidden costs- that would be an example of TANSTAAFL, but it's not being used as an argument.

>the salary to be offered is reduced to cover the estimated current value of the future employee protections.

This is a fallacy. Companies will pay employees as little as possible. Why would they pay you more just because employee protections were removed?

Competition? If everyone is paying an extra 20% in overhead, then that’s an extra 20% they can’t put down as competing bids for the resource in question

And vice versa… if multiple companies want that resource.. they all have 20% more to bid with

Even California still has at-will employment. He doesn’t need cause, or anyone else to agree on what that cause is.

He might if he wants their options not to vest. [Edit: Or to have to pay their golden parachute.]

I wonder if even Musk would be so publicly ruthless as that?

I wonder how many his employees in Tesla/SpaceX/where ever are currently incentivised by stock options, who’d watch their boss doing that to Twitter people and wonder why they bother working evenings and weekends, if the options can be yanked as cruelly as that?

Musk made an offer, voluntarily closed off his ability to back out, then tried to back out and couldn't. He has been thoroughly outmaneuvered by Twitter's management (or outmaneuvered himself, same effect). So I'm not super high on his ability to foresee consequences at the moment.

Also, because of being outmaneuvered, he may be seeking any chance to stick his finger in the eye of the people who did it. That the logical consequences will be that his finger gets cut off... well, as I said, I'm not sold on his foresight at the moment.

I think it was a good gamble. If old management had budged by even 1% or 2% of the original deal, the savings would have easily paid for all the lawyers Musk and Twitter had to hire. Just a calculated risk that didn’t pay off. That’s how calculated risks go sometimes.

there's legislation around layoffs you can't handwave with "at will"

For the downvoters - google the WARN act

WARN Act just means you have to give people notice. You can revoke their credentials and tell them to stay home while the 60-day clock runs. You just have to keep paying them for that time.

And presumably their stock also vests?

The WARN act only means you need to give 60 days notice in certain types of mass layoffs. Given that Twitter hasnt done any mass layoffs yet, speculating on whether or not they gave enough notice under the act is a bit premature.

Twitter hasn't, but it seems that there is some internal tension around it. Making working conditions worse to force people to quit, setting impossible deadlines to fire en masse "with cause," and just generally shedding employees but not calling it a layoff all seem to be in play.

Elon is interacting and trying to dodge this act. He seems to want to cut Twitter's workforce at a scale that the WARN act covers.

Every jurisdiction is different in details, of course, but "at-will" just means you can fire someone, not that you get to decide what happens after unilaterally (e.g. you may owe severance)

Is that the case in CA or NY? I don't know where else Twitter has large offices, but presumably these would be two of the largest. I'm pretty sure in CA the employer doesn't automatically owe severance. It's usually offered in return for a promise not to sue (and sometimes also a promise not to speak ill of).

There's the WARN Act, but I don't think that impacts what happens after a duly-warned layoff, unless I'm mistaken?

The California WARN Act requires companies of a certain size who are laying off 50+ employees to give 60 days notice to the employees.

Technically the company can't get around the WARN act through severance but it is essentially pre-paying the damages so there's no reason to go to court.

Tesla is currently engaged in litigation over allegedly firing employees without providing necessary 60 day notice period under California law, denying them pay as a result, so it would appear that Musk has precedent.

Precedent is when there's case law backing something. I think you're thinking of Musk's PR and decision making, not the company: there certainly isn't case law for letting go of _25% of the company, for cause_

Yeah, the term is "has form".

> Precedent is when there's case law backing something.

No, you're thinking of a restricted version of the second definition from Merriam-Webster, while it was clearly the first definition that was meant.

precedent. noun

1. an earlier occurrence of something similar

2. a : something done or said that may serve as an example or rule to authorize or justify a subsequent act of the same or an analogous kind a verdict that had no precedent b : the convention established by such a precedent or by long practice

> Musk has precedent

The "has" makes it seem like it was a legal statement. It probably should be been worded differently

Agreed. Perhaps something like

"...so that's a precedent that shows that Musk is willing/has done something like this"

See https://ludwig.guru/s/has+precedent for a plenty of examples of using "has precedent" in non-legal contexts.

How many devs at twitter have no code to show for the past month, because they swept up by the impending doom of Musk's takeover and stopped working? I would guess more than a few. Firing those "for cause" will probably be easy; they stopped working for a month and anybody can get fired for that.

Those that remained productive will probably have better prospects for keeping their jobs, and for suing if they're fired.

> because they swept up by the impending doom of Musk's takeover and stopped working?

To a first approximation I would guess 0.

When a company is teetering on calamity, people don't just stop doing things, they just stop doing things in organized, co-ordinated ways.

More than that, firing people for cause usually requires records and a demonstration of dialog the the person (not all jurisdictions) and is hard to demonstrate.

We've known that lines of code were no indication of code quality or developer productivity for well over two decades now -- why would it start to matter now, particularly for those at more senior levels?

> We've known that lines of code were no indication of code quality or developer productivity for well over two decades now

You're severely overstating it. The difference between 500 loc and 5000 loc isn't a clear signal of anything. But zero lines of code certainly is. Firing people because the VCS shows they stopped working is common.

Zero code situation is wishful thinking - poster just made it up.

Perhaps an awful lot of people were just working on a stealth no code project.

> wishful thinking

I have no stake in the matter. My supposition that some employees simply stopped working comes from my experience seeing similar things happen at other companies during periods of uncertainty, and from my knowledge that quite a few twitter employees were very uncertain about their future with twitter.

There are people on my team that haven’t committed anything for a couple weeks. I don’t work at Twitter, but wouldn’t be surprised if there were people who basically weren’t working.

I spent the last month prototyping code for a demo that will not be checked in. I have a few small unrelated CLs submitted (minor fixes) but I spent 5 minutes per each, my main work for the month is completely unaccounted for in version control.

Should I be fired?

Yeah your shoddy practices are certainly suspect. Why aren't you using version control to checkpoint your prototype?

For your own sake, you should probably check that demo code in somewhere. Keeping a 'paper' trail of the work you've done is always a good practice to follow.

The true big brain 10x programmer is pushing -100 lines of code per sprint.

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Li...

I sort of think of the absolute value of lines changed as a pulse.

You can do -100. You can do 100. You can net zero from 100 adds and 100 subtracts (abs=200). But it’s something. If you have long stretches of zero that’s not good.

The true big brained programmer sat in a meeting and prevented a team of 25 people from wasting 6 months.

Sure. That’s super valuable.

But I hope they have something productive to show for the other 20 odd days that month they collected their paycheque for…

At a previous job I had a few months where I managed approximately minus‐1 instruction per week — and it was the best money the company ever spent. Hard constraints are hard.

Sure. But a code review of their checkins will reveal their productivity pretty quick. Any one claiming 10x (or even 0.75x) productivity would want some very good supporting evidence if they have zero activity in the source control for a month. You want some great specification documents or API documentation or platform architecture diagrams or something…

In case this wasn't clear, when I say "no code" I mean no commits, nothing they can point to as evidence of doing any work. Afaic, commits removing code count for at least as much as those adding code. And if they've spent the past month adding documentation to the intranet wiki or something like that, there should be logs they can show to prove it.

is code the only output of an engineer?

not everything is committed in a VCS: you have documentation, architecture, RFC etc etc depending on the size of the company and seniority of the employee.

That stuff is typically in a VCS.

I don’t think it’s an absolute rule that no commits means someone isn’t developing. But it’s probably a reason to have a conversation.

While you are correct that LOC is not a full measure of productivity, and there are many factors to consider, it would be nonsense to say that merging code has no bearing on productivity. All things equal (and disregarding engineers whose job isn’t coding per se), submitted code is the essential deliverable of a software engineer.

No, “solved problems” is the essential deliverable of a software engineer, and the more senior one gets the less often “submitting code” is the correct path to solving a problem. Someone might submit code based on your work, but there’s no direct correlation between “submitted code” and “did your job” at higher levels.

But you’re describing exactly what I mentioned above: engineers whose job is not code, per se. Yes, the super-senior engineer who cracks down on bad code by others and sets the right path, etc, is very valuable even if they’re not directly coding themselves. I’m talking about the engineers who are directly responsible for implementing features and fixing bugs. I.e., most software engineers.

Sometimes a great engineer spends a month tracking down a 3-line fix, and that’s just what happens with complex software. But by and large, if an engineer averages only a few LOC a month (and I’ve unfortunately seen this way too many times) then we probably have a problem on our hands.

The question is who’s writing the code. A core part of a senior engineer’s job is helping to train and mentor junior engineers; it’s not unusual for an entire project to be designed and led by a senior engineer and implemented by more junior engineers. Design reviews don’t result in commits, deep dives on technical implementations don’t result in commits, negotiating an architecture change between groups don’t result in commits. A large amount of the actual heavy-lifting value-add of an actually senior engineer is not in the code they’re writing.

This. Spending a productive, rewarding half a day pair programming with a receptive junior engineer who isn't sure how to approach a complex task nets them 1+ commits and you 0 commits. Spending half a day chasing after a "loose cannon" engineer who hastily committed bad code nets them 3 commits (the original bad commit, a rollback commit, and the fixed commit) and you 0 commits.

How do the individual stats look at the end of the month/quarter/Musk Layoff Review Period when these kinds of days are relatively common?

All that, in theory, would be tracked. The senior engineer would be able to point to the PRs/MRs with all the helpful comments that led to the code improvements. It wouldn't be hard to show calendar invites or whatever for pair programming sessions, which could be corroborated by asking the junior as well.

It does, however, bring up the point that one should always be mindful of what their output looks like and how easy it is to prove. I'm sure everyone has worked with a 'meeting commando', who loves to discuss edge cases and bikeshed instead of shipping code. Maybe they've carved out a nice niche doing so, and have convinced others in the company of their (dubious) value, but it shouldn't be surprising when the company is sold/acquired/RIFd that someone else might expect someone with an engineering title to have more tangible contributions to point to.

sometimes the most senior engineers don't ship a ton of code to prod, but they should certainly be writing code to figure out where the organization should go, justify the ROI of their ideas, demonstrate a large-scale problem that needs resources mustered, interrogate business logic databases to tie disparate ideas together, understanding the scale and frequency of large scale problems, and so on. If you're a senior engineer and can't point to any code you've written in the past 3 months, maybe you're not really an engineer, because you're not using engineering to solve problems.

I think a lot of software engineers get too comfortable with the idea that meetings are deliverables - they aren't; meetings are coordination and planning. if nobody completes the work that was coordinated and planned, the meeting was nothing but a waste of time. Depending on your seniority as an engineer, you may have written code to decide that the work should be done, or you may be tasked with writing code to carry out the plan. If you're an engineer and you're not writing code on either side of meetings, you should dig deep and figure out why.

The number of such people will be miniscule.

I'd be surprised if more than 20% of employees at Twitter are developers.

Can you cite where it’s been said he’s firing 25% (or any significant percentage) “for cause”?

The only parties being cited as fired for cause are the outgoing executives, and WaPo article at the top of this post provides reasons for that.

From WP: "Layoffs are expected to begin ahead of Nov. 1, when Twitter employees are slated to receive additional compensation related to stock grants."

I think this might be the confusing part, because he's trying to claw back as much compensation as possible, maybe he's trying to avoid paying severance as well

What you're saying does not make any sense relative to the question asked.

Elon Musk says "This is false": https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586831721386766337

(I am not responding to the "25%" part as I did not use a percent myself, but am responding to the second, stricter, statement.)

Elsewhere in this thread, people are discussing a potentially-credible (but maybe you disagree) report on this from Gergely Orosz that does not paint this as "only the 3 senior executives".

https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1587042365084209153

> I talked with an engineering manager who was at Twitter for 5+ years, and got laid off on Sunday "for cause". They were too exhausted from working over the weekend to talk longer: they first need to sleep.

You're missing my point. There's no use in trying to debate whether or not any one person is being fired "for cause" or not...frankly I could care less whether the one item of hearsay you point at is credible or not.

What I'm trying to wade through is the vast oceans of nonsense being fielded in the media and in comments that do not add anything to the story and are just trying to prop up one side or another. There's an ocean of difference between one item of hearsay that you point out (hell, maybe that one EM was due to be fired "for cause" who knows? do you? I sure don't!), and 25% of the workforce being fired "for cause", and 4 executives (not 3 as you point out).

> laid off "for cause"

This is an oxymoron, so either the tweeter or the manager have no idea what he is talking about.

There are Twitter employees tweeting out that they have been fired already. Whether it’s going to be 25% or not, it’s certainly not just outgoing executives.

And the WaPo article states: “ The first round of layoffs, led by his lawyer Alex Spiro, will target 25 percent of the workforce”

You’re missing the distinction PP is pointing out, between “layoffs” and “for-cause firings.”

Ah I see now. Right we will have to see whether they’re claimed to be for-cause or not. Though the rush to fire people with a looming vesting deadline is certainly cause for suspicion.

Getting rid of 25% of the company "for cause" is not going to hold up in court. They'll be treated as layoffs. I think Musk just proved this by trying the same thing at Tesla.

You also have it backwards. The post is positing the for-cause firings and the supposed 25% layoffs as separate events.

Lawsuits are often free financing to fractional future payouts. Especially when the terms are too cush from being clubby. That's like half of Elon's call on this bet.

> Even laying off 25% of the workers would be hard to justify at this point.

It wouldn't because we're in a downturn and Twitter was already planning layoffs.

Did Twitter already file a WARN act notice about the layoffs? If not, how can it be justified under that?

Correct me if I’m wrong but it all really depends on the contract. I understand there are labor laws in place but if the person agreed to something then I don’t think California law can do much.

From what I've seen posted elsewhere California requires companies laying off more than 50 individuals to file. Failure to do so cause the state can step in and force the employer to pay a couple months of severance. Most California labor laws cannot be waived by contract

"You're honor, the so called victim agreed to be murdered by me"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_agreement

That is usually the opposite. If a contract contain illegal clauses, those clauses are nil.

I see, I worked in America but never in California. That make more sense now.

California has some of the most stringent labor laws in the country, and labor attorneys have told me judges tend to not look favorably upon contracts that are in direct violation of those laws… especially when those contracts are drafted by high powered legal teams.

You don't "file" a WARN act notice. You directly give the affected employees notice.

Or much more likely you give them 2-3 months severance which is basically the same as saying "you are laid off in 60 days, don't bother coming back to work". Technically they would be breaking the law but the severance would count against the damages under the WARN act so there's no reason to go to court about it.

EDIT: You might have to file with an elected official actually, the website is a bit unclear: https://edd.ca.gov/en/Jobs_and_Training/Layoff_Services_WARN

That's incorrect. Federal law requires you to also notify your local government.

https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title29/cha...

§2102. Notice required before plant closings and mass layoffs

(a) Notice to employees, State dislocated worker units, and local governments

An employer shall not order a plant closing or mass layoff until the end of a 60-day period after the employer serves written notice of such an order—

(1) to each representative of the affected employees as of the time of the notice or, if there is no such representative at that time, to each affected employee; and

(2) to the State or entity designated by the State to carry out rapid response activities under section 3174(a)(2)(A) of this title, and the chief elected official of the unit of local government within which such closing or layoff is to occur.

If there is more than one such unit, the unit of local government which the employer shall notify is the unit of local government to which the employer pays the highest taxes for the year preceding the year for which the determination is made.

They have not. Not in California, New York, or Washington states anyway. California updates Tuesdays and Thursdays but nothing was filed last week.

Tesla filed 3 WARN notices in California in July so Musk or Musk’s lawyers at least know how to file them.

From what I understand, Twitter’s standard terms of severance allow for two months salary and benefits and some sort of accelerated vesting towards the next quarter. That’s been the big question for employees because they vest quarterly (though each person could have a different vest date) and the terms of the acquisition were that RSUs were converted to cash to be paid out on the vest schedule. Some in the press speculated that Musk was trying to avoid paying our November 1 vests by firing early, but given that you’d need a WARN notice anyway, that wouldn’t prevent anything. If there was an accelerated vest you missed by a few days, that might be something that could be avoided, but I don’t know.

Still, even if you are paying out two months of benefits and salary (and potentially maybe even more, with accelerated vesting), that doesn’t mean a company doesn’t have to file a WARN notice.

And with the expected figures being 25% of employees (~1800 people), that figure would qualify as a mass layoff by federal definition, irrespective of the company’s total size, and irrespective of the 50 or 100 per site thresholds that are true for specific states.

>Twitter was already planning layoffs.

Their CEO told them no layoffs were planned in the immediate future just a few months ago.

If articles on HN are any guide, CEOs say this up until the moment that layoffs occur. It goes something like "while we had hoped and worked to avoid impacting personnel, changes in the macroeconomic conditions have made it impossible for us to..."

He was probably lying.

From your other posts I surmise you know this, but the WARN act means that a company of Twitter's size can't lie about that, at least without then paying out a full notice period to all affected workers.

Every CEO I've seen oversee layoffs has maintained that no layoffs were planned until the very millisecond they're announced. I think of CEOs like I think of the WH press secretary - paid to propagandize.

>Firing 25% of the workforce "for cause" looks like a very hard sell to me

Why would this be? Musk has already signaled his lack of confidence in the previous management, why would this not extend to their hiring practices, training, HR policies, etc.?

Those being laid off for cause are the 3 senior level executives (the old CEO, the lead counsel, and the content policy head). Those 3 had a 100+ million cumulative severance package which they are now no longer eligible to receive, although none of them are strapped for cash.

Elsewhere in this thread, people are discussing a potentially-credible (but maybe you disagree) report on this from Gergely Orosz that does not paint this as "only the 3 senior executives".

https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1587042365084209153?...

I don't understand why so many people celebrate when Elon treats his underlings like trash. Is it because people hate Twitter and think if you work there you deserve this? Is it because they want to have Elon's level of power and fame where the rules don't apply to them? Something else?

Imagine if this was Ellison, HN would be going bonkers. Now that it is musk, lot of comments saying it is fine and dandy.

Because the aggrieved aren’t satisfied only by Elon taking over twitter and taking it in a different direction, they also believe that those currently at twitter deserve harsh punishment for whatever role they had in twitter.

Correct.

The cruelty is the point with authoritarians.

Also one perennial observation with authoritarian-friendly people is that in their dog-eat-dog fantasy they are the badass warlord sitting atop a pile of bones rather than the nameless goon that lies at the bottom of the bonepile.

Probably the same reason people watch drama TV and soaps. It's entertainment

But why are they cheering for the villain?

Loads of people like negative drama. Housewives, Love is Blind, 90 day fiance are all full of really terrible shitty people.

All of the above, plus a fair bit of delusion. The amount of people I've seen pretending to be engineers in order to normalize the most ridiculous things he says or does has been growing and when pressed they often just vanish or stop responding.

That said, should Twitter eventually fall apart it will never be the fault of Musk. It will be because insiders preventing his vision, or the government blocked him, or any number of excuses.

Hasn’t it been a popular topic on here of how bloated Twitter’s staff seems to be given how little the platform has apparently changed over the years? Not taking a stance on that, I don’t know, but to that cohort of commenters this probably seems like victory for common sense.

> they are now no longer eligible to receive

Musk doesn't meet the cause outlined in their employment contracts. They'll get their executive early termination severance but it'll require some legal action first.

What cause is outlined in their employment contracts?

Do they even have employment contracts?

Yep they are filed with the SEC, you can see one of them here: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000119312521...

The average engineer has an employment contract. It would be incredibly surprising if the CEO, lead counsel, and content policy head did not.

> although none of them are strapped for cash

Does this mean that they have or deserve different rights under contract law than others do? What if their counterparty is even less "strapped for cash"?

It’s not an excuse to treat people poorly, but I certainly have less empathy for someone who has $5M in vested stock who gets fired vs someone who makes $15/hour and lives paycheck to paycheck.

Both are injustices. The former isn’t much of a risk to life. The latter could literally result in life or death situations.

Selective empathy is on the path to becoming a sociopath

Relative empathy is part of being a regular human being.

If someone has 10 lollipops and loses 1, that’s not “selective empathy” to feel differently than about someone else who has 1 lollipop and loses everything.

One job one person, the rest is all assumptions. How much they made, their stock options, financial situation. Maybe they are paying for their nephews cancer treatment or something.

Matt Levine has a good explanation (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-10-31/elon-m...), which is that they receive a golden parachute for a simple reason. Their self-interest was to say "la-la-la, we can't hear you" when Musk comes trying to buy Twitter. That would've given them a chance to maintain high paid positions for years. Instead, they sold to him, knowing they'd probably be given the boot.

Now, at some level, it still stinks that the CEO is getting paid so many tens of millions of dollars for less than a year's worth of work. To solve that, you'd have to cut CEO pay in the first place, because just removing the parachute would incentivize clinging to their existing paychecks.

The board decided to sell, not the C-level suite because they do not have that power.

The C suite has an incredible amount of influence to block a deal with a non-strategic acquirer like Elon. The threat of all executives resigning en masse can knee cap a business.

That's true, but it wasn't the question.

What was the question? I don’t see any

Parag Agrawal, as CEO, was also a member of the board. (This is pretty common practice, among both private and public companies.)

That Matt Levine article in archive.ph: https://archive.ph/JrNdE

"which they are now no longer eligible to receive" I would 100% assume that they will sue

It would be funny if the cause was "selling Twitter to Musk". :)

Genghis Khan vibes

Taylor Leese is a respected Twitter engineering manager who tweeted on Sunday that he was no longer working at Twitter. While it's remotely conceivable that he quit, it's much more likely he was fired.

I had reports from friends who worked there that they were asked to stay available over the weekend, presumably for situations like this, or requests from the "war room" group that has been setup.

What is an engineering manager as it relates to actually writing code?

One of the things Elon said was that there appears to be 3 managers for every engineer. I understand the need for a few PMs but if there really was a 3:1 ratio that’s just absurd.

Actually, he said there are 10 managers for every engineer who codes, but I don’t know why anyone would take anything he says seriously at this point.

My understanding of Twitter is that it has, or used to have, many internal teams that do 'social media consultancy projects' for prospective clients presumably to facilitate ad campaigns. In that case I would expect everyone on those teams to have manager as a job title, much like 'director' in design firms.

I think that at this point, taking something Elon Musk says- especially about Twitter!- as having any sort of relationship to truth is the thing that's absurd.

There is literally no chance that Twitter has 10 engineering managers for every engineer. That is simply absurd. i worked there for over 4 years, and the ratio then was very comparable to every other tech company I've worked at, including large ones like Google and smaller ones (then) like Salesforce.

Maybe more interesting, there are a lot of roles that have "manager" in the name somehow. Product Manager is the obvious one, Program Managers exist, and I'm sure there are others, not to mention that every function has managers in one shape or form if they're at all scaled out -- there's managers for designers, lawyers, accountants, etc at a fairly predictable ratio at every company I've worked at.

Amusingly, Twitter was one of the most manager-lite companies I ever worked at when I started. In 2011 the ratio was a lot closer to 50:1 than it was 1:10.

Perhaps Musk is simply taking everyone with manager in their role and implying they're managing other people. This is not the case and is willfully misrepresenting people's work if so. Par for the course for this guy, though.

Musk's purchase premium increased their stock value a considerable amount.

The senior management who were fired "for cause" are all examples of how golden parachutes are properly used, and they all performed to the highest possible standard: They delivered a full-price payout to shareholders.

The "for cause" bit is a transparently vindictive breach of contract. They will get their money and then some. In fact they may know some lawyers who know how to take Elon's money.

Musk stands as good a chance of withholding the golden parachute pay as he did getting out of the acquisition.

You also need to give two months notice, or compensate for two months time, if you're going to have a big layoff. Laying off 50% of employees is also going to add up. 3,500 employees * $20,000 = $70,000,000.

Alternatively you can keep them around for 2 years and pay $840M in compensation.

Closing the sarcasm, yes, layoffs have costs (various costs, including to the morale), but there are reasons why organisations do them anyways.

If they keep them on they'll need to pay that anyway, this way they start saving money in 2 months instead of never.

I was comparing doing a “layoff” vs. firing “for cause”.

I've been through changes like this several times and the SURE indicator that big changes are coming is when the higher-ups say "Nothing will change". Seriously.

I actually think that, below the CEO level, the managers are engaged in wishful thinking, rather than deceit.

My guess is Musk wants to punish them for making him go through with the deal _he agreed to_. He doesn't want to own Twitter and he's making them feel it.

There have been some rumors that the new Chief of Twitter wants to outsource these jobs to some other countries.

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