I agree it’s bad, but there hasn’t been a lot of worker solidarity in tech so I don’t think anyone should be surprised that it can happen to us too
On the point of solidarity, i stopped using amazon when i learned about the abuse their warehouse workers are subjected to. Went from hundreds of £ a month in average to literally 0.
As an industry we’re kinda assholes on average and have an overinflated opinion of our individual abilities and an underestimated importance placed on the situation that made us valuable
Even outside of the US I still see a disproportionate amount of workers in tech being anti-union, anti-labour regulations, compared to most other industries. Probably due to the gold rush that tech has become the past 30-40 years, so many fortunes and wealth was created that still gives hope to many workers that they can make it at some point.
At the same time, we get so many privileges as tech workers that workers from other industries look at us more as part of the rich capitalists class than what we actually are: salaried workers. The class divide also happens from the other side, I had numerous conversations with blue-collar workers (friends, acquaintances) where I had to clearly spell out that I'm on the same team, that I defend the same values about work protection and dignity as they do. Divide-and-conquer between blue-collars and white-collars is very visible and I feel we need to shorten this gap to actually empower workers.
not a total loss, if the net effect of this is that it catalyses more critical thinking and in the long term we get a better deal
I'm not too bullish on his new revenue plans either. I don't think there are that many people willing to pay $8/mo for verification and to avoid ads. Most people on Twitter are consumers of content and have no need for verification.
No, I didn't. It seems pretty clear that you think his public behavior was AOK. Many people, including me and the person you originally responded to, think Musk has little regard about the effect his behavior has on his new employees.
Most people consider getting laid off to be a significant disruption to their lives: their finances, their reputation, and often their mental health. Doing that to 3700 people (or whatever) and then a day later saying, "So do you want to work here or not?" doesn't cancel out what happened a day or two before. Do you understand the old phrase, "you can't unring the bell"?
You could argue layoffs are abuse. But you’d have to convince me Twitter’s specific implementation of layoffs are more abusive than any other company’s. From what I read, 3 months severance was offered, which they have no legal obligation to offer. That doesn’t seem abusive to me.
I don't know how to say this any more clearly. Laying people off and then days later asking them to rejoin is just jerking people around. You might not agree, but that is exactly the abuse this subthread has been about. Not memes, not secret stuff that I claim to be privy to.
> You could argue layoffs are abuse.
This is exactly what I and the person you originally responded to were pointing at as abusive. But not just the layoffs; it was the layoffs then asking for a do-over just a day or two later. For someone worth $200,000,000,000 dollars, firing and rehiring hundreds or thousands of people might be seen as indecisive or fickle behavior, but to those employees it could be quite a lot of turmoil.
That's exactly the argument.
> But you’d have to convince me Twitter’s specific implementation of layoffs are more abusive than any other company’s.
Why? Does it need to be worse than any other company layoff to be considered abuse? Why is that your bar of "abusive"? It needs to be worse than any other company, so if other companies push this slowly it becomes progressively more ok to you?
Or should we consider other similar layoffs (buying a company, stripping it of workers to lower cost, increase gain for the capitalist) as abuse as well? I'm on the latter camp as it seems most on this thread are.
> From what I read, 3 months severance was offered, which they have no legal obligation to offer. That doesn’t seem abusive to me.
Does it become abusive for you when it's at scale? If you do that to 10-20 employees I might see it as less abusive. When you do that to 3k+ it is, morally, more abusive.
It is still legal to hire child labor for agriculture. Approximately a quarter of food in the united states is picked using child labor.
Before that I was considering a Tesla as my next car. And I was actually excited for SpaceX developments. Not anymore. It's a shame to see a clown digging the grave of really nice tech that thousands of people have worked for ages to create (Twitter, Tesla, basically everything Musk touches).
What's complicated is he's a bit like Travis Kalanick in that he needed an absurd amount of self-confidence to go build Tesla (or Uber). This is the same self-confidence that lead to some questionable decisions later.
you are right that he did many other things before that that I've maybe written off as eccentricities (although I admit looking back that the signals for who he is where there all along)