Twitter asks some laid off workers to come back | Hacker News Reader

Twitter asks some laid off workers to come back

reuters.com

35 pointscjg36 comments

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Couple of hours ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33502177 96 comments

and some more hours ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496808 133 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496822 18 comments

"Some of those who are being asked to return were laid off by mistake. Others were let go before management realized that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features Musk envisions, the report said citing people familiar with the moves."

That second sentence, those employees, should tell Musk and Twitter to go f-themselves. To be thrown away because the child billionaire paid too much and has to cut costs asap and then asked to come back because there's a knowledge or skills gap thwarting the pushing of new features is Twitter's problem not that of the employees fired/laid-off.

Mr Musk "will oversee software development" as per Exhibit H.

So I hope he'll have time to plough through all the code. I wonder if he'll be on pagerduty

haha yup, he probably is thinking: "I can land rockets on a platform in the ocean, how hard is running a social network?"

> I wonder if he'll be on pagerduty

Considering he's the world's richest man and he's literally replying to customer feedback about the product on the product, yes, he probably is on pagerduty.

it's not duty if you can stop doing it whenever you want and not get fired

I'd argue former employees from either group should not return - mistake or necessity. This culture is just wrong. It's nothing short of bullying.

well said, that's basically what I was tying to say in teh op

I'd argue they should, while extracting as much money as possible while delivering the bare of the barest minimums. Looking for another job at the same time.

Any sense of loyalty was shattered by the abuse of power, the org knows that and won't be treating these re-hires as usual, the org will be forever suspicious so give them every reason to be suspicious while being legal. They done fucked.

That works as well. Anything that shifts the balance of power in their favour is fine, whatever that may be per circumstance.

There is something deeper here than just a mass layoff. I think it's something that starts with making Steve Jobs style "tantrums" acceptable followed by normalising bullying in workplaces all the way through "oh he's a genius billionaire - he MUST know what he's doing". Having money and past success does not mean you get a free pass at anything. If we keep accepting it, it will be ever more normalised.

Is the job market hot enough for them to refuse to come back?

This chaos further lends evidence to the idea that controls around mass redundancy is a good thing.

People should lobby for the following:

* advance warning

* open redundancy processes

* mandatory consultation periods

* protection that redundancies are justified

Redundancy legislation is not just about minimum severance, it's about making sure large companies put in place proper procedures to prevent this kind of chaos.

By engaging with the workforce with advance notice (real advance notice that there will be redundancies, not just paying off a severance) and having consultations then redundancies can be minimised and focused where necessary.

Not laying off a chunk of workers who a week later you realised you depended on.

Getting laid off with 90 days pay is hardly the worst thing. I don’t really understand why people are upset.

I have empathy for those laid off. I’ve been through it. It’s sucks.

But going through something that sucks isn’t automatically a reason to invoke widespread legislation change.

It's not about compensation or personal circumstance, it's about not having corporations treating your job like a joke and removing you on a whim.

And as in this case, it would protect the company too from itself.

It might "not be the worst" but it's still something that's better done in a thought out manner after consideration and planning.

It's hardly the worst thing until... You just got a new kid and instead of being able to enjoy the first 3 months of life of your kid you will spend 3 months fretting about getting a job. Or maybe you just discovered you have cancer?

It sucks, everyone's life is a little different and it will suck for them a bit more or a bit less. The change for the company is losing some productive workforce, balancing the books, showing you are losing less money per day, etc. The change for a person is getting your life completely upended.

There's a noticeable power imbalance, why does the worker take the biggest hit to their personal life while the company gets to float away barely scratched?

Yes, these are tech workers, earning a lot of money, the power imbalance is still there, the class struggle is still there. Some solidarity would help, it might happen to you in a very delicate moment of your life...

On top of that, people are also more upset because the person taking this decision to upend thousands of lives is an asshole. And I feel that workers are getting pretty fucking fed up with assholes dictating their lives.

They should definitely say yes, contingent on keeping their severance payout.

If it's gonna be amateur night, I want a hundred thousand dollars. I want it upfront, and in a bank account. I want another hundred thousand dollars when you get the signed contract.

Ronin

I ambushed you with a cup of coffee

I know from a first hand source, aka the person experiencing it, that in extreme cases that is what you can get. The person in question was laid off from a small company making test equipment for chip makers during one of the usual down turns. Only for the down turn to be much less steep than expected. So happily took his 6 months of paid leave plus severance pay, only to be hired back 3 months in his garden leave for 30% more base pay, keeping his package and being fully reimbursed for the 3 months off he didn't enjoy. And he was not the only one, some of the older people insisted in part time consultant jobs paying more than their previous employment until their retirement, and they got it.

In the case of Twitter, I'd definitely take the Ronin approach so. Plus health care coverage.

That seems like the very least that should happen.

You fired me, got me to sign a contract with a severance payout. Obviously Im keeping that.

To get me back to a company that fired people this easily and without thought, youd need me to pay me more than previously as "hazard" pay of a kind.

Isn’t this story already exposed as being based on one person on Blind saying something like ‘oh yeah’?

I could look it up but can’t be bothered, a story that references another story with no sources doesn’t need to be disproved.

If true, seems to me many would not accept. Although perhaps they would get a pay rise + some may value a job if they see a recession impending.

Overall, seems very odd, and if true very bad management.

Their status page has been reporting the wrong certificate all weekend: https://status.twitter.com/

It has also rotated through various content (404 page, etc) which suggests someone has been fruitlessly trying to resolve the problem. Rebuilding their internal knowledge about "how to run this Twitter thing" is going to be an adventure for those left.

A cert issue like this is pretty trivial..... concerning if they have nobody who knows how to fix it.

Trivial in a small, no-nonsense company, probably absolutely non-trivial in a place like Twitter, where I expect they have a custom, byzantine devops/config management solution in place.

One thing I wondered about the whole story about Tesla engineers reviewing code was… how many of them and how much time would it take for them to understand organizationally who is needed / knows what to do for a site like Twitter?

Is “I think this codes is not optimally written.” Even useful after a week?

I once was a part of an acquisition where they quickly fired a lot of redundant people.

Including the entire mailroom, dock workers, facilities staff.

After a week they randomly called the tech support number and a group of us who had never been to the dock struggled to open the door for a weeks worth of deliveries.

I was intrigued. As of Monday AM, status.twitter.com was still serving a DigiCert cert for "*.twimg.com"

No sources? You have to take anything to do with Elon’s Twitter takeover with a grain of salt because journalists have an axe to grind now the status symbol (that we’re now finding out was sold at $15k per verification at times by staff under the table) is open to everyone.

Are you implying the main cause of grievance for journos against Musk right now is the loss of "status" of a verified badge? I believe there are many more issues with Musk that they have axes to grind than... Losing privilege to a blue badge on Twitter.

Yes and I think journalists in particular have believed that badge meant they belonged to a different class of people and it is the main thing they're angry about with the Musk takeover.

Git stack ranking via a script coded by SpaceX and Tesla sofware engineers over a weekend and bringing Jason Calcanis and your personal lawyer onboard to give you advice.

What possible other outcome could there be other than a shit show ???.

Don’t forget rape and racism enthusiast David Sacks.

But you are correct. This looks exactly like you would expect given the people involved.

It’s hilarious because Calcanis is an outspoken advocate for 996 work culture.

Fuck that ghoul & anybody who associates with him.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

One article called him not so kindly Elon's henchman - what experience did he bring to the table except being a podcaster ??? :).

Did Musk really bring in Calcanis to advise on layoffs? I mean anyone that associates themselves with Calcanis deserves scorn, but knowing Calcanis, it is entirely possible that he somehow used the twitter chaos and managed to enter the building declare himself part of Twitter management without anyone figuring out this is not the case and he is a simple trespasser.

Remember when Musk initially announced his twitter offer, Calcanis started raising money for it on Musks behalf without being asked or authorized to do so. Musk had to ask him to stop it.

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