He’s Fired | Hacker News Reader

He’s Fired

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74 pointsatdrummond82 comments

On a scale of 0 (hiring at Twitter is as easy as possible) to 100 (Twitter can never hire anyone again) how bad is it now that Musk fired an employee in front of millions of users, especially since the employee was calling out obvious bullshit?

For specifically calling him out on a probable lie

That too. Corrected ;)

(I'm multitasking and on phone; pardon my terseness)

Awaiting the lawsuit against him because of the obvious constructive dismissal going on

On what grounds? Most of US is at will employment, so the worst that he's subject to is something like california's WARN act which requires 60 days notice. However, AFAIK the employees are still receiving a paycheck, just that they have nothing to do and are locked out of the company's systems.

I just want to say that this attitude towards employment will likely be part of the eventual downfall of the USA.

The reason ? It's too risky to tell your boss the truth so when things are going bad so it's easier just not to say anything, I noticed my American colleagues will often not say anything to "the grand leader", they will maybe even encourage stupidity. Where as when I worked in Europe, that doesn't happen.

Not claiming those places are super powers, but I think this "shoot from the hip" American attitude towards staff will be it's undoing.

Nah.

Everywhere I've ever worked, you can tell any boss things they don't want to hear. What you have to do is do it respectfully. I've told directors and VPs multiple levels up from me that I thought they were wrong about something in large meetings. I said it to their face and respectfully, and that was fine. As long as you understand your place and don't publicly trash your boss, there's normally no problem.

The tweet in question here was... not that.

Was his original tweet actually disrespectful? His CEO is openly ridiculing his own company's engineering teams, and he simply said that what Musk said was wrong.

The second tweet had some more sass to it to match the tweet he was responding to, but it also wasn't all that bad. He points out the above in that Musk should be bringing these things up internally rather than publicly belittling his own employees with what appears to be incorrect information.

It's not about that, it's that you have to think and put a lot of mental energy into "being respectful" rather than just being straight forwards and direct. You have to wait for the right time etc.

Giving feedback has higher risk and cost to it than it would otherwise be so why even do it?

While I'm not claiming it's an immediate crisis, I think it is and will continue to become a net long term loss for corporate American culture.

Musk is now teaching the world you can just fire people for saying anything you don't like without even a phone call, it will only make people more apprehensive to talk more freely.

I think more than anything else Musk is teaching people to never apply to any company he owns under any circumstances. This isn't going to be treated as a role model for managers. It's going to be a model of exactly what not to do as a CEO, not just on HR issues, but everything else.

I seriously don't see Twitter ever being able to hire a worker of any significant skill level ever again.

Funny that Musk was touting "free speech" as one of his reasons for wanting to buy Twitter in the first place, innit?

Very clear at this stage that had nothing to do with his real intentions.

Being respectful and just being straight forward and direct are the same thing as long as you're not being an asshole while being straight forward and direct.

I do agree that it can take extra mental energy to translate "this idea is stupid" to "the downside of this approach is..." if you are prone to thinking in a harsh, cynical voice (I'm guilty of it). That is energy well spent.

Looked pretty respectful to me. Musk was throwing devs under the bus, a dev politely corrected them.

It’s been this way in the USA a long, long time for non-Union jobs (maybe since our founding? I don’t know).

So whether you agree or disagree with employment-at-will, I don’t see how it will be the downfall of the USA given the history.

But it would be a better place if people could speak more freely without fear or being fired and without better social safety nets.

Rest assured you're absolutely right in that this one thing won't be the downfall of anything. It may well contribute in some part to the eventual downfall of certain people / things, however…

Doubtful. The whole idea is an overgeneralization. Companies in the US fail all the time because of bad bosses, or bad managers. A boss that can’t listen to their employees eventually craters and ends up somewhere they can’t do much damage. Night manager at Arby’s or the local Foodway, for example. It’s not going to bring down society.

On the other hand, Musk seems like a child yet he is in charge of some pretty important things in the USA such as space technology?

So what? We all know that appearances are not the best guide. The fact that he doesn’t have to spend 8 hours a day in a SpaceX office means that he has hired capable people to run it, and that he listens to them. That puts him ahead of most of the bad bosses in the world.

That’s not how constructive dismissal works. If your company decides they want to soft-layoff, they can’t just make it miserable and hope people quit. They’ll be sued, and courts will find the departures equivalent to a layoff if enough people leave.

I suppose Elon misunderstood what “build in public” meant.

And free speech and everything else he touts. Yet again, it's an example of: don't tell Musk he is wrong, especially in public.

Musk has also, presumably, removed the conversation shown here from Twitter: https://twitter.com/ichdertom/status/1592217628214722560/pho...

What's the order of events here? Between "I can say this is wrong", this "what have you done?" exchange, and "he's fired"?

I get the feeling it is in the order that you listed. The in between discussion doesn’t seem to show on Twitter unless one has the direct link.

It's a shame because Elon was certainly enjoying the prerogative to shit on that team's work.

TBH I was already pretty against working under Musk because of his previous speech and behavior.

I think this was basically another instance of the same. It certainly cements my views.

Here might be another reason for not working for Musk: he asked an executive of his, Jerome Guillen, to "forfeit some unvested equity" because he thought that "some employees were making more from Tesla than he thought their contributions merited", per WSJ. I assume that Guillen was going to get the unvested equity if Musk didn't ask, otherwise it wouldn't be an issue at all.

The sad thing is that Musk and his disciples think this makes him look hardcore. Is Musk maybe the most easily-trolled person on Twitter? Parag Agarwal trolled him out of 44 billion dollars.

I'm actually surprised at how much support he's getting for his fuckwittery on this very site. I shouldn't be, but I am.

He's since deleted the tweet, making this whole thing a 10/10 troll that Musk never in a million years should have fallen for.

He "paid" $44 billion to become the permanent main character of twitter.

Here we see the ruling class unleashing their serfs against the bourgeoisie, a tale as old as tales.

When will elon get that this stuff isn't a cool "haha high five bro nice one" moment, and is instead just a sad display of managerial power, akin to sending a dish back to the kitchen in a restaurant.

It probably is one to his peer group.

As long as he gets the wave of approvers oohing and aahing at each of his tweets, he doesn't care about anything or anyone else. Where have I seen this behavior before? Certain egomaniacs really get addicted to their Twitter fanboys.

Let's not pretend there's that much overlap between trump fans and musk fans.

True, trump at least says his catch phrase 'you're fired' to their face

There may not be, but behaviors can be shared by groups that have very different tastes. Think religions, soccer, etc.

Elon's "free speech" is just marketing. He himself is not qualified to moderate Twitter. They're offended easily and throw tantrums when they don't get their way. If this is how the boss acts the rest of the staff will be taking notes and doing it to you too.

Tantrum is a kind way of framing Elon's social media style. Elon's tactical repertoire includes accusations of pedophilia, as he did to a rescue worker during a deadly rescue mission. Elon later double-downed on the claim by elaborating on why he thought the rescue worker was a pedophile.

It's really a sad thing that Elon Musk won that lawsuit.

the UX is so messed up you have to put in significant effort to understand wtf any of this meant. Luckily, someone pieced together the actual conversation in 4 screenshots in the thread there. What a terrible app!

I might be wrong but I think his responses has been shadow banned, they do not appear in his profile or replies section yet they show up if you follow a direct link to them. Interesting. Anyone more knowledgable care to explain what's happening here?

While this all maybe entertaining to some people , it all just seems highly unprofessional. Right things can be done in a professional and respectful way , not make it all a big show unless they are desperate ways for the company to attract eyeballs and money.

A brand new (non-technical) CEO using misinformation to call out his dev team in public is also highly unprofessional, especially when they've tried to raise the same issue to management previously (apparently).

I've seen the entire thread the fired gentleman in question wrote, and I don't see anything wrong with it, besides calling BS on the world's second biggest man-baby.

>not make it all a big show unless they are desperate ways for the company to attract eyeballs and money.

Are we talking about the fired gentleman or Elon Musk here?

Yes it is unprofessional but that CEO happens to own Twitter, so there's that. The developer is trying to armwrestle his boss in public. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Based on his timeline I think he was ready to leave anyway. I’d bet that he’ll have a new job long before Musk can find someone equally skilled willing to put up with him - fanboys are unlikely to be as good at coding as they are kissing up.

If that's true, it's even more unprofessional. Agree to disagree is a basic professional skill. If you don't have that, maybe Elon was right to fire him?

Musk slagged his workers in public based on his misunderstanding. This guy very patiently gave a detailed correction, so if anyone needs to work on something it’s Musk.

Personally, I’d view this as a litmus test: if your boss is more concerned about scoring points with his sycophants than being right, most highly-employable engineers are going to walk before it gets worse. If Musk had been humble enough to treat this as an engineer would, that’s be a different story since it would tell you that improvement is possible.

Presumably intentional? Whether right or wrong on tech that was never a survivable pissing contest

Well if you thought radical transparency and public debate were still on the table it would have been, but this is further proof it is not.

Free speech as in it will be published, and free speech as your CEO will let you correct him in public at any point, are quite different things. This tweeting got into the manager-employee dynamic and that's not normally a free-speech zone.

> not normally a free-speech zone

How about 'cancel culture' zone?

The 'device tweet was written on' looks like cargo cult of blue bubbles vs green.

it made more sense back when the API was more open and third-party clients were the norm

It only makes sense if those clients aren't Twitter clients. Twitter clients being used by people are similar. If instead that mechanism was used to bring in content from an entire other network, it could be beneficial to identify that.

The blue iMessage bubbles only make sense because Apple chooses not to make an iMessage for Andriod or open the protocol. I hope iMessage goes the way of BBM. It's a $$ artifact, not technical.

Musk is so incredibly fragile

http://web.archive.org/web/20221115075527/https://twitter.co...

oh come on though, eric was playing for a severance package.

If you're going to call out a sensitive ego in public, bring the facts up front.

He and several others apparently did bring facts. Those tweets aren't available now it seems.

Those tweets are still available:

https://twitter.com/EricFrohnhoefer/status/15919683432293662...

As far as I can tell, they are only available if you have the direct link. They don’t show up in the thread or on his profile.

is there any reasonable explanation for why that is the case?

I didn't have the direct link and found them by browsing.

The facts are in replies, not standalone Tweets, so you have to know which Tweet to start with. From his profile, click on "I have spent ~6yrs working on Twitter for Android and can say this is wrong."

Ah I should have been more specific. He said ~"youre wrong", then some hours later, after Musk had prompted him for a real argument, he made an attempt at a constructive response. By "up front", I mean on tweet 1.

His argument wasn't even that great (because there is no good argument, and that's why one wouldn't take the bait if they actually like their job), and by then I'm afraid the axe had already been sharpened.

https://twitter.com/ericfrohnhoefer/status/15922870378054410... is the tweet that makes it official

Who got fired here? I'm presuming it's @EricFrohnhoefer, but his profile says he's "Still @twitter".

Eric has also acknowledged it.[0]

[0] https://twitter.com/EricFrohnhoefer/status/15922870378054410...

I took this to mean he was already fired.

It is extremely brutal

My impression of Elon is that he would appreciate this straightforward feedback that is consistent with his no bs persona. I wonder if he has different evidence than what was presented to him ?

Then you have the wrong impression of a narcissist.

Nothing in his public behavior suggests he takes criticism or being shown up well. Remember the cave rescue in Thailand? A normal person would have said “this kids are safe, great!” but his ego was irreparably injured by the knowledge that he wasn’t the smartest guy in the room.

My guess is that he’s going in determined to be the alpha engineer[1], assuming everyone who isn’t “his man” is stupid, possibly a saboteur, but is still going by what trivia comes up in response to questions. Something like “when you load the app we do a GraphQL query which makes hundreds of requests to our microservices” was understood as “the client makes all of those requests one by one” and since he doesn’t respect his employees he doesn’t pause to ask whether they really wouldn’t have noticed a blindingly obvious problem like that.

1. No, he definitely doesn’t want to know that’s not even a real thing with wolves.

"no bs persona"? I guess you mean his style is "no BS" rather than the substance of what he says.

It's funny I see this applied to people who constantly BS as long as they are not nice to people or PC.

Elon Musk has a no bs persona? Isn't his persona almost always bullshitting?

Nothing is his public interaction or interviews lends this impression to anyone that has been paying attention.

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