Twitter's engineering workforce could be down by 90% | Hacker News Reader

Twitter's engineering workforce could be down by 90%

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73 pointsdoener69 comments

At last, we will have empirical evidence to prove if that old HN saw, "this app doesn't need X amount of people to run it" is correct or not.

There should be a prediction market for this so people can put their money where their mouth is.

A market like “will Twitter report a major outage during the course of the upcoming World Cup?” would be interesting to follow.

There's a election results prediction market, but I think there are other topics allowed;

https://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/

If you are fine with virtual internet point betting, Metaculus [1] is sorta same.

[1] https://www.metaculus.com/

Ha! I always laugh when I hear those. Guess we will find out!

Elon has made it abundantly clear what he thinks of these people and their work. Why would anyone stick around to help bail him out? Let it burn.

You'd be surprised the amount of people that will "stick at it" and work through abuse at work.

I'd imagine we'll over 10% stay at the company no matter what Elon does. I've seen much worse thrown at employees.

A reflection of personal conditions I wager.

Do you think more CEO from startup going to try to emulate Elon? To be extremely demanding of employees in a very abrasive manner, basically the opposite end of the spectrum of how most tech companies cater to employees the past decade.

I have a feeling many CEOs, of all company sizes ,will try to be like Elon. Like how many CEOs were trying to be "Steve Jobs" back then, it was trendy to be pixel-perfect to the minute details.

> Do you think more CEO from startup going to try to emulate Elon?

If his strategy is successful, and 6 months from now he emerges with a Twitter 2.0 that everyone agrees is much better, then yes.

The way he’s acting is consistent with having flipflopped his way into the deal and resenting the whole thing slightly. He seems very worried about the money aspect. This fits with having tried to back out. If this is the case then he’ll need to get a handle on that.

Whether or not he succeeds, I can see that the approach is worth trying. It takes some balls, but coming out and saying, ok, who wants to get serious and work, otherwise leave, is a great way to get at a committed core team. There are huge risks (too many actually good people leaving) but it also solves one of the biggest problems in tech right now which is a coddled workforce that only wants to do what they want. It had to end at some point, and just ripping off the bandaid is as good a thing to try as any.

Edit: I agree with the other post that there should be a clear upside for those who stay, not just keeping their jobs. I don't know enough about what was offered to comment myself

Except that it comes off not so much as ‘who wants to do serious work’ as ‘who wants to work in Musk’s sweatshop for the glory of Musk?’

"I can see that the approach is worth trying" - It's been tried since forever and literally goes back to the beginning of slavery.

I have walked away from several employers who berated their employees. And I didn't wait for them to berate me. I wouldn't never put up with any kind of strong arm tactic that threatens me. I would always make the choice to leave as soon as that was attempted.

I would probably walk away from an employer that treated me in a way I didn't like as well. But we are not their target audience. I'd also be unsuitable anywhere that had a rigid authority structure, like the military. That doesn't make it a universally bad model, just one that automatically selects for a certain type of person. As a deliberate bet by leadrship, such selection could be worth trying.

I'd have to agree that may be a good model for some endeavors and the military is a very good example. I have doubts about it being good for Twitter, but maybe aspects of SpaceX would work well with it.

You basically end up with a bunch of employees who don’t have other options.

Why would employees who do have options voluntarily take on that abuse.

I'm not sure I'd personally get behind Elon Musk as a leader, but people respond to vision and are willing to put in work and ensure hardship, to be part of a compelling vision. Not everybody is just going to work to collect their pay cheques.

Capricious firings and public beratings are certainly one kind of vision.

Have you at any point seen Elon provide anything close to a compelling vision for Twitter? I haven't.

Other than trollish comments about free speech that he's since walked back, he's given no sign of having any coherent vision whatsoever.

The problem here isn't just that he's a terrible person; it's that it becomes clearer by the day that he's really just winging it. Smart, capable people don't want to work around that.

What vision?

All I see is, "I'm the new king here - drop everything and come on bended knee to show me how all this shit works at 1am or you're fired".

I think the approach was poor. Laying off half the company then trying this is a recipe for disaster. If at first, instead of laying off half the company he had said "Look, the company is in rough shape, we are going to turn it around, here is the vision... It's going to get hard but you can leave now" then I could get behind it. But this is just insane, you'll just end up with people who can't leave.

This is what I worry about.

One of the great things about tech culture is that management can’t just openly dominate engineers. “Because I told you so” is not an answer that engineers will accept. If you treat engineers this way (without world-class compensation) then they will just leave.

My guess is that a lot of founders are rooting for Elon here. To them, “because I said so” is a perfectly valid reason to do what I say, because, well, I’m the boss. Who are they to question me? Who are they to complain?

I sincerely hope that Elon fails, if only to temper the egos of would-be petty tyrants everywhere.

EDIT: I realized that it is uncharitable of me to wish for failure. I don't wish ill on any of Twitter's employees. I'll restate it: I hope that Elon is forced to reverse course on his management style.

I think that what you’re describing is a dogmatic / authoritarian leadership style, which in tech can signal incompetence, but that’s not neccesarily what Elon is doing. He is being demanding and brash, and somewhat arrogant.

I'm not sure he is worth emulating unless he manages to dramatically turn Twitter around. In this short period of time he has lost significant ad revenue, while dramatically increasing expenses due to the debt load.

i wouldn't want to work for a ceo insane enough to want to emulate elon musk after watching the twitter trainwreck

He should have outlined the reasons to stay. Compensation, including a new stock plan. A vision of where the company is going.

Giving everyone who is unhappy a graceful exit was the right idea, but he didn't give many reasons to stay even if you were happy.

The vision is working in a cult of personality centered around placating the whims of a narcissistic, psychopathic toddler. Apparently this is attractive to some people.

It’s more likely that those who remain are trapped by circumstances: on a visa, or too deep in debt to risk unemployment, or such-like.

Ha, those employees got a huge payday already when Elon overpaid for twitter. They all have some f-u money to tell Elon to pound sand.

I'm actually curious about that. How much of that money is locked in options/RSUs that won't vest if they aren't employed in 3 months?

I am no expert on this. But I believe in the case of a buyout, all the outstanding options and RSUs would be automatically vested and exercised. Lockouts wouldn't make any sense now that the company is no longer public.

I believe the conditions were that existing employees would receive cash at the time each batch of shares would have vested.

Everyone is acting like this is a totally unintentional reduction in headcount...

Let's wait to see exactly how many people are left (if we ever even hear this number?), but it seems nobody remembers the reports from a month ago saying he wants to reduce it by 75%?

https://www.outlookindia.com/business/elon-musk-plans-to-fir...

Don't worry as there's plenty of dirty cheap consultancies from overseas that will do Elons dirty work with pride.

I highly doubt a shady overseas consultancy is a viable replacement for things like infrastructure, engineering, UX and product design, etc. Maybe he can cut costs as far as moderators, but I don't believe it's possible to reduce a company like Twitter by 80–90% and maintain service and product quality.

I don't see how he gets out of this, honestly. Even if he appoints a CEO with actual social skills, it's hard for me to imagine that anyone would want to work for a company that he has any influence over.

The last company I saw implode like this was named Enron.

Lol what? If he hates remote work why in the world would he be ok with his engineering team working for him from another country?

Didn't he ban software conultancies at his other companies?

He banned the three guys? There is a joke in industrial automation, that if a machine builder has a problem and contracts that work out to some external experts, it's always the same three guys, walking into the car company with different shirts.

The world is really small, if a job has nasty hours, bad conditions and needs expertise. Basically 3 idealists and Noone else.

Does this assume that Musk will actually let people go with 3 months severance as promised? As far as I know his promise wasn't binding.

Twitter confirmed that it was an "official company communication." Seems like a pretty open-and-shut case if he tries to renege on the offer.

He is a free speech guy. Now he should embrace the consequences.

Is he a free speech guy? Or is he just a narcissist who loves his own voice?

Yeah probably what you said :)

This is the fourth article I've seen on this, none with substantiation. I mean it's big if true-- but that's still a big if

I would love to see all of twitter leave and have that be the major reason for the implosion of twitter, even musk could be possible, with all the notoriety. I'm not sure we're going to see it (there's actually a lot stacked against that IMO), but you never know. With sex harassment (assault?) stuff people in high places could start really taking aim at him; and if he harassed one staffer, isn't it possible to see him get canceled, if there was more of a coalition. Not saying he would fade into obscurity, but maybe a bunch of people won't deal with him.

I think that twitter will be able to pull in some talent. Now you don't want mediocre engineers, but tbh there's probably room in some area, for someone that's just technical and experienced.

Lots of people, possibly even myself would roll the dice on twitter. As much as it would suck, I think it has a real chance to slingshot me into a new industry (I do software, but there's a substantial percent of the market that's really off limits ATM). You never know man, it's a moonshot.

I think for me it would definitely unlock a bunch of new avenues. So what if it goes under, and I watch it fall? If Elon fires me is that really going to look so bad? There's probably plenty of talented people that are willing to take the risk.

Obviously, the biggest part is whether this new workforce will stack up... it certainly won't, but it might be able to keep things a float. Twitter was in such bad shape I wouldn't be surprised if it failed, even if the remaining 50% (10%?) were a solid crew of grizzled veterans, obsessed with his hardcore ways... even full crew, motivated might not be able to save twitter from becoming a much more popular (but still quite small) version of voat.

Regwall / dark patterns: <https://nitter.net/gergelyorosz/status/1593345748086788098>

Full thread is interesting, but for just the main sequence: <https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1593345748086788098.html>

It’s like he bought a $44 billion yacht, set it on fire, and watched it burn.

He didn't really want the yacht; he was forced to buy it. Now he's taking revenge on the people who work in the yacht. Publicly ridiculing the quality of their work and firing them if they defend their work.

"forced" is doing some heavy lifting to describe the world's richest person voluntarily making a binding offer to buy something.

He's rich, he's smart, I feel comfortable ascribing agency to him.

He tried to exercise his "agency" to get out of the binding offer and that didn't work, did it?

I guess I'm quibbling over what he was forced to do, so maybe we're talking past each other.

He _chose_ to buy it, with very few conditions. Presumably he was advised by very skilled lawyers during this transaction. He was _forced_ to honour his agreement.

If he didn't want to buy it, he could have not made an offer. Or he could have made an offer with conditions.

Instead, he chose to tweet repeatedly about how broken Twitter was, and how he would fix it once he owned it.

Now he owns it.

He had no "agency." There were stipulations that could allow him to get out and he tried to bullshit his way through making it seem like the situation matched, then panicked and stopped fighting it when the prospect of further discovery in the case threatened his ego.

> he was forced to buy it.

No one forced him to sign a binding agreement to buy Twitter. He chose that for himself.

What happened next was he got cold feet when he decided that he didn't like the deal he himself had proposed and agreed to, and then he spent six months trying to back out of it.

What is up with the "salute" emojii? Seems it is used when you are fired at Twitter? It is some kind of new meme? Or old perhaps?

It means the employee has chosen to not stay for Twitter 2.0 ft. Elon Musk.

I'm sure in Elon's mind it's "Elon Musk ft Twitter 2.0".

The engineer who was summarily terminated after publicly pushing back on Elon's tweets about app performance responded to the news that he had been fired (also via tweet) with the salute emoji. Seems like it's become a meme among Twitter employees headed for the exits.

Yes I saw that. Was he first, and others followed? Or was he just following an already established tradition?

I wonder if it's related to the EVE Online meme of o7 (ascii salute)

Employees started using it when the first proper rounds of layoffs were happening

https://twitter.com/ruchowdh/status/1588694932872925184

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/business/layoffs-meta-twi...

Apparently this: https://twitter.com/alexeheath/status/1593368576777396226

search for [ salute bye gif ]

they are saluting those brave enough to stick with the sinking ship. They have a problem with Elon and not with those choosing to stay behind.

When the indignant see that nothing has changed, the site still works and the company marches on, how will they feel?

I hope grateful that the management gave them a sweet deal to leave. Everyone wins.

I think we all know 50 quality engineers can keep Twitter afloat.

Twitter is bound to have a rocky time after losing so many people so fast. It's going to be a lot harder than it needed to be.

It'll survive, of course, but it's not going to be easy now.

Didn’t have to be but I respect it. Best thing to do is to dismantle everything you can from the previous regimes and replace it with your own loyal people.

Everyone knows the score now and everyone that stays or joins going forward will be dedicated to the new vision and mission.

They’ll be fine.

Saddam had the same vision and mission.

Public executions and a demand for blind loyalty to whatever he wants.

Is twitter.com down or something? How is going to be hard for them?

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