A few tech startup CEOs in my country had started saying Elon's methods are fine
twitter.com
twitter.com
Twitter is not the same. What is the idealistic vision of Twitter right now? The whole "free speech" absolutism thing is thinly veiled political pandering. What is Twitter doing that's special which would make me want to work under significantly worse conditions than the myriad of other software jobs out there?
Also, with some straining and twisting, it's possible to make a case for Twitter changing the future (and present) for the worse. That's much harder to do with the other companies.
I made extremely sophisticated backends for biomedical software. For medical imaging software. And for molecular imaging software. I was very aware that the graphics, biophysics, and mathematics work I was doing at those companies was important. I was on site often collaborating in cross-functional teams at NIH, Carnegie-Mellon, Cleveland Clinic and Sloan Kettering among others. And there was always a core of people on those teams who often wouldn't go home in some situations.
Now, when I had enough exits, and I got into making graphics and physics backends for video games?
Well, sorry, I was just very aware that I was doing something with a lower level of importance. Dressing it up as pushing the boundaries of what some political opportunist wants to call "free speech" would still not have moved the needle for me. If I were at Twitter, I'd be in the camp of "I'm not going to work 18 hours a day on your political campaign as though it's critical to mankind's continuance big guy."
However, that's just a data point of 1. Others might feel different.
I disagree. There were clearly political biases at play when it came to censoring/removing people from Twitter. Regardless of what side of the political aisle you're on that should be a huge issue.
People in general want to socialize and even put their opinion out their. What they don't want is to get death threats or be insulted for any minor opinion (or just for random stuff).
If it's a free for all the ugliest elements (which are currently moderated away on all major social media platforms) of society will scream the loudest and at all times and that turns off many people.
Advertisers don't want their brands associated with that and if I'm to pay 8€ a month I would expect that I am given tools to deal with that (without needing to flag a neverending streams of tweets).
If I'm making a business out of creating content there (or just want have a peaceful environment) I expect that I can also create a pleasant environment for my customers / friends / family. My money, my house rules.
This is not a trivial problem at all and I don't think Elon Musk is equipped to handle it well. If you ask me he is too thin skinned and caught up in his own greatness. The way he memes and engages with employees and (political) opponents in general does not bode well.
It's fair to ask users to pay instead of relying on advertisement but then you cannot (algorithmically and by default) force them to endure a waterfall of shit.
Conservatives may not like it, but their ideological umbrella encompasses some of the most unsavory characters in our society. I mean, the N word example was a bit harsh but even imagine someone who tries to dress it up with khakis and an oxford shirt like Richard Spencer. Still incredibly off-putting once it becomes overt enough. It's natural that a for-profit company would want to hide these people away.
Also keep in mind that when far left accounts were banned for threatening police officers or something conservatives and libertarians were happy to ignore it. In the end, Twitter was not pushing a hegemonic progressive worldview. They were trying to make money, which is why they happily forced Musk to buy them in the first place. If they were just wanting to propagandize people to be Demonrats or whatever then they would not have sold with such zeal for $54.20....
I think software engineers have many more opportunities so they don't need to settle.
Calling them spoiled implies that they should be working 16 hours a day 6 days a week.
There’s something to a platform with strong speech protections that tries to give publication access to everyone in the world.
Compare the coverage of FTX on Twitter vs. legacy media - most of it is happening on Twitter and at higher quality. Legacy media outlets are being duped by Rahul Ligma repeatedly.
I think there’s something there that a visionary leader could rally people behind, the company has just largely not had one so far with any kind of power to do it.
But the optics of SpaceX, Tesla or Starlink do make them feel like more optimistic visions of future.
Perhaps the problem is that the solutions for better Twitter are not technological/engineering problems with controllable/engineerable outcomes.
(Just found the comparison super interesting - not agreeing or disagreeing with the comment.)
The problem is that no one has a good reason to believe it can be done because it has not yet been. At least with rockets and cars, the physics are there to back you up. You also have the problem of it being Elon, and… does anyone think he’d be the guy to choose to fix a social problem? Certainly I would not be and I am also on the spectrum. Then you have the evidence that, he’s fcking firing or burning all these Twitter employees, many of which likely did* want to make an legit good (defined by the above) social media service, regardless of whether they were “woke” or not (avoiding that charged language).
If I rewound a bit and he did get more sleep/get better advice & advisors/took things a little slower and tried to integrate with the company or at least communicate a coherent vision, I could see this having gone differently. It did not…
The cultures of large organizations don't change on a dime, and it takes thought and careful guidance to get them to change at all. Buying a company is not like building one from scratch.
If Twitter stays operational with a skeleton crew: it's confirmation to them that engineering is overstaffed and Twitter was bloated.
If Twitter starts breaking down: it's confirmation that Twitter was so overstaffed it became too bloated to produce reliable, resilient software and instead relied on its outsized headcount to keep things running rather than doing things "properly"
If a system has minimal operational burden, that means it was designed by people who cared deeply about it and worked diligently building it. Those characteristics are rare commodity these days!
So while I don't disagree with Twitter downsizing - as the other tech companies have been doing recently - I don't think it was wise to go at it so aggressively, having the effect that there's now a walkout of staff that Twitter absolutely needs to run.
The chaotic way this has all this has all been done, though, seems like an extremely risky way to run any of kind of business.
I am curious to see the outcome, difficult to predict, I don't know if there are any precedent.
I believe that software only companies can be run with a relatively small staff, but this is not easy and should be built in the company culture from the start.
My intuition is that company culture can only change quickly when it is degrading.
Had he hired an adult and done all of those changes with some thought instead of what he did I doubt anyone would have batted an eye.
It does seem like they were heavy with staff but that reduction could have been thoughtfully and with more tact. At the point that you fired half of the staff and then the next day started asking those some people back speaks volume to the chaos HE is causing and probably killed motivation/morale of the staff left.
Publicly firing someone on twitter for disagreeing with you is also just wrong. He just purchased the company and the amount of arrogance and gall to think you know more than someone who had been working on it for years is just staggering... misguided... hubris. There are really not enough words to say bad the optics appear.
He absolutely should have talked to that person privately and said look do not attack me in public. Now tell me why I am wrong. But that would require some humility and humanity, which HE seems short of.
Then that grade school letter that HE sent at midnight. Do you love me? Do you want to stay and work in super hard core mode? Again it is hard to fathom how stupid of a move that was.
Engineering is needed and is core to keeping the place running and moving forward but that alone is not enough. He needs real product people who understand the product. HE clearly does not.
All of it is fixable but HE needs out of it day to day. Immediately.
Get/keep your core staff you need to keep things running. Step out of the visible light and let and adult run the company. Get some good product people and brainstorm and vet ideas for making it better in private. Then execute.
I'm pretty sure he has a bunch of "adults" working on this making these decisions.
It is hard to reconcile that though with the actions. The actions are bad and seemingly not well thought out.
I hope there is someone advising him maybe he is just not listening.
I think that would probably have been a better plan, but people would still have absolutely lost their minds over it, because it's Elon.
The chaotic way he is doing it is one of the reasons he said the company needed to go private. If you made these sweeping changes to a company that is public you're getting fired.
Also, I think doing a massive sweeping changes all in one go and changing the culture straight away is better than the other option. I've been part of companies while they've changed cultures slowly. Everyone left, just slowly and it was a constant reminder how much things had changed and how bad things were in comparison because everytime someone left it was a "yea, they finally see it".
Right now, Twitter will have lots of people who are quite simply unhappy because Musk. From a HR and company view, these are people you want/need to get rid of. Disengaged employees are a massive drain, actively disengaged are an even bigger drain. They affect the ones who are engaged and can drag a team/company down.
What annoys me is, every time Musk tweets something about the tech at Twitter people think he's gone in and had a look at things and came to that opinion instead of being told it.
For example, the 1200 RPCs for the timeline to be loaded in the app. Everyone jumps on the fact those requests are done server-side instead of the app. Basically jumping on a technicality. If they are making 1200 RPCs via GraphQL that is still completely nuts. And the performance of Twitter isn't exactly good.
Another example, he said they were turning off 20% of the microservices. The sms microservice got disabled or something. People act like he was the one deciding which ones get turned off. Instead of it being someone whose job it is to know this screwing up.
Another thing that grinds my gears, people care more about the Twitter tech team making 300k a year not getting a free lunch than they do about Bezos and his army of people having to pee in bottles for 30k a year.
What does that have to do with my points?
Twitter is probably the most performant platform at its scale. The timeline experience is unparalleled. Reddit cant do it. Facebook cant do it. Gmail cant even let me see an email and go back to where I was in my search query half the time.
Also, Elon touts himself as "technoking" who's sole engineering prowess is responsible for Tesla and SpaceX. If someone tells him 1200 server side service calls are making the app slow in one country and not another, he deserves to be clowned on. He's the one making the claim he's some sort of Tony Stark, so he can catch flak for being dumber than the average mid-level web developer.
Oh also
> Disengaged employees are a massive drain
Why is it the employees fault for being disengaged but not Elon's for being an absolute clown and bullying/firing everyone via twitter that calls him on his bullshit. He's the one being toxic, but people responding negatively to toxicity are the "drain".
Another corporate simp acting in bad faith. Nobody cares more about twitter devs making 300k not getting lunch more than Amazon abusing warehouse workers. Nobody has said that. Nobody has implied it. The same people who are decrying workplace toxicity in elon's takeover of twitter, ime, are in favor of Amazon Unions and better workplace practices.
However, you know who isn't a fan of unions and workplace happiness? Your boy Elon. It's the same side of the same coin.
If you give a shit about Amazon and it's mistreatment of employees I have literally no idea why you're doing so much work defending Musky boi.
Who says it's their fault? If you fall out of love with your SO and want a divorce, is it their fault? No. But you still need to get a divorce.
It's a business. You shouldn't take anything personally. And employees were posting shit about Musk on Twitter before he even took over.
> If someone tells him 1200 server side service calls are making the app slow in one country and not another, he deserves to be clowned on. He's the one making the claim he's some sort of Tony Stark, so he can catch flak for being dumber than the average mid-level web developer.
On the same note, the Twitter tech team needs clowned on for telling him that. As well as, the fact they have a GraphQL making 1200 calls.
> Another corporate simp acting in bad faith. Nobody cares more about twitter devs making 300k not getting lunch more than Amazon abusing warehouse workers. Nobody has said that. Nobody has implied it. The same people who are decrying workplace toxicity in elon's takeover of twitter, ime, are in favor of Amazon Unions and better workplace practices.
The same people decrying Twitter and moving to Mastadon and other platforms are the same ones still buying from Amazon.
Amazon go union busting and people did nothing really. Musk fires people for publically disparaging the company and I hear about it non stop for days and days.
> If you give a shit about Amazon and it's mistreatment of employees I have literally no idea why you're doing so much work defending Musky boi.
There is a big difference between almost slave labour and firing people who make a lot of money.
The so-called defence of Musk here is merely pointing out the facts.
Facts:
* Making sweeping changes and have a month or so of chaos is better than months of chaos.
* Getting rid of disengaged employees is good HR.
* 1200 RPCs via GraphQL is still crap.
2. How do you know that Twitter employees were disengaged?
Some are posting "kiss my ass Elon" on Twitter. Other's tweets mocking the code review and "hardcore" engineer stuff. I'm sure you're going to say "But that doesn't mean all of them" but Musk hasn't fired all of them.
Twitter runs impressively quick (or it used to at least) for what it does. Judging a system by something like "Woah 1200 calls, that's a big number" without contextualizing it just telegraphs your naivety.The "tech team" that told him that are literally the group of Tesla Engineers he brought in on week 1. So idk why the twitter team needs to be clowned on. He's been installing his own people the entire time.
Also, his sweeping changes are still causing chaos because they have a whole system in place now to re-hire people that were accidentally fired because Musk is firing people so much. It's been more than a month and people are still having to randomly fly to the office and do unscheduled group code reviews with like 4 hours of notice.
"People did nothing really" shows how disengaged you are from Amazon's criticism and the action people are taking against it. Christian Smalls is still out there working to Unionize Amazon, people are still supporting him and people like him. It's a long boring fight and just because it isn't flashy doesn't mean nothing is happening.
"People have a penchant for talking about recent news, I'm shocked"
They're not mutually exclusive topics. Billionaires exercising unilateral control over people's lives is generally a bad thing, whether that's musk or bezos.
He created the conditions where anyone and everyone left in the company is likely to screw up. Because they are stressed. Or worried. Or tired. Or angry. Or doing a job that's not theirs. Or taking over stuff they don't know, because those who did know were fired in a rush, and there was no transition, no handoff, no training.
And who decided the timeline?
There is no bad PR if you live off page views!
There are good eyeballs for sale, and someone will buy them.
It might take some time to shift over to a new advertiser cohort.
Steve Jobs had good taste and a healthy respect for the work of the engineers who he took credit from.
Musk thinks (or at least nerds to project) he's the smartest engineer at his companies. Job was a proud dropout from his liberal arts degree. Musk got an econ debgree but has been lying his whole life about getting a Physics degree and being admitted to grad school.
I don't think that claiming the Falcon 9's reusability is not a significant factor in SpaceX's comparatively low launch costs stands up to scrutiny. How could it not lower costs significantly? Likewise, claiming SpaceX benefits from government subsidies is a red herring - all aerospace companies benefit from government subsidies as the government is their primary customer.
What's funny though, when I clicked that link Twitter failed to display the tweet content, giving me an error message about the tweet not available or something. It worked after a refresh.
I don't remember this happening before.
Not sure what has changed specifically. I guess they shut down a bunch of their servers to save money before everyone quit?
That means, either He makes Twitter profitable or Twitter shuts down in a few years(He might prolong it by burning from his personal wealth) without anything to show for the money. As an owner and CEO, he can't afford to let Twitter operate as if it is business as usual.
And it would scale better, one for the boardroom, one for the lobby ... and you could put one on each floor by the lifts.
The lead-up to all this, the utter lack of any grace, the public spats with employees, users and advertisers have made the whole thing a toxic spectacle. The sycophant brigade is exacerbating the problem.
The product, engineering and services will bounceback / survive. (Remember the fail whales and the twittocalypse?). The cultural damage and toxic waste is going to be a tough one to clean up. I wouldn't have imagined a scenario where Meta looks relatively angelic compared to twitter.
Work to live and not live to work. If the latter is you then reassess your priorities as you’re only young once but have a lifetime to regret your choices.
Whether or not that’s a good idea is debatable.
Worst is the extreme dependency on Scala devs, whose only realistic job is at Twitter. Look for Scala dev jobs, they are only needed in Sunnyvale.
[citation needed]
In my experience Scala devs are in extremely high demand as it's a language of choice for a lot of high-performance server-side software like data pipelines and also for the kinds of large enterprises that previously primarily used Java.
Now I've searched again, this time on LinkedIn and this time also Apple (Cupertino) and some others showed up.
Seems very early to judge in either direction, we’ll probably need at least a year to see (or maybe just through Black Friday). But I would disagree with anyone who doesn’t think Elon isn’t in the middle of a high tightrope wall without a net. How many leaders really want to take on this level of risk? And how many want to lose their best engineers to competitors who aren’t taking these risks. We’re like three months in to a bull market and everyone seems to think the lessons aren’t just generalizable, But universal?
Everyone said Jobs completely changed the business landscape, by not very company is apple and not every leader is jobs. In fact it seems very few large tech companies other than apple operate like apple, and even Apple isn't feeling very apple-like lately.
The other thing is I imagine their is a glacier effect here. If Elon is effective it’s probably for the 90% you don’t see, not the 10% you do. He’s not effective, because he fired people. He’s effective because of the way that fits into a larger strategy.
He was clearly wrong, for me Twitter already works better than before (multiple people who I was following were shadow banned, now I can see what they were writing without going to their profile page one by one, Elon is one of the examples).
I specifically set up Twitter to show all tweets from Elon (and some other people). It wasn't working, and now it works. I think this is a basic feature that doesn't need 8000 engineers to implement.
It seems like the author of the tweet can't take ownership for a bad prediction.
It is beginning to flake
After opening that page, all it takes is a single button click to submit a report.
The last time I reported an outage using that site, it didn't even have a confirmation prompt.
I don't see anything preventing false reports from being filed, either.