Hacker News Reader

Comment by i13e | Hacker News Reader

33 pointsi13e99 comments

I say Yes. This represents an attractive opportunity to get in on an artificial ground floor of a large business who’s demise is (very) likely overhyped.

At another point in my life I would have said yes. I think I agree with this assessment of the company vs perception overall, but at this point in my life/career I would rather that if I'm going to be working 12+ hours a day to push products out, that I would be on more even footing as a cofounder or super early employee than a Musk vision factory that's just reimagining a 15 year old product.

...agreed. Contrary to the HN bias, it might be interesting to work for a high energy/high demand place. After you rebuild the staff with people who have not been involved in the recent leadership change, it could turn out to be a fantastic place to work with engineering folks focused on a singular mission. Who knows, but it's worth a shot. That said, not sure how long I might last :-)

I've worked at a lot of startups, and I love that energy.

But part of what I enjoy about it is that I can make a make a real difference in building something new and setting direction, and the sense that all of us are in this together.

That's a totally different vibe than when I'm doing maintenance on a 15 year old codebase, with a billionaire second guessing everything I do

Appreciate the point of view, but I am a systems/infra engineer - not coder. It would be pretty cool to learn how Twitter keeps its infrastructure running all the time. Even though I have been doing my speciality for a long time, I would certainly like to see how others run infrastructure at scale.

In what sense do you mean "ground floor"? Financially this can't be true, due to massive debt financing of a ridiculous overvaluation.

Technologically and careee skill wise doesn't make much sense either.

I agree that the demise is overhyped, which is also why there's not really much of a ground floor, it's falling from heights down to the ground, or already high.

That's how I see it too. It'd be fun and it's a high alpha opportunity. It's like a startup that already has network effects.

Interesting. I still firmly wouldn't work there, but you have a point

What's the comp? Is it a typical FAANG range? Do you get a lot of stock options for a hypothetical future (re-)IPO?

If there aren't outsized benefits, then the only compelling reasons left are that you either really love the product or the leadership against the opportunity cost of all other jobs.

The work culture is admittedly "sleep under the desk" intense. Typical startup vibes, and it's unclear at this point with what autonomy/product ownership that comes with.

Taking this job either needs to come from a place of really loving what you do or being compensated extremely well.

Quickly changing corporate situations offer huge growth opportunities to folks who otherwise would be stuck grinding away at the corporate ladder. Instead of being stuck on a team managing a button in some flow, you might end up navigating into a team that works on core caching, or something else you've been interested in but never had the opportunity to work on. Some folks will be willing to take a slight pay cut if they can leverage it for huge future career growth. That's a big If though, with the way the optics around Musk's situation is right now.

I'm wondering what the value of having "Twitter" on your resume when job searching will have. After all the press on this, I'm wondering if potential employers would look favorably as you being "resilient" or capable of handling high stress situations if you choose to stay for another 2 years or so.

I can answer ignoring everything about the technical situation and his personality.

No.

I value stability and trust. It doesn’t have to be blue-chip level stability. I don’t need to think every idea will be a winner.

The edicts from the top seem to be changing almost hourly. If mental whiplash was a thing, all remaining employees would have it.

Whatever he’s trying to accomplish (and I truly have no idea what it is), there were better ways. If my livelihood depended on his management at this point I’d trust his plan as far as I could throw Twitter’s building.

I’ve been through a dying company. I’ve seen the end. It was nothing like this.

I can’t imagine saying yes for any amount of money.

Asking due to the ultimatum Elon gave Twitter employees on Wednesday:

https://www.businessinsider.com/read-musks-midnight-email-te...

At this point he's just trying to get out of paying severance. If everyone jumps ship before he has to fire them he saves a lot of money.

> expected to work "long hours at high intensity".

> One Twitter employee speaking on the condition of anonymity said: "I have no clue what this means for non-technical roles."

You know what Elon might be on to something.

Lots of important work does not involve hammering away all hours of the night. For example, any work that interfaces with the outside world will be constrained by the availability of people in the outside world. Are advertising clients working at midnight on a Sunday? We've known for many, many years, that hours worked and value delivered do not correlate (which applies in technical roles, too).

You talk to clients during business hours, and at night you hone your pitch and write up proposals, do research, study to become better at your job.

If your job literally only entails things that happen during business hours, like you man the front desk, I'd wager people would be reasonable.

Why do you feel it is desirable for people to work as many hours as possible? Is that how to want to live your life? Have you no other pursuits or things you care about? What is all the work for, in the end?

I don't care how many hours people work. Sometimes in business you need to do a lot of work in a short period of time. He's being fairer than any employer I've had, they would just assign me the work and expect me to put the time in, Elon letting you opt out with 3 months severance to find another job is a decent option I might have taken on a few occasions.

Could you explain a bit more? I can't quite catch what you might mean.

you know damned well what he meant

Please explain it for the rest of the class so we don't all just assume that our differing interpretations are all correct individually. (And personally, I don't have a clue what's being implied but I'm probably just being oblivious).

Only roadblock would be if he expects TOO much grinding. But 40 hours week of focussed intense work seems fine.

I'm optmistic about twitter under him. He seems intent on actually advancing the platform. There would be real work. What had Twitter achieved lately before Musk takeover? Not very much!

(Though I do really appreciate that they added back a strictly chrono timeline, and I will be very sad if that gets axed...)

To me a true highlight of how dysfunctional Twitter was was that they bought the viral hit app Vine, did nothing with it, eventually killed it, only to watch the very-similar TikTok take over the entire world. Show's what an absolute lack of ambition to build stuff existed at Twitter, IMO.

No but only because I don't like the product. Nothing to do with current events.

Edit: I hadn't seen this yet (https://www.businessinsider.com/read-musks-midnight-email-te...). Another commenter posted that. I still don't have any opinions of current events, don't really care about Twitter, wouldn't work there because I don't like the product - but I won't work for any company that expects employees to work overtime regularly as part of the company culture.

No, it is called dignity.

You know, I was reading some of the comments here and I was thinking, “maybe it wouldn’t be so bad…” but your simple statement brought me back to self congruence. Thanks for that.

In my 20s: absolutely yes. I had few responsibilities and tons of energy. Great pay, interesting challenges, becoming guru-level at some niche, working on something very visible, along with other very driven people. Why not?

In my current 40s: hell no, can't be bothered.

If I didn't have a family and still lived in SF, I would jump at the chance I think. Maybe I couldn't keep up the "hardcore" hours for many years, but I think I'd come out of it for the better. I've never thrown myself at something to the degree where I'd be sleeping at my office, but why not life's sort.

> but why not life's sort.

That’s exactly why not.

This situation is very attractive to say yes to. However everything I see from Musk makes me think he doesn’t value the engineering that goes into Twitter. He thinks it’s easy and doesn’t require the best minds unlike his space company. That makes it impossible to win or please the boss. Not a lot pace for anyone to work if what I said is true.

Yes.

Twitter is likely going to try to pivot towards being a crypto driven fintech. If he succeeds in turning Twitter into a P2P payments platform that holds custody of funds you get to be at ground zero in creating a digital bank with millions of users.

The downside is it might fold in a year or so.

Why would twitter manage to pivot into something entirely different, when companies who build this as greenfield have stopped, failed, or are still trying very hard to stay afloat?

Leaning no. But very much depends on what the salary would be. Though seeing as the risk of the company collapsing is super high it would have to be a high salary to compensate.

If I were inexperienced and clueless I might, but I am neither. I have worked at places where I was tasked with supporting something no on there knew anything about and made it work. But they were apps used internally or for a limited customer base, not a giant system processing millions of things per minute. I have worked at places with hundreds of teams building services that interoperated in many ways and the thought of jumping into that with no one having internal knowledge is insane. I have also worked for CEOs that were terrible and that's generally no fun either. Combine that with unsustainable 70 hour weeks for months on end, and the sum of that is not worth it.

Is there a $ figure where these things are acceptable? I guess there could be, but unlikely to be found at a company with so much debt and losing income left and right. Of course if work yourself to death no amount of money is spendable...

For $800,000k/year, why not?

You have an extra "k" in there...

Do they, or did you misread the requirement?

It's a 'Special K' kinda person that would work at Twitter :-)

Should read "$0.000000000000000000000000800000Q"

Yea, that's pretty much my point of view as well - at this point the salary I'd demand would be obscene but given how many bridges Musk is burning I feel like he'll be desperate soon. I would, however, try and organize a union if hired on and I encourage anyone currently at the company to investigate collective bargaining to ensure you have a more stable working environment. Being fired from twitter on twitter is absolutely ridiculous and creates a terrible working environment.

I think the question is posed as, for $200k today, maybe with $200k of options (with a strike price likely 4-5x the next expected 409a) in a privately owned company.

I think this would be an exceedingly good time to demand your salary in all cash. I, personally, am baffled by how he thinks he's going to manage to cover the debt service payments - let alone paying down the actual principle. He's essentially going to need to pull an entirely new monetization model out of his ass and the 8/verified isn't actually nearly enough to even put a dent in the debt. Also - forcing cash transfers from SpaceX into Twitter via overpriced ad buys isn't a long term plan as it's probably super illegal.

Surely Twitter engineers weren't making $800k and more like $350k - 400k at the top end?

I mean, I read it more as, it isn't a yes or no, it's "everyone has a price". I'll do your dirty, high-stress work for a price.

For $800k? Yeah, we probably have a deal. For the parent poster's price, absolutely we have a deal. But that offer will never exist, and I rather doubt the lower $800k offer would ever happen.

Sure, but now the company's been taken over by a madman, you'd need to pay me (and many others) a significant risk premium to even consider it.

We may be approaching the first time in history employees will demand a security deposit from their employer.

Isn’t that a sign on bonus?

Sign on bonuses are usually contingent on you staying for a certain period, and are paid out in chunks. At least that's how it had been anytime I was offered one.

US-based principal and senior staff engineers, as well as staff engineers who negotiated hard with competing offer(s) and/or saw significant stock growth between their RSU grant and vest dates, could all have plausibly been clearing $800k in a given recent year. Even senior engineers, in outlier cases of the stock growth case.

But as of the takeover, RSUs and options are likely being offered valued at the takeover price, while Elon knows the next 409A will likely value the company at ¼ of that.

Twitter went public at $45 a share and only had a max of $77. Sure some engineers could have almost doubled their RSU valuations if they had perfect timing but this isn't a case like GOOG/APPL/TSLA where 100x jumps occurred. Or is my thinking here naive?

I think your thinking is correct, and “almost doubled” is the kind of multiplier I was thinking of for the outlier, but not unrealistic, cases of some staff engineers or even occasionally senior engineers ending up with as much as $800k total comp in a given recent year. No need for 100x or even 5x stock growth to have occurred.

There is considerably more risk now. I would want to be paid daily too.

No remote work is a dealbreaker for me! I also refuse to work at a company with an overall negative impact on the world. As far as I can tell, Twitter's subscription walls (for essential government services) and "bubble" effect isn't making the world a better place. We can only guess about Elon's future direction for the company... but given the pay-for-verified-check snafu last week, I don't think he's trying to make the world a better place with Twitter. Maybe he's trying to make it better for Twitter power users like himself, but even that I'm not sure of.

You would have to be foolish to. However much value may be created, Musk has shown he will try to wriggle out of deals he made when he thinks he can get away with not meeting his obligations to his counterparties. Delaware courts wouldn’t let him welch on the merger, and I expect the execs he fired “for cause” will successfully hold him to their agreements in the end. You, as the employee in a closely held private company, will have no such leverage. Musk could promise all the upside in the world, but even if everything works out he’ll just screw you out of your share of it.

I'm privileged to be in a position where I have a solid cushion in the bank, and I recognize not everyone is in the same place.

But for me personally, there's no way I'd be willing to work there, even for 3x what I make now.

I've worked for egotistical people with unreasonable expectations before, and I'd leave tech before doing it again.

The level of stress feels both artificial and unmaintainable, and it eats at you. I don't need that in my life, and I feel bad for the people who feel like they can't escape it.

Boring product space. Psychotic leader. Hard pass.

Given the condition now? No way.

But if it survives and things stabilize in the future then sure.

But I guess that’s not what the question is about. It’s about now, when it means working for a madman, boarding a sinking ship, where you are expected to work 80h weeks like it’s some kind of early startup when in reality it’s a huge boring enterprise. No thanks.

I would work there if I hadn't already a good job. I have no problem with weird leaders as long as they respect my contract (full remote, subject to German labor laws) and let me decide how my team works (also full remote, contracts modelled on European labor laws).

It would be funny to get an offer like that from Elon.

Yes, it's a unique opportunity to watch well-built infrastructure fail under load and any success at keeping the product going will be a real achievement. I like what I'm doing now and I don't trust the guy though so comp would have to be maybe $2M/year and paid one year in advance.

I don’t know if this company will go under. Give me a massive signing bonus and I’ll consider it.

He seems to want only sycophants, so it's a "no" from me.

I think there's a way to communicate with the CEO of a company that's not direct contradiction in a very public forum.

I don't think that means he necessarily wants sycophants.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect respectful communication from your employees, and to not be publicly contradicted.

We're in a strange phase in the U.S. where this is a lesson that many young people are learning the hard way.

My remark wasn't regarding public poo-flinging from employees to Elon, I agree, it is unprofessional and I would expect more. However, I would also expect my CEO to also not be a poo-flinging memester, too.

He sent an email out asking for employee loyalty (to him?). That is behaviour that is in line with someone who wants only sycophants. Perhaps you read it differently to me.

Maybe,

I already saved a couple of projects and companies from eminent disaster, but that was not for free.

If you're close to elon, let him know I'd help him and expect to retire after a short tenure in the company.

I would. The work environment will be heavily loaded but I believe that should better out in a few months. From my limited reading, I think rewards are higher with meritocracy.

If the reports are to be believed, then very core teams have been fired from Twitter, core services shut down temporarily (due to ignorance).

If true, that isn't a meritocracy, to me it sounds Kafkaesque.

Not until they start paying 5x the market rate for my salary.

Yes, with the caveat that I don't have to move to do so.

So, no? Elon has been pretty clear that he hates remote work

If there's a Toronto office for Twitter, then I wouldn't need to move. The commute sucks, but I'm already dealing with that at my current employer.

I can think of few things more pointless to do with my life.

what did you get done this week?

no no a thousand times no

I voted no, nothing against Elon or Twitter, I just don't like working for other people, regardless of the pay.

It seems more interesting to me to ask: if you had an offer from Google and from Twitter, which would you take?

I have been through different phases in my career, and right now I would be answering No for all these stages.

1. Changing the world. I can see the appeal in working for Elon's other companies (Tesla and SpaceX) as you are truly working on things that are change the world, although Tesla is now at the tail end of this. Unfortunately this doesn't apply to Twitter, at least in my personal opinion. It will be probably be forgotten in two decades, like so many social media platforms before it.

2. Getting by. When my children were small, I just wanted a decent paid job to cover the bills and have a nice standard of living. Career wise I had little ambitions at the time. Clearly in that stage I wouldn't be a good fit given Elon Musk demand for rapid growth.

3. Career advancement. This is the only phase where I would give Twitter a chance. With recent lay offs, there are clear opportunities to grow through the ranks. However, it is clearly going to require hard work and at this stage of Twitter, fat options packages are unlikely. Personally I am too outspoken to work for someone like Elon Musk, however, I can see why people in this phase would opt to work for Twitter.

The sensible thing is likely the opposite of HN consensus.

Depends on the pay, but with enough money I would.

Impossible to answer without more information.

Yep

Some peoples standards for a job are severely too high.

In principle, yes - but it would cost them more than I think they're willing to pay.

Large amount of debt to service, "negative cashflow", "advertisers canceling", "bankruptcy is not off the table", etc. If an oil tanker crashes, contractors probably make a lot of money on the crisis remediation, because the oil companies still have money. Not sure that's true for Twitter.

The major equity has already been made and salaries probably wont be as attractive. Best case scenario, this is a rebuild of a massive existing code base. However, the team is somehow supposed to do with less despite having to support everything already in place.

This is the titanic. Those engineers that left knew exactly what they were leaving behind.

I used to know multiple people there. One was laid off in the first batch, one quit of their own volition, and one just decided 3 months salary was better than signing the suicide pact.

Even completely ignoring my own evaluation, theirs' are from the belly of the beast, so likely far more accurate than mine.

But if I add mine in, what's the potential upside? An opportunity to impress Elmo, and maybe become a pet engineer like the ones carted in from Tesla? I mean, that's probably a lucrative role, even factoring in the cost of one's self-respect.

But I'm just not wired that way. I'm not deferential to wealth or ego, and expect those above me in the hierarchy to both listen and be worthy of respect. He fails both tests, so it would be utter folly for me to pretend and not what he's looking for.

So, no.

The biggest issue for me would be remote work.

I think the job would be interesting, and have neat technical challenges that would be fun to reason about.

The inability to work remotely wouldn't necessarily be a deal killer for me, but I would definitely have to be "convinced".

Also, practically speaking, if working remotely wasn't an option, the cost of relocation would be enormous - it would have to be worth it to relocate my whole family to an area that I don't particularly want to move to.

Depends. If he wanted to pay me like $1m a year sure.

if i got paid a bunch, sure. sounds fun. and if it doesn't work out, it's not the end of the world. people are making this into more than what it is.

EDIT: I just remembered twitter is HQed in san francisco; unless elon also becomes mayor, there isn't enough money in the world you could pay me to work there nonremote. but i would vote yes for any other city where theft is still illegal and there isn't human shit on the pavements.

Tesla comps are a good indication, he drives them pretty hard too. They aren't really that high.

still 3x more than what i make. and if i can get a visa more easily because a bunch of pampered americans threw their toys out of the pram and quit, great.

There are infinitely better ways to spend my time than improving the personal megaphone of a billionaire.

Absolutely yes. I'm behind the bedrock American principal of Freedom of Speech.

You know even if Twitter goes away Americans still have free speech, right?

Not only would I not work there, at some point soon I’d refuse to hire anyone who could have left but hasn’t.

A healthy organization needs people who can question bad leadership. Elon is driving those people away. Those who are left will be those who will support narcissistic leaders in whatever organization they later join.

Obviously there will be exceptions - people on visas etc.

There are plenty of reason some may choose to stay, refusing to hire someone because they wanted to keep a good job seems silly.

Parent is pointing out that if you view the current twitter situation as "a good job" then they don't think the way you view the world would be healthy for their business.

There's no reason to believe this poster has any say over hiring decisions.

I have a friend that works there and elected to stay. His reasoning was that he has been there 9 years, so if they did fire him soon, he would get more than 3 months severance (he thinks it would be 1 month for every year, so 9 months).

I don't know if that is true (written into a contract?), but I also didn't have the heart to tell him that if a company goes bankrupt, they probably don't pay out severance.

You might want to tell him severance gets worse with each round of layoffs. Would he get 9mo if he hadn't chosen to stay this week?

I have doubts you or anyone would actually follow through on such a ridiculous claim.

I (and I have to believe many) would be thrilled to interview and work with folks who decided to stay at Twitter during the Elon takeover. In an era of wave after wave of frothy VC money anointing so many inexperienced and ineffective leaders in our industry, the opportunity to learn under a uniquely effective, authentic and bold leader are tremendous.

Sounds like you have a toxic hiring process anyways.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com