Twitter at 1am on a Friday
teamblind.com
teamblind.com
The difference is those events were chosen. If you are forced to remain at your company (due to visa issues for example) being forced by your CEO to stay at work until 1am is atrocious.
This is not a profession where being at the office this late is the norm and it's not typical for the environment.
Twitter is not a startup in any way shape or form. It was clearly just valued at 44 billion dollars, no startup is worth that much ;).
This is an executive abusing his power, forcing individuals to do as they say. There is little choice and free will being exercised.
Maybe some of the people do want to be there and are happy to do so; I don't believe this is the case. It is naive to think it would be.
Hackathons, staying up late working on a passion or hobby by choice can be fun. Being forced to for your profession and by the new CEO who has fired and caused over 70% of the company to leave doesn't fall under that category.
The world seems to be full of these people. It’s hard to see a way out.
"Just resist psychopaths" is an ableist, reductive paradigm. Of course many people can't just resist. People have families, care responsibilities, and many are indeed conditioned to accommodate.
By your own argument I don‘t even need to give a good reason. I‘m not able to give a good reason, I prefer their philosophy of being responsible based on your notion of not having the ability to see it any different.
https://twitter.com/Theholisticpsyc/status/15941596755867934...
But on a national scale? If therapy is the solution, we are sorely lacking in therapists.
I reckon history will look back at last 20 years as a "Hopelessness epidemic" with social/environmental causes as complex as current obesity epidemic in the US.
I stumbled upon it by chance. I don’t know of a great patient introduction, but I linked some explainers on the ideas below.
Psychoanalysis as I understand it is about understanding your relationship patterns and changing them. The analysis I’m in works through free association, I speak what’s on my mind (including my most disgusting or hateful thoughts, criticisms of my therapist, doubts…) and my analyst mostly just listens, but occasionally pokes and prods, and sometimes opines. His role is partly to be a canvas against which my relationship patterns can present and partly to be an investigator trying to notice and observe behaviors of mine I might not be totally aware of.
It’s not just a matter of knowledge. Change in analysis seems to come through a felt experience, through the relationship with the analyst. I find myself talking and talking and one day I say something that I’ve known my whole life and yet never really said, and I start to connect it to all sorts of forgotten feelings, and it becomes a little less weighty, unstuck in time.
Because of my work in analysis I have developed a now 4 year long romantic relationship, several close friends, and become happier at work. But I still have lots of dissatisfaction and lack of meaning (in those same relationships and work) and that is what I spend most of my time talking about currently.
I’ve heard someone say psychoanalysis is about making you more free. Not in the civil liberties sense, but in a way that is almost a bit painful, as you will have more responsibility.
Personally I also have found the theory behind it rich and deeply insightful. Reading some of Freud (and others, like winnicott) has felt like something clicking in my head about people that I’ve wanted to understand for a long time.
If you like twitter you could try @jonathanshedler (he has a book too[1]) or @nyctherapist. Nancy McWilliams (Psychoanalytic Diagnosis) is supposed to be good if you want to understand the theory. I’ve actually really liked reading the original Freud. I also hear good things about Mitchell’s Freud and Beyond.
Less clinically oriented (and more lacanian) I also like the Why Theory? Podcast. But it really is less focused on psychological insight.
[1] https://jonathanshedler.com/PDFs/Shedler%20(2006)%20That%20w...
Mine was through referral of a friend. Dumb luck. I’ve heard you can also find them by contacting a local psychoanalytic institute. Seems like the American psychoanalytic institute has a website for finding them as well. [1] On twitter,Jonathan Shedler is in the Bay Area and obviously nyctherapist is in nyc, they are both analysts, it’s possible they could refer as well (no clue). If you’re in NYC you’re in luck because analysts (at least used to) occupy many of the offices near Central Park. I used to find therapists through psychology today, but I think analysts are harder to find there. Asking for a referral from someone you find there might be good too.
In my opinion credentials (MD, PsyD, PhD) and age (within reason) seem like good signs. Proxies for experience.
Oh also, it could be worth explicitly asking the person if they are practicing psychoanalysis specifically. There are a lot of varieties of therapy. Sometimes therapists seem to list themselves as psychoanalytic (or psychodynamic) when they aren’t analysts.
>How long did take you before you felt you were making some progress.
Hm. It’s a little tricky to tease apart. When I started I was so desperate to get better that I would think anything was progress. Which is to say I felt like things were improving immediately, but I think the deeper kinds of progress actually came later. Psychoanalysis is after real psychological change. I think the changes I have experienced have come from slowly but deliberately picking apart these masses of feeling inside me, and have come over the course of months and years rather than days and weeks. I got into a (different) relationship after perhaps 5ish months. Getting into a relationship was not an explicit goal to me when I started, but I was so isolating that I think that’s indication of some genuine change. I know that by now I have changed quite a lot. It’s been about 5 years.
In any case, if you do pursue it, good luck! I’ve found it deeply enriching. It’s great for my curiosity, and I think there’s even a sense of adventure to it (going to depths of the mind that are no where else allowed)
Let's be honest this is far from what people call slavery. They are being paid multiples of six digit salaries, RSUs and work in one of the most happening tech ecosystems of the world.
I would love to be a part of something like this. Heck most of us would love to be a part of something like.
I kind of envy those guys working on these projects. I hope I was the one there.
A CEO is just a title, often for someone who’s can’t get anything done independently.
Musk is an example. He builds nothing, actual engineers build, actual salespeople sell.
Nope. At 1 AM? Nope.
Nobody would be in office at 1 AM by choice, they had to for the paycheck.
Twitter itself has already been built. What new thing would they be building? A slightly different content moderation system? Slightly tweaked steps for verifying accounts? I'm not sure I see anything hardcore about any of this.
All-hands-on-deck after hours work is ALWAYS done under duress.
And no H-1B is not the reason. You can find new jobs under an H-1B. You're not restricted to a single company and can change companies.
(Just not sure if you’re aware.)
People need money to eat.
A startup sized team working on a platform with twitters scale for a boss with capital and a willingness to consider new ideas? Once in a lifetime opportunity.
Willingness to consider his new ideas. Not your new ideas. He's the idea man, your job is to implement it. And if you tell him why the idea may not work as intended, you're fired.
What new hard problem is Twitter solving, at this stage of its life?
You're as important as him, regardless of your bank account.
At a short notice summon the handful of engineers who survived the purges to the office at 2pm on a Friday and to bring 10 screenshots of code they've written "for review". With that implicit threat, have them wait until 6pm. Then keep them around until 1am to give a tutorial level introduction to the Twitter infrastructure to Musk (who could have gotten this months ago). There's just no legit justification for it; it's pure bullying and a loyalty test.
And then to top it off, have your pet venture capitalists post fawning tweets about how this really shows the classic SV energy.
I wasn't able to read many of the collapsed comments since I don't have a teamblind account. Is that actually the context of this picture then?
You got startup CEOs (not just Elon Musk brownnosers) talking about how some of the most innovative things get built at startups.
Which is true! Big, world-changing ideas, don't get built 9-5. And especially if you have some competitive advantage, you need to rush to market, to beat the others.
But Twitter is (was) a 40+ Billion dollar company. None of the people in this photo have any reasonable equity (the kind that makes people work nights and weekends in the hope that an IPO makes them a millionaire). And Twitter has a massive network effect of the kind meaning that if you don't screw it up (and god is Elon trying), none of these people are going anywhere.
I can understand that it's in Musk's interest to create a reality distortion field and convince the employees that they need to stay and go Hardcore so that he can create the American Weechat, or whatever he's got in mind.
But what do the other CEOs that are swooning over this have to gain except a dry run for also starting to treat their employees like garbage...
What if what he has in mind is attempting to undo the negative effects that social networks have had on our society and democracy and instead attempt to rebuild this particular network in a way that can have a positive effect on society? It seems like that is a technological possibility and also something he could plausibly be interested in.
And what about the positive effects that twitter was already having? I'm part of something adjacent to and with overlap into the canadian disability rights movements; they are devastated by what's happening with twitter and widely considered it to be a unique and unprecedentedly powerful space for community and organization for them. It's not all shitposts and fascism you know.
My sense is that the 1000's of people who where already working on it have been working on it from the perspective of how to make a billion dollars while working at it. EM is free from that constraint.
For there to be a “Twitter mafia” Elon would need to, out of the kindness of his heart, give them real ownership in Twitter. And then Twitter needs to be a success, much more than it already was.
I’d play the lottery instead and leave fantasy land.
Again, it’s time to leave fantasy land.
I'm sorry, is this a cult or a workplace? Why is this a good thing?
> This is how shared mental models are built, shit gets done
I get why Elon wants people to work until 1am, but what's in it for the employees? Why work 2x as hard and 2x as long and get 2x shit done if you're not getting paid 2x as much?
There are many contexts where some amount of suffering is a prerequisite for achieving great things. For example, from personal experience, both startups and mountaineering require some amount of suffering to achieve great things. The bonds formed from shared suffering are like top 25th percentile.
Shared mental models are built in tough times in the trenches,
The engineers chosen to be there! It’s not a slavery,
It’s like you said People just dont grasp Elon’s vision. I’m glad there’s someone who understands innately
I can't imagine there would be a large funnel looking to work there after this.
My note: I am aware of someone at Meta attempting to reach out to these folks to interview for offers to transfer their visas. Very kind of folks willing to do so.
Source: https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employe...
Meta is firing 11K people and freezing hiring right now.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/09/meta-to-lay-off-more-than-11...
Twitter will bounce back. For the people who are staying, this is a giant career opportunity to get a good executive job as the result. I'd stay in a heartbeat, even if it means spending one terrible year or two there.
Like in this case.
Those who peaced out made the right decision. This is beyond office heroics or hustle porn - this is just a rich, long-time former coder, way out of his depth, trying to relive the former glory of the mad days of the Internet boom, abusing people because he is having fun with this.
But that's because I really enjoy watching weird shit happen, and there's so much weird shit happening there right now. It would be a win-win for me, odds are I'd emerge in a few months, maybe a year, with some great stories about watching a bizarre implosion of a foundational tech company as well as experience a billionaire self destructing. Or, way less likely, but possible I suppose, I would help that crazy billionaire reinvent the tech company and walk away pretty rich.
I don't think the time of day matters much. I've been in the office at that time of the day a number of times. As long as it's only an occasional thing it's fine.
At a minimum, Musk should have done this _before_ deciding which 50% of the company to lay off, and then scaring the majority of the remainder with an ultimatum.
This is nothing but ego and hubris still.
Musk has said Americans are lazy compared to those not in the US… Maybe that picture shows it… Work balance over changing the world type of work or your stuck cause no job your out of the country. Maybe it's a mix of both
Maybe musk could force more truth on the Internet, somehow through the blue checkmark and verification of each user… Create a reputation system, or may be crazy if you're going to spread lies how much of your own money you gonna back up that silly political lie with (so much drama in politics it driven by emotions more then logic).
Identifying what you want to fix should be written down but the structure of the app should not be what is being discussed at 1am
The only whiteboard I see is on the right hand side at the back, mostly obscured by people, and I certainly can't make out what's on it.
Electric cars, space travel, large-scale drilling, Twitter 2.0, etc. This is a man history will remember.
It ain't worth it and shows lack of leadership. I now have cash on hand to walk out on all nighters and death marches.
Unless I was given a ton of liquid equity for it, I would not assume it was in my best interest.
Having a stake in a business doesn’t just mean owning stock looking for future growth. Wanting the business to still be alive this time next year is also a future outcome that can be embraced by anyone who draws a salary.
I honestly do not understand why it’s getting the hate here, it’s like the least controversial thing he has done. Although I guess it’s on par for the cadre of folks with Musk derangement syndrome on here.
The details of the severance package weren’t known until after they had agreed to stay. You also need to consider that many people are attached to a specific job and are strongly opposed to leaving due to specific benefits they might struggle to find elsewhere. Besides the H1B situation that many have wondered about, there are also things like health insurance. Depending on one’s health situation—particularly with children—you may be concerned about finding a new position at a company with a similar health plan before your severance runs out. COBRA is expensive.
Are you implying that contributing to your company’s success isn’t important? I mean I have helped multiple companies to be successful and by many measures this has provided me success as well. I am pretty sure there is a correlation there.
Exempt employees drawing a salary are pretty much paid on an expect end result more than some arbitrary # of hours the employee works. Hours are meaningless.
"Exempt" is company-speak to make you think your hours worked are not tied to compensation. Try tell a lawyer or structural engineer the same and they'd laugh at you.
Uh, no. “Exempt” is a legal definition created by a bunch of politicians to exempt people from the FSLA. Basically it means that certain roles can be tied to an expected outcome and not a specific hourly pay guideline. And specifically in the state of California, SWEs can be classified as exempt allowing their employer to require them to work whatever number of hours that are necessary to achieve an outcome.
Since California is also an “at will” state, the employee is free to leave the arrangement.
The successful companies on the other hand, are planning ahead and taking setbacks into account. Work was done properly so no crazy firefighting. They also don't burn out their employees.
Just my experience of a 43 yo developer.
I think in that case creating a deadline of “we need to put this fire out before it consumes the entire forest” and motivating a bunch of smokejumpers hop in and bust their ass to save the forest isn’t a bad thing.
So you are the owner of the company? I was raised to put "our family" as a priority, and that means working for money, but doesn't include working like crazy and not getting compensated for it because it's in the best interest of "our company".
I’m not giving up time with kids and getting shot so boss can meet a deadline.
This ^ or the fact that such hours usually yield low productivity so are a waste of time. Working long hours just because is not my thing.
”I can’t do this because I have to be with my family in the evenings.”
”This sort of thing wouldn’t work for me due to commitments I’ve made outside work.”
”I personally wouldn’t do this.”
What you said instead is pretty packed in terms of a guns-blazin’ take which, while understandable here, reminds me of something much less constructive: how often I encounter people who share your sentiment at my current workplace.
Specifically, the tone with which you say it is what rings true. “We” instead of “I”, refuse-to instead of decline-to, poking at a lack of family or social life, and the need to tell everyone about a personal preference — reasonable in your case, in the context of a discussion, although I note yours is a top level comment so not exactly a reply to anything anyone here has said.
I think I understand the anger. Some people can’t take part in extra curricular work stuff, or want to express solidarity that would normally be expressed through a union, or feel that an employer who tolerates and even encourages work-outside-of-work is immoral and must be challenged.
These are valid feelings. They probably indicate being in the wrong field (bleeding edge knowledge work) or the wrong sized company (small, highly remunerated, with high growth expectations.) Neither of these apply to Twitter.
I agree, I wouldn't stay till 1am for anybody... but if the world's richest man just bought the company I worked for, then personally came to work with us through the night... I would definitely consider it (also not an Elon fan btw)
I suspect you've never been around Musk or people of Musk's class. What could you possibly learn that would materially improve anything in your life other than "you get to keep your job (for now)"? Or is it just curiosity you want to satisfy?
An example might be Einstein and Steve Jobs having a full wardrobe of duplicates of the same outfit. Ok, but why? Because they realize the mind is only capable of resolving a finite number of dilemmas per day and choosing what to wear depletes that resource. An eccentric habit, but revealing indeed. After being sold on the theory, they went all in. I wonder to what degree they executed on insights like that where the rest of us just brushed them off
His "habits" are asking the people with actual knowledge what to do and then sometimes ignoring them when he gets too involved in his twitter drama.
>An example might be Einstein
Elon had to lie about his Bachelors degree, please don't compare him to an actual genius.
And this “same outfit” bullshit is just propaganda for making you believe that you are also a temporarily embarrassed billionaire and you actually are part of this wealthy group, when in fact you are further away from them then from some poor gal in Thailand working for a dollar a week. People are not machine, you can probably only productively work 3 hours a day.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/twitter-day-in-life-video
Having worked in both types of environments, I can tell you only the 1am types survive and become profitable.
> She pans the camera to three women in a meeting room. She also shows several bookshelves filled with books, but otherwise shows nothing about the meetings they held or the "projects" they may or may not have been able "to knock out."
I mean, of course someone's not going to record an internal company meeting and post it on TikTok!
The number of people saying all of these completely unsubstantiated things about Twitter, and everyone believing them without any questions is weird.
In addition, how could this person know if mostly H1-B workers are present. I certainly can't tell who is and isn't on a H1-B. Or is it because the bulk of the people are not white that this person assumed they were? That seems like an immensely racist assumption.
Also, is nobody asking questions? I've seen multiple people doing so, including you.
Also, in your accusation of racism, you are making assumptions about assumptions.
Also, is positing that there are H1Bs among non-white tech workers "immensely racist", or is that dramatic?
What I see in the picture is organic connection. It's really easy in tech for everyone to get siloed, working on assigned tasks without communication. Greatness comes from the shared spark <and then> head down focus.
I bet elon is trying to recreate the environment that worked at paypal and tesla and spacex. Scrappy, energetic, get shit done, not 100 managers with 100 tiny fiefdoms.
Well said. There are a few of us out there with that Gimli from LOTR approach to life:
“Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?”
I know some really wealthy people who are only wealthy because they took a little risk. I know some people who could be wealthy too if they took the same leap, but didn’t and they aren’t. Perhaps they felt like you do…. It all comes down to choices. These people sticking at Twitter are making their choice. Others left, that was their choice. I’m not going to criticize either choice.
The bulk of the wealthy in tech got there by working for some lucky person, with a modicum of talent, and a good idea that happened to offer them a piece of the company before some VC swooped in funded them.
Let’s face it as hazing rituals go, this is pretty mild.
The best you can hope for is a decent bonus, but that is not life altering in any way and I don’t think it is worth the stress of working under an unstable idiot drama queen some insane hours that may or may not get paid, over at.. the million other IT jobs. Sure, taking risks may be beneficial, but you ain’t jumping down a hill just because it is risky, you have to hope for something.
I don’t buy into the notion that Musk is the worst boss in the world. A former colleague and I were laughing recently at how mild Musk is compared to an old boss we had.
Your opinion may be that the good folks left. Musks opinion may be the good folks stayed. The ultimate determining result is that Twitter stays alive and starts becoming something viable and finds away into the black.
It would seemingly be a huge gamble as to whether it is disorganized with constantly shifting priorities or increased operations overhead but if there is a vision and the plan is to go balls to the wall to get it done, that’s awesome.