Twitter employees are bringing their own toilet paper to work | Hacker News Reader

Twitter employees are bringing their own toilet paper to work

fortune.com

70 pointsperihelions70 comments

Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash covers this in pretty hilarious detail.

http://soquoted.blogspot.com/2006/03/memo-from-fedland.html

Of course, given Stephenson's ideology, it was a government agency doing this in the book, whereas in real life it turned out to be a large profit-seeking corporation.

of course it should also be remembered that in Snowcrash, the government is effectively just another corporation.

The good thing about such a decision is that it is obvious that the person behind it is insane. So then everyone can act accordingly.

Unless their ability to remain in the country is tied to their job…

Why should I care that a tech worker on visa can't keep their high paying job in a rich foreign country? Become a citizen.

Should they be treated differently than everyone else?

One does not simply become a citizen, most have to convert from a work visa to a permanent visa (requires wait time + process), and then more wait time before being allowed to apply for citizenship. So there’s workers at twitter who can’t merely say “the boss is crazy, I’m out of here”. They have to line up another job and get their visa in order before they can go. No one is asking you to care or treat people differently, though people might judge you based on the thoroughness of your understanding & compassion for the situation.

Because a tech worker is highly skilled labor that would leave the country and therefore henceforth would not be available to the labor pool of said country, which arguably will have negative long term economic effects.

This problem occurs precisely because foreign tech workers are being treated differently. You are also glossing over the fact that those tech workers are on their path to become citizens.

Pay a lawyer $7-$14k, maintain residency on work visa for 7 years (for which you have to fight 5 other qualified candidates for a slot). Wait months for responses from an overwhelmed government service for each phase of an overly complicated process.

You’re right they shouldn’t be treated differently. Everyone should be treated better than that.

Because the USA isn't a "foreign country". Its my country.

1. We have a worker shortage.

2. Immigrants are the kinds of people who drive new businesses. They're innately calculated risk-takers, as they've already passed the gauntlet of "Leave everyone I know to live somewhere else", and on the average benefit our economy greatly.

3. Sending these people home not only is terrible for their lives, its terrible for the USA. We have these visa processes because we've all agreed its better for us _AND_ them for them to stay around.

4. I'm sure the Twitter H1B workers were productive before this asshole bought out the company. I don't think our visa system / H1B system was designed for this scenario.

I think the essence of any answer would be 'empathy'.

Do you know how long it takes to become a citizen?

I worked with a guy who came over to the US when he was just out of college. He went through the process as quickly as he could, and yet he was still in his late forties by the time he finally managed to become a citizen. A decade or two is not at all uncommon. And that's for in-high-demand professions where we desperately need to import that talent.

The "why can't you just" answer is almost always a big red flag that the speaker knows nothing about the actual problem or how hard it is to solve.

Though we're well past it, this reminds me of the 'Elves are leaving Middle Earth' state of companies.

https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...

TP is much lower down on Maslow's Hierarchy than caffeine, of course. Tying up people with such basic requirements takes a lot of time away from 'hardcore' mode.

But, I get away from myself. This is all looking at Elon decisions through logic; something we know is not there.

I learned (the hard way), early in my 20s, to visit the facilities of every prospective employer and more than once I've declined to continue forward with interviews based on what I found. If they're not getting the fundamental basics of the office space right I don't have much hope for anything else.

This whole Twitter story is so unbelievable it would not pass as satire...

I wonder if any books or research will be done with it couple years... Seems like there is lot to unravel here.

What lesson would a business school teach? Don't make any spur of the moment decisions to buy a large public company while you're going through a divorce from your slightly age inappropriate C-list (nothing against her but she wouldn't be as famous as she is without Musk) electronic music artist wife/whatever (I don't know if they were actually married).

To me the real lesson has been one that's repeatedly been driven home over the last 7 or 8 years - rich people are just regular people with more money. They like to push some myths about ability or some other moral justification about why they deserve more toys than the other boys and girls. The reality is they might have a bit more ability than most, but not 100X+ more.

And they are really needy. They need people to pay attention to them and include them in all the controversies. If they start to feel irrelevant they get a divorce or go on an authoritarian bender. Failing to grovel before a powerful person is the greatest affront.

Oh, this will, I assume, inspire high production value multi-season docudramas that will make the WeWork one look like a student project.

Quite looking forward to them, to be honest.

Farce. That’s what it’s called when you overshoot your satire.

I'm looking forward to a movie starring Bale or DiCaprio as Musk in a few years.

Whoever played Miles Bron would be good enough. He was not playing Musk by all accounts in that movie, but I have full confidence he would succeed perfectly.

So Edward Norton?

Yeah, he was really good in that role. And Musk role would be similar.

He's not nearly insane enough though. Johnny Depp might pull it off.

He probably fired the person who would have contracted the janitorial staff.

It's a pretty good illustration of knock on effects.

Pretty sure buying Twitter hasn't turned out to be the nerdy equivalent of a billionaire buying a NBA team he was hoping.

The workers are anyway doing overtime so they might as well clean-up after themselves right?

Removing the janitorial was a deliberate act of penny-wise cost savings.

An NBA team would have been only 4b. And those owners are the shadiest of the shady.

He paid 44b just to get rid of the government agencies controlling the news.

What janitorial service requires renewing the service every month?

It's more likely someone cancelled it.

I work at Twitter and this article is nonsense. Yes, he is cutting costs, but there is no problem with the bathrooms that I've ever seen. Can't believe no one here is questioning this. I thought people on HN were smarter than this. Disappointing.

Which office do you work at?

And why would believing a random comment from someone who doesn’t even share which office they’re talking about be smarter?

Especially when we know for a fact that Twitternisnt paying its office rent and has fired its janitorial staff in at least 1 office?

This should have been their cue to quit

A lot of these "effective jerks" like Musk and Jobs are successful because they count on a lot of people "driven by the mission" in detriment of self-respect

The man is a billionaire. Toilet paper should have been way down on the list to cut.

That is, I guess, precisely the conclusion Forbes wants you to draw.

What are the incentives not to, does America have good redundancy packages or something?

Has Twitter services actually deteriorated? I don’t spend much time there

> What are the incentives not to,

People on H1-B visas can only remain in the US for a very period if they're out of a job.

Not everyone is leaving because these stories are greatly exaggerated and the experience of working there doesn’t feel anything like they write in the press

keep talking. What is it like? How know you?

I see bugs I did not seen before. Mute function is working on and ofd. The new video feature has quite annoying usability bugs atypical for twitter. Threading is broken, so whenever someone makes long thread (and people I follow do them), my timeliness is cluttered with out of context thread tweets.

Ukraine was removed from list of countries for like a day or so, making it impossible for Ukrainians to even login if they had 2 factor authentication. Specifically their Twitter was malfunctioning for multiple days.

Some Asian countries had 2FA also disabled for few days. Their phone providers were cut off entirely.

The harassment on platform went super up, it not that discourse there would be super great before, but it became much much worst.

He didn't cut toilet paper per se, he just fired the janitorial staff which is responsible for replacing it in the restrooms. And then never got a replacement janitorial staff.

I would not want to see what state those bathrooms are in at this point.

But... all those code printouts Musk demanded...

https://archive.vn/ebBES

Woo! Hardcore!

Not giving your employees toilet paper doesn't really cut costs. It's to show them they are worthless and expendable slaves

This is ridiculous, Isn’t this a sign to leave?

Anyone who missed the previous signs already has some serious reasons to stay. I suspect H1B indentured servitude is a big pet of it.

One suspects that Musk has misunderstood what the phrase ‘like crazy’ means.

When the Boss takes the TP, the Boss is the TP.

Elon is making an arse of Twitter.

Of himself, actually

If you shit on company time, do you really care about your company? /s

I was on team Elon, I wanted to see him being free speech to Twitter. First he started banning users who talked about Mastodon. After this post I consider him unfit.

You’re the richest man and you are cutting something as basic as toilet paper, you are a bimbo.

These are peoples lives and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth, he’s a degenerate.

What, exactly, was the "free speech" you were being denied under the old guard, specifically?

"Freedom of speech[2] is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech

Oh, the drama!.

Pay me lotta money more and I will care also of buying my own toilet paper

If I was paying my engineers a lot of money, I'd want them focused on higher level issues than how to clean their asses after using the facilities. And I think the whole free food thing verges on exploitative/paternalistic, but this swings the pendulum a bit too far in the other direction for my taste.

Not a bad point. On the other hand, If somebody is being paid solid money for coding around complex logistics problems should be able to solve this simple logistic problem really fast and cheaply, and move on with their lives.

Is a transition period for the company. Not all must be perfect. Leaving a well paid job because toilet paper seems very poor capability to deal with frustration in a reasonable way.

If it were only TP perhaps, besides the sign of a disfuncional management. Now unsanitary bathrooms is another level, and could impact ones health.

>Leaving a well paid job because toilet paper seems very poor capability to deal with frustration in a reasonable way.

The toilet paper thing would be anecdotical taken in isolation but the reasonable thing at this point is to leave as soon as you secure another similar paying job, even if it's 1/3 less of salary.

Contrary to a lot of people I truly think that Musk has quite a lot of merit in the things he has accomplished. Just the fact of trying hard things should be acknowledged. But he has been unstable for a while, in a very obvious way. Who knows if there is some kind of medical condition behind. I know first hand of similar cases were erratic behavior was later found to be caused by some illness. Maybe it's just pressure or whatever.

Anyway, my bet is that most people that remain at Twitter are interviewing like crazy.

> Leaving a well paid job because toilet paper seems very poor capability to deal with frustration in a reasonable way.

Why? It is not like Twitter was paying significantly more then others. If you can get job somewhere where management dmxarws about working conditions and pays for clean offices or hygienic supplies, why would it be bad to go there?

This idea that employees with choice need to put up with management that don't care about normal office standards, else someone twists it into "poor capability to deal with frustration" or some other nonsense just don't make sense.

There's an article that gets thrown around here a lot I believe titled "The Elves Leave Middle-Earth" that I think is quite good, and a good analogy. Basically, it says that when the neat perks of working in a tech company start getting taken away by the bean counters, it's a sign of trouble on the horizon, and the Elves, the top talent, understand the signals and quickly move on. As I've said, I have some issues with the perk culture too, but when the TP is taken away, I think even the Orcs and Trolls can take a hint.

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