Elon & Twitter

[Daniel in SD]

The New York Times estimated that there are about 2700 employees left after the recent resignations. According to Forbes there were 8% of the work force had H1B visas so your statement is false. By the way I am a Democrat, I voted for Biden but I can't stand people that can't face a little bit of hardship.

It doesn’t really say that. That doesn’t account for people who left before Thursday. Also Twitter has many employees in other countries where Elon’s email doesn’t apply due to different labor laws. Also they don’t only employ engineers but H1Bs are all engineers. So the percentage of H1Bs of remaining engineers is probably very high.
That meeting was supposed to have every engineer at US Twitter who can code. It doesn’t look like that many people.

 

[ElectricIAC]

It doesn’t really say that. That doesn’t account for people who left before Thursday. Also Twitter has many employees in other countries where Elon’s email doesn’t apply due to different labor laws. Also they don’t only employ engineers but H1Bs are all engineers. So the percentage of H1Bs of remaining engineers is probably very high.
That meeting was supposed to have every engineer at US Twitter who can code. It doesn’t look like that many people.

Sounds like more people should learn to code.

 

[mach-edriver]

This business of "But Twitter is still working! I just logged on!" has all the weight of Fox 'n' Friends chiming in with, "WHAT global warming? It's snowing outside today!"

 

[Prunesquallor]

How about we give the man and team a chance and let them work?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1593899029531803649

Edit:sorry mods, posted on the wrong thread

Doesn’t look like they are discussing advertising…

 

[advocate8]

They were also trying to be pioneers in their fields and there was a good chance that the early employees could get rich. Social media is not new, and in fact, has sort of moved on from Twitter. TikTok is the new thing.

I don't get why Elon didn't just create a new site. $44 billion is more than most companies raise in all of their financing rounds.

Investigations and evidence gathering takes time. What's worse than not indicting someone quickly? Not getting a conviction at all due to sloppy evidence gathering.

Lots of KKK members haven't been convicted of anything. But do you think advertisers will want to touch them with a 10' pole just because they haven't been convicted?

Also...actually whether the overall, sum-total effect of SpaceX is going to be a societal good is debatable. Ditto Twitter, before, during or after Elon.

 

[Singuy]

Yeaaaa force everyone to work to 2am everyday and come in on weekends.
Make sure they have zero lives other than to serve and do the owners bidding.
Slave away to make your owner trillions.
Anyone who says no is clearly a loser,low life, cry baby.
That's the way, every company should follow suit!


Talk about modern-day slavery.

Haha master class logic here.

Imagine a real slave 200 years ago was offered to leave with 3 months of pay. If that slave said no then he is then considered an employee and no longer a slave.

Why you asked? Real slaves cannot make a choice about their employment, employees can .

 

[EVNow]

All this is nice and good, but the early reports are a lot of folks staying are H1B folks and anyone who can do better or are great (Elon material) left.

We don't klnow how many H1B people are left in Twitter ... but given a choice most H1B people will not quit. It is difficult to find new companies that will transfer the H1B - and they will usually give you less money.

Also, H1B contractors are easily the most hard working in most companies. Because of the above reason. They may not be all that productive (because they usually don't have the context) ... but they work hard. Been there done that.

BUT, companies try to convert good H1B employees to full time quickly - after which they may not work that hard

eports… exclusively by people who left the company because they didn’t like the terms. No bias there.


Twitter is still online today in case you were wondering.

When 90% of people leave, I think a better question is why are the 10% staying back. Assuming they are the "best" engineers and somehow all the ones who left are "bad" ... is simply irrational. It is more likely that the ones staying back are
- less likely to easily get jobs elsewhere (because of ability or visa status) or
- like Elon

Elon might want to have only "the best" working for Twitter .... but there is at present very little reason why "the best" would want to work for Twitter.

 

[scottf200]

Between 10x and 40x more problems than normal reported by users in the last 24 hours (the 40x was more in the peak evening times, the 10x in the wee hours overnight)

Current broad breakdown is about half the issues were with the website, another 36% with the app, and 14% with server connection.

"... a few scenarios that are real threats to the integrity of the bird site over the coming weeks."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1593541177965678592

 

[Singuy]

Doesn’t look like they are discussing advertising…

Haha, Elon is a master class advertiser for the platform. Don't for a second think the current Trump poll isn't a form of getting left and right of the political spectrum to sign on to twitter for the vote of the decade while it being advertised from every news source.

Musk believes in building great products and it'll sell itself. Social media is all about eyeballs which Musk have proven to be extremely good at that.

 

[Ogre]

By Thimkin! and using their power of observation. If you don't know that Trump is a criminal you need to polish up your critical thinking skills too.

I agree, I said as much in the post you quoted.

You are missing the entire point. Maybe you need to polish up your reading com skills since we’re giving advice here?

 

[Singuy]

We don't klnow how many H1B people are left in Twitter ... but given a choice most H1B people will not quit. It is difficult to find new companies that will transfer the H1B - and they will usually give you less money.

Also, H1B contractors are easily the most hard working in most companies. Because of the above reason. They may not be all that productive (because they usually don't have the context) ... but they work hard. Been there done that.

BUT, companies try to convert good H1B employees to full time quickly - after which they may not work that hard



When 90% of people leave, I think a better question is why are the 10% staying back. Assuming they are the "best" engineers and somehow all the ones who left are "bad" ... is simply irrational. It is more likely that the ones staying back are
- less likely to easily get jobs elsewhere (because of ability or visa status) or
- like Elon

Elon might want to have only "the best" working for Twitter .... but there is at present very little reason why "the best" would want to work for Twitter.

Musk wish 90% of the people left. Sources are saying 2500 employees are left which is still a boatload of people. Now he will be hoping for some attrition.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1594012879048478721

 

[Ogre]

When 90% of people leave, I think a better question is why are the 10% staying back. Assuming they are the "best" engineers and somehow all the ones who left are "bad" ... is simply irrational. It is more likely that the ones staying back are
- less likely to easily get jobs elsewhere (because of ability or visa status) or
- like Elon

Elon might want to have only "the best" working for Twitter .... but there is at present very little reason why "the best" would want to work for Twitter.

Musk is rebuilding Twitter in a similar way to how SpaceX and Tesla are structured. It seems pretty clear he is willing to get rid of almost everyone and rebuild from the ground up to do it. That isn’t “I think Musk will do this”, it’s simple observation. Maybe that means Twitter is running a skeleton crew who can just barely keep the lights on for a few months.

Do you think it never occurred to Musk that so many people would leave?

Musk has had little trouble attracting top talent before. I seriously doubt he’ll have a ton of trouble here either.

 

[Big Dog]

Why is Musk so obsessed about people having to show up in the office instead of being able to work from home (at least part of the time)?

Folks didn't seem to notice that the demand of 80 hour workweeks for engineers and managers is really just a 50% hourly paycut.

Elon is able to get people to work that hard at Tesla and Space-X, but they signed up for it when hired, they tend to burn out and eventually quit, but since Tesla and Space-X are doing amazing things there's a supply for more young talent willing to replace the burned out ones.

Twitter is not doing anything amazing to draw in all that young no-family-life work-all-day, burn-out, step-and-repeat talent.

Disagree. That is the clearly the point Elon is trying to make: Twitter will not longer be a lifestyle company, no longer be in competition for Best Places to Work. And if that is the kind of place that you desire, go elsewhere.

As I have posted earlier, he just got there in the reverse order, IMO. He could have saved a lot of bad PR by first requiring everyone to show up in the office on Day 1 for a minimum of 5 days/40+ hours per week. Hundreds would have quit on the spot. No need to pay severance.

 

[Ogre]

Disagree. That is the clearly the point Elon is trying to make: Twitter will not longer be a lifestyle company, no longer be in competition for Best Places to Work. And if that is the kind of place that you desire, go elsewhere.

Sort of like Tesla and SpaceX? According to your criteria they aren’t in Competition for Best Places to Work either.

LOL.

 

[Big Dog]

Sort of like Tesla and SpaceX? According to your criteria they aren’t in Competition for Best Places to Work either.

LOL.

That is correct, they are not. Best Places to Work is for ALL employees, is HR speak for being all family-friendly. A place that happens to have the best of the best in engineers is not the same.

 

[Knightshade]

Sort of like Tesla and SpaceX? According to your criteria they aren’t in Competition for Best Places to Work either.

LOL.

For folks who value work/life balance? They aren't. Not remotely. (see what I did there?)

For someone who is say a hardcore rocket engineer whose lifelong dream has been interplanetary colonization and will put in all work needed to get there ASAP it's by a mile the best place to work.

But as pointed out to you repeatedly there's probably fewer folks whose lifelong dream was "working crazy hours to enable longer cat videos to be posted to a microblogging site used by only 3% of the world"

And certainly it wasn't the dream of the majority of existing workers at twitter.

"... a few scenarios that are real threats to the integrity of the bird site over the coming weeks."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1593541177965678592

An excellent thread (though I think it's already been posted) giving a good high level technical overview, by someone who has been there, of the myriad reasons twitter (and any public-facing site like this) isn't "just some website that 3 guys can keep running perfectly"

Compounded by their lack of any dev environment for testing code changes- as was discussed in previous court testimony, all their testing is done in production so by the time you know you broke something everyone knows.

 

[Nrkl]

Everyone seems to have a crystal clear idea what is happening, or should be happening at Twitter. All I know is that Elon has a track record of building great engineering orgs, and he is just a few weeks in.

That is correct, they are not. Best Places to Work is for ALL employees, is HR speak for being all family-friendly. A place that happens to have the best of the best in engineers is not the same.

You are echoing my sentiments. By not being a workplace for everyone, you can be the right place for a few. Musk does not need or want everyone to want work at his companies. Only the best.

I’ve already heard some engineers say they wish they could be there, the most exciting place in SV right now.

Also, most good engineers will LOVE Musks hate for meetings and PMCs (professional managerial class)

 

[EVNow]

Musk wish 90% of the people left. Sources are saying 2500 employees are left which is still a boatload of people. Now he will be hoping for some attrition.

Definitely in some engineering groups 90% (or in some cases everyone) is gone.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1593382901638434816

 

[EVNow]

Musk has had little trouble attracting top talent before. I seriously doubt he’ll have a ton of trouble here either.

I've explained above why Twitter is different.

I'd have definitely worked in SpaceX/Tesla - but definitely not Twitter under current conditions.

There simply aren't enough high quality "anti-woke" engineers.

 

[Singuy]

Definitely in some engineering groups 90% (or in some cases everyone) is gone.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1593382901638434816

Yes, you need 1k to leave for Twitter to be at 2500 in the last hour. This guy only said hundreds...hopefully there are actually more employees who left and didn't bother to post.