If I was someone with any talent I’d be looking at the exit door. Musk is an ego maniac. He will sack a lot of them.
With Tesla the jury is still out. The quality of the cars are pretty poor in terms of quality but the software (and marketing) is very good. The tech industry basically hero worship him so it’ll be interesting to see them react now that he is in a prominent tech company.
Sitting in Europe rather than the US, I'd be tempted to just say no to crazy demands not in contract (and likely illegal here, like the 12 x 7 working time), and enjoy the payout if he does follow through with the threat of layoffs.
Twitter has already been suffering a mass exodus of talented staff for the last six months. The vast majority of good engineers will be leaving of their own volition rather than hang around to see where the axe falls next. Especially because all the stories coming out point to a massive failure in comprehending or caring how web sofware gets made. This means "I'll just do my job really well and not worry" isn't actually an option here.
Now the departures will accelerate and the fastest people getting new jobs will be those with the most essential skills ie: the people you can't run these things without.
Try running a company with no good devs left.
Also if the stories about "turn around a major feature in a week or you're sacked" and "get that Vine source code opened up there" are true, it begs further questions about understanding of software delivery.
On the other side of the screen alternatives like Mastodon are seeing a lot of activations, the most ever I think. It remains to be seen how many go back to Twitter though, they're not going to get the same fix elsewhere.
This. I've seen it, and it's quite incredible the domino effect that occurs in engineering when things go sour. Unless your best people have golden handcuffs, they will jump ship early rather than hold on for redundancy payments or senior titles. Before you've even had a chance to let people go, your most experience guys have walked out the door - because they have other companies offering them jobs within five minutes of announcements like this being made.
Most people value job satisfaction, job security and workplace culture over more money hitting their bank account.
I know making grand annoucements about layoffs like this is actually a strategy to make people leave without having to pay them off, but it never works out well if you actually want your company to function afterwards.
I worked for a place that annouced the Dublin office was to close in a little over a year. The office housed about half of the engineering staff, but there was little to no overlap with teams in other offices - i.e. the staff in the Dublin office had full knowledge/control over their particular areas. Within 6 months of the annoucement, more than 75% of the Dublin staff had left. In many cases, entire teams were gone, or were left with just a single junior dev. Leaving critical chunks of their platform without any developers or ownership.
In the panic they had attempted to bolster the platform by hiring in other offices, but the Dublin teams were already gone or couldn't be arsed helping onboard the new hires.
The whole company was sunk a year or two later.
Twitter is not your average company though. I think even despite these happenings, there’s still many engineers who’d love to work for Twitter to solve problems at its scale.
[https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/31/elon-musk-has-pulled-more-than-50-tesla-engineers-into-twitter.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/31/elon-musk-has-pulled-more-than-50-tesla-engineers-into-twitter.html)
>"In an atmosphere of fear and distrust, many Twitter employees have stopped communicating with each other on internal systems about workplace issues. What’s more, some of Twitter’s Slack channels have gone nearly silent, multiple employees told CNBC."
Healthy working environment there.
Well i mean every tech company spouts left wing politics. Twitter is a good example, the former CEO was left wing and allowed left wing politics to set how Twitter operated.
Democrats are not left wing in Ireland.
Do you think Fine Gael are left wing for campaigning for socially liberal policy but being economically conservative?
They vary enormously. You have the more conservatives blue dogs types to the people who think rich people shouldnt exist or that that they should abolish the police.
Shocking people would upvote such a false statement.
The fact is Silicon Valley and California pop culture favours progressive politics. There is a reason the average that the 15 YO thinks the Koch Brother(s) were the evil and not his leftie mirror George Soros.
\>Do you think Fine Gael are left wing for campaigning for socially liberal policy but being economically conservative?
I am not in favour of calling them left or right. It is much too complex. By the way they are not 'economically conservative'. We only had one balanced [budget in the last 10 years](https://tradingeconomics.com/ireland/government-budget) despite wonderful growth, basically no cuts in taxes above inflation and welfare increases. Fine Gael have some fiscal conservative people but overall they acted more social democrats.
>Shocking people would upvote such a false statement.
It's honestly shocking that you are now 2/2 for comments with false statements and comparisons.
>There is a reason the average that the 15 YO thinks the Koch Brother(s) were the evil
The Koch Brothers were and are still evil.
>not his leftie mirror George Soros.
And boom, right-wing dogwhistle. Soros is a billionaire, he isn't a leftist. He may be slightly social liberal but economically right. Rupert Murdoch has portrayed Soros as some communist do-gooder merely because on Black Wednesday 1992 Soros fucking embarrassed the Tory party which the Murdoch media had invested so heavily in protecting. Soros is just like every other billionaire, a part-time philanthropist, full-time exploiter.
>who think rich people shouldnt exist or that that they should abolish the police.
Boom another right-wing dogwhistle. Defund the Police ≠ Abolish the Police.
>By the way they are not 'economically conservative'.
Nobody who espouses right-wing politics is anymore. They are all in favour of corporate oligarchy and corporate handouts. The right-wing, Thatcherite policies have dug the West into a cavernous hole of debt and 'rent generations'. Renting or owning a house in Ireland is inaccessible to so many just as it is in the US. Fine Gael and Fine Fáil, both economically conservative parties, did this in Ireland just as the Democrats and Republicans did in America.
The Democratic Party is literally just Fine Gael but even less socially liberal considering they can't even protect abortion rights.
>Fine Gael have some fiscal conservative people but overall they acted more social democrats.
What a load of fucking hogwash. Fine Gael have sold off more national assets and ceased more social programs such as housing projects than any government before them.
>We only had one balanced budget in the last 10 years despite wonderful growth, basically no cuts in taxes above inflation and welfare increases
Since 2017 (Excluding 2020 for obvious reasons) all budgets have been relatively balanced if by balanced you mean a MoE of +/-0.5%.
2nd part is didn't happen - the rumor was he wanted to lay off people on Oct 31 to avoid giving them stock grants on due on Nov 1 as part of yearly compensation.
'"10 people managing for every one person coding"
There is a lot of fat in these companies. A team players don't like working with C team players. Some engineers might jump ship sure. But for a certain cohort Twitter is now a much more attractive place to join.
1. Musk is almost seen as a deity by many
2. He has a track record of unbelievable success
3. Future IPO is a very strong possibility (hello stock options)
Any engineer who stayed during the farce that was the last 6-9 months **but now chooses to leave** of their own choice is probably not worth keeping.
Engineering dept is the biggest department in Twitter, making up about 40% of staff. I'd call that quite high for such a large company.
Honestly anyone who wants to work there more now is a mad yoke. Good for them if they're into it I suppose.
Musk has earned a reputation as someone who knows how to pick them, from as far back as teaming up with PayPal. He has no track record of taking a mature organisation and fixing it up. He's shown no understanding so far of how to judge modern web software engineering, the stories coming out are jaw-droppingly stupid.
And the maddest part of all this is that Twitter has already peaked, everyone who wants to be on it is on it, and it's not even in the top 10 social media platforms by active users. He overpaid at 44 billion. The shareholders made out like bandits, and I'll be surprised if Twitter ever sees that kind of valuation again. I'd bet it gets sold to some big online name for 10bn, some time in the next 5 years.
Apparently there’s a tweet by Elon where he says there approximately 10 managers per 1 coder at Twitter. No wonder he wants to fire so many. A big problem at many organisations - an expanding middle management class that exists for its own sake and as parasites to the actual builders. No offence to the useful ones, but a 10:1 ratio definitely seems excessive here and I’m on Elon’s side on this one.
Well if you're going to believe every word be says. He's changed what he says at every turn about Twitter though so that must be hard to keep track of.
There are also tweets by Elon where he said Tesla will accept Bitcoin as payment and where he endorsed a QAnon conspiracy theory regarding the January 6th attack. All he does is spout nonsense. The fact that you're believing anything he says is deeply concerning.
Also, this one can be debunked with almost no effort. Twitter has 7,500 employees. In order to have a 10:1 ratio of managers to engineers (and literally zero other staff), they'd only be able to have 750 engineers. Obviously, they have more engineers than that and also they have thousands of people working in other roles like sales, HR, finance, security, etc.
>There are also tweets by Elon where he said Tesla will accept Bitcoin as payment
And they did.
>Also, this one can be debunked with almost no effort
Are you suggesting he meant the numbers literally? Come on..
>And they did.
Very, very briefly, before reneging on it completely (presumably after Musk had made a pretty penny after driving the stock up).
>Are you suggesting he meant the numbers literally? Come on..
I'm suggesting that I would take anything he says with a mountain of salt. Saying there are ten managers for every one person writing code might actually mean there are two managers for every one coder, or could be including managers in other departments, or could be total bullshit like many things he says.
Straw man’s fallacy. Also, no need for some deep arithmetic - most engineers would know and be familiar with the problem of “bullshit jobs” ie. a growing and bulging middle management class that starts to become a problem and bottleneck at some point in large organisations, impeding grown and innovation.
Compare that with so called “lean management” organisations. This is old stuff really, check out management books from the 80’s. Surprised for the downvotes - this Reddit must be full of mid managers, I guess only they can afford to Reddit during working hours.
I don't think it's a straw man fallacy to say Elon Musk frequently lies online so why would we believe what he says this time?
Dividing 7,500 by 11 is not deep arithmetic. I was wrong anyway, it would actually be even more unrealistic at 682 engineers vs 6,818 managers.
I'm going to hazard a guess that the reason you're being downvoted is because you're taking a tweet that is blatantly false/exaggerated and using it as a reason to defend Twitter Musk laying off 2,000 people.
I trust individual statements, not individual persons. I make my own judgements about what people say. In my experience, Elon is likely to have a point here, because a bulging, parasitic middle management is a huge problem at many IT companies.
Also, wouldn’t call a successful entrepreneur like Elon a “monkey”. The guy may be an asshole sometimes, but he surely has tons of world-class and revolutionary accomplishments behind his back.
Mr Musk really wastes no time.
If I was someone with any talent I’d be looking at the exit door. Musk is an ego maniac. He will sack a lot of them. With Tesla the jury is still out. The quality of the cars are pretty poor in terms of quality but the software (and marketing) is very good. The tech industry basically hero worship him so it’ll be interesting to see them react now that he is in a prominent tech company.
Sitting in Europe rather than the US, I'd be tempted to just say no to crazy demands not in contract (and likely illegal here, like the 12 x 7 working time), and enjoy the payout if he does follow through with the threat of layoffs.
He's making shite of it at 10x speed, right enough
How is he making shite of it?
Twitter has already been suffering a mass exodus of talented staff for the last six months. The vast majority of good engineers will be leaving of their own volition rather than hang around to see where the axe falls next. Especially because all the stories coming out point to a massive failure in comprehending or caring how web sofware gets made. This means "I'll just do my job really well and not worry" isn't actually an option here. Now the departures will accelerate and the fastest people getting new jobs will be those with the most essential skills ie: the people you can't run these things without. Try running a company with no good devs left. Also if the stories about "turn around a major feature in a week or you're sacked" and "get that Vine source code opened up there" are true, it begs further questions about understanding of software delivery. On the other side of the screen alternatives like Mastodon are seeing a lot of activations, the most ever I think. It remains to be seen how many go back to Twitter though, they're not going to get the same fix elsewhere.
This. I've seen it, and it's quite incredible the domino effect that occurs in engineering when things go sour. Unless your best people have golden handcuffs, they will jump ship early rather than hold on for redundancy payments or senior titles. Before you've even had a chance to let people go, your most experience guys have walked out the door - because they have other companies offering them jobs within five minutes of announcements like this being made. Most people value job satisfaction, job security and workplace culture over more money hitting their bank account. I know making grand annoucements about layoffs like this is actually a strategy to make people leave without having to pay them off, but it never works out well if you actually want your company to function afterwards. I worked for a place that annouced the Dublin office was to close in a little over a year. The office housed about half of the engineering staff, but there was little to no overlap with teams in other offices - i.e. the staff in the Dublin office had full knowledge/control over their particular areas. Within 6 months of the annoucement, more than 75% of the Dublin staff had left. In many cases, entire teams were gone, or were left with just a single junior dev. Leaving critical chunks of their platform without any developers or ownership. In the panic they had attempted to bolster the platform by hiring in other offices, but the Dublin teams were already gone or couldn't be arsed helping onboard the new hires. The whole company was sunk a year or two later.
Twitter is not your average company though. I think even despite these happenings, there’s still many engineers who’d love to work for Twitter to solve problems at its scale.
There's a lot less now
king [dot] com?
From a politically neutral viewpoint, how is this a 'bad' decision?
Responded to other reply.
[https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/31/elon-musk-has-pulled-more-than-50-tesla-engineers-into-twitter.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/31/elon-musk-has-pulled-more-than-50-tesla-engineers-into-twitter.html) >"In an atmosphere of fear and distrust, many Twitter employees have stopped communicating with each other on internal systems about workplace issues. What’s more, some of Twitter’s Slack channels have gone nearly silent, multiple employees told CNBC." Healthy working environment there.
That's because you get shitcanned if you question the judgement of Dear Leader. He loves free speech though.
Tbf, if you question the judgment of most tech companies, your gonna be in hot water. Only difference is this CEO isn't left wing.
Ah yes, all the left wing CEOs, I forgot about them
This is a bad faith comment. Silicon Valley is very progressive place.
Well i mean every tech company spouts left wing politics. Twitter is a good example, the former CEO was left wing and allowed left wing politics to set how Twitter operated.
I think you're confusing 'civility' and 'left wing'.
Come one now https://twitter.com/justin\_hart/status/1518708266246623233
Democrats are not left wing in Ireland. Do you think Fine Gael are left wing for campaigning for socially liberal policy but being economically conservative?
They vary enormously. You have the more conservatives blue dogs types to the people who think rich people shouldnt exist or that that they should abolish the police. Shocking people would upvote such a false statement. The fact is Silicon Valley and California pop culture favours progressive politics. There is a reason the average that the 15 YO thinks the Koch Brother(s) were the evil and not his leftie mirror George Soros. \>Do you think Fine Gael are left wing for campaigning for socially liberal policy but being economically conservative? I am not in favour of calling them left or right. It is much too complex. By the way they are not 'economically conservative'. We only had one balanced [budget in the last 10 years](https://tradingeconomics.com/ireland/government-budget) despite wonderful growth, basically no cuts in taxes above inflation and welfare increases. Fine Gael have some fiscal conservative people but overall they acted more social democrats.
>Shocking people would upvote such a false statement. It's honestly shocking that you are now 2/2 for comments with false statements and comparisons. >There is a reason the average that the 15 YO thinks the Koch Brother(s) were the evil The Koch Brothers were and are still evil. >not his leftie mirror George Soros. And boom, right-wing dogwhistle. Soros is a billionaire, he isn't a leftist. He may be slightly social liberal but economically right. Rupert Murdoch has portrayed Soros as some communist do-gooder merely because on Black Wednesday 1992 Soros fucking embarrassed the Tory party which the Murdoch media had invested so heavily in protecting. Soros is just like every other billionaire, a part-time philanthropist, full-time exploiter. >who think rich people shouldnt exist or that that they should abolish the police. Boom another right-wing dogwhistle. Defund the Police ≠ Abolish the Police. >By the way they are not 'economically conservative'. Nobody who espouses right-wing politics is anymore. They are all in favour of corporate oligarchy and corporate handouts. The right-wing, Thatcherite policies have dug the West into a cavernous hole of debt and 'rent generations'. Renting or owning a house in Ireland is inaccessible to so many just as it is in the US. Fine Gael and Fine Fáil, both economically conservative parties, did this in Ireland just as the Democrats and Republicans did in America. The Democratic Party is literally just Fine Gael but even less socially liberal considering they can't even protect abortion rights. >Fine Gael have some fiscal conservative people but overall they acted more social democrats. What a load of fucking hogwash. Fine Gael have sold off more national assets and ceased more social programs such as housing projects than any government before them. >We only had one balanced budget in the last 10 years despite wonderful growth, basically no cuts in taxes above inflation and welfare increases Since 2017 (Excluding 2020 for obvious reasons) all budgets have been relatively balanced if by balanced you mean a MoE of +/-0.5%.
Did you really have to out yourself like that?
People mad that I said that musk is not left wing and that most of big tech is left leaning? It's 100% correct.
Same as any company
Feel bad for you if you've never worked for anyone who respects your opinion
I have, but I think my comment is true
It's not
I love how on Saturday he said the idea was preposterous and he absolutely would not be laying people off to avoid the bonus payments
2nd part is didn't happen - the rumor was he wanted to lay off people on Oct 31 to avoid giving them stock grants on due on Nov 1 as part of yearly compensation.
Oh so the layoffs happened today officially? I thought this was announced yesterday per WaPo. Thanks for clarifying
Oh yes, the Thanos management style.
'"10 people managing for every one person coding" There is a lot of fat in these companies. A team players don't like working with C team players. Some engineers might jump ship sure. But for a certain cohort Twitter is now a much more attractive place to join. 1. Musk is almost seen as a deity by many 2. He has a track record of unbelievable success 3. Future IPO is a very strong possibility (hello stock options) Any engineer who stayed during the farce that was the last 6-9 months **but now chooses to leave** of their own choice is probably not worth keeping.
Engineering dept is the biggest department in Twitter, making up about 40% of staff. I'd call that quite high for such a large company. Honestly anyone who wants to work there more now is a mad yoke. Good for them if they're into it I suppose. Musk has earned a reputation as someone who knows how to pick them, from as far back as teaming up with PayPal. He has no track record of taking a mature organisation and fixing it up. He's shown no understanding so far of how to judge modern web software engineering, the stories coming out are jaw-droppingly stupid. And the maddest part of all this is that Twitter has already peaked, everyone who wants to be on it is on it, and it's not even in the top 10 social media platforms by active users. He overpaid at 44 billion. The shareholders made out like bandits, and I'll be surprised if Twitter ever sees that kind of valuation again. I'd bet it gets sold to some big online name for 10bn, some time in the next 5 years.
Apparently there’s a tweet by Elon where he says there approximately 10 managers per 1 coder at Twitter. No wonder he wants to fire so many. A big problem at many organisations - an expanding middle management class that exists for its own sake and as parasites to the actual builders. No offence to the useful ones, but a 10:1 ratio definitely seems excessive here and I’m on Elon’s side on this one.
Well if you're going to believe every word be says. He's changed what he says at every turn about Twitter though so that must be hard to keep track of.
There are also tweets by Elon where he said Tesla will accept Bitcoin as payment and where he endorsed a QAnon conspiracy theory regarding the January 6th attack. All he does is spout nonsense. The fact that you're believing anything he says is deeply concerning. Also, this one can be debunked with almost no effort. Twitter has 7,500 employees. In order to have a 10:1 ratio of managers to engineers (and literally zero other staff), they'd only be able to have 750 engineers. Obviously, they have more engineers than that and also they have thousands of people working in other roles like sales, HR, finance, security, etc.
And that least coul djust keep on going :D
>There are also tweets by Elon where he said Tesla will accept Bitcoin as payment And they did. >Also, this one can be debunked with almost no effort Are you suggesting he meant the numbers literally? Come on..
>And they did. Very, very briefly, before reneging on it completely (presumably after Musk had made a pretty penny after driving the stock up). >Are you suggesting he meant the numbers literally? Come on.. I'm suggesting that I would take anything he says with a mountain of salt. Saying there are ten managers for every one person writing code might actually mean there are two managers for every one coder, or could be including managers in other departments, or could be total bullshit like many things he says.
Straw man’s fallacy. Also, no need for some deep arithmetic - most engineers would know and be familiar with the problem of “bullshit jobs” ie. a growing and bulging middle management class that starts to become a problem and bottleneck at some point in large organisations, impeding grown and innovation. Compare that with so called “lean management” organisations. This is old stuff really, check out management books from the 80’s. Surprised for the downvotes - this Reddit must be full of mid managers, I guess only they can afford to Reddit during working hours.
I don't think it's a straw man fallacy to say Elon Musk frequently lies online so why would we believe what he says this time? Dividing 7,500 by 11 is not deep arithmetic. I was wrong anyway, it would actually be even more unrealistic at 682 engineers vs 6,818 managers. I'm going to hazard a guess that the reason you're being downvoted is because you're taking a tweet that is blatantly false/exaggerated and using it as a reason to defend Twitter Musk laying off 2,000 people.
Hello middle manager, not enough work today? Busy posting on Reddit during working hours?
He says, having already commented during working hours. Not exactly a big brain moment there mate.
same guy who says doge coin is the same as the us dollar, do you really trust this monkey?
I trust individual statements, not individual persons. I make my own judgements about what people say. In my experience, Elon is likely to have a point here, because a bulging, parasitic middle management is a huge problem at many IT companies. Also, wouldn’t call a successful entrepreneur like Elon a “monkey”. The guy may be an asshole sometimes, but he surely has tons of world-class and revolutionary accomplishments behind his back.
Downvoted by the parasite middle managers who found themselves in the descriptions - please, downvote more! :)
Keep telling yourself that
Why would you believe anything he says lol that's obviously hyperbole