Twitter

[bacchi]

What is the point of having people "opt in" with that email?.  It's not like they can't opt in and then be only "kind hardcore" and let the chips fall where they may.  Or opt in and then bail in 5 weeks when they finally secure another job offer.  Or anything else.

I think it's kinda smart.  It's a way of doing layoffs without doing layoffs - he's offering people who don't really want to be there (and are probably looking for other jobs anyway) a cash bonus to leave now.  Theoretically it would reduce the number of people leaving later which would translate into more stability/predictability for release dates and features.

It's the kind of thing he should have started with after the takeover rather than massive across the board layoffs and random firings.

There's also a psychological aspect to it. The ones who accept will be more likely to work longer hours simply because they agreed to his vision and opted in. Only the cynics will opt in and quiet quit while they look for another job.

[maizefolk]

What is the point of having people "opt in" with that email?.  It's not like they can't opt in and then be only "kind hardcore" and let the chips fall where they may.  Or opt in and then bail in 5 weeks when they finally secure another job offer.  Or anything else.

I think it's kinda smart.  It's a way of doing layoffs without doing layoffs - he's offering people who don't really want to be there (and are probably looking for other jobs anyway) a cash bonus to leave now.  Theoretically it would reduce the number of people leaving later which would translate into more stability/predictability for release dates and features.

It's the kind of thing he should have started with after the takeover rather than massive across the board layoffs and random firings.

I imagine there is also a fair bit of psychological weight resting on the difference between "I chose this" and "this was forced upon me."

There is a reason a lot of the best practices for things like brain washing focus on the subject making small choices voluntarily that slowly lead down a path to a different world view. Details below the spoiler tag.

Spoiler: show

An examination of the Chinese prison camp programme shows that its personnel relied heavily on commitment and consistency pressures to gain the desired compliance from prisoners. Of course, the first problem facing the Chinese was how to get any collaboration at all from the Americans. These were men who were trained to provide nothing but name, rank, and serial number. Short of physical brutalization, how could the captors hope to get such men to give military information, turn-in fellow prisoners, or publicly denounce their country? The Chinese answer was elementary: start small and build.

For instance, prisoners were frequently asked to make statements so mildly anti-american or Pro communist as to seem inconsequential (“The United States is not perfect.” “In a communist country, unemployment is not a problem.”). But once these minor request were complied with, the men found themselves pushed to submit to related yet more substantive requests. A man who has just agreed with his Chinese interrogator that the United States is not perfect might then be asked to indicate some of the ways in which he thought this was the case. Once he had so explained himself, he might be asked to make a list of these “problems with America” and to sign his name to it. Later he might be asked to read his list in a discussion group with other prisoners. “After all, it's what you really believe, isn't it?” Still later he might be asked to write an essay expanding on his list and discussing these problems in greater detail.

The Chinese might then use his name and his essay in an anti American radio broadcast beamed not only to the entire camp, but to other p.o.w. camps in North Korea, as well as to American Forces in South Korea. Suddenly he would find himself a “collaborator” having given aid to the enemy. Aware that he had written the essay without any strong threats or coercion, many times a man would change his image of himself to be consistent with the deed and with the new “collaborator” label, often resulting in even more extensive acts of collaboration.

[Metalcat]

What is the point of having people "opt in" with that email?.  It's not like they can't opt in and then be only "kind hardcore" and let the chips fall where they may.  Or opt in and then bail in 5 weeks when they finally secure another job offer.  Or anything else.

I think it's kinda smart.  It's a way of doing layoffs without doing layoffs - he's offering people who don't really want to be there (and are probably looking for other jobs anyway) a cash bonus to leave now.  Theoretically it would reduce the number of people leaving later which would translate into more stability/predictability for release dates and features.

It's the kind of thing he should have started with after the takeover rather than massive across the board layoffs and random firings.

I imagine there is also a fair bit of psychological weight resting on the difference between "I chose this" and "this was forced upon me."

There is a reason a lot of the best practices for things like brain washing focus on the subject making small choices voluntarily that slowly lead down a path to a different world view. Details below the spoiler tag.

Spoiler: show

An examination of the Chinese prison camp programme shows that its personnel relied heavily on commitment and consistency pressures to gain the desired compliance from prisoners. Of course, the first problem facing the Chinese was how to get any collaboration at all from the Americans. These were men who were trained to provide nothing but name, rank, and serial number. Short of physical brutalization, how could the captors hope to get such men to give military information, turn-in fellow prisoners, or publicly denounce their country? The Chinese answer was elementary: start small and build.

For instance, prisoners were frequently asked to make statements so mildly anti-american or Pro communist as to seem inconsequential (“The United States is not perfect.” “In a communist country, unemployment is not a problem.”). But once these minor request were complied with, the men found themselves pushed to submit to related yet more substantive requests. A man who has just agreed with his Chinese interrogator that the United States is not perfect might then be asked to indicate some of the ways in which he thought this was the case. Once he had so explained himself, he might be asked to make a list of these “problems with America” and to sign his name to it. Later he might be asked to read his list in a discussion group with other prisoners. “After all, it's what you really believe, isn't it?” Still later he might be asked to write an essay expanding on his list and discussing these problems in greater detail.

The Chinese might then use his name and his essay in an anti American radio broadcast beamed not only to the entire camp, but to other p.o.w. camps in North Korea, as well as to American Forces in South Korea. Suddenly he would find himself a “collaborator” having given aid to the enemy. Aware that he had written the essay without any strong threats or coercion, many times a man would change his image of himself to be consistent with the deed and with the new “collaborator” label, often resulting in even more extensive acts of collaboration.

Lol, oh it's not "a bit" it's very blatant. This is *exactly* what he's trying to do.

[ChpBstrd]

What is the point of having people "opt in" with that email?.  It's not like they can't opt in and then be only "kind hardcore" and let the chips fall where they may.  Or opt in and then bail in 5 weeks when they finally secure another job offer.  Or anything else.

I think it's kinda smart.  It's a way of doing layoffs without doing layoffs - he's offering people who don't really want to be there (and are probably looking for other jobs anyway) a cash bonus to leave now.  Theoretically it would reduce the number of people leaving later which would translate into more stability/predictability for release dates and features.

It's the kind of thing he should have started with after the takeover rather than massive across the board layoffs and random firings.

I imagine there is also a fair bit of psychological weight resting on the difference between "I chose this" and "this was forced upon me."

There is a reason a lot of the best practices for things like brain washing focus on the subject making small choices voluntarily that slowly lead down a path to a different world view. Details below the spoiler tag.

Spoiler: show

An examination of the Chinese prison camp programme shows that its personnel relied heavily on commitment and consistency pressures to gain the desired compliance from prisoners. Of course, the first problem facing the Chinese was how to get any collaboration at all from the Americans. These were men who were trained to provide nothing but name, rank, and serial number. Short of physical brutalization, how could the captors hope to get such men to give military information, turn-in fellow prisoners, or publicly denounce their country? The Chinese answer was elementary: start small and build.

For instance, prisoners were frequently asked to make statements so mildly anti-american or Pro communist as to seem inconsequential (“The United States is not perfect.” “In a communist country, unemployment is not a problem.”). But once these minor request were complied with, the men found themselves pushed to submit to related yet more substantive requests. A man who has just agreed with his Chinese interrogator that the United States is not perfect might then be asked to indicate some of the ways in which he thought this was the case. Once he had so explained himself, he might be asked to make a list of these “problems with America” and to sign his name to it. Later he might be asked to read his list in a discussion group with other prisoners. “After all, it's what you really believe, isn't it?” Still later he might be asked to write an essay expanding on his list and discussing these problems in greater detail.

The Chinese might then use his name and his essay in an anti American radio broadcast beamed not only to the entire camp, but to other p.o.w. camps in North Korea, as well as to American Forces in South Korea. Suddenly he would find himself a “collaborator” having given aid to the enemy. Aware that he had written the essay without any strong threats or coercion, many times a man would change his image of himself to be consistent with the deed and with the new “collaborator” label, often resulting in even more extensive acts of collaboration.

Lol, oh it's not "a bit" it's very blatant. This is *exactly* what he's trying to do.

So... Musk sets the editorial direction of a future Twitter that algorithmically adapts to your preferences and simultaneously trains us all to comply with what Twitter asks them to do. What could go wrong?

[Fru-Gal]

The other aspect I find myself contemplating is how rarely we celebrate or aspire to servant leadership. While autocracy is the accepted model for most companies, I am fairly allergic to it.

[Villanelle]

What is the point of having people "opt in" with that email?.  It's not like they can't opt in and then be only "kind hardcore" and let the chips fall where they may.  Or opt in and then bail in 5 weeks when they finally secure another job offer.  Or anything else.

I think it's kinda smart.  It's a way of doing layoffs without doing layoffs - he's offering people who don't really want to be there (and are probably looking for other jobs anyway) a cash bonus to leave now.  Theoretically it would reduce the number of people leaving later which would translate into more stability/predictability for release dates and features.

It's the kind of thing he should have started with after the takeover rather than massive across the board layoffs and random firings.

I guess I think the framing of it is odd, not so much the idea that they are doing voluntary lay-offs.  By framing it as "opt-in to hardcore, hard times", it seems like he thinks this will weed out the "slackers" in some way that, "hey voluntary lay-offs are here.  Three months pay if you want to take the package and bail" wouldn't.  But I don't think anyone hitting that button is actually 100% committing to what he's asking.  They just aren't prepared to jump quite yet.

I read the subsequent posts about choice vs. force, and staring with small gestures, but I'm not sure I buy that this will be effective with more than just a small minority.  It's an employer.  People are used to smiling and nodding and then fucking off.  Yes, start time is at 8.  But I'll keep showing up at 810 because it doesn't really matter.  Sure, supplies are only for office use.  But the pen cup at home is full of work pens, sitting next to the work stapler, on top of a stack of work printer paper.  I think people have so little loyalty to their employer that this tactic is unlikely to be effective on more than a small minority, which is why I think it is silly. 

[Telecaster]

There's also a psychological aspect to it. The ones who accept will be more likely to work longer hours simply because they agreed to his vision and opted in. Only the cynics will opt in and quiet quit while they look for another job.

Yep.  And there is another component too:  Scarcity.  You only have until 5 pm and then the offer goes away. 

[Fru-Gal]

Legally speaking, how do Twitter workers know that saying they want to be laid off will in fact result in getting severance vs. choosing to quit?

[Villanelle]

Legally speaking, how do Twitter workers know that saying they want to be laid off will in fact result in getting severance vs. choosing to quit?

Well, they have the email, so I think that would be the basis for a very solid legal argument if it came to that. 

[nick663]

Lays off a bunch of people with no regard to their function.  Then asks the remaining people to commit to working "long hours"?  Yeah, that's going to be a no from me.

I can't imagine the headache people are going to have trying to recruit people to join Twitter in a month or two.  Not a single person is going to show up for the interview when they hear it is with twitter.

[seattlecyclone]

Lays off a bunch of people with no regard to their function.  Then asks the remaining people to commit to working "long hours"?  Yeah, that's going to be a no from me.

I can't imagine the headache people are going to have trying to recruit people to join Twitter in a month or two.  Not a single person is going to show up for the interview when they hear it is with twitter.

I can think of three groups of people for whom that would not be the case:
1) Elon Musk fanboys,
2) People here on H1-B visas who were recently laid off from another big tech company and have 60 days to find a new visa sponsor or else leave the country.
3) People who have every right to remain here but failed to save an emergency fund.

I expect most of the people agreeing to this change to "hardcore" working conditions for no additional salary are also in one of those three groups.

[Paul der Krake]

I can think of three groups of people for whom that would not be the case:
1) Elon Musk fanboys,
2) People here on H1-B visas who were recently laid off from another big tech company and have 60 days to find a new visa sponsor or else leave the country.
3) People who have every right to remain here but failed to save an emergency fund.

I expect most of the people agreeing to this change to "hardcore" working conditions for no additional salary are also in one of those three groups.

4) Cautious or intrigued people taking the wait-and-see approach
5) People who enjoy the grind and look forward to working in a pressure cooker

I think people underestimate how appealing #5 can be for many. It's not something I want to do all the time, but I do enjoy a high stakes, laser-focused launch every now and then. For a few days you work with a super close-knit team and watch all the red tape disappear. Everyone is on their A game and there is no time for bullshit because as the DRI for $project I get to wave my magic wand and people get out of the way for my shrieking ambulance.

It's probably easier to sell people on high stakes environments when you have a super compelling vision like I don't know, COLONIZING MARS, and it remains to be seen if he's able to generate this much enthusiasm for what is essentially a shitposting website. But who knows. Wall Street also promises insanely long hours for not that much pay, at least in the first couple of years. They don't have a recruiting problem either.

[seattlecyclone]

Yeah, I totally get the motivation to work for a high-risk high-reward company. I just don't see that in today's Twitter though. It's a pretty mature product, owned by someone who seems to be highly motivated by cost cutting. The potential upside just doesn't seem like it's likely to be there for most of these employees the same as it might be at an actual startup. They're signing up to work long hours for a boss who knows he's right about everything and won't accept anyone telling him otherwise, and maybe if everything goes perfectly they get a nice bonus at the end of the year. I'd take the three months' severance.

[LennStar]

If you try to tweet "joinmastodon.com" at the moment, you get blocked by twitter. I got a "too many login attempts" message with tweetdeck.
Is that Freedom of Speech?

Now, to be fair it seems to be a problem with the certificate, joinmastodon.org works. And I can't even say if the .com is a legit site or a phisher.

But still, that is an awful coincidence, isn't it?
---

EDIT: https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/109361033047223898
translation: .org is the right one, .com was only bought a few weeks ago when a newspaper wrongly linked it, was a spammer site before

[seattlecyclone]

Sounds like a supermajority of remaining employees decided they didn't want to work in an "extremely hardcore" manner at this time. Perhaps will be less than 1,000 workers remaining.

[bacchi]

Musk also started walking back his WFH ban.

[Villanelle]

Sounds like a supermajority of remaining employees decided they didn't want to work in an "extremely hardcore" manner at this time. Perhaps will be less than 1,000 workers remaining.

I've read that if nothing else changes, they will have lost about 88% of their workforce. 

[Travis]

https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1593384803507654657

https://twitter.com/kyliebytes/status/1593391167718113280

https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1593394552966156289

https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1593427480051822592

Some updates on the severity of the departures.

[nick663]

Yeah, I totally get the motivation to work for a high-risk high-reward company. I just don't see that in today's Twitter though. It's a pretty mature product, owned by someone who seems to be highly motivated by cost cutting. The potential upside just doesn't seem like it's likely to be there for most of these employees the same as it might be at an actual startup. They're signing up to work long hours for a boss who knows he's right about everything and won't accept anyone telling him otherwise, and maybe if everything goes perfectly they get a nice bonus at the end of the year. I'd take the three months' severance.

Yeah, I know a few people who joined tech startups and worked the crazy hours.  Most were given stock options and joined with the mentality of either being rich or unemployed in 5 years.

[Sibley]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/17/technology/twitter-elon-musk-ftc.html

Front page of NY Times (at least on the website and mobile app). This whole mess is definitely going into the business textbooks.

[ChpBstrd]

Yeah, I totally get the motivation to work for a high-risk high-reward company. I just don't see that in today's Twitter though. It's a pretty mature product, owned by someone who seems to be highly motivated by cost cutting. The potential upside just doesn't seem like it's likely to be there for most of these employees the same as it might be at an actual startup. They're signing up to work long hours for a boss who knows he's right about everything and won't accept anyone telling him otherwise, and maybe if everything goes perfectly they get a nice bonus at the end of the year. I'd take the three months' severance.

Yeah, I know a few people who joined tech startups and worked the crazy hours.  Most were given stock options and joined with the mentality of either being rich or unemployed in 5 years.

It would be hard to work 70h weeks in dirty cubicles for Elon Musk, for no stock options, and with your best coworkers gone, when the unemployment rate is 3.7%.  Imagine all your former coworkers are posting on LinkedIn about how they're grabbing up all the available jobs at fast-growing, fun cultured or WFH startups offering stock options. Those who stay have to be thinking about their recession survival game plan and whether they'll be able to leave later. They'll have to think about whether their career plan involves taking 5 a.m. phone calls from a deranged billionaire asking why you aren't in the office I sent the meeting invite three hours ago.

[FINate]

What is the point of having people "opt in" with that email?.  It's not like they can't opt in and then be only "kind hardcore" and let the chips fall where they may.  Or opt in and then bail in 5 weeks when they finally secure another job offer.  Or anything else.

I think it's kinda smart.  It's a way of doing layoffs without doing layoffs - he's offering people who don't really want to be there (and are probably looking for other jobs anyway) a cash bonus to leave now.  Theoretically it would reduce the number of people leaving later which would translate into more stability/predictability for release dates and features.

It's the kind of thing he should have started with after the takeover rather than massive across the board layoffs and random firings.

It's the worst kind of layoff, especially in engineering. The best engineers know their worth and generally don't view "extremely hardcore" as working long days and weekends (in reality, hardcoreness is more about difficulty and complexity). Sure, there's a time and place for long hours, but not as normal operating procedure. While some great engineers may want grueling hours, from what I can tell this was not previously part of Twitter's culture, so it's unlikely that the interviewing and hiring process selected for this. Therefore relatively few of the key engineers that keep the lights on are likely to stick around and will jump ship to a place that's not batshit crazy. This leaves mediocre and/or desperate engineers who will sign on out of fear. It's a terrible way to conduct layoffs because it tends to reduce the overall quality of the workforce.

I think I'm starting to understand now why Tesla continues to struggle with build quality.

[Herbert Derp]

The way I see it, Elon paid $44B for Twitter’s established user base and market share. I don’t understand how the company can continue to move forward with its existing legacy infrastructure, given how many of the employees have departed. The knowledge base required to operate and develop within the current infrastructure has been obliterated.

That being said, I think this may be what Elon wants. The old Twitter was a bloated and lazy company, both in terms of their infrastructure and employee base. To bring Twitter into the next decade, the entire thing needs to be burned down and rebuilt from scratch. Elon would have had an easier job doing this if he just started his own social media company, but then he wouldn’t have Twitter’s user base and market share. Twitter is one of those companies that just got there first and established itself, and by doing so is almost impossible to replace no matter how bloated, lazy, and lacking in vision it may have become.

Elon is going to have to create a very compelling vision for his new Twitter if he wants to be able to hire people willing to work “hardcore” hours though. Tesla and SpaceX both have top-notch technology and extremely compelling visions, which is why their employees are willing to work that hard. Twitter has never had that, which is why it has always been famous in the Valley for its lazy and unmotivated employees.

So for Elon to succeed here, he needs to do the following:
1. Communicate a clear and compelling vision for the new Twitter so that he can attract the kind of “hardcore” engineers he wants to hire.
2. Keep the existing infrastructure running well enough to avoid losing the established user base and market share.
3. Build out a whole new infrastructure for the new Twitter which will eventually replace the old one.

It will be extremely difficult to achieve this but Elon Musk does seem motivated enough to pull it off. I’m worried about #1 though, as nothing he has communicated about his vision for the new Twitter has been clear or compelling.

Furthermore, all of this fits perfectly into Elon’s established MO. He identifies a lucrative industry that has become weak and bloated, and finds a better way to do it. Then he moves into the industry, builds a younger, leaner, and more capable company, disrupts the old players, and takes over the industry. The process has already been done twice with SpaceX and Tesla. Twitter is an interesting case because Elon is disrupting it internally rather than externally, and Twitter’s business is lucrative in political power rather than profits. But it’s still essentially the same process being put into motion at Twitter as what Elon already did in the space and automotive industries.

[Taran Wanderer]

With Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, we’re heading off hearing of executive firings, lay-offs, and now mandatory 84 hour workweeks on top of all the other changes to service, moderation, etc.  The people who founded Twitter are gone. The management and culture are going to go through radical changes, and it very much sounds like it’s going to be for the worse. So my question is… why don’t people just leave en masse?  Twitter could basically be shut down, and Musk would have nothing of value with no people to run it. Why stay through this mess?

Whaddya know. Sixteen days later it actually happened. Huh.

[LennStar]

Allegedly the (last?) guy responsible for the badges was fired a few hours before all badges were deactivated and nobody was able to go into HQ.

Don't know if it's true, but the fact I am totally ok believing it shows how bad the situation is ;)

[jrhampt]

One of the funnier things about this is that no one is really sure who's even left because most of HR is gone too.

[chemistk]

It's been a lot of fun to watch all the discussion about this on Reddit. I honestly believe at this point that the public narrative about what's going on is going to manifest itself into reality. Take a look at Twitter right now, and you'll see tons of people posting their "last tweets" and (joking or not) acting as if they're listening to the band play as the Titanic sinks.

In our hyper-connected world, I seriously think there's a more than 50% chance that the remaining Twitter employees are seeing this narrative unfold in a terribly perverse Stranger Than Fiction-esque saga. If I were there, I'd probably have at least a few serious thoughts about "screw it, let's make this happen" and help to burn the barn down.

To that end, I have to wonder whether Twitter is actually going to exist in any meaningful form. We all know subconsciously that social media actually isn't so great and yet none of us individually have much power to change a damn thing about it. But much like a mangled nightmare of a car accident on the highway, it has our rapt attention because secretly it's the thing we all want to watch so badly.

Twitter's not really the worst company for this to happen to, either - I do feel dirty making this qualification but they're one of the lighter-staffed tech companies so the losses are not nearly so detrimental as if Meta were a raging inferno and Zuck blasted his way into orbit.

In all likelihood, Twitter is going to exist in some form or fashion but it's pretty clear that there's been too much damage done too quickly. What will it become? That's hard to say. Maybe a sadder reincarnation of itself, with more paywalls and not nearly so many interesting contributors.

Someone on Reddit noted that Musk could have paid $5 million to each and every employee when he bought the place, burned the buildings down for insurance, and still could have come out ahead by a few billion.

[GuitarStv]

What is the point of having people "opt in" with that email?.  It's not like they can't opt in and then be only "kind hardcore" and let the chips fall where they may.  Or opt in and then bail in 5 weeks when they finally secure another job offer.  Or anything else.

I think it's kinda smart.  It's a way of doing layoffs without doing layoffs - he's offering people who don't really want to be there (and are probably looking for other jobs anyway) a cash bonus to leave now.  Theoretically it would reduce the number of people leaving later which would translate into more stability/predictability for release dates and features.

It's the kind of thing he should have started with after the takeover rather than massive across the board layoffs and random firings.

It's the worst kind of layoff, especially in engineering. The best engineers know their worth and generally don't view "extremely hardcore" as working long days and weekends (in reality, hardcoreness is more about difficulty and complexity). Sure, there's a time and place for long hours, but not as normal operating procedure. While some great engineers may want grueling hours, from what I can tell this was not previously part of Twitter's culture, so it's unlikely that the interviewing and hiring process selected for this. Therefore relatively few of the key engineers that keep the lights on are likely to stick around and will jump ship to a place that's not batshit crazy. This leaves mediocre and/or desperate engineers who will sign on out of fear. It's a terrible way to conduct layoffs because it tends to reduce the overall quality of the workforce.

I think I'm starting to understand now why Tesla continues to struggle with build quality.

Musk obviously didn't want to keep the best engineers though.  The decrees about work from home and randomly firing people who correct his mistakes is evidence of that.  He was attempting to select only for blind loyalty and exploitability. . . and that kind of layoff is good for those particular characteristics.  I think the trouble he's walking into right now is that there aren't enough exploitable/blindly loyal employees to keep the company working.

[ChpBstrd]

One of the funnier things about this is that no one is really sure who's even left because most of HR is gone too.

I bet somebody pulls a Milton, and stays on the payroll for years after their layoff.

[sonofsven]

One of the funnier things about this is that no one is really sure who's even left because most of HR is gone too.

I bet somebody pulls a Milton, and stays on the payroll for years after their layoff.

Hmm, didn't Milton burn the place down?

[jrhampt]

One of the funnier things about this is that no one is really sure who's even left because most of HR is gone too.

I bet somebody pulls a Milton, and stays on the payroll for years after their layoff.

Hmm, didn't Milton burn the place down?

He did, but only after they "fixed the glitch" that was keeping him on the payroll.  In the case of twitter, sounds like most of the payroll department left, too.

[GuitarStv]

One of the funnier things about this is that no one is really sure who's even left because most of HR is gone too.

I bet somebody pulls a Milton, and stays on the payroll for years after their layoff.

Hmm, didn't Milton burn the place down?

He did, but only after they "fixed the glitch" that was keeping him on the payroll.  In the case of twitter, sounds like most of the payroll department left, too.

Also sounds like management has already burned twitter down.  :P

[FINate]

What is the point of having people "opt in" with that email?.  It's not like they can't opt in and then be only "kind hardcore" and let the chips fall where they may.  Or opt in and then bail in 5 weeks when they finally secure another job offer.  Or anything else.

I think it's kinda smart.  It's a way of doing layoffs without doing layoffs - he's offering people who don't really want to be there (and are probably looking for other jobs anyway) a cash bonus to leave now.  Theoretically it would reduce the number of people leaving later which would translate into more stability/predictability for release dates and features.

It's the kind of thing he should have started with after the takeover rather than massive across the board layoffs and random firings.

It's the worst kind of layoff, especially in engineering. The best engineers know their worth and generally don't view "extremely hardcore" as working long days and weekends (in reality, hardcoreness is more about difficulty and complexity). Sure, there's a time and place for long hours, but not as normal operating procedure. While some great engineers may want grueling hours, from what I can tell this was not previously part of Twitter's culture, so it's unlikely that the interviewing and hiring process selected for this. Therefore relatively few of the key engineers that keep the lights on are likely to stick around and will jump ship to a place that's not batshit crazy. This leaves mediocre and/or desperate engineers who will sign on out of fear. It's a terrible way to conduct layoffs because it tends to reduce the overall quality of the workforce.

I think I'm starting to understand now why Tesla continues to struggle with build quality.

Musk obviously didn't want to keep the best engineers though.  The decrees about work from home and randomly firing people who correct his mistakes is evidence of that.  He was attempting to select only for blind loyalty and exploitability. . . and that kind of layoff is good for those particular characteristics.  I think the trouble he's walking into right now is that there aren't enough exploitable/blindly loyal employees to keep the company working.

Agreed. I just don't see it as a smart move. I'm not a fan of Musk or Twitter -- if he manages to destroy $44B while killing Twitter I won't shed any tears. This may even be good for society, especially if he tarnishes his "personal brand" in the process. I'm completely over egotistical tech leaders with messiah complexes.

[bacchi]

Twitter has never had that, which is why it has always been famous in the Valley for its lazy and unmotivated employees.

I keep reading this lately but hadn't heard of it before this saga. Did I miss this discussion on hackernews and reddit? Was this discussed on blind?

It's not like I've been super involved the past few years...did they become super lazy recently, more so than the other high flying tech companies?

[MaybeBabyMustache]

Twitter has never had that, which is why it has always been famous in the Valley for its lazy and unmotivated employees.

I keep reading this lately but hadn't heard of it before this saga. Did I miss this discussion on hackernews and reddit? Was this discussed on blind?

It's not like I've been super involved the past few years...did they become super lazy recently, more so than the other high flying tech companies?

Work for a large tech company in the valley, & do a lot of hiring. I don't think this is a thing. We've hired plenty of great folks from Twitter.

[FINate]

Twitter has never had that, which is why it has always been famous in the Valley for its lazy and unmotivated employees.

I keep reading this lately but hadn't heard of it before this saga. Did I miss this discussion on hackernews and reddit? Was this discussed on blind?

It's not like I've been super involved the past few years...did they become super lazy recently, more so than the other high flying tech companies?

Work for a large tech company in the valley, & do a lot of hiring. I don't think this is a thing. We've hired plenty of great folks from Twitter.

I agree. I think the payroll at Twitter was probably bloated, which is the fault of management, not "lazy employees."

[ChpBstrd]

Agreed. I just don't see it as a smart move. I'm not a fan of Musk or Twitter -- if he manages to destroy $44B while killing Twitter I won't shed any tears. This may even be good for society, especially if he tarnishes his "personal brand" in the process. I'm completely over egotistical tech leaders with messiah complexes.

Yes. The formation of cults of personality around celebrity billionaires reflects a society where every value has been subsumed by the dream of having lots of money. The fanboys are like a religion, hoping the worshiped entity maybe throws them some appreciation one day.

This forum is largely about the dream of having lots of money, but the rational path toward that goal. The whole admiration of rich people in the hope their luck rubs off or something is bizarre.

[Travis]

Allegedly the (last?) guy responsible for the badges was fired a few hours before all badges were deactivated and nobody was able to go into HQ.

Don't know if it's true, but the fact I am totally ok believing it shows how bad the situation is ;)

This was from a humor account.  The reports about the HR department being wiped out might be true.

I think the trouble he's walking into right now is that there aren't enough exploitable/blindly loyal employees to keep the company working.

The rumors from last night are that the core of the current employee base are visa holders who must retain their employment.

[nick663]

The way I see it, Elon paid $44B for Twitter’s established user base and market share. I don’t understand how the company can continue to move forward with its existing legacy infrastructure, given how many of the employees have departed. The knowledge base required to operate and develop within the current infrastructure has been obliterated.

That being said, I think this may be what Elon wants. The old Twitter was a bloated and lazy company, both in terms of their infrastructure and employee base. To bring Twitter into the next decade, the entire thing needs to be burned down and rebuilt from scratch. Elon would have had an easier job doing this if he just started his own social media company, but then he wouldn’t have Twitter’s user base and market share. Twitter is one of those companies that just got there first and established itself, and by doing so is almost impossible to replace no matter how bloated, lazy, and lacking in vision it may have become.

Elon is going to have to create a very compelling vision for his new Twitter if he wants to be able to hire people willing to work “hardcore” hours though. Tesla and SpaceX both have top-notch technology and extremely compelling visions, which is why their employees are willing to work that hard. Twitter has never had that, which is why it has always been famous in the Valley for its lazy and unmotivated employees.

So for Elon to succeed here, he needs to do the following:
1. Communicate a clear and compelling vision for the new Twitter so that he can attract the kind of “hardcore” engineers he wants to hire.
2. Keep the existing infrastructure running well enough to avoid losing the established user base and market share.
3. Build out a whole new infrastructure for the new Twitter which will eventually replace the old one.

It will be extremely difficult to achieve this but Elon Musk does seem motivated enough to pull it off. I’m worried about #1 though, as nothing he has communicated about his vision for the new Twitter has been clear or compelling.

Furthermore, all of this fits perfectly into Elon’s established MO. He identifies a lucrative industry that has become weak and bloated, and finds a better way to do it. Then he moves into the industry, builds a younger, leaner, and more capable company, disrupts the old players, and takes over the industry. The process has already been done twice with SpaceX and Tesla. Twitter is an interesting case because Elon is disrupting it internally rather than externally, and Twitter’s business is lucrative in political power rather than profits. But it’s still essentially the same process being put into motion at Twitter as what Elon already did in the space and automotive industries.

The people I know that worked at Tesla all burned out within 3 years.  That is not good when your business is hardware with long lifecycles.  Tesla's quality and launch execution are symptoms of the lack of stability within the company.

[Metalcat]

Allegedly the (last?) guy responsible for the badges was fired a few hours before all badges were deactivated and nobody was able to go into HQ.

Don't know if it's true, but the fact I am totally ok believing it shows how bad the situation is ;)

This was from a humor account.  The reports about the HR department being wiped out might be true.

I think the trouble he's walking into right now is that there aren't enough exploitable/blindly loyal employees to keep the company working.

The rumors from last night are that the core of the current employee base are visa holders who must retain their employment.

Musk was recently praising Chinese workers and heavily criticized US workers.

I'm really curious what will happen next, if Twitter survives or comes back and if there will be a larger proportion of foreign workers as a result. It's possible.

It's all very curious, that's for sure.

[TreeLeaf]

Allegedly the (last?) guy responsible for the badges was fired a few hours before all badges were deactivated and nobody was able to go into HQ.

Don't know if it's true, but the fact I am totally ok believing it shows how bad the situation is ;)

This was from a humor account.  The reports about the HR department being wiped out might be true.

I think the trouble he's walking into right now is that there aren't enough exploitable/blindly loyal employees to keep the company working.

The rumors from last night are that the core of the current employee base are visa holders who must retain their employment.

Musk was recently praising Chinese workers and heavily criticized US workers.

I'm really curious what will happen next, if Twitter survives or comes back and if there will be a larger proportion of foreign workers as a result. It's possible.

It's all very curious, that's for sure.

A lot of US tech companies already have a large proportion of foreign workers, usually as contractors. It would not surprise me at all if Twitter survived and also has a larger proportion of foreign workers afterwards and becomes a much leaner company under Elon.

[ChpBstrd]

Allegedly the (last?) guy responsible for the badges was fired a few hours before all badges were deactivated and nobody was able to go into HQ.

Don't know if it's true, but the fact I am totally ok believing it shows how bad the situation is ;)

This was from a humor account.  The reports about the HR department being wiped out might be true.

I think the trouble he's walking into right now is that there aren't enough exploitable/blindly loyal employees to keep the company working.

The rumors from last night are that the core of the current employee base are visa holders who must retain their employment.

Musk was recently praising Chinese workers and heavily criticized US workers.

I'm really curious what will happen next, if Twitter survives or comes back and if there will be a larger proportion of foreign workers as a result. It's possible.

It's all very curious, that's for sure.

A lot of US tech companies already have a large proportion of foreign workers, usually as contractors. It would not surprise me at all if Twitter survived and also has a larger proportion of foreign workers afterwards and becomes a much leaner company under Elon.

If I was CEO I might move the company out of high-cost locations too, but there are cleaner ways to offshore than what Musk is doing. Will they even be able to file taxes?

[GuitarStv]

Musk has effectively infinite money . . . like 200 billion or so, right?  Maybe there was no plan and he just wanted there to not be a twitter any more.  44 billion seems like a lot to those of us broke people, but would you even care about the money if you had 150 billion or so left after blowing it?

[FINate]

Musk has effectively infinite money . . . like 200 billion or so, right?  Maybe there was no plan and he just wanted there to not be a twitter any more.  44 billion seems like a lot to those of us broke people, but would you even care about the money if you had 150 billion or so left after blowing it?

My guess is he's more concerned about his reputation than money, though losing ~25% of one's network is significant. This whole debacle reeks of amateur hour.

[bacchi]

Musk has effectively infinite money . . . like 200 billion or so, right?  Maybe there was no plan and he just wanted there to not be a twitter any more.  44 billion seems like a lot to those of us broke people, but would you even care about the money if you had 150 billion or so left after blowing it?

I was thinking something similar. Out of spite, subconsciously or not, maybe he wants to run Twitter into the ground. What's $44B when you can give a giant FU to own the...libs? The DE Chancery Court? The (former) Twitter execs?

He is making seemingly irrational decisions. He closed all of the offices for the week and then asked the surviving engineers, last minute, to meet him in the SF office. Some of them are of course at the non-SF data centers so they'd have to book a last minute, early-Friday, flight to make the meeting. If they got the tweet/email in time.

A former SpaceX VP recalls getting a 3AM call from Musk asking him his location. The VP responded, "I'm at home sleeping so that I can get up early and go to work."

[Travis]

Musk has effectively infinite money . . . like 200 billion or so, right?  Maybe there was no plan and he just wanted there to not be a twitter any more.  44 billion seems like a lot to those of us broke people, but would you even care about the money if you had 150 billion or so left after blowing it?

Something like $25 billion of the purchase came out of his own pocket. The rest is investors and loans that are more tied to the company name than his own.

[Fru-Gal]

https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-asks-twitter-software-engineers-report-office-email-2022-11-18/


I mean this is now going into the annals of crazy….

Elon Musk encourages Twitter engineers to fly in for in-person meetings -email
Fri, November 18, 2022, 11:52 AM
By Hyunjoo Jin

(Reuters) -Elon Musk on Friday asked any remaining Twitter employees who write software code to report to the 10th floor of the office in San Francisco by early afternoon, according to an email reviewed by Reuters.

The billionaire said in a follow-up email: "If possible, I would appreciate it if you could fly to SF to be present in person," adding he would be at the company's headquarters until midnight and would return Saturday morning.

He said the engineers should report at 2 p.m. on Friday.

The emails came a day after hundreds of Twitter employees were estimated to have decided to leave the beleaguered social media company following a Thursday deadline from Musk that staffers sign up for "long hours at high intensity."

The exodus adds to the rapid change and chaos that have marked Musk's first three weeks as Twitter's owner, during which the company's headcount had already been more than halved by layoffs and other departures to around 3,700.

Twitter told employees on Thursday that it would close its offices and cut badge access until Monday, according to two sources. Reuters could not immediately confirm whether the headquarters reopened.

As of midday Friday, the company had not yet cut off access to company systems for employees who had declined to accept Musk's offer, two other sources told Reuters.

One of those sources also said the company was planning to shut down one of Twitter's three main U.S. data centers, at the SMF1 facility near Sacramento, for cost-saving reasons.

Amid the changes, Moody's withdrew its B1 credit rating for Twitter, saying it had "insufficient or otherwise inadequate information to support the maintenance of the rating."

A White House official also weighed in, saying Twitter should tell Americans how the company was protecting their data.

In his emails on Friday, Musk ordered employees to email him a summary of what their software code has "achieved" in the past six months, "along with up to 10 screenshots of the most salient lines of code."

"There will be short, technical interviews that allow me to better understand the Twitter tech stack," Musk wrote in one of the emails.

Musk said earlier this week that some Tesla engineers were assisting in evaluating Twitter's engineering teams, but he said it was on a "voluntary basis" and "after hours."

He said he would try to speak with remote employees by video, and that only people who could not physically get to the company's headquarters or have a family emergency would be excused.

In his first email to Twitter employees this month, Musk said: "We are also changing Twitter policy such that remote work is no longer allowed, unless you have a specific exception."

"Managers will send the exceptions lists to me for review and approval."

Musk wrote on Twitter late on Thursday that he was not worried about resignations as "the best people are staying."

[less4success]

He asked remote employees at 10am to fly in for a meeting at 2pm on a Friday the week before Thanksgiving with.. screenshots of code? Just so they can explain their tech stack to him?

What is this guy’s problem?

I guess it’s a good way to identify people who will do whatever you want because you’re the big boss…

[bryan995]

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593767953706921985?s=46&t=U1IAZMdYsQx2YXISPkiEOg

Going to be an interesting 24 hours.

[bacchi]

Deleted. What did it say?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593767953706921985?s=46&t=U1IAZMdYsQx2YXISPkiEOg

Going to be an interesting 24 hours.