The thing I don't get is the hyper-focus on salient or "fancy" code. We're not all Jeff Dean and most code is bland and boring plumbing work anyways. Even in awesome ML powered systems, it's still 99% bland foundation, 1% cool algorithms. Hell, as a manager, you don't want only "rockstar" developers because they'll become bored working on the plumbing code, which again, is most work. From datascience there's the phrase "Everyone wants to do the model work, not the data work" and it sounds like he wants only those people? Why?
It's literally just some bizarre hazing ritual. Trying to evaluate whether code is good or bad from some screenshots without understanding the context and being familiar with the codebase makes no sense anyway. Anyone can show you ten screenshots of formally well written code and you have no idea whether it's useless or not.
I don't understand the strategy behind creating an atmosphere where the threat of termination is so regularly deployed to drive action. When I think of the best engineers I have ever worked with, I suspect every one would be turned off by Musk's behavior and leave, not just because of how they themselves were being treated unprofessionally, but because of a strong sense of decency regarding how their coworkers are being treated. If this goes on long enough, who will be left to work at this company? Can engineers effectively collaborate to create great products that appeal to a broad global market, if they are all self-proclaimed "hardcore rockstars" who are at least willing to overlook, if not excited about the mistreatment of their colleagues?
Even as long-time skeptic of Musk's ballyhooed business/engineering acumen, I have no clue what's going on here. Surely nobody at this level could be this brazenly incompetent when it comes to communicating a vision and building some sense of unity. Even the biggest fakers in the world are self-aware about the importance of maintaining the illusion of power and control.
If you had told me that these emails were being written by Kanye as he scrambled to find a new shoe partner after Adidas, I would have believed you.
I think people miss the point with the "tell me what code you've written in the last 6 months" task. The idea is hopefully not to qualitatively quantify anyones work - the idea is to find folks who have nothing whatsoever to show, and yet have titles like "staff software engineer". Anyone who has worked at a large enough company knows there is a solid 10-15% of folks doing nothing. The new leadership probably asked the infrastructure team if they could keep the site online if all development stopped, and they probably said "easily". I don't think twitter is in any risk of disappearing - the real question is if velocity can be regained or not.
I'm no Elon fan, but why does essentially everyone in these threads automatically assume he is wrong?
Has no one here worked at companies where there was more dead weight than talent? Where 80% of the work being done is by 20% of the people, and there are whole teams that do almost nothing?
What if there is no clean, efficient way to discover who should be fired and so Elon's fallback plan is to test for who really wants to continue working for the company vs. who is apathetic?
I'm not saying it will necessarily work, but I'm also not going to assume he is grossly incompetent either.
I'd love to see some code snippets that he likes.. because i can't grasp what would make good screenshots in this context.
If i were Elon i'd want to see "dumb" looking code which brings together a larger, complex thing in a simple way. The larger picture is complex, but composed of simple primitives. Every piece looks unimpressive because experience taught the right abstractions to write things in a simple, testable and scalable manner.
Yet Elon wants to fit that in a screenshot? I don't understand. I'm glad i don't work at Twitter.
yeah how much can you derive from a screenshot anyway? code formatting, variable naming? any references to classes/data structures/whatever not defined in the screenshot can't be attributed to the screenshot owner. maybe everyone is getting fired for putting '{' on a newline??? i have no idea.
To be honest I doubt Elon could even write a fizzbuzz in a language of choice if his life depended on it.
Nothing but hot air that guy.
He's as much an engineer as I'm a neurosurgeon.
What if Twitter actually succeeds after this? I'm not saying that it's likely, but what if? Let's imagine it as a thought exercise. What will this say about the current state of software engineering in startups and big techs?
His history at X.com and then PayPal is definitely of someone who tried pushing their own technical delusions down the throats of other technical people, there he got fired for it.
It seems minor now but at the time he was pushing for PayPal's tech stack to ditch Linux and use a Microsoft stack instead. Peter Thiel backstabbed him to oust him for that.
I know someone that works at Tesla and they say that when Elon comes around there's an aura of terror. They've personally seen him firing people on a whim during one of his "visits".
From what I've read the past few weeks, Elon is mostly just a figurehead at SpaceX at this point and it seems like only his cultural presence (read: making everyone work long hours) is still around. Not sure about Tesla but it seems like it's about the same besides very high level business direction decisions.
What do you mean "we" the information has been out there for years for anyone who wasn't trying not to see it. The racism lawsuits, the article by his ex-wife, the thai cave thing, the SEC case, his general behavior on social media and the people he publicly associates with. It paints a picture of someone who is, at best, unreliable, thin-skinned, egotistical, and reckless.
I'm wondering if this erratic behaviour is Musk having some sort of breakdown over how things are unravelling?
* Currently that revenue is cratering and things are not going well. Bankrupcy is a real risk with the high debt servicing cost for the take-over.
* If the value is going quickly in the direction of $0, banks will call the loans.
* If banks call the loans, he has to sell Tesla stock to pay the $44bn.
* If Musk starts to sell Tesla stock at that scale, the value of Tesla could quickly crater in the current climate. It's the last bubble-stock of this cycle, still 80% way to go down, if valued like its auto industry peers.
The outcome of that could be that even selling his entire holding of Tesla, Musk could end up broke, and potentially still owe money from the Twitter take-over.
It would make the wealth destruction of FTX look like a Sunday stroll in the park.
Does this mean he is actually looking to do more firings After the massive exodus yesterday?!?
This is just...
Honestly at this point this is just fascinating to watch from the outside and I feel bad for everyone impacted. Particularly those that had no choice but to stay (Visa's)
Comments talking about how Musk will look at those screenshots of code and somehow determine an employee's worth are hilarious.
This obviously has nothing to do with evaluating a developer's quality; this is a classic move dictators do to determine who has chugged the kool-aid all the way (who are the most loyal and subservient underlings willing to demean themselves to this level). Nothing more, nothing less.
I'm sure he'll succeed in building it. The game industry manages it, for example. You can abuse and burn out engineers if that's what you really want.
That said, I wouldn't say abused engineers are particularly more productive. He can work them 9/9/6 while he's at it, I don't think that'll help Twitter succeed.
Interesting. I find git blame sufficient to assess engineering talent on a shared code base. Sometimes I read through a file and there's clarity and other times it's spaghetti. The ones who write with clarity are the ones I want my desk next to. Sometimes they are not even the ones that management is promoting.
If you took a shit-pile of code I was involved in, I could intelligently discuss the code, why it is as it is, the history, the f(possible) future, and overall have a good discussion around it.
This “code printout” talking point is just… obnoxious.
I hire this way - I don’t care about a coding interview, I care about how you think about my your work and your ability to speak to it.
I have yet to see concrete evidence of malfeasance here and yet… the circle jerk continues.
Now he's saying that he wants people to fly in to present their code to him by midnight.
On the Friday before Thanksgiving.
Into one of United's big hubs.
With 14 hours notice.
And a lot of cold fronts over the eastern seaboard.
Likely more like 10 hours with travel times and the line of potential people that are presenting.
I'm honestly gobsmacked.
Look, if you're on of those engineers and are unfortunate enough to have to go through this insane reapplication for your job on ~1/2 day's notice, then I think you owe it to the poor people that are trying to fly in to drag this thing out as long as possible and stall, Stall, STALL.
With all the departures from Twitter's payroll department, I'm curious if these employees can even count on being reimbursed for the travel. Ever (if bankruptcy), let alone in a reasonable time frame.
Also, how does Twitter handle approval for travel if one's manager is gone?
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from this whole debacle, it’s that US employment law is fucked. I can’t believe worker protections are so poor in such a forward thinking, modern country. The things he’s getting away with sound like something out of a Victorian factory.
I am curious if he tried the same at Tesla or SpaceX: "Hello dear mechanical engineers, please bring photos all the cars/rockets that you created in the last 6 months".
> ...please email me a bullet point summary of what your code commits have achieved in the past ~6 months, along with up to 10 screenshots of the most salient lines of code.
Holding my fingers crossed that he receives many many screenshots... of Leetcode.
Outside of HN the impression I've had is that Twitter is an unprofitable company which is overstaffed. There's also an image of idle employees pursuing political crusades unrelated to the bottom line.
Elon is cutting the workforce. The short email doesn't seem out of place.
On HN Elon is some kind of villain. Except he's also incompetent, so he's not a super villain. More of bumbling idiot destroying higher SV ideals which are beyond his comprehension. How gauche of him.
In the RW media he is ocassionally portrayed as a savior, who is going to stick it to the libs, right where they deserve it the most. In their social media oligarchy!
Elsewhere in the media he is an un-PC problematic figure who foretells the rise of fascism, just you wait, this time it is really going to get bad! Did you know he lived in apartheid ZA?
Overall this just seems absurd. I cannot understand the fascination with him. Elon has become more interesting than all of the shit-posting on Twitter itself. I don't believe he's a villain, an incompetent, a savior or the catalyst for totalitarianism.
He's just an above average troll with extraordinary money. He bought Twitter, a messaging and microblogging site. He's trying to clean house, maybe even turn a profit?
Why is the Internet obsessed? Are partisans so emotionally invested in the outcome that they cannot turn away? Will his success or failure validate their tribal identity?
> I just hope whoever processes severance checks is still working.
In the dotcom era, I was in the middle of a mass layoff. At the meeting, "everybody go back to your desk and dial extension 1234, and you will get a message with your employment status, instructions and next steps".
PBX crashed.
PBX took a while being brought back up because, well, the people responsible for supporting it wanted to find out whether _they_ were some of those laid off before deciding whether they wanted to bring it back up.
[+] [-] MonkeyMalarky|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Barrin92|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lern_too_spel|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rich_sasha|3 years ago|reply
Can he code.to save his life? Does he know anything about engineering from Tesla or SpaceX, beyond catchphrases?
[+] [-] 331c8c71|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wellareyousure|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tennisflyi|3 years ago|reply
So a decent amount of devs get a nice six-figure salary (RSU, equity), pretty good benefits, kush perks, and more to mess with a template? Órale...
[+] [-] lsy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rchaud|3 years ago|reply
If you had told me that these emails were being written by Kanye as he scrambled to find a new shoe partner after Adidas, I would have believed you.
[+] [-] erulabs|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] errantmind|3 years ago|reply
Has no one here worked at companies where there was more dead weight than talent? Where 80% of the work being done is by 20% of the people, and there are whole teams that do almost nothing?
What if there is no clean, efficient way to discover who should be fired and so Elon's fallback plan is to test for who really wants to continue working for the company vs. who is apathetic?
I'm not saying it will necessarily work, but I'm also not going to assume he is grossly incompetent either.
[+] [-] lijogdfljk|3 years ago|reply
If i were Elon i'd want to see "dumb" looking code which brings together a larger, complex thing in a simple way. The larger picture is complex, but composed of simple primitives. Every piece looks unimpressive because experience taught the right abstractions to write things in a simple, testable and scalable manner.
Yet Elon wants to fit that in a screenshot? I don't understand. I'm glad i don't work at Twitter.
[+] [-] chasd00|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jgb1984|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haolez|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] castrodd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] piva00|3 years ago|reply
It seems minor now but at the time he was pushing for PayPal's tech stack to ditch Linux and use a Microsoft stack instead. Peter Thiel backstabbed him to oust him for that.
I know someone that works at Tesla and they say that when Elon comes around there's an aura of terror. They've personally seen him firing people on a whim during one of his "visits".
[+] [-] DabbyDabberson|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rockostrich|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giraffe_lady|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johannes1234321|3 years ago|reply
With Twitter he is an outsider coming in to a company serving a very different market, with existing structures and projects he can't know about.
[+] [-] elil17|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adastra22|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wfaler|3 years ago|reply
* Currently that revenue is cratering and things are not going well. Bankrupcy is a real risk with the high debt servicing cost for the take-over. * If the value is going quickly in the direction of $0, banks will call the loans. * If banks call the loans, he has to sell Tesla stock to pay the $44bn. * If Musk starts to sell Tesla stock at that scale, the value of Tesla could quickly crater in the current climate. It's the last bubble-stock of this cycle, still 80% way to go down, if valued like its auto industry peers.
The outcome of that could be that even selling his entire holding of Tesla, Musk could end up broke, and potentially still owe money from the Twitter take-over.
It would make the wealth destruction of FTX look like a Sunday stroll in the park.
[+] [-] nerdjon|3 years ago|reply
This is just...
Honestly at this point this is just fascinating to watch from the outside and I feel bad for everyone impacted. Particularly those that had no choice but to stay (Visa's)
[+] [-] gigel82|3 years ago|reply
This obviously has nothing to do with evaluating a developer's quality; this is a classic move dictators do to determine who has chugged the kool-aid all the way (who are the most loyal and subservient underlings willing to demean themselves to this level). Nothing more, nothing less.
[+] [-] helen___keller|3 years ago|reply
I'm sure he'll succeed in building it. The game industry manages it, for example. You can abuse and burn out engineers if that's what you really want.
That said, I wouldn't say abused engineers are particularly more productive. He can work them 9/9/6 while he's at it, I don't think that'll help Twitter succeed.
[+] [-] FireBeyond|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tppiotrowski|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nadieyninguno1|3 years ago|reply
This “code printout” talking point is just… obnoxious.
I hire this way - I don’t care about a coding interview, I care about how you think about my your work and your ability to speak to it.
I have yet to see concrete evidence of malfeasance here and yet… the circle jerk continues.
[+] [-] wnevets|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MarkMarine|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] curiousgal|3 years ago|reply
I guess we have different definitions of what's actually demeaning.
[+] [-] pschuegr|3 years ago|reply
A better way to find high performers would be "send me an email summarizing the code that you've deleted and why".
(Not saying that doesn't have it's own problems, there's ultimately no substitute for understanding)
[+] [-] mrloop|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Balgair|3 years ago|reply
On the Friday before Thanksgiving.
Into one of United's big hubs.
With 14 hours notice.
And a lot of cold fronts over the eastern seaboard.
Likely more like 10 hours with travel times and the line of potential people that are presenting.
I'm honestly gobsmacked.
Look, if you're on of those engineers and are unfortunate enough to have to go through this insane reapplication for your job on ~1/2 day's notice, then I think you owe it to the poor people that are trying to fly in to drag this thing out as long as possible and stall, Stall, STALL.
[+] [-] CoastalCoder|3 years ago|reply
Also, how does Twitter handle approval for travel if one's manager is gone?
[+] [-] m_ke|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andreysolsty|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michpoch|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] almog|3 years ago|reply
Holding my fingers crossed that he receives many many screenshots... of Leetcode.
[+] [-] aww_dang|3 years ago|reply
Elon is cutting the workforce. The short email doesn't seem out of place.
On HN Elon is some kind of villain. Except he's also incompetent, so he's not a super villain. More of bumbling idiot destroying higher SV ideals which are beyond his comprehension. How gauche of him.
In the RW media he is ocassionally portrayed as a savior, who is going to stick it to the libs, right where they deserve it the most. In their social media oligarchy!
Elsewhere in the media he is an un-PC problematic figure who foretells the rise of fascism, just you wait, this time it is really going to get bad! Did you know he lived in apartheid ZA?
Overall this just seems absurd. I cannot understand the fascination with him. Elon has become more interesting than all of the shit-posting on Twitter itself. I don't believe he's a villain, an incompetent, a savior or the catalyst for totalitarianism.
He's just an above average troll with extraordinary money. He bought Twitter, a messaging and microblogging site. He's trying to clean house, maybe even turn a profit?
Why is the Internet obsessed? Are partisans so emotionally invested in the outcome that they cannot turn away? Will his success or failure validate their tribal identity?
[+] [-] tempest_|3 years ago|reply
How long can the systems chug along with no one watching.
[+] [-] justusthane|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DabbyDabberson|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yumraj|3 years ago|reply
I guess he’ll be able to drive them hardcore.
Personally, expect for those with visa issues, I won’t have much respect for anyone who still remains.
Unless of course, some of the good ones might be able to really renegotiate their comp and contract at this time.
[+] [-] gausswho|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] someguy212|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FireBeyond|3 years ago|reply
In the dotcom era, I was in the middle of a mass layoff. At the meeting, "everybody go back to your desk and dial extension 1234, and you will get a message with your employment status, instructions and next steps".
PBX crashed.
PBX took a while being brought back up because, well, the people responsible for supporting it wanted to find out whether _they_ were some of those laid off before deciding whether they wanted to bring it back up.
[+] [-] TheOtherHobbes|3 years ago|reply
The movie is going to be great.