This is the strategy of someone who is aware of an internal cultural problem at Twitter.
You can blame pointy haired PMs, activist community managers, leetcode and Foosball engineers, or whoever you want for the situation.
To Musk its all the same, over 50% of the workforce was actively hostile to Musk for being Musk, and at least 25% was actively engaged in sacrificing the business to pursue personal or political agendas.
This would be fine if Twitter were a cash cow posting record profits, but it wasn't.
The strategy Musk is performing is to create as much chaos as possible to shake out as many of those groups as possible, and hire back anyone caught in the crossfire.
I've never seen a CEO attempt this at this scale, but at my last company there was an employee like above in a top position - and in order to get rid of the people under his influence the only solution was to can the whole division.
This 4d chess thing is getting old. He's just a terrible boss doing what terrible bosses do all the time, fire people at whim, decide product direction is a feelings thing that only he is capable of doing, ignores and reject any competence that threats his image and position, etc.
Who would agree to be hired back without extracting serious risk premiums from Twitter? If I had taken the 3 month severance and am seeing the ongoing chaos, the only way I’d agree to go back is as a contractor for $2000/hr with a $1M retainer with no clawback.
“Pointy-haired PMs” is a good one. I have to use this.
In all honesty, this is just absurd, and is playing out like some bad movie plot. Next I expect Musk to fire more engineers without any severance at all, and force them to exit the building wearing one of those #GetWoke T-shirts he unearthed in a Twitter closet. He’ll then tweet out the video of the fired engineers exiting, and mock them with a Tweet like “Out with the old! Maybe you should go work at Grindr! LOL!”
Honestly, It's surprising how someone who managed to get a car and rockets company up and running can cause so much chaos.
This looks so unprofessional, erratic and unnecessary even if you want to cut down headcount and have a political motivation behind the take over, that it shocks me, honestly.
I guess that when someone is that wealthy you can duck-tape mistakes with money and move on.
I've complained many times about the effects of the so called "woke" ideology has, particularly outside of the US, but I don't think this is the way to do it.
If EM thinks this is a way of helping free speech and turn the volume down on some deranged ideologies, I don't think this is moving towards that goal.
I am interested to know people's thoughts about Musk for those that have known him for a long time.
For example, I definitely always got the sense that pg had a negative assessment of him from some of pg's writings about PayPal's early days.
But I'll say I always admired Musk for his sheer tenacity and ability to work extremely hard (and his ability to convince other people to work extremely hard). I'd say my opinion about him started to change right when he started bizarrely libeling that guy in Thailand as "pedo-guy".
So I guess my question is whether he's always been a collosal asshole, or whether that just grew over time as his wealth and power removed any constraints on his ego.
Financial math is just arithmetic with a footnote about remembering to add a dozen zeroes.
Same as we were taught in school; keep the numbers you work with day to day by using a simple noticing.
Add 1 to 3.654 x 10^11, another billionaire appears!
Their wealth is mathematical inference. None of them have Scrooge McDuck Vaults full of real money.
Tangentially, Paul G Tweeted a few weeks ago about America being “fake”; American cheese was one thing he called out specifically. No one Tweeted back “billionaire wealth.” I had del’d my Twitter years ago, did not seem worth making a new one.
I think we all invested in him as he's nerdy and chasing moonshots. I bought TSLA stock at IPO and held through all the fail years. Musk enjoys unparalleled fandome and respect in many circles.
But of course, Elon thinks it's all him. He's a genius, a savior and nothing can come between his view of reality. Imo, Elon is past his expiry date. Time for capitalism to fix him
Visas like H-1B can be limiting career mobility until the employee gets a green card. Under H-1B quitting a job means committing to move back to your country in a month or so. It's traumatic.
This is a completely valid perplexion. It's so bewildering, right?
Something I've learned (and keep learning in other contexts) is that change can be overwhelming for some for many reasons, probably more than I'm aware of.
I've literally gone to a previous coworker and said, "there's a job with your name on it. Your pay will literally double. Your hours will halve. And you won't ever have to fear a C-level throwing a tantrum." They hummed and hawed and explained away why they didn't want to try.
Because many engineers are being paid upwards of $200k to work at one of the largest social media companies. On top of that, the economy in general is uncertain right now, with many other similar tech companies not hiring as aggressively as before. Layoffs were heavy handed, but this was a company that has been historically not profitable. Those that remain are being asked to show up in person and provide proof that their work adds value to the company. I understand why some would leave, but I can’t fathom how you absolutely cannot understand the reasons many are choosing to stay.
I’m not the greatest fan of Musk but if I was at Twitter, I would have stayed just to see how Musk works up close, to see the changes, and maybe to feel like being part of something big.
Now, in retrospect, I would not have stayed but 9 months ago it was hard to know how chaotic Musk will be.
>I absolutely cannot understand why any engineer would chose to stay at Twitter with the way things are.
I get it. For the same reason that Geohot gets it.
There's a certain type of personality that doesn't care about life. They don't care about family. They don't care about wealth and material possessions. They don't care about "work life balance". They care about clout. They care about being "the best of the best". They want to be part of an elite team working on the hardest problems in the world, and nothing else matters. And Elon (through SpaceX, Tesla, and now Twitter) feeds that need greater than anything else available.
Collapsing companies can be an excellent way to jump several rungs on the career ladder at a time.
If you're an ambitious Level 2 Hierarch and you know your Level 3 and 4 Hierarchs along with many of your fellow Level 2s have just departed, you can roll the dice and maybe become a Level 4 Hierarch before you depart in 6 months time. Experience allowing you to become a Level 4 Hierarch at a company that isn't collapsing.
Of course, it isn't clear that Musk is looking to promote any Hierarchs, so this would be a gamble.
<< Some employees were offered up to $100,000 in raises to stay
I will admit that this entire saga shows rather reactive, if not plain erratic, behavior. That said, this behavior supposedly is not new in a sense that Musk has been known to sometimes sleep at Tesla factory and is a known workaholic that demands similar level of devotion.
I am saying all this as someone, who defended Musk's initial layoffs, because I assumed ( clearly wrongly ) that he had some sort of plan devised during his review of Twitter during purchase. Musk is currently worth 180b. Even if he burns Twitter to the ground, he could still buy 2 or 3 publicly listed companies on a whim ( as he seems prone to do ).
Is it the kind of power we, as a society, want one person to wield?
>Is it the kind of power we, as a society, want one person to wield?
It really is terrifying. You know for a fact that he has a UI where he can pull up the DMs of anyone ever on Twitter. The blackmail opportunities alone were worth the $44b.
Gergely Orosz has been engagement farming this ongoing saga for weeks now (I had to mute him on Twitter). Kind of makes him a bit hypocritical when taking advantage of this situation for his own enrichment, no? I wonder how many books he's sold in the meantime. Also, acting like engineers that have been making six-figures for years now are some kind of underclass is a bit ridiculous, but that's neither here nor there.
One of the more recent layoffs was Ikuhiro Ihara [1] who is definitely not someone I'd classify as an 'underperformer' (though I'm sure that's how he'll be reclassified since that seems to be how people act).
The worst part is hiring will be impossible for him. I think he feels strongly that throwing money at people will get him engineers. The question is are there enough talented engineers in the cult of Elon in the domain he needs
I don’t think it is cruel treatment targeting software engineers, it is targeting employees not originally hired by Musk’s management. Of course, that is everybody at Twitter.
Absolutely none of this is surprising. Twitter employees knew that this was coming for like 9 months or so. If people are still there, then they are voluntarily accepting this cruel treatment. Any software engineers that are even halfway decent would still get snapped up in a heartbeat elsewhere.
Of course, the one caveat to all this is our indentured servitude system of H1B visas. Even then, though, if I were on an H1B, as soon as it became apparent that Musk was taking over I would have started looking for other employment if I wanted to stay in the US.
But otherwise, I don't see why any other software engineers at Twitter would have any right to complain about cruel treatment. Just leave if you don't want to work there.
All: please let this topic sit for at least two weeks, if not more. It’s too early to tell what’s happening and we are only getting one side of the story, from very few confirmed first-hand sources.
[+] [-] TillE|3 years ago|reply
Whatever you think of Musk or his goals, it's just not something that makes any sense for him to be spending his time on.
[+] [-] subradios|3 years ago|reply
You can blame pointy haired PMs, activist community managers, leetcode and Foosball engineers, or whoever you want for the situation.
To Musk its all the same, over 50% of the workforce was actively hostile to Musk for being Musk, and at least 25% was actively engaged in sacrificing the business to pursue personal or political agendas.
This would be fine if Twitter were a cash cow posting record profits, but it wasn't.
The strategy Musk is performing is to create as much chaos as possible to shake out as many of those groups as possible, and hire back anyone caught in the crossfire.
I've never seen a CEO attempt this at this scale, but at my last company there was an employee like above in a top position - and in order to get rid of the people under his influence the only solution was to can the whole division.
[+] [-] guax|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dymk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_snooze|3 years ago|reply
Who would agree to be hired back without extracting serious risk premiums from Twitter? If I had taken the 3 month severance and am seeing the ongoing chaos, the only way I’d agree to go back is as a contractor for $2000/hr with a $1M retainer with no clawback.
[+] [-] papito|3 years ago|reply
Musk is not creating chaos on purpose [eye roll] - he does not know how to be a manager in a situation that is not a crisis dialed to 11 at ALL times.
Everything has to be a hair-on-fire-level crisis, to stress the minions and get them moving, except we see how that strategy is burning him out.
He's always been like that, we just never called it because "you can't argue with success", but you can definitely argue with failure.
[+] [-] joegahona|3 years ago|reply
In all honesty, this is just absurd, and is playing out like some bad movie plot. Next I expect Musk to fire more engineers without any severance at all, and force them to exit the building wearing one of those #GetWoke T-shirts he unearthed in a Twitter closet. He’ll then tweet out the video of the fired engineers exiting, and mock them with a Tweet like “Out with the old! Maybe you should go work at Grindr! LOL!”
[+] [-] spaniard89277|3 years ago|reply
This looks so unprofessional, erratic and unnecessary even if you want to cut down headcount and have a political motivation behind the take over, that it shocks me, honestly.
I guess that when someone is that wealthy you can duck-tape mistakes with money and move on.
I've complained many times about the effects of the so called "woke" ideology has, particularly outside of the US, but I don't think this is the way to do it.
If EM thinks this is a way of helping free speech and turn the volume down on some deranged ideologies, I don't think this is moving towards that goal.
[+] [-] qbasic_forever|3 years ago|reply
Similar story for pay pal.
[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|3 years ago|reply
For example, I definitely always got the sense that pg had a negative assessment of him from some of pg's writings about PayPal's early days.
But I'll say I always admired Musk for his sheer tenacity and ability to work extremely hard (and his ability to convince other people to work extremely hard). I'd say my opinion about him started to change right when he started bizarrely libeling that guy in Thailand as "pedo-guy".
So I guess my question is whether he's always been a collosal asshole, or whether that just grew over time as his wealth and power removed any constraints on his ego.
[+] [-] msie|3 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/rob_sheridan/status/1595319316249186304?...
[+] [-] butMebbe|3 years ago|reply
Same as we were taught in school; keep the numbers you work with day to day by using a simple noticing.
Add 1 to 3.654 x 10^11, another billionaire appears!
Their wealth is mathematical inference. None of them have Scrooge McDuck Vaults full of real money.
Tangentially, Paul G Tweeted a few weeks ago about America being “fake”; American cheese was one thing he called out specifically. No one Tweeted back “billionaire wealth.” I had del’d my Twitter years ago, did not seem worth making a new one.
[+] [-] negamax|3 years ago|reply
But of course, Elon thinks it's all him. He's a genius, a savior and nothing can come between his view of reality. Imo, Elon is past his expiry date. Time for capitalism to fix him
[+] [-] TruthIsHeresy|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bkishan|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sedatk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Waterluvian|3 years ago|reply
Something I've learned (and keep learning in other contexts) is that change can be overwhelming for some for many reasons, probably more than I'm aware of.
I've literally gone to a previous coworker and said, "there's a job with your name on it. Your pay will literally double. Your hours will halve. And you won't ever have to fear a C-level throwing a tantrum." They hummed and hawed and explained away why they didn't want to try.
I think some of it is:
- inertia
- anxiety of "what if?"
- known over unknown
- ???
[+] [-] HWR_14|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pythonguython|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amerkhalid|3 years ago|reply
Now, in retrospect, I would not have stayed but 9 months ago it was hard to know how chaotic Musk will be.
[+] [-] ramesh31|3 years ago|reply
I get it. For the same reason that Geohot gets it.
There's a certain type of personality that doesn't care about life. They don't care about family. They don't care about wealth and material possessions. They don't care about "work life balance". They care about clout. They care about being "the best of the best". They want to be part of an elite team working on the hardest problems in the world, and nothing else matters. And Elon (through SpaceX, Tesla, and now Twitter) feeds that need greater than anything else available.
[+] [-] michaelt|3 years ago|reply
If you're an ambitious Level 2 Hierarch and you know your Level 3 and 4 Hierarchs along with many of your fellow Level 2s have just departed, you can roll the dice and maybe become a Level 4 Hierarch before you depart in 6 months time. Experience allowing you to become a Level 4 Hierarch at a company that isn't collapsing.
Of course, it isn't clear that Musk is looking to promote any Hierarchs, so this would be a gamble.
[+] [-] tleilaxu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] negamax|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ergocoder|3 years ago|reply
It's hard to find other jobs right now with all the companies laying off people.
[+] [-] pstuart|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] A4ET8a8uTh0|3 years ago|reply
I will admit that this entire saga shows rather reactive, if not plain erratic, behavior. That said, this behavior supposedly is not new in a sense that Musk has been known to sometimes sleep at Tesla factory and is a known workaholic that demands similar level of devotion.
I am saying all this as someone, who defended Musk's initial layoffs, because I assumed ( clearly wrongly ) that he had some sort of plan devised during his review of Twitter during purchase. Musk is currently worth 180b. Even if he burns Twitter to the ground, he could still buy 2 or 3 publicly listed companies on a whim ( as he seems prone to do ).
Is it the kind of power we, as a society, want one person to wield?
[+] [-] ramesh31|3 years ago|reply
It really is terrifying. You know for a fact that he has a UI where he can pull up the DMs of anyone ever on Twitter. The blackmail opportunities alone were worth the $44b.
[+] [-] dvt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fzeroracer|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1595818243620380672
[+] [-] noncoml|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duke98|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] moolcool|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] negamax|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yalogin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaybrendansmith|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r721|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djaouen|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endorphine|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sgt101|3 years ago|reply
He's hiding something.
[+] [-] togaen|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] weakfish|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] osigurdson|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|3 years ago|reply
Of course, the one caveat to all this is our indentured servitude system of H1B visas. Even then, though, if I were on an H1B, as soon as it became apparent that Musk was taking over I would have started looking for other employment if I wanted to stay in the US.
But otherwise, I don't see why any other software engineers at Twitter would have any right to complain about cruel treatment. Just leave if you don't want to work there.
[+] [-] endorphine|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dangue_fever|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madeofpalk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] terminatornet|3 years ago|reply