I’m curious about “not satisfactory” standards and how they are evaluated. I’ve met many earnest engineers and architects who were trying to do good and ended up making stuff worse by creating conformant code that still sucked.
I’ve met many more “witch-hunt” reviews that were just a reason to thin the company to please VC or shareholders.
The article/tweet doesn’t mention it, but I assume they have the same severance package of a few months as the rest. If so, it could be a lot worse
The article/tweet doesn’t mention it, but I assume they have the same severance package of a few months as the rest. If so, it could be a lot worse
Yeah well not exactly. From the thread:
Those fired got 4 weeks severance, by the way. A slap in the face, given that if they chose to not click "yes" to stay just a week ago, they would have gotten 3 months.
They might have believed in Twitter 2.0, but still got a worse deal than those who chose to simply leave.
The performance warning email closes with this line:
"Please use this opportunity to restore our confidence and demonstrate your contributions to the team and company."
It should be Twitter 2.0 that needs to restore confidence with employees.
Happy Thanksgiving.
It is already worse. And just to top it off, management wants people to make efforts to regain their leaders' confidence in them. That's vaguely Orwellian.
On anything vaguely Elon related I've learned to ignore high-frequency reporting. It's all about creating instant disgust. Who knows what we we'll eventually find out; my guess is that it's more likely everyone gets similar longish severance.
(Or pseudo-severance, for countries and states with certain regulations, to ensure actual legal compliance even among the public perception of everything happening instantly without regard to sources of delay.)
I'm sure there were some unfair evaluations. Like, for example "terrible code" that's terrible because it was some attempt to add functionality or fix a bug in existing terrible code.
Actually it is easier than you think IF you know the stuff. But that big if does not apply in most of the cases.
I have tried this whenever I moved to a new company and read other people’s code and can almost pick out more than half of the coaster or BSers immediately without talking to any of them. You will miss a few more but you rarely get false positives.
BTW the loc is a stupid metric should never be used in the first place.
I heard the FSD code was a chaotic disaster too. I think numerous inexperienced programmers find fault with other people’s code and sometimes those criticisms are valid, but more often there is a huge amount of context the person sitting in their ivory tower is unaware of.
Doing things like this with kindness and wisdom would be better than swinging the axe with incomplete information. Especially H1Bs who are reliant on an employer to remain in the country are hopefully exempt from such extreme punishment and are at least given a shot at doing what Musk wants in terms of code quality.
From my point of view there’s no need to treat people as disposable commodities who cannot improve given the right environment. And I don’t like anyone thinking their opinions are that much better than anyone else’s, but these are the times we live in…
"Twitter's management STILL trying to recruit back experienced software engineers who left Twitter last week, opting in to not be part of the "hardcore" Twitter 2.0.
Wonder how many of them return, knowing they also can be fired at any time based on a single code review."
Why would you return to something that will try to spit you out at the first sign of trouble? Or have those poor people working on a visa no choice?
Relatedly, I really wish people would stop calling this a "code review". That term already means something different than "shallow performance evaluation used as a justification for completely arbitrary firings with no notice".
It's horrifying to allow well-established industry concepts and terms to be redefined overnight by a single incompetent individual.
Why would you give up your 3 month severance to come back for 80hr work weeks for the same salary with the risk of getting fired at any moment based on a weekly screenshot of 'salient' code and then only getting 1 month severance?
Prayers is not technically all we can do, we can push for more labor organization which would be able to prevent that type of mistreatment, among other things. We could also boycott Twitter.
If Twitter had unionized they could have protected themselves from the whims of Musk. It's still likely Musk would have massacred the company, but maybe people wouldn't be getting fired the day before Thanksgiving.
How any engineer looks at Twitter and doesn't say, "We should consider a union..." is beyond me.
Twitter engineers are extremely well paid in addition to being cashed out of their company stock options at an above market price - and then getting severance.
With 33% of the severance that the 'non-clickers' got just last week too.
Why would anyone re-join Twitter2 or get hired there?
Why are the people that got put on the PIP doing anything but trying to find another job?
You know Elon's just going to abuse you and not much else, he's proven it a few times now. It's very clear, he thinks you're a chump and he's going to keep treating you like a chump.
I could imagine some young hackers/CS grads would see Twitter2 as an opportunity to come in, work hard, launch product that succeeds, and use that to parlay to a more sustainable career in the future. Such people will tolerate a fair amount of abuse (similar to grad school) because the expectation is that it will pay off long-term.
None of this is surprising. It's not about the code it's about figuring out a reason to fire people to cut costs dramatically since the company isn't profitable at its current footprint or with its current Chief Moron making it a toxic asset for advertisers.
You are right. We are firing you to cut costs could put the blame on the company, we are firing you because your code is ugly puts the fault on the employee. It is all about blaming.
No, its all about costs. A layoff for cost reasons gives the employee unemployment and costs the employer higher UI tax rates (which are based, in part, on the cost of UI paid to their employees vs. past payments.)
A firing for failure to meet performance standards other employers met doesn’t give the employee unemployment and doesn’t result in additional costs to the employer.
Of course, a pretextual firing might be the subject of an unemployment appeal, but at the pay of a Twitter software engineer, while people might take UI they are entitled to, they aren’t likely to bother fighting it based on need (but might just to make a point.)
> Those fired got 4 weeks severance, by the way. A slap in the face, given that if they chose to not click "yes" to stay just a week ago, they would have gotten 3 months.
I was thinking, why did they give the first round 3 months and this time only 1? Why didn't they give the first round 1 month? Only thing I could come up with is that more people who were on the fence for the first round might have stayed, so giving them 3 months encouraged more people to leave, which is the ultimate goal, to save money.
This is why not getting to review severance (if leaving) and employment contracts (if staying) before having to make the "commit to hardcore" decision was unreasonable.
Unfortunately this is often standard procedure when companies do layoffs. The first round gets generous severance. In subsequent rounds, the company's death spiral has become obvious and they no longer spend on niceties like unnecessary severance.
Lesson: if your employer offers you a buyout, take it.
First round got 3 months because a no-notice mass layoff requires at least 60 days according to various state and federal WARN acts. Once you get down to actually firing people for cause, you can (usually) skirt WARN acts.
Who is judging the code not being satisfactory? Can we see example of the code in question? Can we also see examples of the code written by those who say other folk's code isn't satisfactory? In other words, are the evaluators even competent? Usually not.
What else was Musk gonna proclaim about why they were fired? That he needed to scare the remaining staff into submission by getting rid of a few more without any rational selection criteria?
It already stopped making sense at "10 most salient lines of code". He's trying to spread his truth that he knows anything about software (or tech at large), a fiction that was probably always a big reason for why people gave him money. Enough seem to buy it. Probably the one thing he is an actual genius at: Marketing.
If you want some hair-raising stories of Musk mistreating his employees and generally being self-destructive, this article was a pretty good warning. There’s a story halfway down about Musk firing a competent engineer just because he was pissed off and that engineer was nearby. You can’t read the entire thing without thinking either (a) it’s all lies, nobody could be that cruel and inept, or (b) holy crap he’s the worst boss ever. This Twitter debacle has been illuminating. https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-tesla-life-inside-giga...
What a food critic reviews (the food, the service, the ambience) is analogous to the user-facing Twitter experience, which you don't need to be a programmer to review. What a chef does to create that dining experience (sourcing ingredients, planning menus, organizing the kitchen) is analogous to what programmers are doing, and that's not something you can usefully critique without relevant experience.
In any case, I wouldn't really trust a food critic who couldn't cook. But even the greatest home cook is not a chef.
Even this metaphor breaks down, in what way would someone who eats at 5 star restaurants be qualified to comment on the structure of the recipe or the reliable sourcing of ingredients? The truth is pretty clear at this point: Musk has no technical chops.
> Who is judging the code not being satisfactory? Can we see example of the code in question?
Why should you see the code, or learn who the judge is, or be the judge yourself? Are you qualified to judge someone else's $44B acquisition? If you haven't recently purchased a social network for $44B, then you are not qualified to look at things from their perspective either.
Go start your own company and then you can do what you want with yours and your investors' money, but Elon Musk doesn't owe you a shred of explanation for anything he chooses with the company that he bought that he clearly believes was on life support, at best.
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I’ve met many more “witch-hunt” reviews that were just a reason to thin the company to please VC or shareholders.
The article/tweet doesn’t mention it, but I assume they have the same severance package of a few months as the rest. If so, it could be a lot worse
Yeah well not exactly. From the thread:
Those fired got 4 weeks severance, by the way. A slap in the face, given that if they chose to not click "yes" to stay just a week ago, they would have gotten 3 months.
They might have believed in Twitter 2.0, but still got a worse deal than those who chose to simply leave.
The performance warning email closes with this line:
"Please use this opportunity to restore our confidence and demonstrate your contributions to the team and company."
It should be Twitter 2.0 that needs to restore confidence with employees.
Happy Thanksgiving.
It is already worse. And just to top it off, management wants people to make efforts to regain their leaders' confidence in them. That's vaguely Orwellian.
(Or pseudo-severance, for countries and states with certain regulations, to ensure actual legal compliance even among the public perception of everything happening instantly without regard to sources of delay.)
They should have at least gotten a horse out for the deal.
And during the holidays at end of year, when hiring seems to slow down for a couple months.
Dead Comment
It’s mentioned in the 4th tweet. Says they get 4 weeks.
Deleted Comment
I have tried this whenever I moved to a new company and read other people’s code and can almost pick out more than half of the coaster or BSers immediately without talking to any of them. You will miss a few more but you rarely get false positives.
BTW the loc is a stupid metric should never be used in the first place.
Doing things like this with kindness and wisdom would be better than swinging the axe with incomplete information. Especially H1Bs who are reliant on an employer to remain in the country are hopefully exempt from such extreme punishment and are at least given a shot at doing what Musk wants in terms of code quality.
From my point of view there’s no need to treat people as disposable commodities who cannot improve given the right environment. And I don’t like anyone thinking their opinions are that much better than anyone else’s, but these are the times we live in…
Wonder how many of them return, knowing they also can be fired at any time based on a single code review."
Why would you return to something that will try to spit you out at the first sign of trouble? Or have those poor people working on a visa no choice?
It's horrifying to allow well-established industry concepts and terms to be redefined overnight by a single incompetent individual.
First you ask a crazy upfront payment to come back, then you ask a crazy wage per month.
If they agree, you're mad at yourself for not asking more.
That's how I would do it. Like a x10 sum of money.
How any engineer looks at Twitter and doesn't say, "We should consider a union..." is beyond me.
Give me a break. This sector of the economy is literally the upper echelon of humanity.
They won the lottery compared to most people and act like this is some affront. What a bunch of baloney.
Why would anyone re-join Twitter2 or get hired there?
Why are the people that got put on the PIP doing anything but trying to find another job?
You know Elon's just going to abuse you and not much else, he's proven it a few times now. It's very clear, he thinks you're a chump and he's going to keep treating you like a chump.
It would be odd to expect more from other employers.
And the enormous amount of debt that Musk heaped on the company as part of the LBO.
Let us not all forget that Twitter's debt service increased by a factor of ten thanks to the acquisition. This is a problem of Musk's own making.
No, its all about costs. A layoff for cost reasons gives the employee unemployment and costs the employer higher UI tax rates (which are based, in part, on the cost of UI paid to their employees vs. past payments.)
A firing for failure to meet performance standards other employers met doesn’t give the employee unemployment and doesn’t result in additional costs to the employer.
Of course, a pretextual firing might be the subject of an unemployment appeal, but at the pay of a Twitter software engineer, while people might take UI they are entitled to, they aren’t likely to bother fighting it based on need (but might just to make a point.)
Can this be real? That’s seriously f-ed up.
This is why not getting to review severance (if leaving) and employment contracts (if staying) before having to make the "commit to hardcore" decision was unreasonable.
Lesson: if your employer offers you a buyout, take it.
It already stopped making sense at "10 most salient lines of code". He's trying to spread his truth that he knows anything about software (or tech at large), a fiction that was probably always a big reason for why people gave him money. Enough seem to buy it. Probably the one thing he is an actual genius at: Marketing.
In any case, I wouldn't really trust a food critic who couldn't cook. But even the greatest home cook is not a chef.
Why should you see the code, or learn who the judge is, or be the judge yourself? Are you qualified to judge someone else's $44B acquisition? If you haven't recently purchased a social network for $44B, then you are not qualified to look at things from their perspective either.
Go start your own company and then you can do what you want with yours and your investors' money, but Elon Musk doesn't owe you a shred of explanation for anything he chooses with the company that he bought that he clearly believes was on life support, at best.
Well, it is now.
Dead Comment