Twitter at 1am on a Friday
teamblind.comLots of comments on how hackathons and late night sessions were fond memories for people.
The difference is those events were chosen. If you are forced to remain at your company (due to visa issues for example) being forced by your CEO to stay at work until 1am is atrocious.
This is not a profession where being at the office this late is the norm and it's not typical for the environment.
Twitter is not a startup in any way shape or form. It was clearly just valued at 44 billion dollars, no startup is worth that much ;).
This is an executive abusing his power, forcing individuals to do as they say. There is little choice and free will being exercised.
Maybe some of the people do want to be there and are happy to do so; I don't believe this is the case. It is naive to think it would be.
Hackathons, staying up late working on a passion or hobby by choice can be fun. Being forced to for your profession and by the new CEO who has fired and caused over 70% of the company to leave doesn't fall under that category.
I've never seen an optional hackathon that didn't come with serious "contribute or else" vibes.
I’m the exact opposite. I’ve never seen a hackathon with that mentality and you should avoid hackathons that guilt you into working beyond your limits
It's the cost of failure that's different. If you loose a hackathon everyone gets a high five and goes home empty handed. If you loose at your job(in the US) you have no income, a very high COBRA payment, and possibly a major visa problem. All of which are a fantastic way to start a recession.
It's fairly common, actually, to have completely optional hackathons. I guess it would depend on the social circles you hang around, or if you falsely believe that there is actually an "or else" consequence.
Hackathons are always completely optional and rather inconsequential. When they're not, they're called "exploitation" instead.
Yeah, true.
All-hands-on-deck after hours work is ALWAYS done under duress.
There is a more simple explanation: that these are the folks who actually want to go "hardcore" and build to some actual vision.
And what exactly is the vision? Elon keeps changing it by the day.
Twitter itself has already been built. What new thing would they be building? A slightly different content moderation system? Slightly tweaked steps for verifying accounts? I'm not sure I see anything hardcore about any of this.
That's not an acceptable explanation. They need to be assigned an acceptable one. As you can see, there are many volunteers assigning them.
At this point in my life and career, I wouldn’t be in that room. And I’m sure some people are not there by choice. But I’m also sure this is the highlight of many in this photo’s career so far.
sorry I dont quite understand what you mean by "acceptable one" and "give them one". Which one are you referring to?
I really don't agree with what you're saying here. Why do you automatically assume that every single one of these people is there unwillingly? Why would they pose for the camera with Elon with smiles on their faces? You want to claim that not only are they there unwillingly that they're lying to everyone about their emotions as well. They had the option of leaving the company with a 3 month severance pay.
And no H-1B is not the reason. You can find new jobs under an H-1B. You're not restricted to a single company and can change companies.
And why are they assuming they are H-1Bs in the first place, based on the photo? They can tell immigration status based on what exactly?
The fact that so many people so willingly give in to it is why sociopaths rule us all.
Just an example: if you hold an L visa, your only other option is packing your stuff and going back to your home country.
It's not just L visa(I was on L a few years back, and returned back).
Let's be honest this is far from what people call slavery. They are being paid multiples of six digit salaries, RSUs and work in one of the most happening tech ecosystems of the world.
I would love to be a part of something like this. Heck most of us would love to be a part of something like.
I kind of envy those guys working on these projects. I hope I was the one there.
Agreed. I've missed multiple deaths in the family, important events with friends and sacrificed a large chunk of my life to be in one of the most happening tech ecosystems in the world. Even when I was eventually fired due to burn out, I walked away thinking to myself: "I still envy the people in that office, working hard for that CEO".
Envy for others working to burnout for some other person? How sad.
A CEO is just a title, often for someone who’s can’t get anything done independently.
Musk is an example. He builds nothing, actual engineers build, actual salespeople sell.
This reminds me Stockholm Syndrome.
> Heck most of us would love to be a part of something like.
Nope. At 1 AM? Nope.
Nobody would be in office at 1 AM by choice, they had to for the paycheck.
Hahaha you've never met a real man, neat.
We are born dependent and vulnerable. If our parents are cruel we contort ourselves to love them anyways, so that they will keep feeding us. Then we go into the world and find we are still contorted.
The world seems to be full of these people. It’s hard to see a way out.
Therapy can help break this mindset and cycle. Highly recommended if you feel stuck, or like your past is shaping your future in a way you don't want. Therapy is like having a personal trainer for your mental fitness.
https://twitter.com/Theholisticpsyc/status/15941596755867934...
I agree. psychoanalysis has saved my life.
But on a national scale? If therapy is the solution, we are sorely lacking in therapists.
Agree - I wish I could pick how my taxes were allocated at a granular level. Therapy and other forms of mental health/wellbeing support would be at the top.
I reckon history will look back at last 20 years as a "Hopelessness epidemic" with social/environmental causes as complex as current obesity epidemic in the US.
Do you have any recommendations for learning about psychoanalysis and its benefits? I'm curious what led to you to psychoanalysis over other techniques or approaches in the psychology discipline.
Note: I added my email to my profile after writing this. Feel free to reach out if you’re curious. I have a deep love for psychoanalysis.
I stumbled upon it by chance. I don’t know of a great patient introduction, but I linked some explainers on the ideas below.
Psychoanalysis as I understand it is about understanding your relationship patterns and changing them. The analysis I’m in works through free association, I speak what’s on my mind (including my most disgusting or hateful thoughts, criticisms of my therapist, doubts…) and my analyst mostly just listens, but occasionally pokes and prods, and sometimes opines. His role is partly to be a canvas against which my relationship patterns can present and partly to be an investigator trying to notice and observe behaviors of mine I might not be totally aware of.
It’s not just a matter of knowledge. Change in analysis seems to come through a felt experience, through the relationship with the analyst. I find myself talking and talking and one day I say something that I’ve known my whole life and yet never really said, and I start to connect it to all sorts of forgotten feelings, and it becomes a little less weighty, unstuck in time.
Because of my work in analysis I have developed a now 4 year long romantic relationship, several close friends, and become happier at work. But I still have lots of dissatisfaction and lack of meaning (in those same relationships and work) and that is what I spend most of my time talking about currently.
I’ve heard someone say psychoanalysis is about making you more free. Not in the civil liberties sense, but in a way that is almost a bit painful, as you will have more responsibility.
Personally I also have found the theory behind it rich and deeply insightful. Reading some of Freud (and others, like winnicott) has felt like something clicking in my head about people that I’ve wanted to understand for a long time.
If you like twitter you could try @jonathanshedler (he has a book too[1]) or @nyctherapist. Nancy McWilliams (Psychoanalytic Diagnosis) is supposed to be good if you want to understand the theory. I’ve actually really liked reading the original Freud. I also hear good things about Mitchell’s Freud and Beyond.
Less clinically oriented (and more lacanian) I also like the Why Theory? Podcast. But it really is less focused on psychological insight.
[1] https://jonathanshedler.com/PDFs/Shedler%20(2006)%20That%20w...
Thanks! How do I go about finding a good analyst then? Are those some of the Twitter names you listed. How long did take you before you felt you were making some progress. I'm very intrigued by this.
>How do I go about finding a good analyst then? Are those some of the Twitter names you listed
Mine was through referral of a friend. Dumb luck. I’ve heard you can also find them by contacting a local psychoanalytic institute. Seems like the American psychoanalytic institute has a website for finding them as well. [1] On twitter,Jonathan Shedler is in the Bay Area and obviously nyctherapist is in nyc, they are both analysts, it’s possible they could refer as well (no clue). If you’re in NYC you’re in luck because analysts (at least used to) occupy many of the offices near Central Park. I used to find therapists through psychology today, but I think analysts are harder to find there. Asking for a referral from someone you find there might be good too.
In my opinion credentials (MD, PsyD, PhD) and age (within reason) seem like good signs. Proxies for experience.
Oh also, it could be worth explicitly asking the person if they are practicing psychoanalysis specifically. There are a lot of varieties of therapy. Sometimes therapists seem to list themselves as psychoanalytic (or psychodynamic) when they aren’t analysts.
>How long did take you before you felt you were making some progress.
Hm. It’s a little tricky to tease apart. When I started I was so desperate to get better that I would think anything was progress. Which is to say I felt like things were improving immediately, but I think the deeper kinds of progress actually came later. Psychoanalysis is after real psychological change. I think the changes I have experienced have come from slowly but deliberately picking apart these masses of feeling inside me, and have come over the course of months and years rather than days and weeks. I got into a (different) relationship after perhaps 5ish months. Getting into a relationship was not an explicit goal to me when I started, but I was so isolating that I think that’s indication of some genuine change. I know that by now I have changed quite a lot. It’s been about 5 years.
In any case, if you do pursue it, good luck! I’ve found it deeply enriching. It’s great for my curiosity, and I think there’s even a sense of adventure to it (going to depths of the mind that are no where else allowed)
Not sure why you're being downvoted.
"Just resist psychopaths" is an ableist, reductive paradigm. Of course many people can't just resist. People have families, care responsibilities, and many are indeed conditioned to accommodate.
Would you say that it's also ableist to ask people to "just resist fascism"? After all, many people are indeed conditioned to accommodate fascism. Or pick another -ism you prefer.
Yes, that hews into the same notch. One cannot simply resist any form of oppression, there were/are only a lucky few who had the motivation, ability and resources to do so. If you are one of those and would gladly take a fight against the world to make it better, then be mindful to not hastily generalise from your position.
Camus and Sartre would like a word. I prefer their worldview.
By your own argument I don‘t even need to give a good reason. I‘m not able to give a good reason, I prefer their philosophy of being responsible based on your notion of not having the ability to see it any different.
I didn't quite follow, what are folks giving into?
As the comment says, it would be interesting to interact with the richest person on earth. Short of that, I have no idea why anyone would think it's fun or anything to be in that atmosphere. He could change direction on a whim and make you redundant in a second.
I guess different people want different things, but I would have flown across the country to be in that room at 1am.
A startup sized team working on a platform with twitters scale for a boss with capital and a willingness to consider new ideas? Once in a lifetime opportunity.
> A startup sized team working on a platform with twitters scale for a boss with capital and a willingness to consider new ideas?
Willingness to consider his new ideas. Not your new ideas. He's the idea man, your job is to implement it. And if you tell him why the idea may not work as intended, you're fired.
This is silly. Companies like Tesla and SpaceX don't succeed without a willingness to consider new ideas. They clearly aren't the result of one man's ideas alone.
Tesla and SpaceX had very hard problems to solve.
What new hard problem is Twitter solving, at this stage of its life?
Tesla has implemented numerous ideas from their customers' tweets.
Well, come to think of it, if you want your ideas to be implemented in Twitter, tweeting publicly at Elon Musk (and staying the hell away from Twitter HQ) seems like the way to go. Plus, no danger of being fired.
It’s startup cosplay, made for public consumption and Elon ego boosting.
I completely agree. This is the kind of luck that money can't buy that you can use to catapult yourself to new areas of a career.
Catapult seems like a very apt choice of word.
I'd like to assert this richest person holds no real sway over you unless threatening your life, which is a far cry from possibly just being a nuisance narcissistic character at worst introducing a discontinuity in your employment.
You're as important as him, regardless of your bank account.
At best you might follow him to the next business venture that everyone is talking about in 2030.
I’ve stayed up for hackathons and stayed out late for meetups, this seems way more fun. Who cares if you’re redundant? Not everything is about status.
In this context being made redundant means losing your job.
(Just not sure if you’re aware.)
It’s worse than that. For many of them it also means they will have to leave the country because Space Karen had a new idea for the 19th time that week.
Yea I’m aware
> Who cares if you’re redundant?
People need money to eat.
then get a job?
They have a job. Redundancy is taking their job away. There's a recession.
Exactly. I can admit that it would be sort of cool to be around Elon for a bit, just to have a good story for parties, even if it means staying past 1am at the office. But let's not pretend they're building something earth-shattering that actually merits being there at 1am. They're there to feed Elon's ego and make him believe he understands the inner workings of twitter, which for some reason would help him make executive decisions that are less arbitrary than he's already made?
If you want to know why the people look like they’re having a fun time, watch The Death of Stalin
To be honest, they don't look like they are having fun to me. Most of the people I can see in that photo read as exhausted to me (which makes sense, 1 am and all). Even the group photo Elon tweeted looks pretty forced to my eyes.
America doesn't have the culture of Russians of continuous lying. That doesn't apply.
This is like a sociological experiment where they show different people the same picture and ask "what do you see"? The results are heavily influenced by your previous perception of Elon. The results vary from "abuse and modern slavery" to "I'd fly halfway across the country to be there." I don't really have an opinion here as I don't know what is actually happening and assume the original poster intentionally framed it in a specific way. As humans we are very predictable, and even in a high IQ place such as HN, mostly everyone used the photo as validation of their existing position.
I mostly agree, but you're kind of implying that the photo exists in a vacuum. People are reasonably using context. Yes, they cherry-pick the context a bit and perhaps overextend it, but they're not just making up a story from whole cloth.
The "modern slavery" comment made me chuckle. Seriously...
It's pretty amazing when you think about it. Even given Musk's erratic behavior in the previous weeks, it would have been hard to predict something like this.
At a short notice summon the handful of engineers who survived the purges to the office at 2pm on a Friday and to bring 10 screenshots of code they've written "for review". With that implicit threat, have them wait until 6pm. Then keep them around until 1am to give a tutorial level introduction to the Twitter infrastructure to Musk (who could have gotten this months ago). There's just no legit justification for it; it's pure bullying and a loyalty test.
And then to top it off, have your pet venture capitalists post fawning tweets about how this really shows the classic SV energy.
>"At a short notice summon the handful of engineers who survived the purges to the office at 2pm on a Friday and to bring 10 screenshots of code they've written "for review".
I wasn't able to read many of the collapsed comments since I don't have a teamblind account. Is that actually the context of this picture then?
Of all the scenarios with Twitter in the last several months where people talk past each other, this is the one I am most confused by.
You got startup CEOs (not just Elon Musk brownnosers) talking about how some of the most innovative things get built at startups.
Which is true! Big, world-changing ideas, don't get built 9-5. And especially if you have some competitive advantage, you need to rush to market, to beat the others.
But Twitter is (was) a 40+ Billion dollar company. None of the people in this photo have any reasonable equity (the kind that makes people work nights and weekends in the hope that an IPO makes them a millionaire). And Twitter has a massive network effect of the kind meaning that if you don't screw it up (and god is Elon trying), none of these people are going anywhere.
I can understand that it's in Musk's interest to create a reality distortion field and convince the employees that they need to stay and go Hardcore so that he can create the American Weechat, or whatever he's got in mind.
But what do the other CEOs that are swooning over this have to gain except a dry run for also starting to treat their employees like garbage...
> so that he can create the American Weechat, or whatever he's got in mind.
What if what he has in mind is attempting to undo the negative effects that social networks have had on our society and democracy and instead attempt to rebuild this particular network in a way that can have a positive effect on society? It seems like that is a technological possibility and also something he could plausibly be interested in.
What if what if what if. What about his actions leads you to believe he's more capable of that than the thousands of people who were already working on it? If that were easy to do it would have been done, social media companies are full of people who care very deeply about this exact issue and who are also not absolute fucking neophytes at understanding and managing the constraints of a large social media network.
And what about the positive effects that twitter was already having? I'm part of something adjacent to and with overlap into the canadian disability rights movements; they are devastated by what's happening with twitter and widely considered it to be a unique and unprecedentedly powerful space for community and organization for them. It's not all shitposts and fascism you know.
> what about his actions leads you to believe he's more capable of that than the thousands of people who were already working on it?
My sense is that the 1000's of people who where already working on it have been working on it from the perspective of how to make a billion dollars while working at it. EM is free from that constraint.
That's why he settled Twitter with additional debt and talked about how it might go bankrupt soon if it doesn't make more money, to make it clear that profit is not important?
Never trust a billionaire who tells you they’re not interested in making money. That’s like a crack addict telling you they’ve had enough crack.
Elon believes in "free speech" and these unmoderated free speech networks rapidly become filled with toxic garbage.
historically, yes; but might that be a function of both the platform incentives (advertising, engagement) and poor technology?
Well twitter is in more debt than ever, so it might be even more beholden to advertisers now. And as for the technology, they just fired most of their engineers...
It's still centralized, proprietary, and going to have the harmful business model of advertising, no?
Of all those, "advertising" is the only fundamentally evil one, and he is chipping away at that one.
I strongly disagree. Also what would he replace it with? You seriously don't think his alternative revenue sources meant to be anything but supplementary, do you?
given the strength of the network effects a subscription model is worth exploring, which seems to be what he is pursuing.
Pretty sure he has stated he wants an American WeChat.
I am amazed by how polarizing this seems to be. Some of my best memories are from previous startups with this exact 1am energy. This is how shared mental models are built, shit gets done, and shared suffering cements lifelong bonds.
Twitter isn't a startup. The folks in this picture don't have the same risk/reward as their counterparts at a startup would.
Their risk reward is show up or get kicked out of their homes and country. Real shitty.
Elon has alluded to several times that he thinks software teams should have startup energy and intentionally keeps them small. Both at Tesla and SpaceX the software teams are small and likely assumes he can do the same at Twitter.
They are going "hardcore" with EM at a critical time. You could be looking at the "twitter mafia" of 2030 something.
The PayPal mafia had equity / ownership that paid off when they sold the company. Those people in the photo are employees with essentially 0 upside in terms of real ownership.
For there to be a “Twitter mafia” Elon would need to, out of the kindness of his heart, give them real ownership in Twitter. And then Twitter needs to be a success, much more than it already was.
I’d play the lottery instead and leave fantasy land.
i guess we all have to judge the value of such human connections
Elon, nodding along to your explanation of how authentication works, sees how intelligent, capable, and full of potential you are. He stops you: Wait Bob, do you have a startup idea you’re working on that I can invest in? Can I at least get your personal phone number for late night idea sessions?
Again, it’s time to leave fantasy land.
people who share intense experiences and endure hardship together will tend to be very open to communicating again in the future. This is based on my past experience, not fantasy.
It's a fantasy for you to think this will include Elon Musk. There are legions of SpaceX and Tesla engineers -- did they form this deep human connection with Elon that you're expecting? But you think it'll happen here? Again: Time to leave the fantasy. Senpai won't notice you.
can you share the datapoints you are referencing that lead you to this conclusion? My experience over 30 years spent in many startups as well as other domains such as mountaineering where shared suffering cements strong bonds leads me to a different conclusion. Perhaps we just differ on our assessment of EM's motivations.
> shared suffering cements lifelong bonds.
I'm sorry, is this a cult or a workplace? Why is this a good thing?
> This is how shared mental models are built, shit gets done
I get why Elon wants people to work until 1am, but what's in it for the employees? Why work 2x as hard and 2x as long and get 2x shit done if you're not getting paid 2x as much?
>> shared suffering cements lifelong bonds. > I'm sorry, is this a cult or a workplace? Why is this a good thing?
There are many contexts where some amount of suffering is a prerequisite for achieving great things. For example, from personal experience, both startups and mountaineering require some amount of suffering to achieve great things. The bonds formed from shared suffering are like top 25th percentile.
I believe that those memories are of times that share some factual similarities to the pictured scene, but it seems pretty presumptuous to assert that the energy is the same.
I am curious about what you think could be the most relevant differences.
I'm kind of amazed there isn't an immediate union drive right now.
Why would you stick around to form a union when you could take 3 months of severance? What would you get out of a union hostile to leadership by staying at Twitter versus the 3 months pay and going somewhere else?
Try doing it during the middle of the day, it ends up working out much better thaw way.
Yes wskish exactly!
Shared mental models are built in tough times in the trenches,
The engineers chosen to be there! It’s not a slavery,
It’s like you said People just dont grasp Elon’s vision. I’m glad there’s someone who understands innately
I wonder what twitter new-hire TC offers are going to look like going forward.
I can't imagine there would be a large funnel looking to work there after this.
Er. How many of them are H-1Bs?
Per US. Citizenship and Immigration Services, around 300 employees at Twitter are working under the H-1B visa.
My note: I am aware of someone at Meta attempting to reach out to these folks to interview for offers to transfer their visas. Very kind of folks willing to do so.
Source: https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employe...
This data apparently is not complete, if you search Amazon it returns 646 employees, a random Amazon high rise building has more H1-B workers than that count.
The number is likely somewhere between 300 and however many Twitter employees are remaining (~1000?).
> I am aware of someone at Meta attempting to reach out to these folks to interview for offers to transfer their visas. Very kind of folks willing to do so.
Meta is firing 11K people and freezing hiring right now.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/09/meta-to-lay-off-more-than-11...
Twitter will bounce back. For the people who are staying, this is a giant career opportunity to get a good executive job as the result. I'd stay in a heartbeat, even if it means spending one terrible year or two there.
All but one or two
How do you know?
Maybe he's in the photo?
Looks like a death march to the bitter end. A suicide pact.
You do a Death March project once in your career, as a lesson. Just so that the next time you see it coming from 100 miles away, you run, run hard.
Like in this case.
Those who peaced out made the right decision. This is beyond office heroics or hustle porn - this is just a rich, long-time former coder, way out of his depth, trying to relive the former glory of the mad days of the Internet boom, abusing people because he is having fun with this.
Why are they at work at 1am?
Musk called them in at 2pm on Friday for a code review.
That's at 2pm. 11 hours before 1am. What is so critical that they still need be there at 1am? Whose going to die?
I like to turn it around an ask what opportunity I would show up for at 1am.
to let that sink in
I have to say, if I was in different circumstances, I would love to go to work at Twitter right now.
But that's because I really enjoy watching weird shit happen, and there's so much weird shit happening there right now. It would be a win-win for me, odds are I'd emerge in a few months, maybe a year, with some great stories about watching a bizarre implosion of a foundational tech company as well as experience a billionaire self destructing. Or, way less likely, but possible I suppose, I would help that crazy billionaire reinvent the tech company and walk away pretty rich.
Why would that make you rich? You would just be an employee, no?
When he posted it I thought it was pretty cool that he's sitting down with the team and discussing things. This is how Elon learns in an organization. He needs to do this kind of thing and do it a lot more.
I don't think the time of day matters much. I've been in the office at that time of the day a number of times. As long as it's only an occasional thing it's fine.
Honestly, I like the picture of the new owner coming in and having engineers whiteboard the systems out to him and start getting up to speed with the company. It does have a nice feeling of espirit de corps to it. If he had started with that instead of fire and fury and a lame sink joke, he wouldn't have tarnished his image and the company so much.
Twitter is a mature tech platform that routinely onboards people at all levels of technical experience into every part of itself. There's no way they don't have probably several entire programs for getting people up to speed on how it all works. Possibly even a few full time dedicated people working only on that, actually. At least before he fired them anyway.
This is nothing but ego and hubris still.
Its wild how many people believe this dumb "pull up of your sleeves" photo op bullshit. Musk doesn't even have a B.S., dude couldn't understand how to build a barn door much more something like Twitter.
Ignorant bandwagoning. He wrote and sold basic games at 12, built x.com, learned about rocketry to found SpaceX, made Tesla into what it is. He has a good grasp on engineering. You can see that in interviews with Karpathy, or Everyday Astronaut’s content.
Ok that's just shitty though. Musk is an incompetent fool but the lack of a degree isn't why, or even a strong indicator of that. I don't have a degree at all and have accomplished a lot of highly technical work I'm proud of in my career. Don't be shitty about it.
But doing it at 1am is asinine
Doing it after losing ~80%+ of the staff is also asinine.
At a minimum, Musk should have done this _before_ deciding which 50% of the company to lay off, and then scaring the majority of the remainder with an ultimatum.
I see it says there's a lot of H1 work are still there…
Musk has said Americans are lazy compared to those not in the US… Maybe that picture shows it… Work balance over changing the world type of work or your stuck cause no job your out of the country. Maybe it's a mix of both
Maybe musk could force more truth on the Internet, somehow through the blue checkmark and verification of each user… Create a reputation system, or may be crazy if you're going to spread lies how much of your own money you gonna back up that silly political lie with (so much drama in politics it driven by emotions more then logic).
AFAIK Tesla & SpaceX aren't known for great work/life balance.
Right, they are known for changing the world.
Looking at that diagram, and thinking the person who needed it just bought the company for 44 billion dollars, is bewildering.
I see that whiteboard as a mechanism to help build a shared mental model for all assembled. Everyone there has seen some previous unknown revision of architectural diagrams, and has their own partial model of the system. Due to the urgency at hand, they all need to have a crisp shared model of the important parts, down to the naming of things.
If you need a shared mental model diagram at the 1am pseudo-crunch-a-thon then you're doing something wrong.
Identifying what you want to fix should be written down but the structure of the app should not be what is being discussed at 1am
I agree with you in ideal circumstances.
What puzzles me is that Twitter’s greatest challenges in recent years have not been technical. There shouldn’t be a technical emergency that requires an urgent call for all software engineers.
That single Tweet took eleven seconds to load on my phone, up to the point that all spinners stopped and all elements were visible. That seems typical for Twitter on the web these days and suggests there is something technically wrong in the stack.
That's a hell of a hand-wave. But for Twitter's sake, I hope you're right.
I am just imagining how to start a meeting with the remaining 25% skeleton crew of technical folks. Seems like drawing a map of the system and allowing various folks to contribute their part would be a super positive experience all around. What would be other alternative explanations?
Only about 70 employees showed up (out of 7500 a month ago).
crazy situation; all the more reason to draw a map to see where we are all at.
Imagine you're thinking about buying a 44B business and want to radically change its business model, and potentially, plan to fire a lot of technical people. What are the things you need to know to achieve this?
What diagram / whiteboard are people talking about? Is there more than one photo?
The only whiteboard I see is on the right hand side at the back, mostly obscured by people, and I certainly can't make out what's on it.
I hope those people are paid in lots of equity in this startup…
Love him or hate him, Elon Musk makes things happen.
Electric cars, space travel, large-scale drilling, Twitter 2.0, etc. This is a man history will remember.
PT Barnum with memes.
Some people have families and a life outside of work. We sure as heck ain't staying until 1am for anybody.
Got put on corrective action for refusing to stay until 1am . For the second night in a row. Company was in a bad part of town. Most of the people were just goofing off anyway. Wiped computer. Went home and emailed that I quit.
I’m not giving up time with kids and getting shot so boss can meet a deadline.
> Most of the people were just goofing off anyway.
This ^ or the fact that such hours usually yield low productivity so are a waste of time. Working long hours just because is not my thing.
Right, every time I felt trapped working on a problem into the evening became MUCH more easy to resolve the very next morning after a good night's sleep and the ability to seek outside help/resources from others who are also at work at that time
I have a family and a life outside of work, and I can’t count how many all nighters I have pulled in 35+ years of my career. Sometimes you need to do them. Of course I was raised in a generation that believed it was in our best interest that our company’s were successful…
I've never done an "all nighter" in 30+ years and never will. I value my time and if a company is expecting such a commitment then they're taking liberties with understaffing projects.
I did all nighters early in my career only to have management go in a different direction when we were done.
It ain't worth it and shows lack of leadership. I now have cash on hand to walk out on all nighters and death marches.
What was the crisis this time? There was zero mission or purpose here. Bow down and kiss the liege's ring. Thats all that this was. There was not one iota of reason for this forced display of loyalty, nothing pressing that couldnt have been done like a reasonable part of business. The jerking people is the point.
> I was raised in a generation that believed it was in our best interest that our company’s were successful…
Unless I was given a ton of liquid equity for it, I would not assume it was in my best interest.
Liquid equity implying you could turn it into cash, so equivalent to good salary? Regular compensation is indeed a sufficient driver for employees to want their employer to be successful.
Having a stake in a business doesn’t just mean owning stock looking for future growth. Wanting the business to still be alive this time next year is also a future outcome that can be embraced by anyone who draws a salary.
But would you still do it without the cash?
> our company
So you are the owner of the company? I was raised to put "our family" as a priority, and that means working for money, but doesn't include working like crazy and not getting compensated for it because it's in the best interest of "our company".
I used to love all nighters but as a single dad of a young child, either I leave for school pickup or the police pick me up. If an employer did this to me, I’d be out of a job, and they’d be looking to hire someone else, that will likely cost them more and deliver less…
I have 20 years in startups and this is not normal.
Twitter has been a product for literally 16 years, pretty sure it’s not a startup.
And doing this for an established company owned by one of the richest people on Earth is… supposed to make this better?
To keep a company alive vs shuttering it? Seems like it’s something that these folks are willing to do for the organization and Musk. They chose to stay despite an offer to go voluntarily with a severance package. Who does that? Can we give these SWEs the benefit of the doubt that they are intelligent enough to make a decision that is in their best interest?
I honestly do not understand why it’s getting the hate here, it’s like the least controversial thing he has done. Although I guess it’s on par for the cadre of folks with Musk derangement syndrome on here.
They’re burning the midnight oil to save a company that is suffering from fatal wounds that were largely self-inflicted.
The details of the severance package weren’t known until after they had agreed to stay. You also need to consider that many people are attached to a specific job and are strongly opposed to leaving due to specific benefits they might struggle to find elsewhere. Besides the H1B situation that many have wondered about, there are also things like health insurance. Depending on one’s health situation—particularly with children—you may be concerned about finding a new position at a company with a similar health plan before your severance runs out. COBRA is expensive.
It's interesting that you naturally attribute this belief to upbringing rather than an actual justification.
Yes, I attribute my belief that it’s important for the company helping me via my compensation to feed, cloth, and shelter my family to be successful to my upbringing. I mean I don’t recall my parents ever saying “When you start working, do as little as possible because screw them they dont deserve your best effort.”
Are you implying that contributing to your company’s success isn’t important? I mean I have helped multiple companies to be successful and by many measures this has provided me success as well. I am pretty sure there is a correlation there.
I'm implying that the success of your company does not automatically transfer to you by osmosis. These employees are not going to see any additional payoff for staying to 1AM. Even if this exercise did somehow improve Twitter's profits, that money is going to Musk, not to them. If they are paid the same salary, work 80 hours a week instead of 40, and Twitter does well as a result, what have they gotten? A 50% hourly paycut.
So, some week down the line they may only work 20 hours and as salaried employees will likely still get the same paycheck that they did for doing 80 hours. By your logic I guess they wouldn’t deserve that 50% extra comp they received for the hours they didn’t work, correct? I’d say it’s a safe bet that almost all have happily cashed that paycheck for likely years and I’d wager at least 50% didn’t work 2080 hours in the last 12 months.
Exempt employees drawing a salary are pretty much paid on an expect end result more than some arbitrary # of hours the employee works. Hours are meaningless.
> Exempt employees drawing a salary are pretty much paid on an expect end result more than some arbitrary # of hours the employee works. Hours are meaningless.
"Exempt" is company-speak to make you think your hours worked are not tied to compensation. Try tell a lawyer or structural engineer the same and they'd laugh at you.
> "Exempt" is company-speak to make you think your hours worked are not tied to compensation. Try tell a lawyer or structural engineer the same and they'd laugh at you.
Uh, no. “Exempt” is a legal definition created by a bunch of politicians to exempt people from the FSLA. Basically it means that certain roles can be tied to an expected outcome and not a specific hourly pay guideline. And specifically in the state of California, SWEs can be classified as exempt allowing their employer to require them to work whatever number of hours that are necessary to achieve an outcome.
Since California is also an “at will” state, the employee is free to leave the arrangement.
In my experience, the most chaotic companies that were fire fighting all the time tried to pull this "there is this deadline and it has to be finished by X or else we die".
The successful companies on the other hand, are planning ahead and taking setbacks into account. Work was done properly so no crazy firefighting. They also don't burn out their employees.
Just my experience of a 43 yo developer.
Sure, but in this specific case you kind of have to assume that Twitter wasn’t on fire already and was well planned and addressing setbacks. I think a fair metaphor could be that there was a bunch of folks enjoying the warmth the flames on the tree in front of them, but ignoring the blazing forest around them.
I think in that case creating a deadline of “we need to put this fire out before it consumes the entire forest” and motivating a bunch of smokejumpers hop in and bust their ass to save the forest isn’t a bad thing.
Other ways of saying the same thing:
”I can’t do this because I have to be with my family in the evenings.”
”This sort of thing wouldn’t work for me due to commitments I’ve made outside work.”
”I personally wouldn’t do this.”
What you said instead is pretty packed in terms of a guns-blazin’ take which, while understandable here, reminds me of something much less constructive: how often I encounter people who share your sentiment at my current workplace.
Specifically, the tone with which you say it is what rings true. “We” instead of “I”, refuse-to instead of decline-to, poking at a lack of family or social life, and the need to tell everyone about a personal preference — reasonable in your case, in the context of a discussion, although I note yours is a top level comment so not exactly a reply to anything anyone here has said.
I think I understand the anger. Some people can’t take part in extra curricular work stuff, or want to express solidarity that would normally be expressed through a union, or feel that an employer who tolerates and even encourages work-outside-of-work is immoral and must be challenged.
These are valid feelings. They probably indicate being in the wrong field (bleeding edge knowledge work) or the wrong sized company (small, highly remunerated, with high growth expectations.) Neither of these apply to Twitter.
> Some people have families and a life outside of work. We sure as heck ain't staying until 1am for anybody.
I agree, I wouldn't stay till 1am for anybody... but if the world's richest man just bought the company I worked for, then personally came to work with us through the night... I would definitely consider it (also not an Elon fan btw)
How is this not overtly racist?
Are you kidding me? Those guys are living the dream! Chilling out with Elon Musk on a Friday night. I’d go there to make the coffee and clean the dishes so I could overhear in the next room. No seriously
Oof. That boot.
He’s only the most successful entrepreneur alive. But sure visa holders need their beauty sleep. Seriously you can’t stay up to 1am to have the company of the worlds richest person? What an opportunity to learn. This thread is totally nuts
> What an opportunity to learn
I suspect you've never been around Musk or people of Musk's class. What could you possibly learn that would materially improve anything in your life other than "you get to keep your job (for now)"? Or is it just curiosity you want to satisfy?
His habits. You can’t regularly work 80 hour weeks without packing a few tricks. You can’t build multiple billion dollar companies without knowing something others don’t. Often I find when talking to successful people, they’ll make a revealing offhand comment that’s pure gold and can in fact change your life - if you’re paying attention.
An example might be Einstein and Steve Jobs having a full wardrobe of duplicates of the same outfit. Ok, but why? Because they realize the mind is only capable of resolving a finite number of dilemmas per day and choosing what to wear depletes that resource. An eccentric habit, but revealing indeed. After being sold on the theory, they went all in. I wonder to what degree they executed on insights like that where the rest of us just brushed them off
>His habits.
His "habits" are asking the people with actual knowledge what to do and then sometimes ignoring them when he gets too involved in his twitter drama.
>An example might be Einstein
Elon had to lie about his Bachelors degree, please don't compare him to an actual genius.
You mean shitposting on twitter? Thanks, I’m quite good at that as is. And yeah, I could probably buy a company and hire some competent people to manage them for me from a litany of money if I happen to be born into that wealth.
And this “same outfit” bullshit is just propaganda for making you believe that you are also a temporarily embarrassed billionaire and you actually are part of this wealthy group, when in fact you are further away from them then from some poor gal in Thailand working for a dollar a week. People are not machine, you can probably only productively work 3 hours a day.
Who burns down $44 billions in record time by fking up twitter faster than a lettuce rots? Oh, and it will not only burn down that, but he has his tesla shares as collateral.
As opposed to:
https://www.theblaze.com/news/twitter-day-in-life-video
Having worked in both types of environments, I can tell you only the 1am types survive and become profitable.
Some of the criticisms of the video are a bit unfair.
> She pans the camera to three women in a meeting room. She also shows several bookshelves filled with books, but otherwise shows nothing about the meetings they held or the "projects" they may or may not have been able "to knock out."
I mean, of course someone's not going to record an internal company meeting and post it on TikTok!
What sample sizes are we talking?
Was it not surviving and extremely profitable?
Twitter? It was not profitable in 2020 and 2021. Jack did do good in 2018 & 2019 though
It's kind of sad to see so many people just take this story at face value. Is it really 1am? I could certainly believe it, but some random picture doesn't make it true. Also, even it is 1am, it's possible that work ended hours ago, and that some people are staying late to talk to Musk. Who knows, but to assume that everyone is being forced to stay, maybe, maybe not. I guess I'd like a little evidence.
The number of people saying all of these completely unsubstantiated things about Twitter, and everyone believing them without any questions is weird.
In addition, how could this person know if mostly H1-B workers are present. I certainly can't tell who is and isn't on a H1-B. Or is it because the bulk of the people are not white that this person assumed they were? That seems like an immensely racist assumption.
Why should people automatically disbelieve word-of-mouth any more or less than they should believe it, as long as they are not making it into some kind of conviction from which they base significant material action?
Also, is nobody asking questions? I've seen multiple people doing so, including you.
Also, in your accusation of racism, you are making assumptions about assumptions.
Also, is positing that there are H1Bs among non-white tech workers "immensely racist", or is that dramatic?
Been reading a lot of hate on twitter, reddit, and here about how elon is handling twitter. Personally, I love the energy in this picture, want to work at twitter more now than before, and believe they have a good chance of doing great work.
What I see in the picture is organic connection. It's really easy in tech for everyone to get siloed, working on assigned tasks without communication. Greatness comes from the shared spark <and then> head down focus.
I bet elon is trying to recreate the environment that worked at paypal and tesla and spacex. Scrappy, energetic, get shit done, not 100 managers with 100 tiny fiefdoms.
I was also thinking that now would be a fun time to work at Twitter.
It would seemingly be a huge gamble as to whether it is disorganized with constantly shifting priorities or increased operations overhead but if there is a vision and the plan is to go balls to the wall to get it done, that’s awesome.
Does your last name perchance rhyme with Tusk?
This is after he fired over half the company and threatened the rest with unemployment if they didn't come in. This is not organic. This is coercion.
Or…it’s separating the wheat from the chaff
and what do I gain by giving my soul to the company?
Maybe a lot of you are willing to take a chance with some risk and some effort. Maybe you get nothing.
I know some really wealthy people who are only wealthy because they took a little risk. I know some people who could be wealthy too if they took the same leap, but didn’t and they aren’t. Perhaps they felt like you do…. It all comes down to choices. These people sticking at Twitter are making their choice. Others left, that was their choice. I’m not going to criticize either choice.
Risk in return for what reward? There's no reason to believe there's any more upside to working at Twitter vs any other big tech company where you don't have a egonomaniac CEO making you do stupid hazing rituals. It's not like a startup where your equity can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars if there's a big IPO. Twitter is well past the 1000x growth stage.
Considering that a lot of the other big tech companies are also laying off and have hiring freezes and the market is saturated with 20000 recently unemployed other big tech SWEs also looking for work…I’d say the reward you get is not having to deal with that rat race.
Let’s face it as hazing rituals go, this is pretty mild.
What exactly is your proposed mechanism for success, by working an ordinary IT job? How is it any different than any other workplace, now that it is owned by Musk?
The best you can hope for is a decent bonus, but that is not life altering in any way and I don’t think it is worth the stress of working under an unstable idiot drama queen some insane hours that may or may not get paid, over at.. the million other IT jobs. Sure, taking risks may be beneficial, but you ain’t jumping down a hill just because it is risky, you have to hope for something.
I live quite a comfortable life despite three decades of “working an ordinary IT jobs”. I guess I don’t see the obvious downside here. These folks are choosing to stick around—maybe it’s an ordinary IT job and maybe working for Musk could be challenging, but maybe they turn around the company and Musk rewards the loyalty, and maybe he doesn’t’. At that point they can re-evaluate.
I don’t buy into the notion that Musk is the worst boss in the world. A former colleague and I were laughing recently at how mild Musk is compared to an old boss we had.
This is just gambling but with your time instead of your money. I think you're more likely to become rich by starting your own side gig than by working for Elon until 1am on a Friday.
I disagree. That requires a having money stashed enough to do it or being tough enough to be poor…then having good idea, talent, and luck. I have been in tech long enough to know that is a exceedingly rare combination.
The bulk of the wealthy in tech got there by working for some lucky person, with a modicum of talent, and a good idea that happened to offer them a piece of the company before some VC swooped in funded them.
And keeping the chaff as staff?
That remains to be seen doesn’t it? It’s also a subjective measure.
Your opinion may be that the good folks left. Musks opinion may be the good folks stayed. The ultimate determining result is that Twitter stays alive and starts becoming something viable and finds away into the black.
^totally. I remember my startup incubator we all worked well into the night often as late as 6am. I remember falling asleep at my terminal often, and indeed slept at the office regularly, well until they told me to stop that. Look, people of a certain mindset need an Everest to conquer. If they don’t want to join in they can leave, everyone is there by choice.
> people of a certain mindset need an Everest to conquer.
Well said. There are a few of us out there with that Gimli from LOTR approach to life:
“Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?”