Isn't that his goal? Reduce headcount before vesting bonuses on Nov. 1st? It seems like you would be just the sucker that Musk is trying to get rid of before one last milestone cash payment.

On top of which, why couldn't you defend that line in a meeting? "I changed this one line cutting the loading time in half for the program. It took 2 days of profiling to find where to change and another week to ensure that it works across all build targets and work on a deployment timeline."

> 's just a demeaning process meant to assert the dominance of the new owners.

It is in fact a bit of that. Employees who quit are cheaper than fired employees or continued-to-be-hired employees. doing something unreasonable to make them quit seems reasonable, even if that might skew more towards the better employees.

But it's also a rough attempt to identify deadweight who cannot explain why they did anything of value in 2 months.

It's about identifying the most extreme offenders and pushing out people like the GP who will rage quit without severance.

Not sure if you personally are a Twitter employee but Twitter fits a certain demographic of employee who wants to traverse that fine line between not wanting to risk an early startup for potential huge upside but also doesn't want a boring cushy job at Salesforce or Google or whatever.

If you value your time and not the money, there's better places to apply your talents and labor than Twitter (pre or post Elon)

Its not about “defending”, its about explaining. Even from your reply one can feel the instant defensive position you take when asked about (your) code. I think ability to disassociate from your code and just be able to discuss it (not defend) and explain what and why (tradeoffs) and how was done is very valuable in developer, and in anyone actually if you extend it beyond the code.

When take over a company ant talk with people and they take defensive position thats a red flag for me. (I take over companies in my head only so far)

It doesn’t matter if it’s about defending or explaining. Either one is an absolutely absurd situation to find yourself in where you have to explain stuff to people with zero context to save your job.

If I was given these instructions I’m out.

(I don’t have a horse in this race. I don’t work there. So not sure why you think I’m taking this personally)

That's your threshold for asking employees to summarize what they've been doing recently?

Management must have some profound interest in the feature being delivered and how it was implemented?

Question: have you ever managed people? And if so, how many?

I won’t go into your ad hominem.

While you're entitled to your opinion, it doesn't seem particularly relevant in discussions about whether or not this process is effective.

no one wants your code just for fun of it or it beying extra nice and smart. code is neded becauae it creates value.

The question itself comes from a place of authority, and the employee has nothing to gain, only to lose. Best case - I keep my job. Worst case - I get fired. That introduces stress into my life unnecessarily.

The new owners can go and read past evaluations instead of boiling the ocean. But, of course they won't do that. It's much easier to assert your authority and stress everyone out, to make sure they know that they are just resources churning out code.

If you step out of the soulless business mindset for one second, I'm sure you'll understand why asking me to prove my worth out of the blue is insulting.

"Prove your worth to the new gods, employee #1337!"

No, thanks.

Not sure from which perspective you're saying "No" from?

If you were a Twitter employee, that means quitting. But apparently from what you just said you don't want to lose your job. (There's no stress if getting fired is something that doesn't bother you)

Or from a management perspective? In which case I think vincnetas did a good job explaining why management might want to do this if they wanted to downsize.

Basically you're saying the concept of laying off people is a ridiculous viewpoint because it makes employees feel stressed. Sure this is just a discussion forum and we're all free to express opinions, but realistically, what makes you think an employee can say "No, thanks" to this?

Sure there is, long painful meetings where you go over your work for the last 30 days sounds miserable regardless of if you care about the outcome.

You also might lose your severance package.

While you can't say no thanks, if put in that situation by my employer I'd do the bare minimum and start lining up interviews with the tens of recruiters that message me daily (as I'm sure is the case for anyone with twitter on their resume)

Sure, I've done the exact same thing. What's stopping you from bringing that line of code to an interview and talking about it?

> "If you ask me to print my code and defend it in a meeting, I will instead skip the meeting and respond to one of the dozens recruiters who reach out every week in my inbox. "

When you interview with your new employer, won't you be discussing notable achievements such as the single line of code you wrote that cuts app startup time by half?

> "It's just a demeaning process meant to assert the dominance of the new owners."

Are interviews demeaning? In a sense, sure. Sounds like you're doing it one way or the other, though.

GP's answer is essentially "sure, but what stops me from not doing that instead?":

>> I will instead skip the meeting and respond to one of the dozens recruiters who reach out every week in my inbox.

I have to say, I agree. Why stay around for the circus when you can leave and make an honest living as a respected professional instead of playing post-acquisition hunger games as a pawn in a rich boy's ego trip gone awry?

Nothing of course -- and this is always true, every second of every day.

> "I have to say, I agree. Why stay around for the circus when you can leave and make an honest living as a respected professional instead of playing post-acquisition hunger games as a pawn in a rich boy's ego trip gone awry? "

If you see it that way then it seems in everyone's best interest that you leave the company, which means the system worked exactly as intended.

As to the question of whether this makes sense, it would seem we all agree that it does, then.

I don't and have never worked at Twitter :)

> As to the question of whether this makes sense, it would seem we all agree that it does, then.

My comments are mostly about the likely future of Twitter, which is almost certainly atrophy and death.

> "My comments are mostly about the likely future of Twitter, which is almost certainly atrophy and death. "

This was already their future, so I guess we can see if they improve at all.