> Because despite you thinking they are horrific companies many other people don't.

The same goes for twitter.

Also neither of those companies are necessarily known as terrible places to work. I know people who'd be miserable in most 9-5 jobs who are happy in Meta.

Working at Twitter now means a daily grind means being subject to the whims of an increasingly petulant emperor who does not respect anyone's expertise. What good does it for your career if he's just going to drop the ball at a moment's notice anyway?

If that were actually true, why do so many people love working at Tesla/SpaceX? Clearly they don't have the same view of Elon's management style as you do.

The reality is that Twitter as a business (and, imho, as a product) was sorely in need of a course correction. Layoffs, if they need to be done, should be done crisply and thoroughly so that remaining employees don't feel like the other shoe is about to drop.

You rip off the bandaid, it sucks, then you refocus on the work ahead.

I don't know why people work for Tesla/SpaceX. I can take a guess though - there are only a handful of companies that work in space related field and only a few companies that make electric cars. So it is somewhat understandable, if one really wants to work at these places.

Twitter is different - there are other big companies that provide as much tech challenges or more (whether they are better/worse than Twitter is another question). Twitter employees have many more options (relatively speaking) than SpaceX employees

Working at Tesla/SpaceX puts you at the cutting edge of your field. It's probably worth a few trade-offs - and I'm sure it pays a hell of a lot more.

Working at Meta/Google doesn't necessarily do that. I'm almost certain most of these companies' moonshot divisions are not as well-run as many startups, nor are these companies assured success in these areas.

Their main products are already at a "don't fix it if it ain't broke" stage, even though many will claim these are broken. I doubt it's exciting work.

Working at Tesla or SpaceX will be like working on a moonshot that's actually taking off. I'm sure it's a thrill. But increasingly, I don't think Musk is level-headed enough to be trusted with such things.

It takes time to reject nitwitted leaders, so we can't expect employees to abandon ship overnight just to prove my point.

I agree that "good company" and "bad company" are a reflection of personal preferences, but the fact that FAANG comp is much higher than elsewhere tells us that the companies strongly suspect that a lower salary will not be enough to attract such a strong talent pool.

No. The companies feel they can afford to pay top drawer wages so they do so in order to hire what they hope is among the top talent, subject to among other things the randomness of their hiring processes.

> Because despite you thinking they are horrific companies many other people don't.

Thats exactly how a lot of people will view Twitter. You might think its horrible and they are terrible for laying of people, but plenty of good engineers ready to fill those roles for the money without the need of having free snacks, free coffee, rest booths, ping pong area, LED illuminated reading rooms, etc etc etc. Twitter will be fine.

lol. Suppose their salaries reduced to half of what they are making today, how many of them do you still think will continue to work at these places, for the technical challenges and whatever else they have told themselves is the real reason for them to work there in the first place?

I don't doubt the technical excellence of these companies. They are technically very capable because of the talent they hire, and they are able to hire top talent because of the high salaries they pay, not because of some altruistic or egoistic reasons