News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by Teandw on Friday November 18, 2022 @01:46PM (#33659837)
I think you're misunderstanding the situation. It's not that ALL software engineers don't do anything. It's that Twitter has so much staff, you start to question what can they all actually be doing.

If someone had 10 people cleaning a small apartment every day, you'd question what were they actually doing. That wouldn't make sense.

Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by kibwen on Friday November 18, 2022 @01:50PM (#33659931)
Conversely, if you had 7,000 people cleaning an apartment occupied by a few million people across the globe, that might make some sense.

There's no doubt that Twitter could be leaner than it was as of September, but haphazardly firing employees at random and alienating the most employable of the remainder into resignation is not the way to go about it. He could have spent a few months getting to know the place, but deliberately chose not to.

Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by ceres on Friday November 18, 2022 @01:54PM (#33660015)
And yet WhatsApp had 55 employees at acquisition.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/whatsapp-bought-for-19-b...

Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by kibwen on Friday November 18, 2022 @02:18PM (#33660504)
WhatsApp is (was) an instant messenger, not an ad-supported media company.
Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by uxcolumbo on Friday November 18, 2022 @03:04PM (#33661244)
Did Whatsapp serve ads?

Did it have to moderate content?

Twitter is vastly more complex than Whatsapp when it comes to functionality and platforms it had to support.

Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by lesuorac on Friday November 18, 2022 @04:06PM (#33662196)
WhatsApp didn't get to 55 employees by having 2000 and then randomly firing 97% of them.

The argument is not that twitter can't be ran leaner, it's that the current process of leaning twitter is bad.

Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by Terretta on Friday November 18, 2022 @01:53PM (#33659988)
Not if all few million people live in the same few variants of one apartment, and the same cleanup cleaned all of them.

TBC, talking about the code part.

There's another Twitter, which is not code, but guest and resident services. Your example holds there.

Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by wwkeyboard on Friday November 18, 2022 @01:53PM (#33659987)
Exactly, go to your 25 year old HotMail account and open the spam folder. That's what they've been fighting.
Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by butterlesstoast on Friday November 18, 2022 @01:53PM (#33659983)
Best comment hahaha. Made my day.
Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by selimthegrim on Friday November 18, 2022 @02:06PM (#33660271)
So Twitter is the movie Mother?
Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by kccoder on Friday November 18, 2022 @02:09PM (#33660328)
And nearly every decision he's made has driven away Twitter's best developers, who could probably be useful in reducing the headcount in an efficient and non-shambolic fashion.
Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by dont__panic on Friday November 18, 2022 @01:56PM (#33660061)
Elon has clearly read enough Hacker News to ask the question we've all been asking for the last... 5? 10? years. "What do all of those engineers do at [Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Netflix/Google]".

That's a fine question to ask -- it's clear that plenty of those engineers aren't contributing real value. They're working on passion projects, or side projects like React or Docusaurus, or pie-in-the-sky next-gen products, or reinventing the wheel in-house, or infrastructure, etc. Many are working on similar projects in separate silos of large companies, completely unaware that they have "twin" teams elsewhere in the org solving damn near the same problem, but not in a generalized way.

The big problem is that Elon has no idea what the fuck he is doing. I don't mean to disparage anyone, but jeez... the guy has fired thousands of people in the last few weeks and looks like he's on the cusp of running a company that's been around for over a decade into the ground in the next few weeks. Over the holidays. And who's going to deal with the issue? Oh yeah, the H1B visa holding employees who can't escape. He's officially a jerk, and that's not even counting the times when he called innocent people child molesters, or spouted lies about crypto, or tried to manipulate Tesla stock, etc. etc.

TL;DR: Elon is an idiot trying to use internet wisdom to run a company. This whole situation reminds me of when some rich person you know tries to run a small business, like a coffee shop or an ice cream shop, and they screw up just about every piece of it... because they don't get the fundamentals. Elon does NOT get the fundamentals, based on observations of him over the last few years. It's clear he's just a lucky rich kid with a big ego and lots of confidence who loves smoking weed and ruining other people's lives.

Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by Teandw on Friday November 18, 2022 @02:46PM (#33660965)
"...and looks like he's on the cusp of running a company that's been around for over a decade into the ground in the next few weeks."

What do you base that on? There's no evidence to point the company is going downhill or improving at the moment. You seem to be basing this on a personal hatred for Elon and nothing else.

Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by maxbond on Friday November 18, 2022 @03:22PM (#33661485)
They give various reasons for their view based on observations of recent events at Twitter, in the comment you are responding to. What reasons do you have for attributing their views to personal animus? It's hard for me to imagine a way you could know the contents of the mind of a stranger on the internet, and I wonder if maybe you would make this remark about any comment expressing a similar sentiment, regardless of the evidence they provided or what their motives may be.

I submit that people who make this type of comment should be prepared to offer up not only what evidence they have that criticism of Musk (or whatever is being discussed) is insincere, but what sort of evidence they would need in order to accept the criticism.

Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by dont__panic on Friday November 18, 2022 @03:03PM (#33661229)
Many (newly) former Twitter employees have raised concerns about essential services now left unattended.

Reports indicate the internal beta build Twitter instance has slowed down significantly this week -- a sign that services, code, or other essential infrastructure is being neglected.

Musk fired half the company and drove two-thirds of the remainder to quit. He's asking the remaining employees to print out their code contributions to prove their worth.

These things might not be explicit signs of trouble in the company, but I sure wouldn't read them as positive. A shakeup could be a good thing in the long term if the company has stagnated... but there's no guarantee.

I raised multiple explicit examples in my previous post; here's some more. I think Elon is a complete dunderhead, because it's hard not to think so based on his behavior. I still think Twitter is at a very high risk right now of collapsing. With him making such dramatic moves as CEO, isn't it impossible to separate his bad behavior from Twitter's future?

Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by stefan_ on Friday November 18, 2022 @07:31PM (#33665155)
His acquisition bumped the burn rate up by a sweet billion dollars a year while his conduct maximized spooking off any advertising clients still left in an impending recession.
Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by RC_ITR on Friday November 18, 2022 @01:53PM (#33659984)
Sure, but then you ask them what they do and keep the ones who clean your toilets and drop the ones that organize your fridge.

Your goal isn’t one cleaning person, it’s the right amount

Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by xwdv on Friday November 18, 2022 @01:51PM (#33659951)
Software Engineers aren’t doing things all the time but there is a tremendous amount of company knowledge and experience locked up in them. You basically pay to keep them employed for when you need them. They are paid for value not hours.
Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by dont__panic on Friday November 18, 2022 @01:58PM (#33660099)
Well said. I think this is where the 4-day work week and WFH pushes in the software industry get their momentum: most of us don't need to work 40 hours in an office with a manager looking over our shoulder to provide that value.
Re:If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to ... by xwdv on Friday November 18, 2022 @07:22PM (#33665043)
Problem is a lot of people just don’t understand this because they’re used to having a 1:1 relationship between the hours they work and the value they deliver.