That’s the same kind of fun one can have at a well-funded startup, and it doesn’t come with the technical and regulatory baggage that Twitter carries.

From my POV, the massive scale of Twitter is nothing but downside for engineering focus in the current situation where all the moderation and legal frameworks have been blown to bits. I spent a couple of years at Facebook, so I’ve seen what the legal reality is for product work in high-volume social media. Nothing could entice me to work in a situation where I as an engineer became personally responsible for managing that. Yet that’s the de facto situation at Twitter. They’re not even taking meetings with EU regulators anymore because there’s nobody left at the company! It’s not my kind of fun if I’m being asked to make rushed decisions that can lead to multi-billion fines and/or distress and physical harm to users.

Maybe, but most startups aren't at that scale and impact yet (and they'd be smart not to build as if they were imho), so it's a different kind of fun, and t. The mental reward of getting a fire-fighting assignment and putting out the flames is something I enjoy occasionally.

I'd imagine the same exists on the legal and product side, too. They need people who love a challenge and want to see whether they can overcome it, they need adventurers. No clue if it'll be successful, but I can see the appeal.