>As soon as Musk became owner, there were always three things that had to be done by yesterday
Just when? Just three??
I don't think any of it had to do with people having "nothing better to do on their own projects".
I don't know about you, but if my new boss, the one that threatened to fire 3/4ths of the staff, told me to do something, it doesn't matter what I was working on before, my sole new project would be what the boss wanted.
>Some of us had worked through the weekend trying to help out a colleague who’d been given an insanely tight deadline
Note: the deadline was given to "a colleague", not to "our team". Same here:
>My colleague, whom I liked a lot, was never going to get it done in time without help, so we all pitched in.
Also note that he seems to never have worked on such a schedule before:
>I actually quite enjoyed it.
April 25th, Twitter Locks Down Product Changes After Agreeing to Musk Bid
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-25/twitter-l... --- https://archive.ph/CK1X1
> For now, Twitter won’t allow product updates unless they’re business-critical, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the situation is private. The company accepted a $54.20-a-share bid from Musk after a whirlwind courtship that began with the Tesla Inc. magnate disclosing a 9% stake in Twitter earlier this month.
> Product changes will require approval from a vice president, the people said. Twitter imposed the temporary ban to keep employees who may be miffed about the deal from “going rogue,” according to one of the people.
April 26, Twitter is protecting its source code from disgruntled employees, reports say https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/26/twitter-lock-source-code-e...
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For several months, nothing that was not business critical was released (or done). If you were on something that wasn't business critical, you were likely waiting for a fire to fight, working on the "ok, maybe after this all blows over I can deploy this - but not until then."
In either case, not having something to do that was more pressing than helping out a person would not be surprising.
In the context you have provided - yes. But in the context of my professional experience it is rather surprising. Note that the author has not mentioned he was uncomfortable sitting there doing nothing. What he mentioned was:
>we all pitched in. I actually quite enjoyed it.
That looks like that was the first time for him ever. Also quite surprising - for me and my experience.
PS. Also:
>As soon as Musk became owner, there were always three things that had to be done by yesterday
Sweet Jesus. Just "as soon"? Just three??