Elon Musk has made a serious mistake

[MarathonMike]

So how many of you new Elon Musk haters are shorting Twitter? Hmmmmmm????

 

[Coyote]

I notice all of these are either "claimed" or were happening during the shitshow of their startup.

Now you are making excuses.

 

[Foxfyre]

I don't understand a lot of the technical stuff, but it's becoming clear that firing all these engineers was a monumental mistake, which may sink Twitter, Tesla, and his wealth.

Gergely Orosz​

4h • 13 tweets • 3 min read
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What I'm hearing from inside Twitter:

Several people who were let go on Friday, then asked to come back were given less than an hour as a deadline.

Software engineers who got this call I know of all said "no" and the only ones who could eventually say "yes" are on visas.

Also:
Many people got a phone call with this "offer", and a short deadline. Lots of people stopped answering unknown numbers to avoid this.

Inside Twitter, managers I hear are getting desperate, trying to call back more people. People are saying "no" + more sr engineers are quitting.

None of this is surprising. As a rule of thumb, after you lay off X% of people, you get an additional half attrition. Lay off 10%: expect another 5% to quit. Lay off 50%... not unreasonable to expect another 25% to quit.

Calling back people you just fired rarely works.
Why it's a problem that senior people are quitting and people don't want to come back:

Twitter has a complex architecture *for a reason.* And it needs some level of institutional knowledge to maintain.

This institutional knowledge both got fired + is walking out the door.

In practical terms: software engineers who are with the company are now put on oncall rotations for systems they have no idea about. I mean, they can figure it out... easiest to talk with someone who knows these.

The problem is when there's no such person left.

Talking with engineers, some things people don't realize about Twitter:

- On prem data centers
- Lots of infra-level advanced stuff. Eg multi-level infra feature flags
- Advanced infra-level incremental rollouts to avoid outages that were caused by infra changes in the past
Unless the institutional knowledge is somehow retained, in days/weeks/months, we should, sadly, expect to see a lot more outages.

The straightforward option to reduce damage is:
1. Retain experienced folks, at least mid-term
2. Hire and onboard new people with these seniors

I know that on Twitter it's fashionable to mock how "slow" Twitter was to ship.

But the more I learn about the internal systems, and why it was built in a way, the more impressed I am. Eg Twitter onboarding to k8s was extremely challenging (+brilliant) thanks to legacy infra.

Twitter has no nuance to discuss Twitter tradeoffs. But as I understand, there were many: some workaround of legacy decisions, some deliberate.

This doesn't change that Twitter is a complex system, and it's complex for good reasons. I really hope enough people stay who know why.

Also, thank you to both people who built these systems Twitter runs on, and especially those staying and maintaining them.

Keeping Twitter running became far more challenging overnight for no fault of ppl doing all this difficult work.

Thanks for keeping the lights on and more!

One thing that continues to bug me:

Elon Musk is an experienced operator and no stranger to layoffs (and their impact). He has a team of advisors from the VC world.

Surely they expected all this to happen. So, why did they do it? Or is this the plan?

Unroll available on Thread Reader

A timely comic from a former Twitter software engineer - several people told me he was one of the most productive web engineers -, who was also Twitter's unofficial Chief Cartoonist.

So a bit more of an insider view:



Worth linking how the author of the above comic got fired at Twitter.

He was working on a high-priority project at 9pm on Tuesday (after Elon bought Twitter). Disconnected and fired mid-work-meeting. No justification as to why.

Now he's suing Twitter.

President Trump made the mistake of retaining experienced people in jobs with misplaced faith they would do their jobs. Instead far too many of those people undermined him personally as well as torpedoed/sabotaged the great MAGA vision Trump intended to advance.

I think Elon Musk chose not to do that. Those who think he was stupid for firing those engineers aren't considering the damage they could do on the job against his agenda and game plan. I can't believe Twitter is the only business on the planet who had employees capable of doing that job.

 

[Leo123]

I've been on Twitter since Elon and, believe me, there are plenty of loony lefties still there.

 

[EvilCat Breath]

Tesla is down today

View attachment 722307

Of course Tesla is down. They have been exploding all over Florida

 

[Foxfyre]

I've been on Twitter since Elon and, believe me, there are plenty of loony lefties still there.

Yes. And we see their stuff a lot more than we used to too. And they're griping like crazy that they are seeing our stuff now.

 

[Muhammed]

I don't understand a lot of the technical stuff

 

[Leo123]

Yes. And we see their stuff a lot more than we used to too. And they're griping like crazy that they are seeing our stuff now.

Twitter is also not censuring the other side.

 

[martybegan]

Now you are making excuses.

your links exemplify the concept of GIGO.

 

[Foxfyre]

Twitter is also not censuring the other side.

Well they didn't censure the left until Elon took over. Now neither side is censured for content unless they break the rules like Kathy Griffin did. And it is wonderful being able to discuss certain topics honestly without worry of being banned like the Pandemic, vaccinations, Hunter's laptop, etc. The rule Griffin broke was in place long before Elon.

And currently Twitter usage is way up despite the fragile left saying they're leaving. Lots and lots and lots of new Patriot accounts and I think most a new accounts and not just second accounts. It has been pretty interesting to watch.

 

[Orangecat]

Elon Musk has made a serious mistake​

And he's still a multi-billionaire.
Pass the ketchup?

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

If all the Democrats left USMB this site would cease very quickly.

True.

 

[Coyote]

your links exemplify the concept of GIGO.

Your responses exemplify rightwing hypocrisy.

 

[martybegan]

Your responses exemplify rightwing hypocrisy.

And yours show knee jerk TDS.

 

[DudleySmith]

dems cant tolerate freedom of speech on twitter ...

Or anywhere else.

 

[yidnar]

Sure they can. That’s why they are leaving and choosing new platforms instead sitting around whining about it.

I don’t feel sorry Musk. His monumental arrogance is to blame.

monumental ignorance ? millions of conservatives that left twitter will be returning ...

 

[Coyote]

monumental ignorance ? millions of conservatives that left twitter will be returning ...

I said "arrogance".

 

[Synthaholic]

So how many of you new Elon Musk haters are shorting Twitter? Hmmmmmm????

I would never buy Twitter or Meta or any social media stock.

 

[Synthaholic]

Lol!




Toro

 

[Synthaholic]