The Twitter Debacle

[Aaron44126]

Twitter Blue was supposed to relaunch next week, but...

Twitter won’t restart paid verification until ‘significant impersonations’ stop, Elon Musk tells employees

 

[Etern4l]

11 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Twitter Blue was supposed to relaunch in a few days, but...

Twitter won’t restart paid verification until ‘significant impersonations’ stop, Elon Musk tells employees

 

 

I wonder how they are planning to make those impersonations stop. Video verification, ID checks? The more data collected the better.

 

Edit: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-alex-jones-twitter/

 

Ha, so now we know - there is a line! It runs somewhere around the topic of dead children, the justification being that Musk personally experienced the issue. Promising! All we need now is a couple of lifetimes to pass for him to hopefully gain a broader set of life experiences and perspectives.

 

 

 

[Sandy Bridge]

Twitter is now not paying some of its vendors for services already rendered, such as travel expenses for employees that Elon fired: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/technology/elon-musk-twitter-cost-cutting.html

 

Quote

Before Elon Musk bought Twitter last month, the company’s executives had racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel invoices that the social media service planned to pay.

 

 

But once Mr. Musk took over the company, he refused to reimburse travel vendors for those bills, current and former Twitter employees said. Mr. Musk’s staff said the services were authorized by the company’s former management and not by him. His staff have since avoided the calls of the travel vendors, the people said.

 

 

Seems like a bad way to pinch pennies.  Those companies are not going to work with Twitter again, and now that it's public knowledge, any company that is approached by Twitter to do business is going to want payment in advance.  The Soviet Union pulled the same trick with refusing to pay Tsarist debts, and for decades they had to pay for everything they bought overseas in hard currency.

 

It's also been interesting reading about how Musk used the same "the company might go bankrupt" tack with Tesla and SpaceX.  But a key difference being that in some cases that was a legitimate risk for them, and that they had the sorts of missions that could inspire people to want to work long hard hours.  Twitter?  It's not going to change the planet the way that adopting electric cars could, or change the galaxy the way colonizing other planets could.  Why work long hours there when you could work regular hours somewhere else and then post on NotebookTalk in the evening?  Or any of thousands of other activities.

 

Well, I guess George Hotz is in, and he's going to try to fix Twitter's search.  Although more importantly, he's going to get rid of that stupid login overlay.  I rarely use Twitter, but even then I've found it annoying enough to go into the dev tools and abolish it so I could scroll down farther.

 

For that matter, Twitter is also a huge distraction for Musk from things he could do that would have more impact, such as designing rockets at SpaceX or adding more content to etymology.com.

[Reciever]

5 minutes ago, Sandy Bridge said:

Twitter is now not paying some of its vendors for services already rendered, such as travel expenses for employees that Elon fired: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/technology/elon-musk-twitter-cost-cutting.html

 

 

Seems like a bad way to pinch pennies.  Those companies are not going to work with Twitter again, and now that it's public knowledge, any company that is approached by Twitter to do business is going to want payment in advance.  The Soviet Union pulled the same trick with refusing to pay Tsarist debts, and for decades they had to pay for everything they bought overseas in hard currency.

 

It's also been interesting reading about how Musk used the same "the company might go bankrupt" tack with Tesla and SpaceX.  But a key difference being that in some cases that was a legitimate risk for them, and that they had the sorts of missions that could inspire people to want to work long hard hours.  Twitter?  It's not going to change the planet the way that adopting electric cars could, or change the galaxy the way colonizing other planets could.  Why work long hours there when you could work regular hours somewhere else and then post on NotebookTalk in the evening?  Or any of thousands of other activities.

 

Well, I guess George Hotz is in, and he's going to try to fix Twitter's search.  Although more importantly, he's going to get rid of that stupid login overlay.  I rarely use Twitter, but even then I've found it annoying enough to go into the dev tools and abolish it so I could scroll down farther.

 

For that matter, Twitter is also a huge distraction for Musk from things he could do that would have more impact, such as designing rockets at SpaceX or adding more content to etymology.com.

Never a good idea to burn bridges, hopefully the billing gets sorted in an amicable fashion. 

 

I may be biased, but I work long hours, moderate and post here since it's the only community that I feel attached to. Luckily it's been mostly a pleasant experience to which honestly speaking I have you all to blame :) 

 

[Aaron44126]

About that moderation council…

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/22/23474381/elon-musk-twitter-moderation-council-activist-promise

[Etern4l]

11 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

About that moderation council…

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/22/23474381/elon-musk-twitter-moderation-council-activist-promise

 

The council was part of a deal he made with an unnamed “large coalition of political/social activist groups,”

 

Wow, I'm intrigued. What coalition was that? Although, you know - forget it, the bots have spoken after all. 

[serpro69]

I like this one https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/21/23472372/elon-musk-wants-every-twitter-employee-sending-weekly-updates-about-their-work-via-email-now

 

Some years back I was living/working in India for a short-medium period of time, and we had a similar "initiative" brought from above. They wanted to try something "new and exciting that would revolutionize the way everyone worked, boost productivity and performance, and all your usual blah". Our department got the "lucky" draw apparently.

IIRC we did this for about half a year, until we finally convinced the managers to stop the bs. The thing about such activities, they hamper productivity rather than help boost it. And not because you feel like you're being micro-managed, but simply because it's a very inconvenient process that you need to either: a) somehow incorporate into your daily workflow so that reports are accurate enough; or b) make things up in these reports.

 

Now, we were like 5 people in the dept, so 1 person could easily skim through all of these reports on a weekly/monthly basis or whatever. Imagine how many people-hours are going to be spent to go over these reports for every Twitter employee... sheer insanity. Way to make "Twitter the highest performing tech software company in the world", Musk.

[Etern4l]

37 minutes ago, serpro69 said:

I like this one https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/21/23472372/elon-musk-wants-every-twitter-employee-sending-weekly-updates-about-their-work-via-email-now

 

Some years back I was living/working in India for a short-medium period of time, and we had a similar "initiative" brought from above. They wanted to try something "new and exciting that would revolutionize the way everyone worked, boost productivity and performance, and all your usual blah". Our department got the "lucky" draw apparently.

IIRC we did this for about half a year, until we finally convinced the managers to stop the bs. The thing about such activities, they hamper productivity rather than help boost it. And not because you feel like you're being micro-managed, but simply because it's a very inconvenient process that you need to either: a) somehow incorporate into your daily workflow so that reports are accurate enough; or b) make things up in these reports.

 

Now, we were like 5 people in the dept, so 1 person could easily skim through all of these reports on a weekly/monthly basis or whatever. Imagine how many people-hours are going to be spent to go over these reports for every Twitter employee... sheer insanity. Way to make "Twitter the highest performing tech software company in the world", Musk.

 

Weekly status reports are not too uncommon, and probably reasonable enough. At one point daily morning stand ups were all the rage as being "agile", I presume the practice mostly shared the fate of pair programming. 

 

Of course, if Musk is asking to be copied on all the reports that's another sign of madness and toxicity. 

[serpro69]

22 minutes ago, Etern4l said:

Weekly status reports are not too uncommon, and probably reasonable enough. At one point daily morning stand ups were all the rage as being "agile", I presume the practice mostly shared the fate of pair programming. 

 

Sure, weekly (or daily) status reports within a team are fine, good even. But weekly status reports via email from the entire corp... with work summaries and code samples.... I can't see how that's productive. Been there, done that lol - in our case we had to fill out an excel sheet and mail it to the manager 

[Etern4l]

23 minutes ago, serpro69 said:

 

Sure, weekly (or daily) status reports within a team are fine, good even. But weekly status reports via email from the entire corp... with work summaries and code samples.... I can't see how that's productive. Been there, done that lol - in our case we had to fill out an excel sheet and mail it to the manager 

 

This is what someone rational would do if they wanted to drive everyone out of the company. He probably just wishes to weed out sub-standard coders, but the question is will any top coders remaining also be happy to put up with all this for some reason, or will only true Musk-lovers (probably not too many of those at Twitter) remain. Perhaps that's actually the idea. 

[Aaron44126]

1 hour ago, Etern4l said:

At one point daily morning stand ups were all the rage as being "agile", I presume the practice mostly shared the fate of pair programming. 

I imagine daily standups are still common? We do them. Just a quick way to make sure that everyone is on the same page as to what progress is being made and make sure that everyone has what they need to keep moving forward. With a team of 5, should just take like 10 minutes unless there is a specific in-depth issue that needs discussion.

 

I’m feeling Musk’s direction here is less because he is trying to weed people out (though maybe he still is), and more just that he has no real idea how to run a software shop and this is what him “winging it” looks like.

[Etern4l]

45 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

I imagine daily standups are still common? We do them. Just a quick way to make sure that everyone is on the same page as to what progress is being made and make sure that everyone has what they need to keep moving forward. With a team of 5, should just take like 10 minutes unless there is a specific in-depth issue that needs discussion.

 

I’m feeling Musk’s direction here is less because he is trying to weed people out (though maybe he still is), and more just that he has no real idea how to run a software shop and this is what him “winging it” looks like.

 

You don't necessarily need daily stand ups unless there is some sort of reason to promote communication that way, or if the effort is particularly collaborative and the n-n team communication would be happening anyway. Otherwise people end up standing there listening to info about other people's work, which may or may not be of immediate interest. 

 

Musk did start off in software although it was a tiny effort initially, and then at PayPal it seems like his grand vision to create an uber Internet bank didn't pan out and he moved on. In his own view, he is probably one of the best software development managers in the galaxy though. 

[Aaron44126]

Time for another “poll”! Undo all previous bans?

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23475472/elon-musk-twitter-unbanning-suspended-accounts-law-spam-amnesty

[Etern4l]

Totallyy... I mean... Why the hell not, right? 

 

[jaybee83]

On 11/22/2022 at 12:37 AM, Aaron44126 said:

Elon Musk says Twitter is done with layoffs and ready to hire again

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/21/23472025/elon-musk-twitter-hiring-again-ending-layoffs
 

Apparently, the number of current employees is around 2700.

 

yeah sure, now that theyve realized theyve fired too many 😂

 

On 11/22/2022 at 1:07 AM, Etern4l said:

 

Cue an absolute stampede of enthusiastic high-calibre candidates.

 

 

 

https://candor.co/articles/tech-careers/what-is-it-like-working-at-tesla

 

Tesla has an even high turnover rate than Amazon. 

 

“Staff [morale] is very low, job security is very low, the staff turnover is very high and the work environment is extremely volatile."

 

“...he is a relentless micro-manager and singlehandedly derails production, reduces product quality, makes hundreds of people have to work much harder, and causes massive waste because he wants to see every little detail and change those details at literally the last minute,” the Glassdoor user said. “It’s grossly inefficient and is ruining the company bit by bit.”

 

Tesla's benefits are pretty standard

 

 

No kidding... 

 

higher turnover than Amazon?! how is that even possible, lol. amazon is already having troubles finding new ppl because theyve USED UP THE WHOLE ELIGIBLE US POPULATION!!! how much worse than that can u actually get? omg 😂

 

5 hours ago, serpro69 said:

I like this one https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/21/23472372/elon-musk-wants-every-twitter-employee-sending-weekly-updates-about-their-work-via-email-now

 

Some years back I was living/working in India for a short-medium period of time, and we had a similar "initiative" brought from above. They wanted to try something "new and exciting that would revolutionize the way everyone worked, boost productivity and performance, and all your usual blah". Our department got the "lucky" draw apparently.

IIRC we did this for about half a year, until we finally convinced the managers to stop the bs. The thing about such activities, they hamper productivity rather than help boost it. And not because you feel like you're being micro-managed, but simply because it's a very inconvenient process that you need to either: a) somehow incorporate into your daily workflow so that reports are accurate enough; or b) make things up in these reports.

 

Now, we were like 5 people in the dept, so 1 person could easily skim through all of these reports on a weekly/monthly basis or whatever. Imagine how many people-hours are going to be spent to go over these reports for every Twitter employee... sheer insanity. Way to make "Twitter the highest performing tech software company in the world", Musk.

 

5 hours ago, Etern4l said:

 

Weekly status reports are not too uncommon, and probably reasonable enough. At one point daily morning stand ups were all the rage as being "agile", I presume the practice mostly shared the fate of pair programming. 

 

Of course, if Musk is asking to be copied on all the reports that's another sign of madness and toxicity. 

 

phew, such frequent "updates" are a tight rope balancing act... ive gotten used to implement this for myseff, i.e. make short n quick notes on what ive done on a work day to keep track of my accomplishments - comes in handy at the midyear and end of year reviews as well as salary or promotion related negotiations - and, most importantly, it helps me keep a healthy work life balance and not lose sight of any potential OT.

however, if such things become requirements it gets annoying and overbearing VERY easily and just causes unnecessary extra work. having regular (like weekly) update meetings to be on the same page is different, because that is not in the context of "justifying" one's existence at the workplace but rather just alignment of the team and clarification / tackling of unknowns and issues.

[Etern4l]

Twitter disbands Brussels office, prompting fears about online safety

Digital policy executives’ departure elicits unease over adherence to EU rules on disinformation and hate speech

 

Edit: on the bright side, Happy Thanksgiving US folks!

[Sandy Bridge]

On 11/22/2022 at 7:55 PM, Reciever said:

Never a good idea to burn bridges, hopefully the billing gets sorted in an amicable fashion. 

 

I may be biased, but I work long hours, moderate and post here since it's the only community that I feel attached to. Luckily it's been mostly a pleasant experience to which honestly speaking I have you all to blame :) 

 

 

My philosophy has long been that it's great if someone is passionate enough about something that they are motivated to work hard on it, but the problems start when the ownership/leadership of a company expects everyone to be as passionate about the product as the founders are.  It's just not realistic beyond a small/startup-stage company.  Sometimes it continues on a bit when that was already the case beforehand (Microsoft/Apple in the '80s), but it doesn't continue indefinitely (Microsoft today/how nearly the whole original Mac team had left Apple within a couple years of its release).

 

I know of a few people who just really enjoy what they do even at larger companies, which is also great, so long as they don't talk about it all the time (I had that colleague once, he'd come in every Monday and talk about what he worked on over the weekend and make everyone else feel like an underachiever even though they weren't).  But the proportion is usually much smaller than at startups.  So Twitter's going to be left with whoever fits in that category and isn't scared off by Musk's management practices, those who are stuck due to visas, and anyone who is hanging around because they don't think they can find another job easily, aka the underperformers.  Musk is hoping there is a large enough category of passionate people to keep things going, but that's an awfully big gamble.

 

----------

 

I agree that having a couple thousand people send weekly reports to Musk is not a good use of time.  A small team can meet every morning to coordinate and make sure no one is stuck, a somewhat larger team can meet weekly to make sure everyone's on the same page.

 

But at this scale, even assuming Musk has a few people to help him out in reviewing these, I can't see it working well.  My guess is he's going to dismiss people whose reports don't meet his standards, and in the process is going to dismiss a lot of people he shouldn't because he doesn't have the context to understand why their work is valuable.  Kind of like how he's already fired people and then realized they are essential, and has had to beg them to come back (sometimes only to re-fire them a couple weeks later).

[Aaron44126]

Apple reportedly has concerns over the state of content moderation on Twitter.  It could risk getting pulled from the App Store.  (It would be at similar risk of being pulled from Google Play...)

 

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/11/28/elon-musk-apple-stopped-twitter-ads/

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/28/23482387/elon-musk-twitter-apple-threat-withhold-app-store

 

The "source" is Elon Musk himself, so who knows what is really going on, but... For precedent, Parler was temporarily yanked from both stores after failing to deal with violent content in the wake of the January 6 2021 event, and Truth Social had a difficulty launching on Google Play over content moderation concerns.  Further back, Tumblr was temporarily removed from the app store in 2018 also because of content moderation issues.  With Twitter's content moderation teams gutted, it's been widely reported that they've had a hard time keeping up.

 

If Twitter gets pulled, Musk's solution is to create an "alternative phone"; Twitter certainly has the resources for that, right?

[Etern4l]

4 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Apple reportedly has concerns over the state of content moderation on Twitter.  It could risk getting pulled from the App Store.  (It would be at similar risk of being pulled from Google Play...)

 

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/11/28/elon-musk-apple-stopped-twitter-ads/

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/28/23482387/elon-musk-twitter-apple-threat-withhold-app-store

 

The "source" is Elon Musk himself, so who knows what is really going on, but... For precedent, Parler was temporarily yanked from both stores after failing to deal with violent content in the wake of the January 6 2021 event, and Truth Social had a difficulty launching on Google Play over content moderation concerns.  Further back, Tumblr was temporarily removed from the app store in 2018 also because of content moderation issues.  With Twitter's content moderation teams gutted, it's been widely reported that they've had a hard time keeping up.

 

If Twitter gets pulled, Musk's solution is to create an "alternative phone"; Twitter certainly has the resources for that, right?

 

Haha. I would think he has the resources to try and make an ElonPhone, would love to see that attempt!

If he doesn't like something, he can just make his own version of it. Things are great in his universe.

[jaybee83]

On 11/28/2022 at 11:43 PM, Etern4l said:

 

Haha. I would think he has the resources to try and make an ElonPhone, would love to see that attempt!

If he doesn't like something, he can just make his own version of it. Things are great in his universe.

 

an ElonPhone, i love it 😂 should be a satellite phone that can receive signals directly from Mars lulz

[Etern4l]

16 minutes ago, jaybee83 said:

 

an ElonPhone, i love it 😂 should be a satellite phone that can signals directly from Mars lulz

 

Err, let's not talk about that whole Mars thing, let's focus on Twitter. That's what's important!

[Aaron44126]

Twitter Blue launch delayed while Elon Musk figures out a way around Apple's 30% cut for in-app purchases.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/11/musk-wont-relaunch-twitter-blue-until-he-finds-a-way-to-avoid-apple-fees/

(Hint: Just make people use a web browser to sign up.)

(Also: Google charges the same fee.)

[Etern4l]

To be fair, 30% is daylight robbery. 

[jaybee83]

19 minutes ago, Etern4l said:

To be fair, 30% is daylight robbery. 

 

nah, just industry standard. wait for hikes to 40% due to "inflation", everyone's favorite excuse to raise prices currently 😛 

[Sandy Bridge]

Musk would probably just buy some struggling Android phone maker for an overpriced amount to have them start making his phone.  Even he probably couldn't afford the really successful ones though (Samsung, LG, Xiaomi).

 

But I doubt he'd have much more luck with phones than Microsoft or Apple did.  Microsoft poured billions into Windows Phone over the better part of a decade, and had Windows CE before that; Elon could launch his own Android-based phone by purchasing someone, but without the App Store he'd be at just as much of a competitive disadvantage as Huawei (aside from not being sanctioned altogether in the U.S.).

 

Meanwhile he's increasing Starlink prices in Ukraine, for both the terminals and service, because it might be losing $100M/month.  I can't help but think that if he hadn't just dropped $44B on Twitter, he could be having a major PR win with Starlink right now... and even after dropping all that money on Twitter he could still afford it.  It's still sort of impressive from a technical standpoint what Starlink is doing in Ukraine, it just doesn't look so good to be price-gouging the Ukrainians while buying social networks for tens of billions.