Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned out I’d been fired

https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/12/02/i-thought-id-been-hacked-it-turned-out-id-been-fired-tales-of-a-twitter-engineer

by samizdis • 4 years ago

166 306 4 years ago

economist.com

KindAndFriendly• 4 years ago

https://archive.ph/ESpwJ

spaced-out2• 4 years ago

My colleague, whom I liked a lot, was never going to get it done in time without help, so we all pitched in. I actually quite enjoyed it. I wasn’t really thinking about whether those changes were good for Twitter; I just really liked being part of that community, working together on a deadline. I even slept on a sofa in the office on Saturday night.

It's not cool to paint pressuring employees to work long hours as a good thing, and we need to be more vocal about this. It's great the author is fine wasting his weekend working on changes to a verification system that was launched for only a few days, but some of us have family and friends we like to spend time with. Hobbies and other things outside of work that give our lives meaning. Generations of workers fought hard for things like weekends and we shouldn't just glibly throw them away just because we're paid well.

spoils19• 4 years ago

A user on HN, kamaal, posted something that many on this site agree with:

Let's be honest this is far from what people call slavery. They are being paid multiples of six digit salaries, RSUs and work in one of the most happening tech ecosystems of the world.
I would love to be a part of something like this. Heck most of us would love to be a part of something like.
I kind of envy those guys working on these projects. I hope I was the one there.

bobleeswagger• 4 years ago

It's kind of sad when you have the perspective. Nobody working for a tech company in an at-will agreement is a wage slave, period. People just want to be victims, though.

biohax2015• 4 years ago

For real. Go work at an insurance company if you can’t take the heat.

ddellacosta3• 4 years ago

I understand the point being made, but this is fundamentally naive and counter-productive for everyone who wants to be working in this industry as a software engineer. Engineers are going to get exploited: just shrugging and saying "but we get paid well enough" means stuff like this: https://hirecloud.io/hr-and-recruiting-news/the-techtopus-ho... will continue to happen over, and over, and over.

So, unfortunately, your post encourages what the ones at the top with all the capital love: getting the rest of us fight over the scraps. Because the truth is that it's all scraps to them, and that's how they want to keep it.

yamtaddle• 4 years ago

On the other hand it'd be great if people lucky enough to be caught in a temporary storm of spying-ad-supported stupid money would use some of that leverage to improve workers' rights more broadly rather than working overtime for free.

If you're exchanging time for money, you ain't on the capital side of the struggle.

NaturalPhallacy2• 4 years ago

On the other hand "exempt" employees as we're legally defined, make less money per hour the more we work because we're "exempt" from overtime pay.

The fact this is even legal indicates congress sold out the working class in the '80s.

Sure you may be able to slack off a lot in some jobs, and effectively make more money per hour. But it's an absolute certainty that if you work 80 hours a week, you're not going to be paid more as an exempt employee. It's one of the nice things about being a contractor, you can actually get overtime pay. And as a result most companies will be strict about not making you work more than 40. Funny how that works.

civopsec6• 4 years ago

Just saying that you are “lucky” without considering the fact that you make money for your employer makes you into a simp for your employer.

So you’re privileged, you say. What about your employer?

fnimick3• 4 years ago

Not just that, but every employee who wants to work nights and weekends puts pressures on those who don't to catch up or be cut. It's a race to the bottom that leads to people who do have things they need to do scheduling emails to go out late at night, changing the times on their commits, etc to look like they are as "committed" as the rest of the team. It's harmful and damaging and I'm not at all surprised that people here support it.

tylersmith3• 4 years ago

If people are scheduling emails and faking commits to feign value then they should absolutely be cut.

tomcam6• 4 years ago

Did Steph Curry or Kobe Bryant harm basketball because they plain worked harder than everyone else? Prince in the recording studio? Did they cause a race to the bottom?

ketralnis2• 4 years ago

It's kind of a weird situation. As told, this person enjoyed what they were doing and hanging out with their friends, and that happened to be on a project that benefited their employer. This sounds like it's not your problem.

Except you're troubled by it because you're competing with them. You don't have fun hanging out late at work and living on Mountain Dew and Cheetos but you're competing for the same salaries and promotions as people that do. Them glibly throwing away their weekends does affect you because you're in the same competition space as them.

I dunno, I have some dissonance here. I've been young and had fun on a work project and did unpaid overtime because I just really enjoyed it, and I'd have been rightly pretty pissy about it if you unrelated unaffected person on the internet told me to stop. I still do sometimes. But now that I'm older if I were laid off in favour of all-nighter people I'd also be pretty pissy about that.

Especially if those terms changed after I chose an employer based on the stated hours and felt like I met them. The way you "solve" this in a market way is by putting it in the employment terms. I take a job knowing the terms, and maybe I take a pay cut for choosing the non-all-nighters job, fine. But then a Musk can come along and ignore all of that. The protectionist way is regulating the all-nighter folk away but younger me would have absolutely ignored it and a Musk event would have rewarded it in exactly the way you're unhappy about.

spaced-out2• 4 years ago

This is very true, and there's certainly nothing I could do if our industry becomes filled with people who are willing and eager to put in 70 hour weeks for months at a time.

All I'd add is look where it got this guy: still fired. And I bet he got less severance than the people who opted for the 3 months from that form Musk sent out weeks ago. I started my career in startups and I saw the same thing quite often. Passionate young engineers sinking their life into a project only to get the same, or an even worse deal than the people who did less work but were more politically savvy.

tomcam6• 4 years ago

You don't have fun hanging out late at work and living on Mountain Dew and Cheetos

Still my idea of fun! Can’t do it anymore for health reasons but I still pull all-nighters doing my own retirement projects.

golemotron• 4 years ago

Except you're troubled by it because you're competing with them. You don't have fun hanging out late at work and living on Mountain Dew and Cheetos but you're competing for the same salaries and promotions as people that do. Them glibly throwing away their weekends does affect you because you're in the same competition space as them.

Yes. Ressentiment is ubiquitous these days. Nietzsche would be amused but it's not a good look for our culture.

rightbyte• 4 years ago

This sounds like it's not your problem.

He was undercutting his colleagues by working for free. So it kinda is my problem.

I mean, fine, since people's wages are not the same anyway some people might as well decrease their hourly wage by overextending.

But I feel a need to remind those people of that they are suckers and won't be compensated for it in the end.

The author just got fired.

sokoloff2• 4 years ago

This makes about as much sense as being upset that some people eat healthy and work out and as a result are more physically attractive/competitive in the same dating market that you're in. Or that some people study and hone their professional craft sometimes before 8:59 AM or after 5:01 PM.

Make your choices and let others make their choices. Not everyone wants to optimize for the same things in life.

kdmccormick3• 4 years ago

I appreciate that you represent both sides of argument here, but I've found a way to frame it for myself that removes all the dissonance:

You work for a large, for-profit company. You have some free time outside of the typical 9-5 M-F work week and you would like to spend some of it working. Great! You could:

* contribute to an an open source project or start your own

* start a side project/business

* volunteer somewhere

* take an online course

* exercise

* goof off

* do almost anything else

The effects of these on on society and yourself range from neutral at worst to helpful at best.

Instead, you choose to:

* contribute extra unpaid time to your employer

This may enrich your life, but it definitely enriches the shareholders of your company. It dials up the expectations of others who are in the same employment pool as you. It hurts future generations of workers by eroding the expectation of work-life balance that we are lucky enough to have achieved in our industry.

To me, it is pretty clear: if you put your extra time into for-profit work, you suck.

ilyt20• 4 years ago

Looking at my country laws you'd be entirely fine to pull the all nighters at work but paid 150-200% for it.

That solves all of that, employer can't just convince gullible teenager to get extra work out of them for little benefit and have active motivation to hire enough people to not have to crunch very often (as doing that makes them pay 2x per hour of work).

Those laws are in place because for every "crunching and happy for it" there is ten that stay for longer out of fear that they will get fired for wanting to work normal amount in favour of someone that lives work.

joshuamcginnis2• 4 years ago

Generations of workers fought for the _choice_ to not work weekends. Some people, including myself, are happy to work weekends and long hours if its worth it. The point is, it should be the workers choice and if they don't like it, they should be able to leave and find something better. There are clearly still plenty of engineers at Twitter who have done the cost-benefit analysis and decided staying was right for them.

OkayPhysicist• 4 years ago

If it doesn't cost the company significantly extra (say, due to overtime), then the company's interest is increasing work hours for everyone to the max. In such a situation, other workers doing so, and getting discretionarily rewarded for it simply erodes the position of those who, rightfully, refuse to work more than they need to.

Unless there's a fixed "here's how much extra you will be rewarded, and thus how much it will cost the company" policy about working past normal working hours, people who do so are scabs.

mrazomor• 4 years ago

Well said! Thanks for calling it out.

just because we're paid well.

People might try another perspective. Does $200k a year sound good? How about $100k a year?

How many say "yes" to the first, but "no" to the second? While still working weekends and staying late -- that's lying to yourself.

Working unpaid overtime, devaluates the employee. If it comes from more senior colleagues or managers, then it's at risk of creating an implicit culture. One not suitable for people with responsibilities outside the work place.

zamalek• 4 years ago

It's not only that it's "not cool," but the outcomes of long hours don't match the expectations. The concept of "more person-hours in, more productivity out" heralds from the days of Ford, and strictly applies to individuals performing rote jobs on a factory floor (to a certain degree): tightening bolt after bolt, painting the car hoods as they roll by, nailing two pieces of wood together, etc. Human biology is adept at building up physical stamina when exposed to continued physical stress. During the alleged information age we have seen (time and time again) that our biology is woefully inadequate at building up mental stamina: we just get mentally exhausted (i.e. stupid).

Ultimately, if you pour more person-hours into software (or other "mind jobs") you should expect to get an inferior end product and/or diminished productivity.

Just look at Musk himself: sending out completely idiotic emails at 2AM. At least a portion of his behavior could be attributed to having completely diminished his mental faculties due to overworking himself.

mtlmtlmtlmtl• 4 years ago

This is an important point that gets overlooked in these discussion. Which is weird because I thought most programmers had learned the hard way that coding while tired is a surefire way to just generate more work.

concordDance2• 4 years ago

At least a portion of his behavior could be attributed to having completely diminished his mental faculties due to overworking himself.

This feels like a really under appreciated point. If you overwork yourself for 10 years it's going to have nasty effects on you.

matwood• 4 years ago

Hobbies and other things outside of work that give our lives meaning. Generations of workers fought hard for things like weekends and we shouldn't just glibly throw them away just because we're paid well.

One of my big hobbies was doing everything I could on a computer way before I got paid to program. I doubt the author considered what they did a waste since they were doing something they enjoyed.

throw8383833jj2• 4 years ago

I totally agree.

Here's my hypothesis as to why people are so glib about throwing away their lives for their employer:

People depend on their employer for their entire livelyhood. This day and age, without a pay check, you can't have any basic needs: Shelter, food or water and you'd be out on the street or worse: the average homeless person (it's shocking) lives 30 years less than a housed one.

So, it's no surprise that a large segement of people end up with stockholm's syndrom from their employer. they begin to identify with their captor and even take on their values and their beliefs. If you're kidnapped, at least you have some hope of escape. but when you're employed, you are the prison guard who holds the key. so you have no hope of escape, this amplifies the stockholm's syndrom.

deltree7• 4 years ago

Can you apply your brilliant logic to Elon Musk who works 100 hours per week? or Warren Buffett who still goes to work?

Many people enjoy work.

subroutine2• 4 years ago

Just so I understand, your world view is that normality means disliking your job; anyone who enjoys their job is suffering from stockholm's syndrome. Even if you're making a quarter mil per year, if you stay after-hours with coworker buddies to implement a feature that augments the experience of millions of people, you're a total sucker.

bsder• 4 years ago

It's great the author is fine wasting his weekend working on changes to a verification system that was launched for only a few days, but some of us have family and friends we like to spend time with.

No, it's great that the author helped out a colleague. The fact that it benefited Twitter is secondary.

Helping out your colleagues (who are now all over new companies as they've all been fired from Twitter) is how you build your network, get your next job, get people to give you nice recommendations, etc.

Corporations are amoral and greedy and should not be helped unless they are helping you, but that doesn't mean you should piss on everything and everyone around you either.

civopsec6• 4 years ago

I thought about commenting on this. But I figured that people would just take the argument down the path of indirectly competing about who the most passionate hacker (tm) is.

octopolus• 4 years ago

It's not cool to paint pressuring employees to work long hours as a good thing, and we need to be more vocal about this

Just stop, please. There's nothing wrong with working long hours and people enjoy it, let them live in peace.

ilyt20• 4 years ago

That entirely depends on compensation.

chasing• 4 years ago

"Hey, boss. I'm going to need you to go ahead and pay me twice as much this week. Unfortunately I'm not going to be able to work any extra. But just think of the sense of accomplishment you'll have seeing me drive into the parking lot in the new car that you helped make happen! High five!"

smoldesu15• 4 years ago

The "hacking" hook is simply that their Macbook went into MDM lockdown mode. That's completely normal for companies at-scale, and I can understand why they'd want to lock the devices before laying people off. If the opposite had happened, they'd be writing an article about how Twitter failed to protect their files and angle it as a "they're running out of staff" article.

I still don't really understand what there is worth talking about here. Twitter is notoriously overstaffed, and any new management would start by cutting non-essential engineer positions.

infamouscow• 4 years ago

Corporate media produces nothing of intellectual value. It merely continues to exist because their business model, advertising, allowed them pivot into being drama generating entertainment machines.

duxup• 4 years ago

Corporate media

People like to read that stuff.

smoldesu15• 4 years ago

I agree. However, Twitter employees know what they signed up for, so this article is really just taking advantage of people who have never heard/seen this happen. It's fairly common in the industry, even if the results are disappointing and impact is ineffectual.

afavour3• 4 years ago

It feels good to say stuff like that but it's not really true. A look over Pulitzer Prize winners from previous years will show deeply researched investigative stories and have had a real impact on public awareness.

chrisseaton• 4 years ago

Corporate media produces nothing of intellectual value.

Never seen any intellectual value in a BBC drama, comedy, or nature documentary?

chadash• 4 years ago

Top 10 articles from the front page of nytimes.com right now:

* E.U. Settles on Russian Oil Price Cap After Fraught Talks

* A phony climate foundation in Germany helped Russia complete Nord Stream 2 after U.S. sanctions threatened to derail it.

* U.S. Employers Add 263,000 Jobs, Showing Strong Demand for Workers

* Why are middle-aged men missing from the labor market?

* Alex Jones Files for Bankruptcy

* As Officials Ease Restrictions Amid Protests, China Faces New Pandemic Risks

* Hate Speech’s Rise on Twitter Is Unprecedented, Researchers Find

* Kanye West was suspended from Twitter after posting a swastika.

* Cameroon Tries to Become Third African Nation to Advance

* From The Athletic: Follow real-time updates from Serbia vs. Switzerland.

Sure, some of these (e.g. first twitter headline) seem to follow an agenda, but most of these are just plain old news. It is easy to think "all of this is available on Twitter or through other independent journalists", but twitter has the luxury of being able to look at what the papers are reporting on. If you didn't have the likes CNN, NYT and the BBC, you wouldn't have reporters at white house press conferences, people reporting from Ukraine, nor any sort of real curation of the news.

Are there blind spots? Of course. Twitter is way better in some niche areas. Do the news outlets show biases? Yes, of course. But without the big news outlets, twitter wouldn't have as much to go off of. I like to think of it the other way around... imagine that corporate media didn't exist. You'd have thousands of independent journalists looking into different things with no curation. Eventually, some of them would realize that to be effective, they need to form groups, since some areas are too big for one person to cover. Eventually, small groups that people followed would grow larger as they try to report on more and more things. Eventually, they'd collectivize and form larger "corporations". You'd be back to square one.

And I'm just talking about plain old news. All of this is leaving aside the big and costly investigative pieces that some of the larger outlets are able to put together. Go and read anything at https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/206 and tell me if anyone but "corporate media" would be able to do anything even close to these.

cuttysnark2• 4 years ago

don't really understand what there is worth talking about here.

Elon Musk, previously adored by many for futurist technology advocacy and largely forgiven for quirky-billionaire-behavior is now on the "bad guy list". This is "public opinion", from my perspective. It is now common to hear people saying: "He didn't really build that" "His family had money" "His family had a mine" "He's a fascist" "He's a racist because of where/when he was born"

Any and every attempt to report on the fallout from Musk buying twitter will command the headlines. Doesn't matter if it's the same strategy any other takeover management would employ. That's irrelevant. Musk? Bad Guy.

So: "Elon Bad. Twitter suffer. Here's an example..."

mertd• 4 years ago

“You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

This is almost a truism. When someone reaches an extreme position, they can never be ordinary again and they will be judged by absolute terms.

VHRanger• 4 years ago

Nonsense.

Presumably any private equity firm would also have came to a conclusion of reducing headcount.

They wouldn't have done so in a single week based on ridiculous analysis. And wouldn't have done so in a way to destroy the morale of remaining workforce.

smoldesu15• 4 years ago

It does seem to be the case, I'm just not sure what's worth reading into here. Billionaires do stupid and terrible things constantly, if any of these passionate sideliners actually cared about that stuff then they'd be out for Larry Ellison's head for buying Lanai, or asking Steve Jobs about his $40 million jet.

hungryforcodes• 4 years ago

Though he is heading on the path of Dr Evil, let's just admit it.

izzydata• 4 years ago

The only really important aspect here is that he is a bad business man and Tesla and SpaceX had to manage Elon rather than then the other way around in order to be successful.

rxhernandez• 4 years ago

I guess I can buy that some of the criticism is objectively gratuitous but, humans hating everything another human does, if that human is hated themselves, isn't really anything new.

I guess the real question is, why should anyone expect Elon to have exemption from the hate game that everyone else is apart of?

osculum• 4 years ago

Those are not new comments about musk no? I’ve heard them for years.

zimpenfish• 4 years ago

It is now common to hear people saying: "He didn't really build that" "His family had money" "His family had a mine" "He's a fascist" "He's a racist because of where/when he was born"

To be fair, that's been going on at least 2-3 years. Way before he got involved with Twitter.

coffeeblack4• 4 years ago

Yep. And the entire media apparatus changed its behavior at the same moment into the same direction. Weird.

fzeroracer3• 4 years ago

Normal according to who, exactly? Like where is your reference point for 'normal'? I've worked for companies at scale and have never dealt with these sort of problems before because usually there's an understanding that employees when laid off aren't going to do anything bad (unless you're perhaps cutting them out of severance and spiting them, which...).

Do you have any reference points or reasons why you believe this is normal contrary to my own professional experience?

telotortium2• 4 years ago

Many, many companies, particularly larger ones (5,000+ employees, but Silicon Valley companies are more likely than non-tech companies of a given size to employ "advanced" IT features like MDM) are concerned with potential sabotage by suddenly laid-off employees, particularly in the U.S. Have you ever worked anywhere with MDM installed on your company-provided devices?

horsawlarway4• 4 years ago

Across basically every company I've worked for - this is normal. And many of those companies are not 3k+ employee tech companies. Think 10 to 100 engineers.

It's actually a requirement for many compliance certifications in the US - previously employed staff are not allowed access to your systems.

If you're in an office - you can wait until you grab the employee and put them in a conference room to fire them before cutting access (as long as security is there to escort them out afterwards). When everyone is remote - that is not an option.

ex: item number 1 for SOC 2 compliance is

----

Access controls

—logical and physical restrictions on assets to prevent access by unauthorized personnel.

----

When an employee is terminated - they are unauthorized personnel.

spaceywilly• 4 years ago

When I was laid off security walked me from a conference room near the exit to my car. I was not even allowed to collect my stuff from my desk, had to have a friend bring it to me after.

WalterBright2• 4 years ago

One company I'm personally familiar with announced a layoff at a branch office a couple months in advance. When the main branch people showed up two months later to manage the layoff, the building was looted clean and nobody was there. Even the furniture was gone. Only trash remained.

themitigating5• 4 years ago

Notoriously overstaffed based on what? The fact that you've heard this repeated in different ways over a long period of time?

bottlepalm5• 4 years ago

Twitter had almost the same number of people as SpaceX. One of those companies launches a rocket a week, multiple manned missions a year to the ISS, operates a global satellite internet constellation, and is building a ship that can go to Mars. The other company.. does what?

coffeeblack4• 4 years ago

Based on the staff they actually need.

smoldesu15• 4 years ago

Based on the fact that they've gone through several waves of layoffs and nothing significant has broken yet. If anything, it's gotten better now that I don't need to log-in to scroll through someone's feed. Best change they've made in years, from where I'm standing.

But generally, yeah. I've heard a lot of people question Twitter's opex and headcount over the years, from HN to daily standup meetings. Twitter is a big company that ships a small handful of products, of which only Twitter for iOS and Twitter for Web really seems to matter. As long as they don't fire their sysops and iOS developers, most Twitter users would probably never notice a difference.

ilyt20• 4 years ago

Their cost in last 4-5 years grew faster than profits, their user base didn't increase that much, which means they have been hiring people that have less and less to do with turning profit to the company.

What musk is doing is, well, clown fiesta, but it's easy to look at twitter finances and see someone isn't making company's money

coffeeblack4• 4 years ago

It’s a news headline. So it’s less about accuracy and more about drama.

reaperducer2• 4 years ago

Twitter is notoriously overstaffed, and any new management would start by cutting non-essential engineer positions.

Elon? Is that you?

Raed6674• 4 years ago

This is why I tell everyone I ever work with: "Don't have any personal document on your work laptop that isn't backed somewhere personal"

You never know when that bank statement, or rent agreement or whatever will suddenly become inaccessible.

Edit: I know we're not supposed to mix personal data with work. But who hasn't downloaded some docs because you need them filled or printed or something.

GloriousKoji• 4 years ago

I don't mix personal data and work but they sure can present enough gray areas. Things like digital copies of paystubs, ESPP details, and W4 can only be accessed while employed and on the company network. I leaned that one the hard way a year later when doing taxes.

Raed6674• 4 years ago

The scary wake-up call for me when I heard the story of someone who informed their manager of their 2-week notice. And instead of having 2 weeks to sort everything out, they got locked out immediately.

kadoban2• 4 years ago

Anything you do on work hardware, it the US is pretty much free range for them to snoop into as much as they want.

Putting that kind of stuff on your work laptop is just unthinkably weird to me. Why would anyone do that?

Raed6674• 4 years ago

I guess my rule of thumb is "Am I ok with HR seeing this?", this is more about access (tax papers, paystubs, bank statements, ...) than privacy.

kelnos6• 4 years ago

Because most people don't actually care all that much about privacy, at least when the consequences aren't immediately obvious.

Sure, if you flat-out ask someone if they'd be comfortable posting their bank statements on Facebook, they'd say no, of course not. But even if people know that their employer can snoop on the contents of their work laptop (I imagine some people don't realize), it's a hypothetical threat. And often people have some sort of implicit trust in their employer, anyway, for some strange reason.

In my experience, most people put personal things on their work laptop, and don't think twice about it. Unfortunately you're actually the "weird" one, even though I totally agree with you.

francisofascii• 4 years ago

Why would anyone do that?

Because of convenience. It is an easy mistake to make. If you have to print something like a rent agreement, do you use your office printer or go through the hassle of sending it to FedEx to print? Also, when you have home office setups configured for your work, it can be a pain to switch everything to your personal laptop, if you even have one.

teeray• 4 years ago

From a sustainability perspective, it’s regrettable that regulations are so fixated on the physical machine. It would be entirely possible to logically segment a work environment from a personal environment on a machine without one’s processes spilling over into the other’s. But nope, we all lug two laptops and two phones (if you use iOS).

deathanatos• 4 years ago

There have been a number of times in my career where HR emailed personal material (e.g., legal agreements, tax documents, etc.) to my work email, effectively forcing me to exfil my own personal data off the work laptop to the personal laptop. In HR's mind, it's a company document, because it pertains to an employee. But to me, it needs to persist beyond my employement, e.g., because the company wants me to honor the terms of the agreement, or because law requires it.

One of these times was during a layoff that I was a part of.

(But also, people are lazy, and personal stuff ends up on work machines.)

kevstev• 4 years ago

Mostly because we generally work during the same business hours other people are? If you ever have to deal with an insurance issue, sign a lease, take out or refinance a mortgage, buy a car... etc... its probable that you will have to print something out at the office, sign it, scan it and send it back to someone- and now its essentially open for the company to read. Even if you aren't downloading and printing something, even logging into a website is more or less the same thing for a determined snooper. Sometimes its just a matter of convenience, but it can add an irritating delay or worse.

I try to avoid it as much as possible, but its unavoidable in at least some cases. I am not going to take a day off of work just because I have to call about a billing issue and need to login to my account to give the details to a service representative.

civopsec6• 4 years ago

I wiped the computer they gave me and installed my own OS. If I quit or they fire me there is a three month period where I have to work for them anyway.

It would be ideal to have two computers, but I don’t feel like committing to such an expense (it would have to be about equally powerful) in this economy and all that.

Raed6674• 4 years ago

How are you even allowed to access anything related to work without some sort of device-management installed?

Symbiote2• 4 years ago

The BIOS (or equivalent) will be locked on these corporate laptops. You can't install your own OS.

1983054105• 4 years ago

In France, I have the same 3 months period where I still have to work. If they decide to lock my computer during this period, I'm free to stop working and tell them to provide me with a new computer ASAP since I cannot do anything at all.

Unless they want to fire you and then they still could remove those 3 months and give you some money instead. It would be stupid of them to give me a free salary for 3 months: either they fire me properly, or they give me a computer.

retskrad• 4 years ago

It's fascinating how Elon Musk supporters on Twitter cheered, almost like a sports team, when the Twitter employees got fired in such inhumane ways by Elon Musk. Don't his supporters realize that Elon would do the same thing to them if they worked at Twitter? The stereotype about conservatives ring true - they don't care about others until it affects them personally.

badpun• 4 years ago

Employing people who barely provide any value is no good for anyone in the long run. Full employment was always the primary goal of all communist countries, so (state) companies were practically required to employ everyone on the job market. Many of those people had little to do and so, when people got their salaries at the end of the month, there wasn't that much stuff in the stores to buy with it, as the companies didn't have much of an output.

factsarelolz4• 4 years ago

This 100%.

Look at how much the employees of SV/FAANG companies donate to politicians and which ones. It's not hard to see the money laundering going on.

MikePlacid7• 4 years ago

It's fun to see a simple plain truth downvoted.

I was a software engineer in the Soviet Union. To buy your family something to eat (like milk, or cheese) you should skip work and spend an hour or more standing in lines at a grocery store. I used a different strategy: work late and around 8 pm there were no lines at you could still buy sour milk, bread and canned fish in tomato sauce. I survived on this and was pretty happy cause I liked my job. But remember the requirement: no kids...

ilyt20• 4 years ago

I'm suspicious many redesigns came from just that.

The app is needed, so we hire people to make app. We got a bunch of designers and developers to develop UI in a team.

But OH NO!, WE DID A GOOD JOB! EVERYTHING WORKS AND IS EASILY EXTENSIBLE!

What next? There isn't enough work on the new stuff ? We just add UI for a feature other team develops every so often, that's not enough work to go by.

And, more importantly, MANAGER CAN'T MAKE THEMSELVES LOOK GOOD when doing only maintenance and not delivering features.

What to do, what to do? I know ? Let's rewrite perfectly functioning UI again! Let's fuck around with stuff that works fine already. Make it look "modern" while we're at it. Use new framework so we can't reuse that much code. That will keep the devs busy and manager getting bonuses!

KMag• 4 years ago

The sad fact is that most people really care about their 150 or so closest acquaintances, somewhat care about people in their various tribes, and try and largely fail to have much compassion for outsiders. For the majority of people, their espoused political leanings are rationalizations they tell themselves to cover selfish underlying motivations.

Elon has his fanboys, who are going to fan. I think they probably skew fiscally and regulatorily laissez-faire, socially progressive, and middle-aged more than they skew classical conservative.

pessimizer2• 4 years ago

The sad fact is that most people really care about their 150 or so closest acquaintances

Which is the best reason that upper-middle class people are screaming about Twitter layoffs. The worst reason is just because they repeat what they've read to each other as a proxy for conversation.

pessimizer2• 4 years ago

Layoffs aren't particularly inhumane, they're common, especially after a change of leadership. If you want workers' rights, fight for them. It's bizarre to make it into a soap opera of judging the moral worth of great men.

It's bizarre how Musk has been propped up into a surrogate for the bad aspects of capitalism, especially by an administration that just overruled a union vote through legislation.

aussieshibe2• 4 years ago

GP didn't say "layoffs are inhumane", but that the manner in which people have been fired is inhumane.

dibt5• 4 years ago

It's fascinating how Elon Musk supporters on Twitter cheered, almost like a sports team, when the Twitter employees got fired in such inhumane ways by Elon Musk

Do you have any examples? Did they identify as Musk supporters? One or two tweets with a sufficiently high amount of replies and 'likes' should be enough. Otherwise, I'd wonder if you are painting a narrative.

ilyt20• 4 years ago

I think it comes from the fact that musk & his cult got shit thrown their way from Twitter-leaning people when he started talking about free speech, as it appeared that they were unhappy that Twitter might stop banning people that have "incorrect" political opinions.

So the firings is seen as "karma" coming back to people that "didn't wanted free speech", even if fired person might be utterly unrelated to the whole thing.

fired in such inhumane ways

gotta complain to your legislators here, musk would be fucked if he tried shit like that in EU...

The stereotype about conservatives ring true - they don't care about others until it affects them personally.

That's basic human group behaviour and nothing characteristic for any political group. The other side behaves literally identical. Or, well, as usual, the some individuals in the group do, but, also as usual, the more extreme elements of a group often form its public image.

beau_g• 4 years ago

My boss was fired. So was his boss. And his boss’s boss. And their boss.

At least 5 direct reports between a talented engineer working on a critical feature with huge media attention and the leadership? Seems like a lot.

telotortium2• 4 years ago

I might expect that at Google, but Google also has 20 times the employees.

amrocha5• 4 years ago

seems pretty normal to me.

Engineer -> team leader -> director -> VP -> CXO

buzzdenver• 4 years ago

To add to the sibling post: 5^5 is around 3000. So 5 engineers have a team leader, 5 of them are under a director, etc... So 5 layers sounds about right for a Twitter sized company.

heywherelogingo• 4 years ago

Is this Economist promo week?

NaturalPhallacy2• 4 years ago

It's Musk hating week.

godshatter2• 4 years ago

I thought that was last week.

usedtoprog• 4 years ago

As Denis Leary said: "Life sucks. Get a fucking helmet"

brailsafe• 4 years ago

This has roughly happened to me many times. It gives you a bit of trauma, and now every time anything ecen vaguely off happens, I think I've been fired. Lots of people don't know what it's like, welcome to the club.

ElijahLynn• 4 years ago

One day I created a tool that made it faster to download things from your work email that you might need if you were looking for a job: performance evaluations and that sort of thing. I posted the tool on Slack so that my colleagues could also benefit from it if they needed to. One hour and four minutes later I was fired.

azanar2• 4 years ago

It seems many commenters in several threads are making the same point. I'll summarize it here:

Creating an excessively competitive environment by working longer hours because of an ability and desire to do so is bad civic hygiene.

I can say I understand the sentiment. I personally very much dislike the bind someone puts me in if they do my job for cheaper. I dislike it _more_ when I see them suffering because of the choice they made. I think of the implications, and see a path toward everyone suffering. I want to hold that other individual responsible for increasing suffering in the world.

I take a beat. They've made a poor decision. Or maybe they haven't. Maybe they are suffering in ways I see, but not suffering in ways I don't see. Maybe they seem to be suffering more than they are. Can I do something else about my suffering _other_ than hold them responsible?

Example: are they _really_ normalizing mandated weekend work by voluntarily working weekends.

No? Then I think we can start talking about civic hygiene. I think civic hygiene is too complicated of a subject to shoot from the gut about. It is too complicated to reason about from a foundation of resentment.

kelnos6• 4 years ago

It's the human equivalent of the race to the bottom. A company with deep pockets (or VC funding) might sell a product at or below cost to try to muscle out competitors. The end result is either a monopoly (where the company can then raise prices up to whatever profitable levels they want) or long-term lower prices and weak margins.

In the same way, an individual worker might want to work longer hours in order to be more attractive as a candidate for raises or promotions. But often management sees a small number of employees willing to do this, and then starts to expect all employees to do it. In the absence of unions or other collective action, the other employees are forced to keep up. They've raced their labor price to the bottom.

I agree with the "civic hygiene" angle: it's much healthier for people not to do this, and provide better working conditions for themselves and others. But that requires everyone to do the right thing all the time. There will always be enough people who want to get ahead, and are willing to make themselves miserable to do it. I don't think most are being malicious: they don't realize the societal effects of their actions. But those effects happen regardless.

The difficulty of collective action is really the heart of this. If every employee just up and decided one day that the standard would be a 32-hour work week, and people would only work Monday through Thursday, it would... actually happen. Companies would complain, threaten to fire people, fire some people after all. But if everyone could actually stick together for the greater good, it would work. But people can't do that, not 100%. Some can't for legitimate reasons ("I can't risk getting fired or I won't be able to pay rent / buy food / stay in the country"), and some won't for selfish reasons ("If I break ranks and lick the company's boots, I'll be rewarded").

azanar2• 4 years ago

There was a possibility I proposed, which I think you missed. Maybe they _aren't_ miserable. They might be suffering in some ways. They might even complain about it. That doesn't mean they are miserable. They may find other joy that makes up for the suffering.

If we can't agree on this, we'll probably not agree on anything else. It'll mean you've decided on a premise that I think is false. I'll just keep seeming ignorant to you.

_Should_ they be miserable? Perhaps. Maybe they have a false consciousness. Maybe they need to understand better the societal effects they are responsible for. These are debatable. To _presume_ this is true, though, seems to me kind of arrogant.

that_guy_iain2• 4 years ago

One day I created a tool that made it faster to download things from your work email that you might need if you were looking for a job: performance evaluations and that sort of thing. I posted the tool on Slack so that my colleagues could also benefit from it if they needed to. One hour and four minutes later I was fired.

"I built a tool to allow people to copy corporate data so they could find a job easier."

To be fair, it seems like something you should only do if you don't care about getting fired and if you're already on the way out the door. Unless you're migrating from one email provider to another and your company isn't migrating all the data, most companies are going to take offence to that.

He is suing Twitter, I wouldn't be surprised if he lost because Twitter will successfully claim he wrote a tool to bypass security and allow people to steal trade secrets.

amrocha5• 4 years ago

lol

He wrote a JS script that clicks a a button in your inbox. That's not "bypassing security" in any way.

factsarelolz4• 4 years ago

It's staging data for exfiltration. This is an attempt to take property and data not owned by the employee.

that_guy_iain2• 4 years ago

Lol

Like a judge is going to understand that after lawyers spend hours talking about data theft and how they have policies and how the security team had concerns.

EarlKing2• 4 years ago

One day I created a tool that made it faster to download things from your work email that you might need if you were looking for a job: performance evaluations and that sort of thing.
I posted the tool on Slack so that my colleagues could also benefit from it if they needed to. One hour and four minutes later I was fired.

Gosh, I wonder these two incidents are related?

PROTIP: Don't distribute tools to facilitate the exfiltration of company property and expect to keep your job.

factsarelolz4• 4 years ago

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought the same when reading those lines.

EarlKing2• 4 years ago

The hilarious part is they literally buried the lead in the last paragraph. Nothing says "our readers will definitely think this guy deserved to get fired and not read any further if we tell them this" than burying it in the last paragraph.

sangnoir2• 4 years ago

Do employees have the right to access past performance reviews manually? If so, it's not "exfiltrating company property". Do you draw the line at automation?

scottcodie• 4 years ago

Twitter's actions seems like retaliation against the employee for enabling other employees to collect evidence of discrimination. Performance reviews often exist to reduce the companies liability when firing people off, but being fired with good performance reviews can work against them.

heleninboodler6• 4 years ago

Oh, come on, "exfiltration of company property" when we're talking about personal performance evaluations is a pretty huge stretch. I'd characterize this as "Don't make cheeky slack posts alluding to the fact that you're looking for a new job and helping others do the same."

orsenthil• 4 years ago

One day I created a tool that made it faster to download things from your work email that you might need if you were looking for a job: performance evaluations and that sort of thing.
I posted the tool on Slack so that my colleagues could also benefit from it if they needed to. One hour and four minutes later I was fired.

---

Seems straightforward, isn't it? Why would a company tolerate such a tool and a toolmaker?

toto• 4 years ago

As a reminder, Whatsapp had *35* engineers for 450M users at the time of its acquisition by FB (2014). It had *50* engineers for 900M users (2015).

https://www.wired.com/2015/09/whatsapp-serves-900-million-us....

omeze• 4 years ago

these comparisons to whatsapp are really tiring, twitter is a totally different product. twitter is more similar to facebook than whatsapp from an engineering requirement's perspective, messaging is a minor feature of twitter's. even from a non-tech perspective, the presence of public data & the moderation requirements that entails alone makes it operationally different enough to not be a good comparison...

amrocha5• 4 years ago

You must not work in tech if you think Twitter and Whatsapp are in any way comparable

Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned out I’d been fired

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