Musk emails remaining Twitter staff to find “anyone who actually writes software”

Musk email: "Anyone who actually writes software, please report to the 10th floor."

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[co-lee]

Even if you did write software, why would you go? You’re just asking for trouble with this guy. Congratulations, you’ve been nominated to work 20 hour days at the same pay!

Sorry, I’m a solutions architect, I didn’t think you meant me

And imagine being the person who buys a plane ticket, planning to expense it, books last minute hotel room in SF, lands late at SFO at 11:00pm, rushes to get a ride to HQ, arrives at 11:40pm. To find out that Musk already called it a night and you were fired 4 hours ago. Along with your manager who has to authorize your expenses ...

 

[co-lee]

I am honestly confused as to how this is going to work, mechanically.

Does he expect to go through hundreds of people, examining their code in enough detail to understand its application, all in 10 hours?

Aren't Twitter's offices locked, and badges not working?

For anyone outside of SF, is it literally possible to arrive at Twitter's offices in time?


Is this demand of his physically possible to meet?

It is weird. Even after layoffs, there have to be more than 2 or 3 developers. So, he's going to look at their code, evaluate their productivity, and get informed about twitter's tech stack (the nominal purpose) at 10 minutes max a person. Time 6 an hour. For 10 hours. All of 60 developers that he'll have talked to. 120 if he gives them 5 minutes apiece. 600 if he gives the 1 minute apiece.

Dude doesn't understand scale.
And if there's one thing something like twitter needs it's performance at scale.
His every action just shows how immensely far from even beginning to do this job he is.

(And yes, it would be possible from most of the US and western europe to have woken up this morning, checked your email to see the message sent at midnight last night, bought tickets and gotten on an airplane to arrive at twitter HQ by midnight tonight. An interesting intelligence test to see how many did this.)

 

[co-lee]

Janitors and secretaries are absolutely the most important people to have on your side in nearly any workplace if you want to have a nonmiserable experience.

When I was a 100% travel consultant, I always made friends w/ all the admins, front desk people etc. Definitely paid off when they took care of me. Including the time the receptionist at a client I was no longer working with gave me the exec conference room to hold some meetings in just for walking in and asking. It was holiday time and she got some good chocolates ....

 

[co-lee]

Even aside from the insanity of "screenshots of code," what on earth constitutes a "salient line of code?" No sissy architecture diagrams or design docs, I want to know what lines of code you've authored that have done particularly important things.

It's like, I hear you're in forestry management. I need to know everything about your operation, so give me photographs of your six best trees and I'll figure out the rest.

The best code is clearly

        }
      }
    }
  }
}

cause the rest is nothing w/o those lines. Salient my ass indeed!

 

[co-lee]

Apparently, as he's doing one-on-one code reviews and "short technical interviews" to understand the twitter "tech stack", he's also holding inspirational meetings w/ groups of people. Meetings so inspirational that remote people are hanging up in him when it hits 5pm ...

Spoiler: screenshot for posterity

 

[co-lee]

Are we 100% sure that The Onion has not pirated the meincmagazine.com url???

And let me guess - they have to pay for the flights to SF themselves, right?

I'm sure they can submit an expense report to their no-longer-employed-at-twitter manager who will immediately send it for payment to the no-longer-existent payroll dept ...

 

[co-lee]

Actually, Twitter has been pretty good for me when supporting journalists at one newspaper job some time ago (even though they didn't source any confirmed news from it the first place, it was good for catching up on rumours). It's been outright invaluable to developing citizen OSINT initiatives like @Bellingcat, who did a great job showing just how the Russian misinformation or even assassination (Novichok) campaigns operate. It's been invaluable during some of the various citizens' uprisings in authoritarian regimes like Egypt, Iran and others, at least for a while. It's been really nice for keeping up to date on Russia's invasion of Ukraine with some very carefully vetted sources there as well.

All the while, watching this whole shit‑show and implosion in accelerated real time just makes me sad. Sure, there's been some really bad things in there, like with any other social media, but also some pretty nice things...

I know. Twitter could certainly bruise one's feelings. But, there was a huge amount of really important and really valuable information and interaction there. The musk incompetence and destruction show is certainly entertaining and full of I-can't-believe-he-did-that guffaws, but overall this is just really sad.

 

[co-lee]

I fear that the only path for survival for Twitter is for Google or Amazon to buy it after Twitter files Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Meta would have antitrust issues buying it. Why would Apple want it? That does not fit with its business model. Google wanted to get into social networking with Google+, but failed. This might be Google's chance for success in social networking. This would not fit with Netflix's business model, either. Amazon might buy it to try to mine it for sales leads, and since Bezos owns both The Washington Post and a big chunk of Amazon, maybe use the WaPo to help mine leads for news stories and slap disinformation sources with tags denoting such.

$13B in debt and massively negative brand equity makes any acquisition hard to imagine.
I think Mr Musk is gonna be doing his best Slim Pickens impression all the way down ...

h/t DoD...

 

[co-lee]

It has been awful for political reporting. It's WAY better for all other forms of reporting. If there's a fire in my area - I fucking live on Twitter. There's reporters but also direct information from every government agency, fire authority, etc.

But that's really just a problem of political reporting. It's not like CNN wasn't terrible about it before Twitter, they just had less bandwidth.

By and large the name accounts that post from NYT, WaPo, Politico, CNN are all horrible. And the circlejerk they regularly engage in sucks. Some of the media criticism is good and since all the journalists live on twiiter, they get uncomfortable when someone like Soledad O'Brian calls them out. They still suck though ...

But ... access to journalists from local and specialized outlets is really a big deal and a good thing.
As is access to local weather, forestry, emergency mgmt.

Plenty of good and bad on twitter.

And a lot of good is being lost. Even if this is ultimately the right way for all of this to play out.

 

[co-lee]

Now, that’s quite remarkable. Most people know if they’ve got a job or not!

this person was an early version of Wilf ...

 

[co-lee]

There should be a pencil icon to the right of the Quote button if you're on desktop. On mobile the edit button is in the dot menu, located next to Quote as well.

Although a Cray person would be an improvement, having a solid understanding of computing.

Edit seems to appear only in Forum view. Not in Front Page view. Which is just a weird omission.
ETA: of course, now the edit quill showed up in Front Page view too. Cool!

 

[co-lee]

Am I the only one sometimes thinking that this is just an AI running amok at Ars, producing nonsense articles. A psychological experiment, how long and far they can let it go before the readers call out bullshit?

Not the articles, no. These are actually written by journalists, based on sources, written in coherent complete sentences.
Now some of the comments ... well yes, those could well be produced by an AI and are often nonsense. Those bot comments are not an experiment: rather more of a disinformation attack and attempt to find fools who will be influenced by the nonsense.

Happily arsians demonstrate robust immune systems and are able to overcome and repel most of this nonsense.

The stuff that's left appears to be written by real human beings. Some of whom are confused and troubled. And in compassionate moments, I can feel some empathy for those folks. In less compassionate moments, I do find myself calling bullshit.

Now, what exactly was it you were saying?

 

[co-lee]

I wonder if Musk is planning to ban everyone who votes no on that poll.

I wonder if he can find someone still working at Twitter who has the knowledge to pull it off.

I assume he had someone build him a button that he could point at any twitter account and kill it.
Then he spends his days namesearching and working thru QTs and banning people.
Cause that's how supergeniuses get their hands around the details of the tech stack ...

 

[co-lee]

That poll currently has normally 14 million votes. 48% for keeping Trump gone.

If he wants to ban over 6 million accounts one account at a time, it might delay his next stupid idea.

That would be great! Go for it, Elmo!

But, I dont think he wants to ban everyone who disagrees with him.

He wants the emotional release of banning specific individuals. Fuck that asshole, he thinks I'm a conman. Fuck her, she QT'd me and made fun of me. Fuck them, they pointed out the toilet paper hanging out of my trousers. Fuck the media, they keep writing stories not accurately describing my imperial majesty. Fuck all those people, they're not laughing at my absolutely really funny joke.

And the enjoyment Elmo Pickens gets out of this is in the act of banning that specific person.

It's good for him to have people disagreeing with him. Cause then there's more individuals who he can single out and personally punish.

A mass ban wouldn't give our godemperor the enjoyment in personal individual cruelty he appears to desire.

 

[co-lee]

Lets see Musk find an excuse to ban CBS while they aren't posting.

Elmo: fuck you CBS! You have to post on my platform! What other excuse do I have to ban you! <pulls out his supergenius supersecret ban button> You're banned! I don't need no steenking reason! He's banned, she's banned, you're all banned!

 

[co-lee]

So, what are the current odds of what goes under first? Occupied Crimea or Twitter? Just askin' for some London bookie friends...

I would sure prefer the timeline where twitter wasn't taken over by an insecure and incompetent edgelord and where Crimea was liberated and again part of Ukraine.

Unfortunately, looks like we get the world where needless suffering continues to be imposed by one asshole dictator and white supremacists and transphobes are welcomed by a second would-be dictator to take dumps in everyone's living rooms ...

 

[co-lee]

The world is complicated, but people seek out the tools the need from amongst the tools that are available, and Twitter is hardly a monopoly; there are loads of alternatives to it that accomplish the same positive things you mentioned. Twitter was chosen because it was low-hanging fruit, but Mastodon or any of many other collaborative messaging apps would have done just as well.

All these people that didn't use twitter and don't understand it confidently making assertions about twitter ...

OK please show me the Mastodon instance that has all the info about Russian war on Ukraine that was on twitter. Please show me the tool that has all the small artists that were on twitter. Please show me the tool that has the community and enables the activism that twitter did.

Or, just admit that losing twitter is a real loss and let people mourn it. Sure, something new will be born, life will go on, and people will find ways to connect. But at least admit real value is being lost even if you didn't use twitter and you don't understand it any better than the spoiled baby does,

 

[co-lee]

I thought this was a pretty good writeup of what made twitter special, rude and bruising as it could be.

(Of course, I found this link on mastodon ...)

https://www.pwnallthethings.com/p/twitter-was-special-but-its-time

 

[co-lee]

And the robotaxi nonsense (which happened because he was mad Uber got a higher IPO).

It hadn't occurred to me that of course the robotaxi stuff and it's supporting fantasy of FSD were because Musk was jealous of other IPOs. But, of course it was. And of course, he's that petty ...

 

[co-lee]

That all rather depends on what you're doing and how people are interacting with those systems.

Remember: Twitter is a big, online platform. That means millions of people pounding on the system. Millions of people adding stuff to that system, so storage needs have to be physically managed. They pound on that system at different times for different reasons adding different amounts of data.

There are also millions of people who want to break that system. Looking for vulnerabilities every second of every day. People who want to post kiddie porn or movies or whatever.

This is not a scenario in which you can just build a stable system and let it go, just as you cannot just build a bridge without maintaining it and expecting it to have a long lifespan.

I can't say what Twitter's headcount should be, but 75% fewer people probably isn't it. Also, they should probably have a payroll department.

And even giving Elmo the benefit of the doubt (hah!) and supposing one could run a twitter-like platform w/ 1/4 the staff that twitter ran with 4 weeks ago, staffing needs are real path dependent. And the path that goes off a cliff by cutting 3/4 of the staff in 3 weeks isn't one that leads to the successful twitter-like platform run by the remaining 1/4....

 

[co-lee]

My next car will probably be an EV. But probably not a Tesla. Two intentional decisions by Tesla (probably Musk) worried me:
- The first was enabling people to play games/watch movies on the cars console while in motion. Very unsafe and illegal.
- The self-driving performing rolling stops at stop signs when in assertive mode. Also unsafe any illegal

In both cases, it was an intentional software update that reduced the safety of the car by doing illegal things. So I'm worried about future updates.

Sure, bugs can happen. But these weren't bugs. They were intentional.

(snipped above) This is a good point. And a serious problem w/ OTA updates from a Musk controlled company.
OTA is a great idea and one that should be standard from all car mfrs going forward. But real car companies will use it for bug fixes, safety improvements, and actual functionality enhancements. With a process for vetting any changes and ensuring they don't degrade car functionality.
OTA from a company w/ no internal controls and an impulsive fool shoveling whatever crazy idea his manicness settled on this morning is not a good thing...

 

[co-lee]

I didn't click "yes" before the deadline on Thursday. It felt too much like extortion: "agree to this major contract modification or you're gone".

I woke up Friday, saw this email on my phone before my access was cut, sighed in relief and went and played "penguins" with my kids. This totally eliminated any doubt I had that I'd not made the right choice.

Oh gosh, that's crazy. Glad you made the right decision and glad his imperialness made it so clear that you made the right decision ...

 

[co-lee]

So, we're supposed to pay $8 a month to get a kludgy clone of signal tied to our twitter handles? With encryption coming soon?
As opposed to paying $0 a month to get signal tied to our cell phone numbers? With encryption here now?