The ongoing Elon Twitter saga: "insert demographic" melts down

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visibleman said:
If management has queries or issues with XYZ, then i expect it to be handled internally with those that can do something about it - just common-sense and decency. If management take it publically, whilst (in this case) giving out false information, then expect public responses. Neither employees or management come off great in this but ultimately, it makes management and the company look incompetent.
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Doesn't matter how unprofessional your boss/the owner is acting, you don't publicly badmouth them to world.
visibleman said:
Either way, most will find employment elsewhere and given leaks on employment under Musk elsewhere, it probably isn't a bad thing to leave.

* I'm mostly talking about Eric Frohnhoefer, 6+ year Android app dev, who gave a rational response to Musk's "Android app is slow because RPC's" and corrected him.


I imagine "Clark" is talking about sachee who told him to "go-forth" after Musk got rid of a lot of the infrastructure crew (i believe). I can kind of see how someone would be attached to their job/position/peers but arguably it wasn't the smartest thing to do. But having seen some of the employees Twitter accounts, she's probably an exception, plus she appeared to have issue with Musk weeks back, with a lot of them just correcting the BS (particularly around Twitter's stack and infra) Musk is throwing around.
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yeah I saw her, she was one that was amusing, I also think the reply to one of her tweets about getting fired was quite pertinent to this discussion:
As to all these twitter tech employees that are getting fired, given how bloated twitter has become and the fact that it's essentially the same experience it was 10 years ago, long may it continue, despite all these key people being given the boot my Twitter experience is exactly the same as it was 2 weeks ago /shrug.
 
I've levelled a lot of criticism at Daddy Elon's choices so far, as Roar87 will no doubt confirm from his extensive notes. However, this might be a sensible move: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/16/23462026/elon-musk-twitter-email-hardcore-or-severance

Firing anyone who doesn't want to work more hours for the same pay is probably the right move in the longer term, since it seems there's a huge culture clash between normal employees and what Daddy Elon wants. One of these factions will have to go, and since normal Twitter employees haven't been rinsed for $44B dollars to work there, getting rid of the normal folk and replacing them with Cult of Elon members is probably the only way of solving this clash.
 
C Kent said:
Doesn't matter how unprofessional your boss/the owner is acting, you don't publicly badmouth them to world.
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Sounds like ruling by fear which isn't a great leadership style.

The fact this was all made public was because management took it public; if they don't want that then deal with it internally - not a hard concept to grasp.
And, if you've got knowledge and experience on your side and can 'walk the walk' then i'm not sure why you wouldn't want to stand up for yourself and/or your team; seems odd to become a 'Milton (Waddams)'.

FishFluff said:
I've levelled a lot of criticism at Daddy Elon's choices so far, as Roar87 will no doubt confirm from his extensive notes. However, this might be a sensible move: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/16/23462026/elon-musk-twitter-email-hardcore-or-severance

Firing anyone who doesn't want to work more hours for the same pay is probably the right move in the longer term, since it seems there's a huge culture clash between normal employees and what Daddy Elon wants. One of these factions will have to go, and since normal Twitter employees haven't been rinsed for $44B dollars to work there, getting rid of the normal folk and replacing them with Cult of Elon members is probably the only way of solving this clash.
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There's certainly people out there that will live and breath X company and will happily work silly hours for what ultimately ends up being very little but it tends to lead to burnout and churn which can result in knowledge vacuums being created which is what apparently has happened at Tesla and SpaceX in the past, given leaked employee reports/interviews.

But you're probably right in that it may help the short-term but, imo, i'm not sure it's something that can be sustained nor does it offer any stability to those that pay the bills (aka advertisers).
 
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C Kent said:
So if your boss made some decisions you disagreed with you'd jump onto social media and tell the guy to **** off etc and not expect to be fired? Of course not.
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If my boss posted on social media making false and derogatory comments about my work, I would absolutely tell them **** off, and quit.

No one with a spine would put up with it. Especially not tech workers that can walk into a new job the next day.
 
mid_gen said:
If my boss posted on social media making false and derogatory comments about my work, I would absolutely tell them **** off, and quit.

No one with a spine would put up with it. Especially not tech workers that can walk into a new job the next day.
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No good boss would do it in the first place.
You only have to get to that first post to see who the person causing the breakdown of the employer employee relationship is
 
mid_gen said:
If my boss posted on social media making false and derogatory comments about my work, I would absolutely tell them **** off, and quit.

No one with a spine would put up with it. Especially not tech workers that can walk into a new job the next day.
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I'd immediately raise a disupute with HR, who would likely fire the boss. Utterly ridiculous behaviour.
 
mid_gen said:
If my boss posted on social media making false and derogatory comments about my work, I would absolutely tell them **** off, and quit.

No one with a spine would put up with it. Especially not tech workers that can walk into a new job the next day.
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There was a bit more of a follow up interview with the guy (https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/14/musk_twitter_rpc_spat/)

Frohnhoefer pointed out that his team had "done a bunch of work to improve performance" and agreed there was "plenty of room for performance improvements on Android." However, he added: "I don't think the number of requests is the primary issue."
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He only 'Thinks' it's not a primary issue? Surely if he was squaring up to an out of control CEO you imagine he would have some concrete 'I Know' type of technical insight.

I think there are three reasons the app is slow. First it's bloated with features that get little usage. Second, we have accumulated years of tech debt as we have traded velocity and features over perf. Third, we spend a lot of time waiting for network responses.
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Again, he only 'thinks' this? not very definite at all.
Worse, "We have accumulated years of tech debt as we have traded velocity and features over perf".. it's a single android app, reknown for it's slow adoption of features in a company that seems to be staggeringly over staffed..
And to top it off, since he cites spending a lot of time waiting for network responses, what is his excuse for why a specific geographic region is being overly affected by performance issues? If all it's remote requests are poorly architected and unoptimised, then it's pretty plausuble that might be the issue with excess latency thrown in..

He must just have been pedantic over the misuse of "RPC" or really was a bit of a fool to throw around 'opinions' that don't seem rooted in fact.. I'd expect this from our less experienced more junior engineers that are still in the 'just a coder' phase.

.
 
Demon said:
There was a bit more of a follow up interview with the guy (https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/14/musk_twitter_rpc_spat/)


He only 'Thinks' it's not a primary issue? Surely if he was squaring up to an out of control CEO you imagine he would have some concrete 'I Know' type of technical insight.
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It's a hypothesis he's probably right but a good Programmer would only claim they know for a fact until it's tested.

I've been 99% sure on something that's causing an issue but I wouldn't tell my client that I know for a fact until I've tested it or fixed it. As I've been wrong before.

These are super complicated applications dealing with volumes of data and network issues that very few programers have experience dealing with which is why people that have programed at faang companies get the big bucks. Eg there's no searching on stack overflow for the fix as it's never been solved before.
 
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Demon said:
He only 'Thinks' it's not a primary issue? Surely if he was squaring up to an out of control CEO you imagine he would have some concrete 'I Know' type of technical insight.


Again, he only 'thinks' this? not very definite at all.
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Yeah, there has been some follow-up on this and Elon was in fact not just winging it himself but also trying to understand the underlying issues and highlighting things that had been highlighted to him by other twitter Engineers. I initially assumed he was being a douche in firing this guy though this guy was also clearly posturing a bit himself.

I think it's probably a good thing, he's also had all the nonsense on the company slack with employees calling him names etc.. it's skewed very leftist and quite woke so he probably does want to get rid of people who are happy to openly insult him on a company message board! The people dunking on him publicly like that engineer aren't genuinely trying to help with anything, it seems this guy didn't necessarily know, he was just posturing.

Now Elon's gone a step further, laid out his expectations and asked people to opt into them... I guess with other tech firms shedding staff they replace if they need to, more importantly though; he's overpaid for the company, has that debt hanging over him and so needs to dramatically slash costs and get as much out of people as he can...not much point carrying on employing people who are actively against him even owning the company.
 
visibleman said:
If management has queries or issues with XYZ, then i expect it to be handled internally with those that can do something about it - just common-sense and decency. If management take it publically, whilst (in this case) giving out false information, then expect public responses. Neither employees or management come off great in this but ultimately, it makes management and the company look incompetent.
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In this case, he's only just taken over the company and he's openly highlighting things he wants to change/improve on... it's not like this issue occurred under his watch rather it's something he's looking to address along with a bunch of other issues. He has been openly discussing changes he'd make for a little while now.
 
Demon said:
There was a bit more of a follow up interview with the guy (https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/14/musk_twitter_rpc_spat/)


He only 'Thinks' it's not a primary issue? Surely if he was squaring up to an out of control CEO you imagine he would have some concrete 'I Know' type of technical insight.


Again, he only 'thinks' this? not very definite at all.
Worse, "We have accumulated years of tech debt as we have traded velocity and features over perf".. it's a single android app, reknown for it's slow adoption of features in a company that seems to be staggeringly over staffed..
And to top it off, since he cites spending a lot of time waiting for network responses, what is his excuse for why a specific geographic region is being overly affected by performance issues? If all it's remote requests are poorly architected and unoptimised, then it's pretty plausuble that might be the issue with excess latency thrown in..

He must just have been pedantic over the misuse of "RPC" or really was a bit of a fool to throw around 'opinions' that don't seem rooted in fact.. I'd expect this from our less experienced more junior engineers that are still in the 'just a coder' phase.

.
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Yes I saw the follow up.

Musk was talking out his arse. That was obvious to anyone with any technical knowledge at all, because there's absolutely zero chance Twitter could function if clients were making thousands of RPCs just to load a timeline. As the guy states, the actual number is 20.

If my boss came out with some similar blatant BS on social media attacking the tech I'm working on, I'd correct them publicly as well.
 
visibleman said:
That articles skims his replies, which went into a little more detail -

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But he paints the picture that app bloat and latency in the stack/infra are the real cause rather than supposed thousands of remote calls as Musk stated.
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Wow, lazy article from The Register.. quotes out of context, thanks for posting that, it does add a bit more context!

It still sounds like a load of waffle.. increase in UAM = increase in remote transactions.. that should be asynchronous, staged/buffered and not slow the app down, that's poor architectural design (from the scant info we have, I am assuming things), and I'm still struggling that a single app (Android) known for it's glacial feature ads and updates suffered from 'trading velocity and features over perf'.. that is normally for small teams under pressure, or larger teams handling multiple apps etc..

mid_gen said:
Yes I saw the follow up.

Musk was talking out his arse. That was obvious to anyone with any technical knowledge at all, because there's absolutely zero chance Twitter could function if clients were making thousands of RPCs just to load a timeline. As the guy states, the actual number is 20.

If my boss came out with some similar blatant BS on social media attacking the tech I'm working on, I'd correct them publicly as well.
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I agree on the 1000's of RPCs or any form of requests at boot, but why then start laying the blame of perf on things like an increase in UAM? that's a large bunch of transactions that he's effectively saying must be poorly optimised..

We do loads of UAM for auditing purposes (and helps massively with diagnostics).. we don't let any form of network latency or data transaction overhead get in the way of app performance.. that didn't need 'optimising'.. the SW Engs just did it sensibly from the outset..

Whilst Musk might be getting his wires crossed or info from somewhere else, it still sounds like the app is poorly architected and from his own admission it sounds like badly optimised transactional handling which is not a million miles away from the original criticism..
 
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Demon said:
Wow, lazy article from The Register.. quotes out of context, thanks for posting that, it does add a bit more context!

It still sounds like a load of waffle.. increase in UAM = increase in remote transactions.. that should be asynchronous, staged/buffered and not slow the app down, that's poor architectural design (from the scant info we have, I am assuming things), and I'm still struggling that a single app (Android) known for it's glacial feature ads and updates suffered from 'trading velocity and features over perf'.. that is normally for small teams under pressure, or larger teams handling multiple apps etc..
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There was another engineer, James something iirc, that touched on their GraphQL implementation and from that it seemed Musk's "there's fa'sands of em'" statement should have been aimed at their infra and the number of internal calls made between microservices rather than the Android app itself - probably explains the shutting down of microservices.
But as you say, information is scarce so we're just making assumptions.

Although imo, i do put a bit more trust in the app dev over someone that's just rocked up and acting like a bull in a china shop.
 
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visibleman said:
There was another engineer, James something iirc, that touched on their GraphQL implementation and from that it seemed Musk's "there's fa'sands of em'" statement should have been aimed at their infra and the number of internal calls made between microservices rather than the Android app itself - probably explains the shutting down of microservices.
But as you say, information is scarce so we're just making assumptions.

Although imo, i do put a bit more trust in the app dev over someone that's just rocked up and acting like a bull in a china shop.
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That makes more sense.

Normally I'd trust a dev over the CEO anyday, especially Musk, he's clearly latching on to snippets and jumping on that, but I still find something about the guys analysis that is vague and he just sounds like some of our laziest devs.. I know I shouldn't jump to conclusions, but this is the internet for you!
 
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