“Deeply depressing to watch Twitter employees” | Hacker News Reader

“Deeply depressing to watch Twitter employees”

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31 pointsdoener69 comments

> it’s deeply depressing to watch Twitter employees work over the weekend and sleep in the office to push out impossible deliverables

I have enough empathy left to understand that yes, it is depressing to work in a BS project. But I feel the anger is misplaced.

The depressing part is not that Twitter employees are killing themselves to deliver code that no one likes. The depressing part is that Twitter employees are killing themselves to deliver code, full stop. If people did want those "deliverables", it would still be wrong.

Remember, kids: when someone asks you to sleep in the office over the weekend, the correct answer is "an emergency on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine". And then you go home.

I think the phrase is “poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine”. Which seems on point here.

Or “your lack of planning does not constitute my emergency.” An old button from a button lady.

"Your failure to plan does not consitute an emergency for me" is how we used to say it.

It's so important to maintain a healthy work/life balance and to have a healthy distance from work, but in this case the emergency is manufactured and the result of disappointment is being publicly fired. Ie: Go home over the weekend if you want, but you don't come in on Monday if you do. Doesn't make for a healthy workplace, but unfortunately that's the situation Twitter employees now find themselves in.

"an emergency on your part does not necessarily constitute an emergency on mine".

> an emergency on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine

Which is great until you get fired for that, and realize that most companies have put hiring freezes in place.

It's depressing.

Remember that there is absolutely nothing urgent about any of these changes. They are all to appease Musk's vanity and ego.

Musk is cementing his reputation as a bully and a cheapass who would rather ruin lives than pay severance.

If this becomes a pattern, that's one thing. But creating an artificial deadline to turn up the heat to help identify who actually does the development is something else. Keep in mind the ridiculous number of employees that they have.

It’s easy enough to fake it for this period, let’s see how they do after layoffs when they are mired in a swampy mess of unmaintained code.

"Becomes a pattern?" Do you not know that Tesla employees work in these conditions too? Musk already established the pattern.

No, it's a terrible idea. You can assign challenging work without requiring working weekends. Or observe performance during actual emergencies. Musk is either an idiot or a bully (probably both), and this is just some dominance game for him.

A schadenfreude-laden reminder that a business owes you nothing more than a paycheck and a legally safe work environment.

I honestly don't understand why anyone would be killing themselves over a job at Twitter? Is the work/pay that great?

It seems like there's still a decent job market for developers I just don't really get why anyone would actually be working weekends when Elon has shown he's not really interested in making the company work.

Gotta pay the rent/mortgage, got a family etc...

That sounds like economic coercion by any standard.

That's one of the fundamental tenets of society.

From each according to their ability, to each according to their ability. Any other way of running things just gets a bunch of people killed.

When has that ever happened?

Again - is the pay really all that great, when the job market for devs is actually really quite good? When you could get a new job in really short order? Why would anyone put up with this nonsense?

Or are we talking about the non-devs here?

Some people won't, some people will. Some people might unionize some people won't. Just because you think one way doesn't mean others do.

I've heard a similar sentiment on other forums. I think switching jobs is a big deal for many and takes time, especially if you enjoy the work, like your manager, are paid well, or work well with your team.

From going through the interview process, possibly relocating, and starting from scratch again - I think it's reasonable that some people choose to put up with a lot before they switch.

There are also those on work visas who have a more complicated situation.

Still easier than Twitter employees trying to grind leetcode again in a far worse economic environment.

Exactly. I think switching jobs is a huge pain in the ass. I have a CS degree but I'm not naturally gifted at Leetcoding; however I can manage _with enough practice_. (I work at FAANG.) Also if you found some work you enjoy, with a team you enjoy, finding the same in a new company is not easy.

Is there verifiable information about this? I keep seeing it talked about, but no one from Twitter has actually said it's happening...

is it possible it's just one isolated team with a rogue employee?

I saw a tweet with a few thousand likes/retweets talking about how a user was fired by Elon for sticking up for himself. They of course later admitted that they made it the fuck up and don't work for twitter a while after it went viral

Why are tech journalists becoming so obsessed with all these twitter stories?

I have gone through acquisition(s), even after a quarter you have no clue what is happening.

And these, one of the best paid, workers had to turn up to work for one weekend and the journos are deeply concerned?

Is there nothing more concerning around tech today?

   Why are tech journalists becoming so obsessed with all these twitter stories?

Because these are not "journalists" in any real sense of the word. These are mindless bloggers, many of them interns. Value their output accordingly.

okay, can't argue that! If they were maybe then we could get people shitting on the street as deeply concerning news.

You're suggesting the output from "professional" journalists" is any better?

I admit you have to hunt more for quality journalism, but it still exists.

A culture of internet addiction, especially around twitter, permeates journalism.

A high-profile example of something that occurs way too often.

Every time I get paywalled by Twitter for not having an account I remember why I don’t care at all about any of this

I have this saved as a bookmark and it redirects the twitter page to nitter so i don't get blocked for not logging in.

javascript:h=['nitter.it','nitter.snopyta.org','nitter.net']; location.href=location.href.replace(window.location.host,h[Math.floor(Math.random()*h.length)]);

There's also the Nitter Redirect addon.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nitter-redire...

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nitter-redirect/mo...

Parag was great leader, but this has to be the worst thing hes done to twitter

Ironically selling twitter at an inflated price was the only good thing he did, that I’m aware of.

It's a called a login wall, not a paywall, since you don't have to pay anything.

It's still a "walled garden" even if its free.

I care about precisely none of twitters walls, and will in all likelihood continue to misname and disregard them at my leisure.

> since you don't have to pay anything

Rule #1 of Web 2.0: if you aren’t paying, you’re the product. Time, attention, data collection.

So sure, I don’t pay for Twitter.

And cattle don’t pay for pasture.

"Deeply depressing" is watching a miner, lumberjack, fisherman, construction worker, etc risk their health and even life for a pittance of a wage.

"Deeply depressing" is seeing how many of them end up walking funny, being deeply in pain, and end up addicted to drugs to cope.

"Deeply depressing" is not watching people who are paid 2x-10x or more society's average having to pull one crunch time in their comfy and safe indoor job.

Or, all of the above are depressing. "Someone else is worse off _somewhere_" is a facile way to dismiss any complaint.

No, the point is that the vast, vast majority of workers in most jobs are worse off than anyone at Twitter now.

i don't think thats a healthy way of looking at things, workers being treated unfairly/badly (even if they are privilege) isn't good because normalization of such treatment just makes it easier to do it to more vulnerable workers elsewhere

abuse is abuse, full stop

The majority of humanity is soul-crushingly poor and abused. That doesn't mean I should be able to punch you in the face without complaint or punishment.

No one is punching Twitter workers in the face, not even remotely close.

Indeed. It's almost like it was a metaphor.

A passive-aggressive metaphor, if you will.

Even when that _somewhere_ is literally almost everywhere?

All of these have the same cause though

truth is somewhere in the middle. '996 culture' white collar work can be quite bad, including health wise even if it is much better compensated. However it is also true that a lot of people in cushy tech jobs can be pretty big divas and severely overstate how stressful their jobs are. I personally know a fair amount of people in the industry who basically work half a job at full pay.

We are all workers on the same side in this sorry story. It is important to realize who the sides are: one is exploiting the other, extracts all their work, gives back the minimum they can, and prevents them from organizing as a group. In-class infighting distracts us from the real issue.

"Deeply depressing" is the total lack of worker solidarity on display here.

So ... what's the wage cutoff where you're no longer entitled to sane working conditions?

The real "deeply depressing" bit here is how many of us would rather focus on pulling down the top crab than question why we're all in this bucket to begin with.

> So ... what's the wage cutoff where you're no longer entitled to sane working conditions?

Beyond all of the hype and drama, I'm not sure I have good information about what's going on at Twitter and if the conditions are sane or not.

Are employees being told, "sleep at the office for the next week or you're fired"?

Or are employees having the luxury of knowing that at least some layoffs are coming and have a choice to try and deliver something special to make their case? That's arguably incredibly privileged as most people never have foreknowledge about pending layoffs and don't get any last opportunity to show the value they can bring.

So, your answer now is to argue that you don't know whether or not the working conditions are bad, after arguing that they aren't bad enough to entitle people to complain?

Which is it? Why are you now equivocating over this instead of being able to answer for your own conclusions?

Clearly you think the working conditions of Twitter aren't that bad, that was literally the thesis of your first post. Clearly you think that there exists a set of working conditions that are deeply immoral and deserving of at least complaint. That was also the thesis of your first post.

So where does that line exist? When do working conditions go from "not deserving of complaint" to "complaints are fully justified"?

> Why are you now equivocating over this instead of being able to answer for your own conclusions?

Especially in a fog-of-war sort of situation with a lot of drama where it's hard to tell what claims might be real and fake, I don't know precisely what Twitter's working conditions are like. But even not knowing some nuanced details about life at TwitterHQ right now, I'm very comfortable in saying that the worst case scenario working at Twitter is miles better off than the best case scenario say down in an iron mine.

> So where does that line exist? When do working conditions go from "not deserving of complaint" to "complaints are fully justified"?

Everybody is entitled to complain and voice their opinion no matter how rich or powerful they are, but I did take a bit of issue with the "deeply depressing" language that was used.

If the tweet had said "On a human level, it's upsetting to see my coworkers stressed out over the impending layoffs" or something to that effect, I can totally empathize. But "deeply depressing" is a bad phrase for this situation.

I'd say it's somewhere around the same cutoff where you can afford to quit, and let's be honest: Most twitter devs can afford to quit.

Are you seriously suggesting that office jobs cannot be abusive and harmful to workers? Or that office workers cannot suffer long term damage to their health (physical and/or mental) due to their working conditions?

I think he’s suggesting that someone making 6 figures has options.

And it seems like you’re suggesting they don’t. Or maybe the implication is they’re too stupid to realize how bad their “working conditions” are.

I can’t believe this twitter saga is so one sided on HN. The layoffs have been in the cards for weeks. The individuals working through the weekend are doing it because they want to keep their jobs/ are excited about the future of the company.

You don’t need to feel sorry for these people. They’re making individual choices.

And getting paid lots of money to do so.

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