Category: Current Events
It’s official: Elon Musk sent out an email to the remaining staff at Twitter, offering them this choice…
- Stay and be “hardcore,” committing to long hours at high intensity, where “only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade,” or
- Leave and take three months’ salary.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog and a fan of Star Wars: Andor, you already know which choice I recommend.
The whole mess started with this Tweet:
This should have been something like “We’re working on Android performance issues, and you should see improvements in the coming weeks/months,” but that’s not Elon’s style. This was a combination of management by shame and a little red meat for his fanboys.
I myself have delivered working software that was later know-nothingly criticized by a pointy-haired boss, so I understand former Twitter developer Eric Frohnhoefer’s response…
…which led to this Twitter exchange, where Eric defends the team and points out the work they’ve done to improve the Android client. It’s an even-tempered response…
One of Elon’s fanboys — or at least a fanboy-adjacent person — decided to re-ask a question that Elon asked earlier and which wasn’t answered in Eric’s series of tweets, and again, Eric responded matter-of-factly:
Adn that’s when we got our fanboy moment:
On the urging of users, without any apparent managerial or HR review, Eric Frohnhoefer was fired.
We’ve gone from this…
…to this:
You’ve probably already guessed that @Langdon’s Twitter account now looks like this:
Reporter Cyrus Farivar (an online friend) talked to Eric, and the firing had all the characteristics of current Twitter:
In fact, Eric’s confirmation of his dismissal came in the form of being locked out of his company laptop:
Now about that brilliant move I mentioned in this post’s title…
Under normal circumstances, contradicting the boss in a public forum is a bad idea. But these are not normal circumstances.
This is a boss who’s happy to grind his employees with overwork (I have friends who’ve worked at his companies), treat them like 19th century factory workers, and fire people for working from home during the 2020 pandemic. He’s taken over Twitter without a real plan, slashed the workforce with more thought about cost-cutting than actually running the place, and is telling people close to the code that he knows more than them.
We’ve seen this kind of unearned intellectual overconfidence before:
This is not a workplace you want to be in. It is toxic. And it’s not worth the effort. As a Twitter employee, you really have just two options:
- Quit.
- Be fired.
Under normal circumstances, option 1 is the preferable one. But these are not normal circumstances.
Getting fired by Elon under these circumstances, given what is publicly known (and who know what we don’t know yet, but the smart money says it’s much worse) is a badge of honor. You get:
- Points for courage for standing up to the world’s biggest and richest pointy-haired boss.
- Points for integrity for standing up for the Android development team, and defending them in an even-tempered manner.
- Sympathy points for taking on a no-win David vs. Goliath battle.
Someone from the Reddit team has already reached out to Eric about a senior Android development position, and I’m certain that it’s just one of many communications about an open position that he’s received.
Godspeed and good luck in your job search, Eric.
In the meantime…
Brilliant.
The inspirational speech that Kino Loy (played by Andy Serkis) at the end of episode 10 of Star Wars: Andor was meant to inspire the prisoners to break out of the Narkina 5 prison labor camp. However, with only a few changes, it could easily be an inspirational message that someone could send on the Twitter company Slack to the remaining employees.
With the news that Twitter has slashed its contractor workforce by about 80% to 1,000 people, there are now about 5,000 people working at Twitter, which is the same as the number prisoners on Narkina 5. This additional coincidence should make the speech even more applicable.
🚨 Spoiler warning for those of you who haven’t yet seen episode 10 of Star Wars: Andor!
“My name is Kino Loy. I’m the day shift manager on Level Five. I’m speaking to you from the command center on Level Eight. We are, at this moment, in control of the facility.”
“How long we hang on, how far we get, how many of us make it out, all of that is now up to us. We have deactivated every floor in the facility. All floors are cold.”
“Wherever you are right now, get up, stop the work. Get out of your cells, take charge, and start climbing. They don’t have enough guards and they know it. If we wait until they figure that out, it’ll be too late. We will never have a better chance than this and I would rather die trying to take them down than giving them what they want.”
“We know they fried a hundred men on Level Two. We know that they are making up our sentences as we go along. We know that no one outside here knows what’s happening. And now we know, that when they say we are being released, we are being transferred to some other prison to go and die…and that ends today! There is one way out. Right now, the building is ours. You need to run, climb, kill!”
“You need to help each other. You see someone who’s confused, someone who is lost, you get them moving and you keep them moving until we put this place behind us. There are 5,000 of us. If we can fight half as hard as we’ve been working, we will be home in no time. One way out! One way out! One way out!”
Twitter just cut a number of contractors — in the cruelest way possible
On Saturday, November 12th, a number of Twitter contractors found out that they were let go. Many of them didn’t find out by being told so; they found out by trying to log into their systems and seeing something like this:
I found out about this via someone on Mastodon, which led me to this tweet from Casey Newton of Platformer, who’s been providing some of the best coverage of Twitter under Elon Musk’s disastrous “leadership”:
Getting word that a large number of number of Twitter contractors were just laid off this afternoon with no notice, both in the US and abroad. Functions affected appear to include content moderation, real estate, and marketing, among others— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) November 13, 2022
At least one contractor learned the news from Casey’s tweet:
Tap to view the source.
Even more worrisome was the importance of the work that some of these contractors were doing:
This just happened to me. I work(ed) in content moderation in political misinformation. — Melissa Ingle (@mingle74) November 13, 2022
What was the point?
It’s hard to find out why Twitter did such a thing because among the people who got laid off in last week’s 50% staff reduction were almost all of Twitter’s communications staff. There simply isn’t anyone to talk to.
Laying off contractors sounds like a fairly painless cost-cutting move, but it’s not necessarily so. The key part of “contractor” is its root word — contract. Ending a contract suddenly and early is often expensive, because contracts typically have an end date and usually list financial penalties for cancelling the contract before that end date.
As Ina Fried points out in her article on Axios, Twitter contractors have been “in limbo” thanks to the massive cuts in full-time staff:
- Some contractors were suddenly without people to report to.
- Some contractors suddenly found themselves on teams that didn’t have a single full-time employee, meaning that there was no one to sign off on their timesheets.
There’s no reason to treat people this way, but this is the way Musk does things, and his fans are lapping this up, since they see this as some kind of revenge-by-proxy against people they see as “undeserving”. As Adam Serwer put it in his article about Trump fans, whose circle in the Venn diagram overlaps a lot with the one for Musk fans, The Cruelty is the Point.
So why is this a reason to set up a Mastodon account?
Even from the most coldly pragmatic, Machiavellian angle, it’s time to get ready to ditch Twitter. Never mind the ethical stance of not supporting a Musk endeavor; every day is bringing some new action of Musk’s that further undermines the company, either financially or technologically. They’ve let go of a lot of key people, and those who “dodged the axe” are making their own plans to leave. Twitter is imploding, and if you like have a microblogging home, it’s time to find a new one.
Given the available options, Mastodon’s your best bet.
Speaking of Mastodon…
Don’t forget that there’s a Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer meetup this Wednesday, where you can talk to me about Mastodon!
The Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer meetup returns this Wednesday, November 16th, and it’ll happen at The Corner Club in Tampa’s Seminole Heights neighborhood. They’ve got beverages, both alcoholic and non- (including some very good coffee), and great food!
Want to join us? Once again, we’re meeting at The Corner Club in Seminole Heights (1502 E Sligh Ave., 3 lights east of I-275’s Sligh exit) at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 16th. Register on the event’s Meetup page.
Mastodon and other conversations
By now, you’re probably aware of the complete dumpster fire that Twitter has become. In fact, there’s a good chance that it may have even become worse by the time you read this.
You’ve probably been hearing about an alternative social network called Mastodon, which exists in something called the Fediverse, and you might be wondering what it’s all about. We’ll show you!
We’ll also be talking about The Great Resignation in both its forms — leaving a current tech job, and landing a new one. Are you looking for a job? Are you looking to get out of a job? Are you looking to “upskill” for the job you want? We’re here to talk about that, and we’re connected — we might even be able to help you!
The Corner Club
We’ll be at The Corner Club, one of Seminole Heights’ many hidden gems. They’re a neighborhood café with lots of great food prepared from scratch (we recommend the papas bravas potatoes), an interesting drinks selection — with and without alcohol, including some really good coffee — and even local artists’ works on the wall for sale. They’ve got a great outdoor space in the back, which is where we’ll be.
In case you’re curious:
- They have a 4.6-star rating on Google, with 215 reviews
- They have a 4.5-star rating on Yelp, with 35 reviews
- They have a 5-star rating on Facebook, with 7 reviews
Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer is Tampa Bay’s “No presentations, just conversations” meetup for coders and creatives who want to hang out, make friends, and talk over great food and drink. It’s just people getting together at an interesting Tampa Bay venue, tasting what comes out of the taps and kitchen, talking about what interests us, what we’re working on, and what we’d like to work on.
Do you write or manage code, prose, or poetry? You belong in this group. Do you make art for the eyes, ears, or other senses? Join us. Is your creativity more about business and “the hustle”? You should be here. The goal of this meetup is to bring together all sorts of people from Tampa Bay and making it an even better, interesting, and more creative place in which to live, work, and play.