My newest article on the Auth0 Developer Blog is a two-part that covers adding authentication to Android apps built using the Jetpack Compose UI framework!
Here are the two parts:
Jetpack Compose Basics: An introduction to Jetpack Compose through building a single-screen app with composable functions and managing state the Jetpack Compose Way.
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.
Tallahassee is the capital of the state of Florida, and it’s also the home of Domi Station, Tallahassee’s business incubator, coworking space, event venue, general all-round supporter of startups in the area, and friend of this blog (they were a host for StartupBus Florida when we passed through earlier this year). Domi Station is also the home of Startup Week Tallahassee, which happens this week!
And the events are FREE TO ATTEND!
The event is the Tallahassee edition of Techstars Startup Week, a week-long event celebrating entrepreneurship and the startup community. Startup Week features speakers and events to inspire, inform, and introduce people who share an entrepreneurial spirit.
Startup Week Tallahassee 2022 takes place this week, November 14th through 18th at three locations (including Domi Station) and will have 12 tracks focused on different industries:
If you’re one of these people, you have my sympathy. I’ve gone through four layoffs myself, and I have some tips to share below.
Remember that you have Amazon on your resume.
As a FAANG/MANGA company, Amazon has serious “street cred” among recruiters and hiring managers. Emphasize the “Amazon” item on your resume, mention it in your LinkedIn headline…
Your LinkedIn headline is your personal description of yourself that appears just below your name.
…and play up your Amazon experience in interviews.
Borrow a trick from the former Facebookers / Metamates who got laid off and make a “badge post.”
Facebook/Meta has the outgoing employee tradition of the “badge post” where you write a farewell post on their internal portal. When the big layoff happened last week, many laid-off Facebookers/Metamates posted similar posts onto LinkedIn, complete with a photo of their badge (the photo side has just the person’s photo and name, which are already on their LinkedIn profile).
These generated a lot of sympathy, re-connected a lot of people who’d lost touch, and from the comments to these posts, also got a lot of attention from recruiters, hiring managers, and other people who either were trying to fill positions or knew of open ones.
Do this sooner rather than later. The longer you wait, the more “badge posts” will be out there, and you don’t want to get lost among the multitude.
Join an Amazon alumni group.
Every company, once it gets big enough, has at least one alumni group founded by former employees for networking and finding new jobs. Amazon is no exception, and you should look into the following:
Day One Syndicate is probably the biggest and best organized of the Amazon alumni groups. Definitely join this one.
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.
🚨 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!”
