[HN Gopher] Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff's code,
       workers said
        
       Author : perihelions
       Score  : 21 points
       Date   : 2022-10-29 20:36 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
        
       | sidibe wrote:
       | I think the goal here is to get people to quit voluntarily by
       | doing the most ridiculous things possible.
        
       | throwaway728274 wrote:
       | For a variety of performance car nerd related reasons, I've not
       | paid too much attention to Tesla. But iirc, there have been a
       | couple threads here and elsewhere about Tesla making "expedient"
       | choices in Eng, with a lot of horrible bodges around critical
       | components. It definitely left me with an impression that Tesla
       | was a place with low engineering quality -- though again, I have
       | no source at hand here, and don't feel bothered to do the
       | searching.
       | 
       | Anyone know the articles / blog posts I'm talking about?
       | 
       | FWIW, I don't think the idea of Elon having his own folks do some
       | internal reviews egregious. Id bet the comm and positioning
       | around it was suboptimal though, atleast given Elon's
       | personality.
        
       | jstx1 wrote:
       | > One former Tesla engineer, who spoke on the condition of
       | anonymity to candidly describe the matter but was not involved,
       | said Tesla engineers would have trouble capably assessing
       | Twitter's code. Distributed systems, the large-scale and spread-
       | out network that Twitter is composed of, are not the automaker's
       | specialty, the person said.
       | 
       | > The "idea of Elon being flanked by his Tesla engineers
       | reviewing Twitter code is laughable," the person said.
       | 
       | It is laughable, and it's just another signal that Elon has no
       | clue what he's doing. Imagine how farcical the whole thing felt
       | to anyone involved who isn't him.
        
         | the_doctah wrote:
         | What hubris to think that your system is so complex that other
         | engineers couldn't understand it.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | _vertigo wrote:
         | From Musk's POV, a bunch of solid, well-rounded, and
         | experienced engineers you trust might be enough to tell you
         | "this guy is full of shit" when talking to new people.
         | 
         | Maybe it's less about code quality and more about eng quality.
        
           | whateveracct wrote:
           | I guarantee Elon is surrounded by yes-men.
        
         | llamaLord wrote:
         | 14 months ago a lot of people said it was "laughable" that
         | Tesla thought they'd have a working prototype of a humanoid
         | robot in under a year...
         | 
         | I'll take Tesla engineer's over 95% of the industry any day.
        
           | qeternity wrote:
           | No, people said they'd never have a working prototype that
           | was in any way useful or demonstrative.
           | 
           | And those people were right.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | dragontamer wrote:
           | No. Most of us correctly noted that no matter how much effort
           | Tesla puts into Optimus, it won't be as good as Honda's Asimo
           | demo for years.
           | 
           | Let alone Boston Dynamic's demos. Or Disney's stunt robot.
           | 
           | -------
           | 
           | So we're mostly laughing at the wasted effort. Of course it's
           | possible, other companies made humanoid walking robots like
           | 20 years ago.
           | 
           | The other questions, like how to actually make money from
           | them, remain unanswered.
        
           | heavenlyblue wrote:
           | Is it as working as their FSD?
        
         | timcavel wrote:
        
         | TigeriusKirk wrote:
         | At the moment, my default position on all stories out of
         | Twitter is that they didn't happen unless confirmed officially
         | by Twitter. And the more nonsensical the story, the firmer that
         | belief is for me.
        
       | toomanyrichies wrote:
       | When Tesla become a publicly-traded company, it ceased being
       | Musk's personal fiefdom. Diverting engineering resources away
       | from Tesla for personal use strikes me as a dereliction of his
       | fiduciary duties toward Tesla's shareholders. They should be
       | focused on Tesla's mission, not Musk's new shiny object.
       | 
       | EDIT: maybe the Tesla engineers took PTO and Musk paid them out-
       | of-pocket to go on a field trip with him to Twitter HQ? Failing
       | that, this whole thing seems actionable on the part of Tesla
       | shareholders.
        
         | Salgat wrote:
         | SpaceX does the same thing with Tesla engineers, and they pay
         | contracting fees to do this, which is completely above board
         | legally speaking.
        
         | dnissley wrote:
         | I heard that what typically happens in this situation is that
         | one company pays the other a consulting fee. In this case
         | Twitter paying Tesla.
        
         | labrador wrote:
         | Twitter is going private Nov 8
        
         | awinder wrote:
         | Even something like that pay-for-pto plan seems so flirtatious
         | with trouble. It's not a move that's in the fiduciary interest
         | of Tesla shareholders, and mixing personal money into it might
         | even make that more clear.
         | 
         | Elons got a large bench of people who cheerled this thing, ask
         | Larry Ellison for some people who can go audit this thing over
         | multi-months.
        
         | rohan_ wrote:
         | I wonder how much damage short-sellers & tech journalism have
         | caused tesla through twitter? There might be some business
         | justification here.
        
       | giantdude wrote:
       | Someone probably told elon to look into the 'plumbing' of
       | twitter. He brought a sink just in case.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | WheelsAtLarge wrote:
       | Kind of insulting but understandable coming from an owner that
       | just bought a new toy. He should have done it before he bought
       | it.
       | 
       | It's interesting how much publicity this whole situation is
       | getting. Musk must be loving it.
        
       | Waterluvian wrote:
       | I'm still looking for a concise term for "someone who claims to
       | be an expert but immediately reveals beyond any doubt that they
       | have no clue what they're saying, simply by opening their mouth
       | on the subject."
       | 
       | Having Tesla engineers over to review Twitter code is definitely
       | that. It's ridiculous.
        
         | chadlavi wrote:
         | Maybe "a Musk"
        
         | system16 wrote:
         | It's just another thing to add to the pile that should make
         | anybody question why on earth people think he is a genius.
         | 
         | The mythos he has created around himself is comical and it's
         | mind-blowing that anyone actually believes it. He literally
         | spends his entire day trolling on social media, yet people
         | think he's out there solving the world's greatest engineering
         | problems.
        
         | Tiktaalik wrote:
         | word you're looking for is charlatan
        
           | Waterluvian wrote:
           | I was thinking that, perhaps.
           | 
           | But doesn't that imply that Elon knows he's a fraud and is
           | trying to trick others? I don't think Elon realizes he's a
           | fraud.
           | 
           | It's like the opposite of impostor syndrome. When someone
           | speaks with total confidence and absolute garbage comes out
           | of their mouth.
        
       | spaceywilly wrote:
       | This is pretty standard procedure when a company gets bought. The
       | new owners will conduct a review and decide who to keep and who
       | to get rid of. They have probably been given a target of how many
       | people they want to lay off and are evaluating who is worth
       | keeping.
       | 
       | It's not worth staying at a company that gets acquired, you'll
       | either get laid off or be asked to do the same work with less
       | people, and awful morale.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | Waterluvian wrote:
         | I think what you're saying is not untrue. But this isn't that.
         | There would be an entire process performed over many months
         | (some of which should have happened during due diligence.)
         | 
         | Imagine if Elon bought an airline and asked them to line up all
         | the planes on the tarmac for review.
        
         | 8cmj7A wrote:
         | They were asked to print their code and typically this is done
         | as part of diligence _before_ closing. This is not sop. It's
         | Elon making a show of things.
        
         | aaronharnly wrote:
         | Respectfully, very little of this seems to be operating by
         | standard procedure. Have you seen the incoming CEO ask people
         | to bring printouts of their code, ever?
        
       | marstall wrote:
       | I was thinking the "30-60" day time window may be a somewhat
       | subtle way of catching out engineers who haven't written a thing
       | in that amount of time. that would be one way to identify low-
       | performers.
       | 
       | not unproblematic by a long shot, but quick, and probably
       | somewhat effective. and it wouldn't require any deep knowledge of
       | twitter's codebase on the part of the reviewers.
        
       | moomin wrote:
       | People said the acquisition would be bad, but it's already given
       | us so many innocent laughs.
        
       | PM_me_your_math wrote:
       | Didn't Musk get rich solving complex problems? The ink isn't even
       | dry yet and there is a rush to judgement, speculation, and wild
       | assumptions that are simply shameful.
       | 
       | How many cars did Tesla sell on the day after his investment?
        
         | chadlavi wrote:
         | He got rich from his family's mines?
        
       | RadixDLT wrote:
        
       | perihelions wrote:
       | https://archive.ph/xtF0x
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-10-29 23:01 UTC)