[HN Gopher] From Google to Twitter
___________________________________________________________________
From Google to Twitter
Author : nikivi
Score : 91 points
Date : 2022-11-04 20:22 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ma.nu)
(TXT) w3m dump (ma.nu)
| tdeck wrote:
| It was a real culture shock to go from a smaller company to
| Google, and this article illustrates why very well. Almost every
| other bay area tech company does local development on Mac
| laptops, uses something like Slack extensively, and outsources
| tooling. Despite its constant hiring Google is so insular that
| there are many long time Googlers who are not only unused to
| these things, but completely unaware that they're the norm
| outside Google.
| redtriumph wrote:
| Unrelated to the posted link but relevant since it involves the
| author. Author is one of the few who was terminated early Nov.
| [0] and now is part of lawsuit against Twitter for mass
| firing.[1][2]
|
| [0]. https://ma.nu/blog/bye-twitter
|
| [1].
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.40...
|
| [2]. https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/4/23440304/twitter-mass-
| fir...
| [deleted]
| pearjuice wrote:
| >Was this a violation of a corporate policy? Not unless it
| could be proven that the downloaded message file was moved away
| from the corporate computer
|
| A bit later
|
| >21:17 Disconnected from everything mid-meeting, laptop goes
| blank
|
| Clearly his tool was designed and intended to download emails
| to explicitly take it off the corporate computer. What point is
| there in releasing a tool for downloading documents ON the
| corporate computer ("wanted to save some important documents
| before potentially losing access") when you entirely lose
| access to that corporate computer in case of termination. This
| in combination with the cartoons and other rebellious antics as
| noted in his blog posts I'm not surprised he got fired.
| 6510 wrote:
| I suppose firing lots of people works better if the tools aren't
| inhouse creations.
| c4ptnjack wrote:
| This is definitely one of the most interesting and insightful
| descriptions of working at a FANG company ive read.
|
| The only note worth mentioning is confusion around the pod
| system, which I think actually sounds surprisingly effective for
| creating "culture". The op looks for an engineerimg explanation
| to justify meeting up with a group of disparate employees working
| on different projects, at different levels, and in different
| facets of the company. To me it sounds like a genuinely
| productive way to create relationships and "water cooler"
| interactions by letting it not have some ulterior motives related
| to the product.
|
| That might be bias and optimism on my parent, and I'm sure the
| reality isn't that pretty either.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Something I noticed over the past 14 years is that I feel
| managers are becoming increasingly less technical.
|
| Sure, they did some coding at some point but I doubt many were
| ever very proficient and just managed to coast until they become
| managers and had to drop the farce of knowing how to code.
|
| The amount of junior level mistakes and architectural issues I
| spot around are incredible.
|
| I wonder if it's a reflection of the increasingly complex tech
| landscape or a reflection of the increasingly politic and "soft
| skills first" corporations.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Why would managers be technical? The skills required of
| managers are totally distinct from the skills required to
| design and implement computer systems. The idea that you
| promote ICs into management is a weird, bad one.
| [deleted]
| wolfram74 wrote:
| I feel like management that can roughly estimated difficulty
| of a task, or at the very least distinguish possible from
| impossible is an asset.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| In my experience, since I have 3 side projects going on at
| the same time I'm employed full time, the best possible
| scenario is to have the worst technically able manager
| possible. For the last 3 years, I've been allocated to 3
| different projects (on my full time job), all under the
| same manager. The guy is clueless, and I and my team
| members can give any estimate whatsoever for a task
| completion, it's always accepted. On top of that, I'm full
| remote since the start of the pandemic. Life is great and
| I've never been so productive... for me and my projects of
| course. On the other hand, the company that employs me is
| the one that suffers. Twitter seems to be just like my
| company, and at least my employer has the excuse of being a
| typical government owned inneficient piece of garbage.
| icedchai wrote:
| Where can I apply?
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| I'm not american nor I live there, but I'm pretty sure
| the public sector is a mess everywhere. Just embrace the
| cynicism and have a great quality of life.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Firmly disagree. While a manager doesn't need to be a
| productive engineer, they do need to be able to call out
| bullshit. And that is really tough if you don't speak the
| language.
|
| Multiple times I've had engineers tell me something was
| impossible, or strictly necessary, or too hard, when it
| demonstrably wasn't. If you let too much of that happen, your
| product suffers.
| furyofantares wrote:
| Two major concerns of running an organization:
|
| 1) The top knows what the organization is capable of and can
| set achievable goals 2) That the bottom is incentivized to do
| things that achieve the goals of the company
|
| A manager being technical helps #1, information flows upward
| more accurately.
|
| I think #2 is more nuanced, but when you have a boss, you are
| directly incentivized to please the boss, not directly
| incentivized to achieve the goals of the company. Those can
| be different things and the less technical a manager is, the
| more different they can be.
|
| This isn't an argument for just promoting individual
| contributors, though, since lacking management skills also
| makes both of these problems worse.
|
| It is an argument for flatter organizations. Maybe that's a
| better way to look at it, every layer of management makes 1)
| and 2) more difficult. (A fully flat organization wouldn't
| have either problem at all.) But if a manager has both
| management and technical skills, it's more of a partial
| management layer.
| icedchai wrote:
| Smaller orgs should be mostly flat. When I see 20 person
| companies with too many "directors" and "managers", it's a
| bad sign. Too many bosses, not enough workers.
|
| The smaller the org, the more you want someone that
| actually _understands_ the work being managed. Maybe your
| team is getting work done fast, but it 's not done right:
| no documentation, few tests, architectural flaws,
| performance issues, security problems... Someone should be
| able to understand the trade off made, and be able to
| explain them. When one of your engineers gives you an
| estimate, you need to understand if it's reasonable. Is it
| too optimistic? Is he blowing smoke up your ass and
| spending 2 months on a 2 week job? Poor management sets
| arbitrary deadlines and wonders why they aren't met.
| cbtacy wrote:
| THANK YOU!!!!!!
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The skills required of managers are totally distinct from
| the skills required to design and implement computer systems
|
| Some of them are, sure, but one of the skills necessary to
| effective management is understanding of the work being
| managed (especially the work at the immediate subordinate
| level and, if it exists, the next level down.) At the
| executive level, that probably doesn't require more than very
| casual awareness of any of the line work, but at the level of
| first and second line managers it absolutely does, and its
| usually a lot easier to find a worker with the right talent
| to learn the additional skills of management than a "generic
| manager" who can OJT learn the domain.
|
| I've spent most of my adult life in and around tech orgs, and
| the next even half-competent line- or second-level manager
| that didn't start out as an IC I meet will be the first.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I know a lot of people agree, but the most effective
| organization I ever worked in had managers who _only_ knew
| how to order furniture, arrange travel, and sign expense
| reports. The less effective orgs have all had managers who
| at some level or another believed they were involved and
| knowledgable about the work.
|
| The person who can estimate effort and risk, and sort the
| truth from the B.S., is your tech lead. The person who can
| do the seating chart, and relay the work products of the
| tech lead up the chain, is the manager.
| poszlem wrote:
| You get downvoted, but I share your observation (been
| programming for ~20 years). Sad to see HN deciding to downvote
| a perfectly valid opinion instead of engaging with it.
|
| It absolutely makes a difference if the manager knows the
| domain in which he works. The fact that there is a lot of inept
| managers that started as programmers does not really discredit
| that.
| paxys wrote:
| Pretty much exactly what I expected. You can replace Google with
| any other "old school" big tech company (Apple, Microsoft,
| Amazon) and Twitter with everything that came after it (Uber,
| Airbnb, Pinterest, Slack and every other successful or failed
| startup in the last two decades) and the comparison would look
| the exact same.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Apple and Netflix do not engineer their tooling in house. Googe
| and Fb do to a large extent and Amazon is somewhere inbetween.
| So no, not exactly the same
| aresant wrote:
| This person writes a twitter specific cartoon that he hosts on
| his website
|
| They are quite pointed and amusing and he does not discriminate
| in throwing any of the counter parties in this story under the
| bus ->
|
| https://twittoons.com/36 - on previous CEO
|
| https://twittoons.com/38 - on the media
|
| https://twittoons.com/3 - on being public
|
| https://twittoons.com/32 - on Elon
| [deleted]
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Something about that just makes me uncomfortable, I'm not sure
| I would appreciate it if were his peer.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| More importantly that person created the well known Goomics:
| https://goomics.net/
| fazfq wrote:
| >They are quite pointed and amusing and he does not
| discriminate in throwing any of the counter parties in this
| story under the bus
|
| You are right, there even are comics poking fun at the
| moderatorial slant of the site! Oh wait no, there isn't any.
| firefoxkekw wrote:
| A few extracts from the webpage, for a TLDR;
|
| > but Twitter "TLMs" ("tech lead managers") are more managers and
| less "tech".
|
| > I feel like engineers at Twitter are less diligent at adding
| comments and documentation to their code.
| [deleted]
| hericium wrote:
| orblivion wrote:
| This article is dated March 1. Maybe they changed?
| hericium wrote:
| Uh, I indeed missed the posting date. Thanks for pointing
| this out.
| [deleted]
| partiallypro wrote:
| This particular person has been posted about 3-4 times today, at
| least that's made the front page. I've seen more posts on this
| person than on Musk himself today.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| I'd rather read about a random squirrel than Musk... if even
| for just one day.
| cpeterso wrote:
| That post was from March 2022. The author has since been laid
| off: https://ma.nu/blog/bye-twitter
| fisherjeff wrote:
| Wow, I'd missed the update on that post and hadn't realized
| he's a named plaintiff on the class-action suit against
| Twitter. Nice.
| nixgeek wrote:
| Based on the note he posted from HR he was fired for cause and
| wasn't "laid off" by the usual definition of same -- he was
| told by HR that he had violated several company policies and
| his employment was being terminated immediately.
|
| [1]
| https://ma.nu/blog/img/2022-11-01_bye_twitter/termination_em...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Apparently some of the layoffs in Twitter are being portrayed
| as for cause[1], which follows the trend of SpaceX's layoffs
| that tried not to be classified as layoffs by instead firing
| employees for cause.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/29/technology/twitter-
| layoff...
| weezin wrote:
| Yeah given the context I think it is obvious that he got
| fired for advertising an extension that makes it easier to
| download your emails.
| triyambakam wrote:
| Have you seen the cartoons? I think the extension was
| probably the "last straw"
| marricks wrote:
| Cool that the new free speech-haven twitter doesn't allow
| advertising extensions internally or cartoons.
|
| Some proponents of free speech really only care if
| _their_ speech is curtailed and care little about anyone
| else 's.
| luckylion wrote:
| The blue not-really crossing out of the data of the other
| persons involved is great. My god, who wouldn't love to work
| with such an individual.
| sulam wrote:
| Hmm, you have a way to pull email addresses out of that
| picture?
| space_fountain wrote:
| Yes, I'm not sure highlight it by saying anything more is
| worthwhile, but yes it's possible to pull the name from
| this. Interestingly for me at least not the email, but
| still
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Sharing so much information about a company you work for
| publicly may have been considered a fireable offense. Gives
| hackers a lot of insight on how to infiltrate a company and
| what their weaknesses may be.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| What did he share?
| shric wrote:
| > Q: What do you mean by stack-ranking engineers? What were the
| criteria?
|
| > A: Raw number of lines of code over a certain period (a year
| I think)
|
| Wow.
| beebmam wrote:
| Genuinely incredible this happened in 2022. Holy shit. Which
| shitty manager was responsible for this a performance metric
| at Twitter? Should have been the first on the chopping block.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| You're kidding right? The rumors are Elon and co were
| responsible. So not on the chopping block.
| mozman wrote:
| Have a citation? I understand Elon isn't the most popular
| figure here but my sense is this is adding fuel to fire
| and should be backed up.
| beebmam wrote:
| Firstly: please note that companies have no obligation to
| reveal this information, and therefore will not.
|
| Secondly: If a manager under Musk made this decision,
| Musk is responsible as well, unless he renounces it and
| holds the people who made this decision accountable.
| dpe82 wrote:
| It definitely still happens; one group I recently worked in
| at Google used LOC and CL (pull requests) counts as a
| metric during calibration. With predictable results.
| icedchai wrote:
| I worked at a zombie startup in the early 2000's. One of
| the "managers" was in charge of tracking engineer
| performance. He would look at the number of lines added or
| modified. We were using CVS at the time. One guy would just
| add or remove white space to get his count up. Eventually
| this manager _was_ laid off.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| bena wrote:
| And in between the original post and your post is this post:
| https://ma.nu/blog/not-going-anywhere
|
| Which is just kind of funny
| polote wrote:
| We are in a world were some employee can claim ownership of a
| the job in someone else company. Absurd
| mc32 wrote:
| That's from April. So it's not relevant to their recent
| firing.
| puszczyk wrote:
| Can you point me where specifically did he do it?
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I claim ownership of all the jobs. Including yours and
| everyone else that comments on HN.
|
| Wow, what an absurd world we live in where I'm able to do
| something like this.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| thrown_22 wrote:
| >I know I am not the type of employee who has the most to
| fear from any potential incoming changes, and I'm very
| privileged in many ways. Still, what makes the company's
| culture is 100% us. If we're not going anywhere, neither is
| the culture. And because people like me may be in a
| relatively more secure position, I feel like it's our job to
| speak out to say that 1) we're not going anywhere, and 2) if
| there are disruptive changes coming our way, we will look out
| for teammates who may not be as privileged.
|
| This is a very good summary of the liberal woke mindset:
| people deluded into thinking they are important and
| untouchable when they are replaceable cogs. Give it a few
| more firings and this guy will be the next generation of
| deplorable.
| [deleted]
| dwaite wrote:
| > This is a very good summary of the liberal woke mindset:
| people deluded into thinking they are important and
| untouchable when they are replaceable cogs. Give it a few
| more firings and this guy will be the next generation of
| deplorable.
|
| (Sans labelling) this mindset has existed for a long time;
| for instance, labor unions have existed in the US since the
| civil war in order to allow workers stronger collective
| bargaining rights, and have been a federally protected
| right since 1935.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| I must have missed the part in the post where he talks
| about collective bargaining. All I saw was how much
| privilege he had and how it will protect him from being
| fired (it didn't).
| absurddoctor wrote:
| A more generous reading is that he was saying he didn't
| plan on quitting and didn't plan on changing his behavior
| to fit into any culture changes that he might disagree
| with. The mentioned privilege is that he could afford to
| be fired if that was the result, not that he was
| protected from being fired.
| awinder wrote:
| I think you missed the part where you should slow down
| and comprehend before firing all culture warrior
| torpedos, he's talking about not living paycheck to
| paycheck & having a great CV where he can get another
| job.
| luckylion wrote:
| The privilege he mentions is being so rich that he works
| only for entertainment/access to power, not for money.
| That does protect him from the potentially nasty side-
| effects of being fired.
| [deleted]
| icedchai wrote:
| And at a company (Twitter) where the core product has been
| stagnant for years. There's basically been zero innovation.
| paganel wrote:
| Also, previous HN discussion [1] about the author's cartoons
| while he was at Google. He also has a wikipedia page [2]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27778774
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manu_Cornet
| VikingCoder wrote:
| I think Manu's original "org charts" diagram needs to be
| updated to include Twitter.
|
| Perhaps Musk on top with a gun, shooting everyone on the
| bottom?
| leoh wrote:
| A lot of this (eg especially the in house stuff) comes from
| Google starting over a decade before twitter.
|
| OSS just wasn't as good then
|
| A lot of OSS now is from folks that had experience at google or
| were aware of what was going on there -- or who built things so
| that they could make things like the best folks (at the time).
| Some OSS is even from Google of course (eg k8s, chrome dev tools,
| etc.).
|
| Landscape is of course very different now.
|
| Google is slowly moving towards more OSS and external vendors as
| stuff gets better
| Raed667 wrote:
| Also google has +27k software engineers.
| nikivi wrote:
| Was surprised twitter used Phabricator and Jira given how bad the
| UX of those is.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Phab's is pretty good, in my experience. At least for
| engineers. Jira is of course atrocious.
| xtracto wrote:
| I remember using and managing Phabricator a couple of years
| ago and its UX was horrible. Also, wasn't its developemnt
| kind of discontinued at some point in the pass?
| tracker1 wrote:
| I'm now working on a team using Jira with a kanban setup..
| have to be honest, first time in decades that I've seen/used
| Jira and not wanted to pull what's left of my hair out.
| redanddead wrote:
| what's a good alternative to Jira?
| tracker1 wrote:
| Depends on your size, needs, scale, visibility and other
| requirements...
|
| I've seen good/bad usage of Azure DevOps. You can also
| use Trello, or actual cards/tape on a wall. It's just the
| first time I haven't hated Jira.
| nikivi wrote:
| I personally love https://height.app now
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