Twitter employees were treated nicely. Too nicely. And yet they were not productive. The only new features they introduced in 10 years were losses in excess of 200MM to 1bn+ and the banning/shadow banning of those who went against the group think, fun police, and thought-gestapo. Each staffer had 10 bosses and every department had a ton of waste.
Musk could never show up again after some changes, and the company would perform better than under the previous leadership.
As a German, I actually take offense to this kind of expression. You apparently have NO IDEA what Gestapo really was if you think banning gaslighting assholes for hate speech is in any way comparable or even remotely in the same neighborhood as the Gestapo.
These kind of phrases ridicule and downplay the horrific crimes and offenses against human rights committed by that organization and even the most unreasonable and idiotic ban on Twitter cannot ever be compared.
Words matter - and that's why we deal with "free speech" differently than Americans. Btw it's also pretty clear what holds on court and what doesn't - independent of how strict or unreasonable private social networks moderate their content.
Valid or not you do hit upon something I'm genuinely curious about. What do developers for something like twitter even do?
Twitter does one very specific thing, and it doesn't look like it has changed its goal much over the past 10 years, so what is it they're trying to develop so rapidly they need hundreds (thousands?) of developers.
The legacy border-radius assumptions regarding the "Set Up Profile" button may be no longer valid and need to be deeply investigated. We are therefore setting up a cross-functional taskforce to tackle this issue. MVP is due one year from now.
Not a direct answer to your question, but it reminds me of the first chapter from The Mythical Man Month
> One occasionally reads newspaper accounts of how two programmers in a remodeled garage have built an important program that surpasses the best efforts of large teams. And every programmer is prepared to believe such tales, for he knows that he could build any program much faster than the 1000 statements/year reported for industrial teams.
Why then have not all industrial programming teams been replaced by dedicated garage duos? One must look at what is being produced.
In the [attached figure] is a program. It is complete in itself, ready to be run by the author on the system on which it was developed. That is the thing commonly produced in garages…
He then goes on to describe how you can take a program and make it a programming product (by generalizing it, adding testing, documentation, maintenence) and a programming system (requiring interfaces and integration with the rest of the system)
>banning/shadow banning of those who went against the group think, fun police, and thought-gestapo.
Why would they agree to a ToS that clearly lays out things like "don't intentionally misgender people" if they fully planned on breaking their agreement
"But no one reads the ToS!" sure, but when you have your account suspended until you agree to delete a specific tweet and are given the exact area in the ToS you agreed to that you violated, then you should revoke your agreement to the ToS
When it's brought to your attention that you signed a document agreeing to Twitter being the thought Gestapo, just... cancel your agreement. Don't continue to agree to it in writing while whining about it publicly.
Some see it as their duty to fight back against unjust laws/rules. You and I might do it by breaking terms of service, Musk does it by purchasing the platform and adjusting the terms. Two sides of the same coin really, only difference being which end the agency is coming from.
That's like agreeing to take your shoes off when entering a building, leaving your shoes on, and then complaining when the employees/owner/whatever asks you to leave if you're not going to take them off. If you think a rule is stupid, then rebel against it by not agreeing to it
states “You may use the Services only in compliance with these Terms and all applicable laws, rules and regulations”, and links to the Twitter Rules and Policies:
> We prohibit targeting others with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.
In the Wayback machine, it looks like that direct language was added in an update between October 19 and October 28 of 2018, about four years ago:
Thank you, I'm surprised it's explicitly called out but not too surprised.
That said, I have trouble believing that "why would you agree to a ToS that you don't actually intend to ascribe to 100% of the time" is a question that requires serious consideration.
The key part is how you react when the ToS gets enforced. Like I said, if your account gets suspended and the specific violation is brought to your attention, then either delete the offending tweet or revoke your agreement.
It is incredible to look at these companies and see the staggering amount of losses and costs they have, plus the headcount.
There could be entire departments dedicated to figuring out whether or not the "like" and "retweet" buttons should have rounded corners or not, that sort of thing.
At some point, reality has to hit and apparently, Musk is the one who's going to bring it.
Is it being done in a shocking way to those who haven't been through this with other companies? Maybe. But how else is this company going to actually ever become profitable?
Musk paid huge money to get that thing. He paid multiple times the estimated price. The company is now in deep deep debt that was not nearly as large before - because company now owns the money Musk did not had.
He is not hand of the market. He is someone who made pretty bad business and has very little chance to fix.
And yes, there is likely someone doing UI decisions. Usually it is good idea to have special people good with visuals to make these artistic decisions.
Neither I nor person I responded to knows. However, person I responded to took issue with mere existence of such position.
I know that that comment was just pure emotion and hate. But, the fact is, there is nothing wrong with having department for visuals. Or department for marketing or department for communication with advertisers or what have you.
With this kind of mass and rapid layoffs, I will expect more losses in medium and long term since you destroy a working system. A lot of failures will emerge because no one is left for monitoring or fixing some issues.
Destroying a work system that loses 1100Mm a year is not a strategic loss. It is a gain in the direction you want to take the company (gain instead of loss)
Musk could never show up again after some changes, and the company would perform better than under the previous leadership.