> SpaceX, is the first space launch provider to ever achieve propulsive landing and re-use of an orbital-class rocket, a feat which includes some of the hardest software engineering you can do.
Not to be dismissive of landing an orbital rocket, but that's mostly a feat of aerospace engineering and control theory. On the software engineering side of things for SpaceX I think their work around CFD would be the more impressive feat from a computer science perspective.
Elon just made sweeping changes that cratered their ad revenue and took an axe to engineering teams all over the company. He did this in the lead up to the holiday season which has been the most profitable part of the year with advertisers pouring a significant portion of their yearly ad budgets into ad buys. Even if he was 100% correct that all of this was bloat, it was a monumentally stupid idea to make these changes now of all times. I would have expected him to at least have enough of an understanding of software engineering to know that deprecating systems and cutting out bloat needs to happen carefully with the talent onhand to be able to back out changes and manage the transition seamlessly. Fundamentally the risks involved are more financially impactful than the price of keeping headcount around for another year to do it safely.
Twitter hasn't even had a major incident yet and just the revenue loss from advertisers pausing ad campaigns probably already offsets all the savings they were hoping for in 4 - 6 months once the layoffs finally start bringing down staff costs.
Not to be dismissive of landing an orbital rocket, but that's mostly a feat of aerospace engineering and control theory. On the software engineering side of things for SpaceX I think their work around CFD would be the more impressive feat from a computer science perspective.
Elon just made sweeping changes that cratered their ad revenue and took an axe to engineering teams all over the company. He did this in the lead up to the holiday season which has been the most profitable part of the year with advertisers pouring a significant portion of their yearly ad budgets into ad buys. Even if he was 100% correct that all of this was bloat, it was a monumentally stupid idea to make these changes now of all times. I would have expected him to at least have enough of an understanding of software engineering to know that deprecating systems and cutting out bloat needs to happen carefully with the talent onhand to be able to back out changes and manage the transition seamlessly. Fundamentally the risks involved are more financially impactful than the price of keeping headcount around for another year to do it safely.
Twitter hasn't even had a major incident yet and just the revenue loss from advertisers pausing ad campaigns probably already offsets all the savings they were hoping for in 4 - 6 months once the layoffs finally start bringing down staff costs.