Thread by @GergelyOrosz

Scoop: I am hearing far fewer than expected devs hit "yes".

Elon sent out an email relaxing remote working from the former draconian policy.

I'm hearing he is having meetings w top engineers to convince them to stay.

Sounds like playing hardball does not work. Ofc it doesn't.

The new remote policy is how remote work is approved as long as the manager of the engineer takes responsibility that the dev makes excellent contributions.

In-person meetings w teammates are expected ideally weekly; the very least monthly.

A week ago:

"From my larger group of 50 people, 10 are staying, 40 are taking the severance. Elon set up meetings with a few who plan to quit."

I don't blame people quitting. They've been offered intimidation, ever-changing policies the last minute, long hours, and an ultimatum.

I am not sure Elon realizes that, unlike rocket scientists, who have relatively few options to work at, devs with the experience of building Twitter only have better options than the conditions he outlines.

Plus they remember how this was two days ago:

Plus, we're talking about a leader who lost respect with their engineers when an engineer *corrected* him about why the Twitter app was slow.

That engineer was right.

Elon fired him.

Give people fear and intimidation, then a way out: guess what they choose. Well, now we see.

From a dev: "so this new policy makes remote working infeasible. It makes the manager responsible for "excellent contributions" of the direct. If it does not happen: manager is fired.

Managers have 20+ reports and don't have time to check in. So they'll demand in-office work...

I meant it when I called Elon's latest ultimatum the first truly positive thing about this Twitter saga.

Because finally, everyone who had enough of the BS and is not on a visa could finally quit. Lots of the people staying are on visas btw.

The unnecessary brutality Musk has treated all 7,500 Twitter employees has been mind-nubing. I keep saying that tech is pretty small, so be kind to people. He's done the opposite for 3 weeks.

Week 1: turmoil blog.pragmaticengineer.com/turmoil-at-twi…

Week 2: cruel changes blog.pragmaticengineer.com/cruel-changes-…

Unless something changes, Twitter's engineering workforce could be down by 90%, in just 3 weeks (!!!).

Elon fired 50%.

Then fired a few more for correcting him.

Now 80% of the remaining 50% could take severance.

Here's what I think will happen:

Twitter *cannot* afford to lose that many devs and keep operating. Heck, they have barely started hiring new ones, and those hires will not come through the door for several weeks!

I'm assuming Elon will have to throw money at this:
- Retention bonuses
- Short-term contracts

I heard some ppl suggest that Musk has made Tesla a success, SpaceX a success, and we should not judge too early, as he has a track record.

I agree.

But my question is: why treat people with zero respect? And once he does this, what does he expect, when those ppl have options?

Clear to me that Twitter needs to hire new people ASAP plus retain some existing ppl for handovers.

Too many bridges burnt with most devs.

All of this is just completely nonsensical. I get he wants to move fast, but why wreck the company while at it?

The irony is a lot of the software engineers liked some of the changes. E.g. the speed up in the pace. Elon spending time at Twitter.

But, as an eng is saying "we got what we wanted the worst possible way." Faster pace by working on weekends. Elon cancelling remote overnight.

Another sw engineer was telling me he was *really* excited when Elon took over, and could not wait to work with him.

Then was confused why Elon treated Twitter so poorly. Eg didn't even talk with staff.

Then this person was fired as part of the 50%.

Why let go even supporters?

Talking with a software engineer who was fired by Musk. This person is saying they are conflicted. They feel mistreated, but want Twitter to survive - *in spite* of him, because of its outsized importance to the world.

I agree.

Hope Musk sorts this fully self-inflicted crisis.

The odds of a service outage have, sadly gone up with so many leaving. Though good news deploys are locked down (no changes: fewer outages!)

Follow me on LI: linkedin.com/in/gergelyorosz and subscribe to newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/about in the hopefully unlikely case that Twitter has a blip

Deadline passed and lots of people did not blink when given the ultimatum.

Let that sink in.

Pretty much what earlier employee internal polls showed.

Brutal and entirely self-inflicted.

Twitter will be run on a skeleton crew that’s ~10-15% of what it was 3 weeks ago.

So much institutional knowledge walked out the door.