Gergely Orosz Profile picture
Nov 7 14 tweets 4 min read
What I'm hearing from inside Twitter:

Several people who were let go on Friday, then asked to come back were given less than an hour as a deadline.

Software engineers who got this call I know of all said "no" and the only ones who could eventually say "yes" are on visas.

Also:
Many people got a phone call with this "offer", and a short deadline. Lots of people stopped answering unknown numbers to avoid this.

Inside Twitter, managers I hear are getting desperate, trying to call back more people. People are saying "no" + more sr engineers are quitting.
None of this is surprising. As a rule of thumb, after you lay off X% of people, you get an additional half attrition. Lay off 10%: expect another 5% to quit. Lay off 50%... not unreasonable to expect another 25% to quit.

Calling back people you just fired rarely works.
Why it's a problem that senior people are quitting and people don't want to come back:

Twitter has a complex architecture *for a reason.* And it needs some level of institutional knowledge to maintain.

This institutional knowledge both got fired + is walking out the door.
In practical terms: software engineers who are with the company are now put on oncall rotations for systems they have no idea about. I mean, they can figure it out... easiest to talk with someone who knows these.

The problem is when there's no such person left.
Talking with engineers, some things people don't realize about Twitter:

- On prem data centers
- Lots of infra-level advanced stuff. Eg multi-level infra feature flags
- Advanced infra-level incremental rollouts to avoid outages that were caused by infra changes in the past
Unless the institutional knowledge is somehow retained, in days/weeks/months, we should, sadly, expect to see a lot more outages.

The straightforward option to reduce damage is:
1. Retain experienced folks, at least mid-term
2. Hire and onboard new people with these seniors
I know that on Twitter it's fashionable to mock how "slow" Twitter was to ship.

But the more I learn about the internal systems, and why it was built in a way, the more impressed I am. Eg Twitter onboarding to k8s was extremely challenging (+brilliant) thanks to legacy infra.
Twitter has no nuance to discuss Twitter tradeoffs. But as I understand, there were many: some workaround of legacy decisions, some deliberate.

This doesn't change that Twitter is a complex system, and it's complex for good reasons. I really hope enough people stay who know why.
Also, thank you to both people who built these systems Twitter runs on, and especially those staying and maintaining them.

Keeping Twitter running became far more challenging overnight for no fault of ppl doing all this difficult work.

Thanks for keeping the lights on and more!
One thing that continues to bug me:

Elon Musk is an experienced operator and no stranger to layoffs (and their impact). He has a team of advisors from the VC world.

Surely they expected all this to happen. So, why did they do it? Or is this the plan?

A timely comic from a former Twitter software engineer - several people told me he was one of the most productive web engineers -, who was also Twitter's unofficial Chief Cartoonist.

So a bit more of an insider view:

Worth linking how the author of the above comic got fired at Twitter.

He was working on a high-priority project at 9pm on Tuesday (after Elon bought Twitter). Disconnected and fired mid-work-meeting. No justification as to why.

Now he's suing Twitter.

ma.nu/blog/bye-twitt…
I'll cover more from the inside on @Pragmatic_Eng. It's the #1 technology newsletter on Substack. If you work in tech, you might find it interesting: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/about

And some more details about turmoil at Twitter, as reported by me:
blog.pragmaticengineer.com/turmoil-at-twi…

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More from @GergelyOrosz

Nov 8
Most companies after doing layoffs: call an all hands the next day where leadership acknowledges what happened, and rallies the remaining folks about the mission, vision, strategy.

Twitter: the week after the layoff, still none of this. Area leads are doing small meetings.
Software engineers I’m talking with who were not fired are confused as to what they should be working on, what the strategy is… the most they get is reading Elon’s public tweets.

I’ll just say this is an interesting experiment, leading a company from the outside.
Just as confusing is who is in charge. Twitter has no CEO, but external advisors - who have made it clear they are just helping and this is not their job - are making product decisions.

With so much uncertainty, the engineers I talk with are interviewing, looking for stability.
Read 4 tweets
Nov 8
"I've applied for a software engineering job and the company wants me to complete a neuroscientific test first. Is this normal?"

It's uncommon *for software engineers* but it exists. Some founders swear by this test (and reject people with the 'wrong' type of results).
These tests have nothing to do with software engineering. In the past, I would have said, to treat it as a flag of a pretty random hiring process.

However, with a cooling job market, you might not have the luxury to pass on these.

It is a weird process, that's for sure.
"What are 'right' type of results? Hard to tell. But here is an example of a rejection based on such a test.

Read 4 tweets
Nov 7
I interviewed @artman about how he and the team are building @linear.

An interesting thing Tuomas said: because he worked at Uber during hypergrowth (2014-19), he wanted to make sure that he applies the lesson learned at Uber at his next startup:

Never do hypergrowth again.
This is because of the extreme pain hypergrowth comes with, how it pushes systems to be rewritten all the time.

The opposite of hypergrowth is sensible and controlled growth where people have the time to grow with the company and their roles.
Honestly, I came away impressed and think more companies should stop looking up to unhealthy practices like hypergrowth and blitzscaling - needed for a fraction of companies - and look to healthy ways to grow startups.

Full interview will later come to @Pragmatic_Eng.
Read 4 tweets
Nov 7
Another sad scoop: Zendesk is doing layoffs. The positive side is that it's "only" 5% of workforce, about 350 people. Eng leadership team has been briefed, and employees will hear about details soon.

The cuts come after an investor group bought Zendesk July 2022 for ~$10B.
Zendesk has had a turbulent year. In February 2022, its leadership turned down a $17B acquisition offer, thinking they are worth more... well, they were not.

Honestly, the fact that this layoff is *only* 5% in this environment, is almost surprising.

techcrunch.com/2022/06/24/zen…
PE or investors buy companies for $$, expecting they can either sell it later for $$$ or take out $$$ in dividends over the year.

Cost cutting is common in these scenarios.

Considering what happened at Twitter (50% cut a week later), Zendesk (5% 4 months later) looks better...
Read 6 tweets
Nov 7
I really hoped that Meta would not do layoffs despite their revenues growth coming to a halt. This has nothing to do with Meta itself, but everything with how an eye-wateringly profitable company with a founder who has absolute control *could* afford to ride out a rough period.
I told people if Meta was not controlled by Zuck but a career CEO, there would have, no doubt, been layoffs at the company.

Zuck - and dual class shares - was the reason this never happened in 18 years.

I’m told any layoff decision was w Zuck. This week we’ll likely hear more.
If Meta does layoffs, it means a few things:

1. Growth for 2023 is likely to be looking worse than it did just a few months back

2. There is no "safe place" in tech. Companies with profits dropping, even with founders w absolute control will likely reach to this.

3. Recession.
Read 5 tweets
Nov 6
While I’d like to see Twitter, as a product, succeed, we need to acknowledge that Twitter, as a tech company with decent professional standards is already done for.

Staff+ engineers will be wise professionally to not be associated with the messy time to come.
There’s tons of opportunity for less experienced software engineers to step up and push through incredible challenges to come at Twitter - mostly thanks to the knowledge vacuum and staff shortage.

Anyone with options will consider more sane and predictable working environments.
Just the last week showed that Elon and his trusted buddies will call the shots. If you’re a staff or principal engineer at Twitter, you’ve probably been pushed aside, and all your arguments on the risks of throwing away standard practices were ignored, and will be ignored.
Read 5 tweets

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