Gergely Orosz Profile picture
Nov 10 12 tweets 3 min read
Just in: starting today (Thursday) remote work is not an option at Twitter: all employees are expected to be 40 hours in the office. Only exceptions are for those physically unable to travel to an office or exceptions signed off by Elon.

Why the sudden change? My take:
As context, Twitter announced “WFH forever” in 2020. Lots of its workforce joined with the understanding that it’s a full-remote job.

Announcing a sudden return to the office will be unfeasable for many. I think it’s done for two reasons:

washingtonpost.com/technology/202…
1. Because it’s how Elons other companies run. It’s his philosophy. Twitter clearly is becoming similar to eg Tesla or SpaceX in working culture.

2. To further increase voluntary attrition. This one is surprising and would suggest Elon expects to be able to just hire instead.
3. To set expectations at “new Twitter”. The email telling people what will change from Thursday was sent out late Wednesday (just before midnight). At New Twitter, expect things to change last minute and get with it.

Ironically, in Europe, it’s already Thursday working hours.
The ignorance on Europe is especially telling. People got this email after starting their working day - working remote. They cannot reach managers to clarify if this applies for today: most managers are in the US, unreachable (they also need sleep!).
Also, at New Twitter, location seems to matter more. Many newly appointed managers - and managers who got to stay managers - are now in San Francisco, the headquarters.

With no WFH, location will become important. Those based in HQ should have more and better career options.
It feels to me, we’ll see a polarisation of tech companies in groups of:

1. Hybrid work. 1-3 days in the office/week

2. Office only. Like Twitter, Tesla and others that might follow

3. Full remote. Lots of smaller startups and a few larger companies (Automattic, GitLab etc)
Interesting to see where Big Tech is landing. They’re all going towards hybrid, with varying level of enforcing office days: Apple the most strict here, Amazon and Meta very loose. Interesting enough, Meta mentioned cutting lease costs and introducing eg desk sharing.
Update: a legal employee wrote on Twitter's internal Slack how they do not personally believe that Twitter employees have an obligation to return to the office *on no notice*.

It's a fundamental change to employment contracts.
Update: HR has been caught completely off-guard by Musk's email, I am told. They are scrambling to put together a formal policy and communications, as there is none.

I don't envy that team at all.
Writing a longer article which is going out in an hour or two to all subscribers of @Pragmatic_Eng. Sign up here to get it in your inbox: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/about

(Or follow @Pragmatic_Eng to get notified when it is out)
The article is out, with more details:

blog.pragmaticengineer.com/cruel-changes-…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Gergely Orosz

Gergely Orosz Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @GergelyOrosz

Nov 10
The more I learn about what is happening inside Twitter, the less any of this makes sense. Nothing that Elon has done has been to keep Twitter together - or even functioning!

In two weeks, he's let go 50% of staff, and his actions are pushing the other 40% to leave ASAP.
You don't fire 50% of a company with minimal planning if you want to keep the place to function.

You then don't announce an immediate return to the office for a full remote company if you want to keep employees around.

And you don't have all execs quit on you in 2 weeks.
I talked to a lot of software engineers before Elon took over. Some wanted to work with him. All those people are interviewing (the ones not laid off).

The only people I'm aware want to work are ones with large stock vesting the next 12 months, and they need to stay for it.
Read 6 tweets
Nov 10
Serious question: outside of outsized, unvested stock on the line or high compensation, why would any software engineer with options consider working at Twitter, going forward?

Policies changing overnight and an owner acting visibly hostile towards staff who built Twitter.
I can see how Twitter would be attractive for software engineers with no other options (a tight job market) or those early-career (hope to have outsized learning, and don't mind the long hours).

But Twitter doesn't have an inspiring mission like Tesla or SpaceX.
I know a few, still current, Twitter engineers who were excited about Elon coming in and shaking up the culture. They expected they'd ship faster.

However, all of them are now looking around, feeling no respect or appreciation coming their way. Plus, some of preferred remote.
Read 4 tweets
Nov 9
I’m taking a break from covering layoffs or amplifying them. Sadly, they are happening and will keep happening, but they are still an overall small part of the market.

I’m looking to balance things out, starting by focusing on more positive / interesting things.
Please feel free to send me good news “scoop”.

I’d like to learn more about positive things happening across the industry: companies, teams, individuals growing, succeeding, making progress, and what others might be able to take as learning inspiration.

blog.pragmaticengineer.com/scoop/
I’ll also be honest: negativity attracts negativity. I’m getting so many layoff details in my inbox, and it’s a spiral that I’d like to jump off of. I stopped sharing most of these as I see no point.

I’m also burnt out by all this news. Time for a reset!
Read 5 tweets
Nov 9
Meta announced it’s letting go 13% of staff. I’m sorry for those impacted.

It’s worth reflecting on why even founder CEOs like Zuck are in a tight spot at public companies.

Some shareholders wanted more cuts (20%). Employees’ are making less $$. No revenue growth in sight.
Meta’s stock is at a 7-year low and it will only go up if profits go up. Revenue will not be up, so the only way to increases profits is to cut costs (incl employees).

If Zuck didn’t do this, investors could launch more actions. Also, employees would leave thanks to comp drop.
If Meta was a private company - take how eg IKEA is - then none of this would matter. They could keep operating with lower profits, no investor pressure, and employees don’t have stock.

But they’re a public company. Stock matters. Investor returns matter. And this forces cuts.
Read 5 tweets
Nov 9
Noticed some folks mocking layoff announcements where the CEO says “I take full accountability.”

What this means is they don’t blame outside factors. Compare this w layoffs where the CEO says this is due to “the economy” “the macro climate”, suggesting they did everything right.
When someone says they take accountability, it means it was their poor decisions - that could have/should have been better - that led to this. You know who to blame.

The absence of this suggests it’s external things people should blame, not them.

Easier to blame something else.
For those saying “it’s just corporate talk” - well, I see few CEOs owe up to them messing up.

For those asking for consequences - fire someone in leadership! Step down! - I observed a CEO start layoffs saying “I just fired our CRO” as the one responsible. It didn’t seem better.
Read 8 tweets
Nov 8
Well, Expedia is having a bad day. On Expedia .com

Unexpected at the level of Expedia. Sending support for the team dealing with it. Screenshot of expedia.com wepage showing the message "e
This type of issue is strange for a variety of reasons. Like:
- The website going down is business critical for a travel site like Expedia. They could be losing thousands per minute.
- A top-level outage suggests this would not be a simple code change, but sg more fundamental.
In the past, outages like this often turn out to be infra-level issues or config changes (that are hard to catch with eg automated tests... but with decent canarying it should be possible).

I wonder if we'll see a postmortem after such a highly visible outage.
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(