"Employees were told they had to a sign a pledge to stay on with the company. 'If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below,' read the email to all staff, which linked to an online form. Anyone who did not sign the pledge by 5 p.m. Eastern time Thursday would receive three months of severance pay, the message said."
Not just "hardcore," but "extremely hardcore." What does that mean?
In the midnight email, which was obtained by The Washington Post, Musk said Twitter “will need to be extremely hardcore” going forward. “This will mean working long hours at high intensity,” he said. “Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”... Musk said Twitter would be more of an engineer-driven operation going forward — and while the design and product-management areas would still be important and report to him, he said, “those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway.”
There's also a new requirement to show up in the office. Taking all these things together, I think Musk is structuring the place to be quite off-putting to most employees — especially to most woman. And now you have to check a box to admit you're not really the type of person who can do the job under the newly hostile conditions. How can you do all that and not expect litigation? Or does he want litigation?
Speaking of Musk and litigation, did you see "Elon Musk Heads to Court to Defend His Billions in Tesla Pay/A shareholder is asking the court to void a 2018 compensation package that has paid the chief executive nearly $50 billion" (NYT)?
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129 comments:
He wants good programmers, is all. Your work is your hobby. Women don't usually cut it owing to split interests, as Althouse indicates.
"There's also a new requirement to show up in the office. Taking all these things together, I think Musk is structuring the place to be quite off-putting to most employees — especially to most woman."
I'm surprised you would say that. The type of working conditions he's laying out is exactly the type of working condition that every entrepreneur or small business owner has to operate under regularly. This is old school work. This is what it takes- or what it used to take- to be successful, to rise above the pack.
Women have been able to do this forever, even with more obstacles in front of them than most men. Musk is clearly laying out his filter for the type of person he wants in there. If today's new 'STEM' women are not up to it, so be it. Todays 'STEM' boys may not be up to it either. But he'll find enough quality people who are. And in the end, they will be stars.
The word has gone out. Musk is an enemy of the Regime now.
Release the lawyers!
Maybe some of the students Ann trained will be good little Regime enforcers and sue Musk for whatever stupid shit they can make up.
I find it entertaining Ann thinks Musk should be sued for demanding actual work and value to the company from his employees.
Saying “No, you can’t have any more, you’ve already got more than your share” to women is our most important social and political imperative.
This makes musk look insecure.
"Extremely Hardcore" means you actually have to go to the office and work and can't sit on your ass at home pretending to work.
"Extremely Hardcore" means you actually have to go to the office and work and can't sit on your ass at home pretending to work.
"especially to most woman."
I thought we were beyond this stereotype. Maybe I'm wrong.
Perhaps "hard core" has something to do with determination to turn a profit -- largely missing for the last ten years.
Net profit/loss ($mm)
2012 -79
2013 -645
2014 -577
2015 -521
2016 -456
2017 -108
2018 1206
2019 1466
2020 -1136
2021 -221
BusinessofApps
"I think Musk is structuring the place to be quite off-putting to most employees — especially to most woman."
Oh thank god...
At least he rehired Ligma and Johnson!
Women hardest hit? Eh professor….
It applies to all.
It’s a business. He owns it. He gets to run it how he wants.
Besides what was it that all the Karens told us during Covid? Oh, right, employers can mandate employees get shots, and disclose their Covid status and vaccination status, and all sorts of other things.
But… what? They can’t mandate that you actually show up for work at the place of business?
Treating people the same. Oh my gosh how unfair….
I am enjoying having Shouting Thomas back!
Musk is trying to beat Price's law (50% of the work is done by the square root of the number of people working).
I did thirty-nine years as an engineer before retiring. These were always the expectations from Day One. Show up. Get the job done (as opposed to putting in forty hours a week.) Bring your own damn lunch. You are a professional; you have responsibilities to both your employer and the public. If you eff up, people can die. It's not for everybody. Seems to work out that more men than women wear the iron ring. (But the women who do are fierce...)
WaPo has to be dramatic for its readers. In large layoffs, all employees are often offered an opportunity to voluntarily separate with a package. This does get rid of disloyal employees, but it also gets rid of often overpaid experienced employees on better terms. You don't have to volunteer, but then you are part of the pool of people that may be laid off. The only silly thing is the severance package is usually the same either way, but it you are proactive about your career; then you'll leave on your terms and take the package.
In short, this is normal stuff, but WaPo wants it readers to get the vapors from it. Wonder if Amazon is doing the same for their layoff of 10,000 employees?
An "off-putting" work environment to women is one in which they're expected to work hard?
If Musk is trying to save the company from bankruptcy, how else would he do that? Everyone needs to show up and work hard. What's so bad about that? If an employer is no longer allowed to demand this from time to time of employees, because it might hurt employees' feelings and make them miss Little Johnny's soccer practice, we have a bigger problem as a society.
I see women like the ones who made those Twitter Tik Tok videos, and I'm glad my MIL is no longer able to understand what's going on in the world. One of five women in her B school class in the 50s, worked her butt off for years, all to show a bunch of sexist men that women could work as hard as men and were as good as men at their jobs. And for what in the end? So Twitter women could drink wine at work and then whine about how mean Elon Musk wants them to work hard. She handed out many a pink slip at work over the years, and I'm sure she'd be the first to show these folks the door.
How original. If you want to get paid, you actually have to show up to work.
Apparently my current and former bosses are/were all "structuring the place to be quite off-putting to most employees"
Who knew?
Althouse wrote: I think Musk is structuring the place to be quite off-putting to most employees — especially to most woman. And now you have to check a box to admit you're not really the type of person who can do the job under the newly hostile conditions.
"newly hostile conditions" = showing up at the office and having to actually work, and bringing or paying for your own lunch. Oh, and you're no longer allowed to take blue check verification kick backs, and coordinate censorship of conservatives with the Democrat Party and CIA.
"Yes your honor. Mr. Musk insisted that I show up at the office from 8am to 4pm Monday through Friday. I find that extremely sexist and offensive to women. He obviously hates women. Then he threatened me and refused to even provide me with free breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He's trying to starve me to death. I was traumatized the other day trying to pack my own ham sandwich. Do you know how humiliating it is to eat a ham sandwich in front of your coworkers?? Especially in San Francisco?? My family counted on the $15k extortion for a blue check. It was just sort of a way to spread the Twitter wealth. Now it's all gone and any asshole can get verified for $8. This is criminal your honor. HELP US!!!"
Temujin said...The type of working conditions he's laying out is exactly the type of working condition that every entrepreneur or small business owner has to operate under regularly.
"I have only come here seeking knowledge. Things they would not teach me of in college." - Sting - Wrapped Around Your Finger - 1983
"Extremely hardcore" reminds me of a story. I was in Tyler, Texas watching a patent infringement trial against Apple.
The plaintiff's lawyer was crossing Apple's expert; a computer scientist from MIT. But he also served on the Board of The Tor Project.
"Do you know about the study from King's College in London about the Tor Project."
"No."
"Turns out that 90% of the world's extreme pornography uses The Tor Project."
Millions were won right there. The expert was completely discredited. The jury's eyes glazed over after that.
Sounds like Musk wants to do 2 things: return Twitter to a start-up culture and focus on providing a platform and not waste resources on PC/Woke feelings police.
I don't see anything in there that violates usual labor laws (it's CA, maybe, but even there, employees are likely to be at-will) unless workers are already under contract.
This will make Twitter cheaper and more versatile. Which is a necessary step if earlier speculation that Musk wants the platform and not necessarily the tweets, because he has other long-range plans for it.
Why is that off-putting especially to women?
The teamwork of a hardcore group can appeal to anyone. The shared suffering and achievement isn't gender specific.
Perhaps what you meant to say is that employees with families are most likely to quit. It's arguably a distasteful management decision to reward the childless.
He needs great programmers who are team players, as well. If you’re dedicated and create great code, you’ll get rewarded. It’s normal!
It’s meritocracy, too. No trophies simply for participating.
The reality of tech from what I’ve seen: Some women can be good programmers (just like some men can), or are, and a few are excellent, but relatively few are as driven to be the best and there are many fewer of them. The tail matters. Natural interest, imperatives etc
Downstream of mission critical programmers/engineers are a swarm of peri-technical managers who tend to be women (people managers/project managers/hiring managers/budget/HR etc. and quite a few men. Because the field is so relatively objective, it’s so very much merit based (do you have the skill or not...can you learn it in a short enough window to succeed)?
Thus many companies must tithe the political/social influencers and popular sentiment with departments of less important labor. Recessions and innovators expose this (just as in the gov’t but there all the incentives are much worse and often backwards)
My prediction: Because the conditions providing the freedom to take-risks and have these realities exposed as Musk is exposing them, (not just in times of war/great change/natural disaster etc.), the costs will be much higher. Democrats becoming much more the party of labor, resentment, Commie chic and redistribution than before....Republicans conserving whatever currents theyre riding upon and where popular sentiment inputs reasonable allow.
We’ve been feminizing, unwinding and changing much of our civilization, backing our way into a much bigger, sclerotic Euro-style state and institutions, on the logic of social sentimentalism, liberation and (S)elf.
Regardless of the Twitter experiment results, some of those fired will end up recycling back into academia/politics/law/tech and getting their revenge. They will call their revenge noble and ‘good for all’.
That's the way it's always been for "exempt" salaried employees. You get paid to do a job, not for hours worked. Just ask fast food managers or other supervisors of hourly employees. If hourly employees work overtime - 10 hour days and Saturdays - they get paid time + 1/2 for the extra. The supervisors have to be there and they just get their regular salary with no extra.
Welcome to the real world.
I think Musk is structuring the place to be quite off-putting to most employees — especially to most woman.
@Althouse, having retired from a 45 year career designing and developing data management systems where the cutting edge flows into the bleeding edge, I assure you that the environment Musk describes is quite the norm in a high tech entrepreneurial firm. He wants to take Twitter back to its entrepreneurial roots. It will no doubt come as a huge surprise to a doctrinaire feminist such as yourself, but there are women who thrive in that environment. You want to disadvantage such women to accommodate the sort of woman who la-dee-das around her apartment all day pretending to work.
Gee, he might just be serious.
This is the old school tech start-up model: 80 hour work weeks and cutting the bottom 50% of employees both to motivate and to maximize quality. True at Goldman Sachs, true at pre-2000 Microsoft, and attempted by Enron. Etc. Etc. Etc.
This is pure, raw capitalism. Succeed and become multi-millionaires. Fail and have nothing.
This is NOT diversity-friendly "everyone gets a gold star" capitalism.
When women aren't treated differently, equality reigns.
Three months severance pay is hardcore?
Wow!
These entitled little children are our future leaders.
Musk announces he wants his employees to actually work. World ends!
So, I'm a bit confused? Are men and women capable of the same work, or are they not? If men and women are the same, then why the comment about "quite off-putting to most employees — especially to most woman."? Why would this be off-putting to a woman? I thought women were e̶q̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶t̶o̶ the same as men.
When Musk was pursuing Twitter, a number of Twitter employees had posted online that there was no way in Hell that they would ever work for him. They figured that they would be scooped up by other Big Tech companies, maybe at even a higher salary and still have all of the nice perks that Musk has now done away with. Since Musk closed on his purchase Twitter, Big Tech companies like Meta and Amazon have announced massive lay-offs. Musk is now in the driver’s seat with his employees no longer having lucrative employment options elsewhere with competition from the other unemployed Big Tech workers for jobs. Musk can be rather choosy who to keep and who to let go. Twitter employees now have 3 months to prove that they are worthy to be kept on and will need to be competitive with their co-workers to be productive and come to Musk’s attention when making the decision who to keep and who to boot. There are no more “participation trophies” at Twitter. May the best and most productive men and women Twitter employees keep their jobs. And if Musk makes Twitter profitable, may they share in those profits.
Assume the issue for women is childcare and pregnancy/childbirth leave. Litigation if Twitter made promises to employees on that score that Musk is revoking.
In the real world this is an extremely generous offer. As someone else just wrote, where are the articles about Jeff Bezos laying off more workers and did that "good little CEO" offer severance like this?
Older workers as well as women are being targeted by this edict.
The Musk acquisition of Twitter ended up being a rare kind of reverse hostile takeover, a shotgun wedding. While he initiated the hostile takeover, he was forced to buy the company when he tried to back out. I suppose it should be no surprise that he is abusing the bride.
>"I think Musk is structuring the place to be quite off-putting to most employees — especially to most woman."<
Show me the situation and I'll find you the slight to women - an Althouse credo.
The guy is trying to make his newly-purchased company work and survive, not to solve women's - or anyone else's - problems. Of course he is not trying to make it "off-putting' to women - women that can code well, anyway. It is obvious that he *wants* such women working for him. All the rest is deadwood, sexless deadwood.
Ann,
Sounds like you're saying women don't want to actually compete with men. I didn't realize we were allowed to say that, even though it's true.
I mean, yeah, I guess there will be litigation, but what are the causes of action going to be?
Extreme hard core would be sending the email at midnight and giving an hour to respond to keep you job. Not opting in at your leisure.
"extremely hardcore"
"supermodel"
"ultra right-wing"
Working hard isn't a woman thing. I guess.
Musk needs to turn Twitter into a lean, mean, fighting machine because of advertiser boycotts. Funny, how conservatives get cancelled for their political beliefs and that's that. but if liberals get fired (even for bad performance or the corporation needs to downsize), its lawsuits up the wazoo. Wonder why conservatives are so dumb?
Not just "hardcore," but "extremely hardcore." What does that mean?
We will know it when we see it?
I do think Musk is making a mistake by making them all come into the office. We just completed a project for a client for a mid-level marketing job. It was a national work from home search. Ended up hiring someone who lives in the MidWest and 1/2 of the salary they would have paid in NY. The person in NY would have wanted to work from home anyway. The client saved about 50k in salary.
There are some jobs that require in-office work and some that don't. In either case, get rid of the weak people and make a strategic decision about in office or WFH with each role. You can be as demanding with WFH employees as with in-office employees.
Hard work is a personal choice that is reinforced by the appropriate carrot. You don't get hard work with a stick. The larger your candidate pool (national wfh candidate pool is 300+ million people) the higher your probability of finding someone who themselves chooses to work hard because they want to accomplish something personally.
Demanding extremely hardcore and long working hours and exceptional performance gives you sub-par developers and a shitty product. The truth is Twitter is a mature company and no amount of hype is going to turn it and give it some kind of 'start up' energy or whatever. There's no more VC money flowing in, it's sink or swim time, so you need profit and that means you need a superior product. You're not going to get that hiring hungry kids who will work like every week is crunch time. Because these people will be overworked and inexperienced they will make the same mistakes their peers did 10 years ago, and they will have none of the institutional knowledge they need.
If you want something coded right, you will pay dearly for your developers, you will let them work wherever, you will let them set their own working hours and make sure they have everything they need and you will fight tooth and nail to retain them.
Musk is treating Twitter like a factory floor because factory floors is all he knows. Great coders know they are in a sellers market, always have been and always will be. Talent is expensive and talent is demanding and talent can be very capricious but you're not banging tin pots together over here, you're making one of the most complicated things that has ever been.
Mommy!
I can't think of a non-snarky way to say this, but the vast majority of people don't live the life of tenured academics (hell, serf adjuncts don't either), where teaching fewer than three classes a year (2/1), fall, winter, spring breaks, regular semester-long leaves of absence, and every summer off are the norm. I have known very few who take their research, writing, and teacher training requirements seriously enough to produce anywhere near 2,000 working hours a year (countless conferences at resorts are not work), but they are a tiny, tiny minority, and even among those who do, often their academic product is utterly inferior.
Other than in STEM and medicine, I'd say one in ten, or fewer, tenured faculty could handle the rigors of a private, competitive job in a similar field where continued employment depends on showing up, results, and bottom lines. This is not to suggest you aren't one of the few.
But considering the percentages of women who work in low-paying but physically, mentally, and emotionally challenging jobs with no perks and then care for their households without paid help, I still find it bizarre that you would suggest the fairer sex can't work as hard as the other one. I'd expect that sort of comment from one of those 'ladies shouldn't vote' types. And the few female geeks I've known can't be pried from screen or lab any more than the male ones.
“Anyone who did not sign the pledge by 5 p.m. Eastern time Thursday would receive three months of severance pay”
Usually concurrent with retention bonuses for those you want to keep.
"Tony Hsieh, the late ex-CEO of online retailer Zappos, is known for his trailblazing workplace policies — including one in which the company offered up to $2,000 to unhappy new employees to leave the company, essentially bribing them to quit.
According to a 2008 Harvard Business Review article, Hsieh's "The Offer" program was a policy that entailed asking new employees if they'd like to quit following a four-week training period. If they chose to, Zappos would pay them a bonus on top of their full salary during their time worked at the company. The bonus rose over the years, with the company first offering $100 then $500, $1,000, and eventually, $2,000.
The practice was intended to weed out those who would not be as committed to and passionate about their work at the company.
"We want to make sure that employees aren't here just for paychecks and truly believe this is the right place for them," Hsieh told Business Insider's Rich Feloni in a 2016 interview."
"You Go Girl" PR Department hardest hit. HR second hardest hit. DEI third hardest hit. The MSM will have battle-hardened applicants. Its all good.
It's fucking Twitter, alright? How hard can it be?
Great coders know they are in a sellers market, always have been and always will be.
Twitter doesn't need that many great coders to be successful. Some will leave and others will be attracted by the opportunity.
What it really needs is to get rid of the poor and mediocre ones if it's going to avoid bankruptcy.
This is just a first step. Those who choose to stay will face more intense scrutiny of their contributions.
Litigation? How? As I tell potential clients, you can't sue because your boss is a jerk. or even a mean jerk. We have to have a racial, gender, or age nexus.
It’s hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy work/life balance.
Twitter is a mature company, sustained through finance, where the wheat and chaff have progressed with equity and inclusion.
Musk needs to turn Twitter into a lean, mean, fighting machine because of advertiser boycotts.
It's like the progressive prices, and trickle-down debt, in a redistributive economic model. Twitter has been operated on a financed model. Once you separate the wheat from the chaff, the babies from the fetuses, you can return to normal operating procedure.
Black Bellamy injecting a healthy dose of reality into the discussion.
Elon can ask everyone to pretend that it's a start up again, but it isn't. Given disliking what people post on internal message boards gets you fired via Elon Tweet, that 3 months of salary is going to be appealing to many.
People work startups because it is a way to strike it big. What big payoff exists for Twitter? A possibility that if you survive and suck up enough to Elon he might possibly reward you? Sounds like a workforce of toadie yes men to me, not the best and brightest.
There is no upside to staying if he does declare bankruptcy, just all downside.
It's hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy worklife balance says our host.
Well a lot of people want a healthy worklife balance. And some companies offer that--and some don't. And Musk has just told people that the rules have changed in his company and if you don't want to sign up for the trip, there's a lifeboat. Take three months pay and go searching for that healthy worklife balance elsewhere.
Stuff happens in takeovers. People get laid off. Been there and done that both ways. It's better to be with the taker rather than the takee. Life is hard and it's harder when you believe in the tooth fairy.
But Ann, not everyone has the same definition of work/life balance. Some people skew towards work and some don't. Should the ones who skew towards work be penalized for being more ambitious?
Are you requiring equal outcomes no matter the level of work performed?
Ann Althouse said...
It’s hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy work/life balance.
Rational person: Go work for someone else.
Lawyer: SUE HIM!
There are too many lawyers in this country.
Black Bellamy said...
Musk is treating Twitter like a factory floor because factory floors is all he knows.
Welp!
"I think Musk is structuring the place to be quite off-putting to most employees — especially to most woman."
Maybe women shouldn't expect an employer to cater to them as if they are special people.
"It’s hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy work/life balance."
Maybe a company isn't supposed to provide that as a default and that perhaps the people for whom that is more important can go work elsewhere. Again, I think this is an expectation of a womens office culture that assumes that their values are to be prioritized over that of the boss.
It’s hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy work/life balance.
So having to be at your job and work forty hours a week is now an unhealthy work/life balance?
Exhibit #1 on why men get paid more your honor.
What is a healthy work/life balance then?
It’s hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy work/life balance.
Work/life balance is different in an entrepreneurial firm. Welcome to my (former) world. Three months’ salary for severance is more generous than I’d offer in his shoes.
Not sure there's a standard for a 'healthy work/life balance'. It's personal.
My industry had deadlines often entailing weekends and late nights. That was the work.
But salaries were strong and always included annual $$$ bonuses. Quite healthy.
If Twitter's going to be a slave ship - jump. If you're going to make bank - your call.
You're only young once.
Another megalomaniac.
Ann, you are right about that (hostile to an expectation of healthy work-life balance). As someone who has been working as a software developer in exactly this environment for almost 30 years, I have become increasingly aware of that tradeoff, and perhaps even starting to regret it; but this is what the job is at high performance math/physics/software STEM company.
Anyone who wants something different is welcome to start their own company with different expectations; the reality seems to be that when people do that, they take on greater economic risk and put in even more work, and then are reluctant to lower expectations on employees.
My view is that this is why STEM careers tend to be higher compensation than most others. These jobs are very demanding, there is a lot of competition to get and keep them, and they are relentlessly results driven; it doesn't really matter how hard you worked and how collaborative your design process was if the results don't meet your customers' needs.
Ann, you are right about that (hostile to an expectation of healthy work-life balance). As someone who has been working as a software developer in exactly this environment for almost 30 years, I have become increasingly aware of that tradeoff, and perhaps even starting to regret it; but this is what the job is at high performance math/physics/software STEM company.
Anyone who wants something different is welcome to start their own company with different expectations; the reality seems to be that when people do that, they take on greater economic risk and put in even more work, and then are reluctant to lower expectations on employees.
My view is that this is why STEM careers tend to be higher compensation than most others. These jobs are very demanding, there is a lot of competition to get and keep them, and they are relentlessly results driven; it doesn't really matter how hard you worked and how collaborative your design process was if the results don't meet your customers' needs.
Ann Althouse said...
It’s hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy work/life balance.
But... especially women.
Women have to, and do, work twice as hard as men.
Asking women to work hard is unreasonable.
Pick a fuckin' lane!
“It’s hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy work/life balance.”
My, how things have changed. You can’t have an expectation of a healthy work/life balance if you can’t work from home?
Professor, do you actually think so little of this generation? Are they such a bunch of pussies that they can’t work at the employer’s place of business without feeling ‘hostility’ to their views of healthy work life balance?
Or maybe you do think so little of them, and there certainly would appear to be plenty of anecdotal evidence of that being true…
“It’s hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy work/life balance.”
This is the attitude of a spoiled civil service employee with an expectation of lifetime security at a job.
I know this board is "pro capital" v labor, but you've got to draw the line.
First, none of these employees have equity. In a startup, they do. So, are they going to get paid more to work so much more, or get some windfall down the road? What is the return for them? This is a business relationship -- the employees aren't running a charity.
Second, the video game industry is known for "crunches". From Wikipedia:
"In the video game industry, crunch is compulsory overtime during the development of a game. Crunch is common in the industry and can lead to work weeks of 65–80 hours for extended periods of time, often uncompensated."
Stress on uncompensated, which is exploitation. It has terrible effects on the workforce, unless your model is cycling through 20-somethings, replacing them as they burn out. And Musk is saying this is permanent.
Third, who is likely to accept your offer of working 100 hour weeks for no extra compensation? Is it really the best of the best, those most likely to have other options? Many companies have added flex time, work from home, no meeting days, great beenfits, etc specifically to recruit and retain the best, most especially women. Do you think they offer these benefits because they're running charities or are too woke? Ha. It's about the bottom line. Ask literally any HR professional.
Tons of knee jerk responses here.
It’s hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy work/life balance.
What is "it"? The layoffs? I'm sure the 10,000 people losing their job at Amazon and 11,000 losing their job at Meta thinks layoffs are hostile to a healthy work/life balance, because the scale just got a bit light on the work side. Musk is at least listening to/for those who want to retain work at Twitter. Nobody has to stay. Still more people will be left at Amazon, Meta, and Twitter than now work on the Keystone Pipeline.
Oh this shit again.
It's hilarious to me that you evidently don't see how embarrassingly elitist this take is. I know that some people were able to live in nice big houses in nice university neighborhoods and have a schedule that allowed them to walk home sometimes to have lunch with their nice stay at home husbands, just like how at Twitter a lot of people were able to "work" while watching cartoons or going to mommy and me yoga with their two year olds, but that's not how life is or work is for the people who keep the world running.
I'm sure that the women who run registers at Walmart or clean office buildings or take blood samples or make traffic stops or teach first graders (who by the way have likely never received "severance" in their lives) are really crying in their White Claws for the poor sad Twitter ladiez who can't have "work/life balance" anymore because they're expected to show up at work and do their jobs if they want to keep getting paid.
It is absolutely hostile to work life balance. That is another business model. Musk thinks it will be more successful using that strategy. A 3-month severance package is very generous I never received one. While losing one's job is traumatic it is also usually growth inducing for the individual. At least that's my experience. I was just talking about that with one of my swim team members last night. He works in high tech and has for 40 years. He's been laid off a half a dozen times throughout his career. He said he always managed to find a better job than the last one.
I like the idea of an Elon Musk business model and perhaps if I was just out of college in my early twenties and single it would be a ton of fun to work at a meat grinder like that. When you celebrate diversity you have to celebrate All lifestyles not just the ones that you like.
To start off my career I work two and a half years as a mud logger in the steam patch on big rigs. Very remote locations usually long commutes from town 12 hours on 12 hours off sometimes working for a month and a half without a day off. Very dangerous conditions working with very scary poorly educated often violent drug and alcohol abusing men. On the job sites I worked at one guy was killed couple guys lost fingers one guy lost half his foot and another guy had a compound fracture to his leg. It was like the Wild West.
Ann Althouse: "It’s hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy work/life balance."
There is no such thing as a "healthy work/life balance" in a fast moving tech startup and make no mistake about it, creating the new twitter is every bit a new tech startup exercise.
Jefferson's Revenge: "I do think Musk is making a mistake by making them all come into the office. We just completed a project for a client for a mid-level marketing job."
Well, there's your problem right there.
Elon doesn't do marketing.
This is the old school tech start-up model: 80 hour work weeks and cutting the bottom 50% of employees both to motivate and to maximize quality. True at Goldman Sachs, true at pre-2000 Microsoft, and attempted by Enron. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Used to be true at Amazon when my other half worked there; likely isn't anymore. Employees were stack ranked in their departments against their coworkers for yearly reviews and if you were on the bottom, pack your shit and get out. My husband was dinged at review time for failing to answer his phone while graveside at Arlington for his father's funeral and spent many launch weeks working 80 hours and sleeping under his desk. Lifespan for most Amazonians was three years.
I'm not necessarily advocating for this; rather just agreeing with you that that's not unusual in the tech world. You had to be hungry and willing to put up with a lot of shit.
There's also a new requirement to show up in the office. Taking all these things together, I think Musk is structuring the place to be quite off-putting to most employees — especially to most woman.
I don't see anything 'hostile' or 'off-putting'. Looks like those who actually pull their weight can now see that their work will be valued.
It's only off-putting if you are a non-performer. I suspect there are a lot of those people.
Wonder if Amazon is doing the same for their layoff of 10,000 employees?
Amazon's severance package will arrive at your door within two day. (Tomorrow before two pm if you are a Prime member)
Musk is going to put y'all back in chain.....er..... aprons!
"It’s hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy work/life balance."
A standard so subjective as to be entirely meaningless.
I imagine Twitter's pre-Musk employee base was broken down like this:
(1)10% keep the infrastructure up and running;
(2)10% develop new systems to run on that infrastructure.
(3)10% are the sales staff;
(4)70% are everyone else.
You only need the top three to actually run the business successfully, plus, maybe 1 in 7 of the other 70%.
It’s hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy work/life balance.
Work/life balance is something you create for yourself via the choices you make. Upon graduation from grad school, my husband, #2 in his class, turned down the highest-dollar job offered to that year's graduates because it was with a management consulting firm, 100% travel, and he had a 4yo and a baby on the way. The guy who took that job also had two children, and got divorced within two years. My husband also passed on Enron (it imploded later that year) because the culture there grossed him out, and he didn't go for any investment banking jobs because he wanted work/life balance.
New management can and often does affect the equation. Those who don't like what Twitter is apparently set to become get 3 months paid time off to find a place that fits their particular equation better. I would be very surprised to learn that Old Twitter was ever intended to be a sinecure.
Black Bellamy writes : Musk is treating Twitter like a factory floor because factory floors is all he knows.
Counterargument: SpaceX. What's the magic that allows them to recover their boosters in those spectacular landings? Software. Probably some of the most advanced control software in the world. And that's not even to mention the amazing system engineering behind the whole Falcon product line.
So forced to buy at high price after attempted withdrawal from deal due to finding the financials were likely fraudulent. Takes over a house of card business and makes immediate attempts to sort out the finances. Discovers bloated workforce with more managers than doers. Employees and outside Liberals work to undermine the company's revenue source in advertising. Biden admin initiates hostilities against Twitter.
And now we hear all the whining about Musk having to trim close to the bone, set high expectations for those remaining employees.
So who thought that damaging Twitter's financial outlook by rebelling wasn't going to result in cutbacks of payroll costs? Sure the lawyers will sue, but if they win, it will only hurt Twitter making its future even less uncertain.
the kiddies have moved on to video shorts from text shorts. The chattering class can revive Journolist to coordinate.
He's trying to run it like a startup where often a relatively small number of people can make great progress.
"It’s hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy work/life balance."
It's true. The startup life isn't for everyone, and few can do it for a long time. I enjoyed working for startups, but now that I'm older, I'm not sure I'd want to do it again.
I worked at ROLM Corp back in the 80s. We had a SVP who was responsible for what was then a Valley innovation: GPW - Great Place to Work. Beautiful campus. Mind-blowing recreation center (built at employee request instead of a profit-sharing distribution.) Fancy (but not free) cafe. Participation in Quarterly Management Meetings (sound boring but it was a window into C-suite thinking). Participation in biannual Division Long Range Planning. Flex time. Education benefits.
Trade-off? Hell, yes. We all saw the numbers: revenue & profit by product and division. We all knew those big numbers paid for all of the nice stuff we enjoyed. We all knew what the competition was up to. We did the "sign-up" thing for the big projects. But did that make it a sweat shop? No. Case in point: as a new boy( fresh out of UC), I nervously went to my boss one morning to tell him my girlfriend had called, she was having heart palpitations. 40 miles away, in Berkeley. He said "I hope she's all right. Call me if you won't be in tomorrow." And off I went.
But when the market tanked we were hit out of the blue with a 25% layoff. Because when you are looking at not making payroll, you have to control costs. At Twitter, as at ROLM, that means cutting staff and salaries. Or your company folds and everybody gets paid $0 p.a.
Having spent the weekend in Western Kansas with friends who run cattle ranches, plant and harvest feed grains, maintain feedlots and transport cattle, this year under drought conditions, with early summer temps (before the cattle shed winter coats) and an early Fall extended freezing days (before winter coats)—-
I’d say Musk’s conditions sound pretty good.
“It’s hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy work/life balance“
People looking for a healthy work/life balance belong n HR departments, academia, or on a factory line. No one should have that expectation if they are entering an entrepreneurial company or wish to get rich.
Ann Althouse said...
It’s hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy work/life balance.
I'm going to agree. It's shocking for these people to hear this stuff. They've never been exposed to it before and now it's impacting them, not someone else...
I also understand economies are cyclical. Soon we're all likely to be hit by a cyclical good and hard...
Redistributive schemes funded Twitter, Obamacares, Bidencares, Green Deals, and force progressive prices through shared responsibility contra rational and reasonable policies. The employees should have expected equal and equitable treatment, not to shift the "burden"... uh, burden of responsibility. You voted, now bear the fruit of your Choice... choice(s). Trump was on the right path, but did not follow through, was interdicted through poorly considered expert domain advice, and further through congressional and activist insurrections from conception and throughout his term. Welcome to socialization in a trickle-down economic model that recaptures capital (i.e. retained earnings) resources from the middle class in particular, and every else, too.
Kay said...
"This makes musk look insecure."
*************
Yeah. The "secure" thing for Musk to do would be to let his employees dictate their terms of employment to him, and then let them shit all over him.
Got it.
When I was in Grad School a million years ago, we often talked about what kind of work we were planning to do. The 50% who planned on going into academia wanted a work-life balance which was (in those days) achieved after making tenure. Once you are in, you can work as hard as you want do. (I knew many profs who continued to work hard).
Those of us going into private enterprise were looking to make a living, work-life balance be damned.
In the end, I think that the most positive impact on society was made by the folks who went into business rather than academia. Many became leaders. People who chose work-life balance have had nice lives, but what are they really accomplishing? Most seem to be followers.
Ann Althouse: "It’s hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy work/life balance."
***************************
"Work from home". "Expectation of a healthy work/life balance."
I suppose those are now standards in our "woke" military.
God help us.
I'm still trying to figure out who's forcing these people to stay. I mean, if it's so bad - so hostile to a work/life balance - who or what is preventing them from leaving?
Do the job you're being paid to do or take your severance pay (that you're lucky to get) and get the hell out of my life.
Spoiled rotten twits.
Howard, a non sequitur:
We're you in the Geysers? What years? What company? I was a mudlogger there for a while in 1991. Got a lot of reading done during bit trips...
The employees expected the stock market or Musk to subsidize their scheming. Will work for six digits with lucrative benefits and Twitters.
"you're making one of the most complicated things that has ever been."
Twitter? Meh. One thing I dislike about coders is the high regard they have of themselves. Produce a product that doesn't have to be constantly patched and I'll be more impressed.
Isnt Musk's expectation equal to a top law firms, talking to its new hires? 100 hour weeks, quota of billable hours, crazy commitment.
Why to lawfirms get a pass?
My guess, law firms don't put it in writing. But demand just as much or more.
I bet he'll deliberately set the office temps to 65˚, too!
One thing for sure, the more they can talk about Musk or Trump; the more the media can ignore the failing Biden economy and the connection between Democrats and FTX.
Ann Althouse: "It’s hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy work/life balance."
Bravo Professor. I'm a big fan of the double down.
Very Trump and Musk like.
effinayright said...
Kay said...
"This makes musk look insecure."
*************
Yeah. The "secure" thing for Musk to do would be to let his employees dictate their terms of employment to him, and then let them shit all over him.
Got it.
11/16/22, 2:01 PM
Having a life outside of work is not shitting on your boss. Maybe he can’t make the company profitable without resorting to such extreme lengths because he doesn’t have what it takes.
It’s hostile to everyone who had an expectation of a healthy work/life balance.
It's a business first. So business comes before helping the worker "balance" their life. The ridiculously lavish perks were a way to lure people to tech when competition for workers was fierce. Those days are over. We're in an unannounced unofficial recession. Companies are laying people off. The ones who keep their jobs will be required to work and the benefits will be more like normal Fortune 500 companies.
It seems too many Twits had a work/life ratio balanced by not working much at all and the damn company was unprofitable. For the economically illiterate out there, this means there wasn't enough money coming in to pay for what they spent it on. $400 lunches aren't going to last when the dough runs out. If you guys think losing fantastical benefits like that are painful then you don't realize how hard most Americans work. It's the reason we had a strong economy. Have you ever seen a compensation plan for a sales team? Talk about inequity! David Mamet soft sold it with his "winner gets a Cadillac and second place is a set of steak knives" scene.
I temped for a while a few years ago at one of these Twitter-like startups here in SF. It survived by regular VC cash infusions, and I rather doubt it even turned a profit.
It was a madhouse. Open plan working on large tables, clutter everywhere, people moving like schools of fish to various floors for meetings while their dogs wandered around aimlessly looking for attention or slumbered on the floor. No one had a desk phone; if you needed to make a call you had to go into a soundproof phone booth. The C-suite level executives I was supporting for that time were so disorganized and unable to keep a schedule. Everyone communicated over Slack instead of via email (so as to keep things documented) so everything seemed to fall through the cracks. I couldn't wait to get out of there.
..."specifically to recruit and retain the best, most especially women . Do you think they offer these benefits because they're running charities or are too woke?"
So, why exactly are they recruiting and retaining "most especially women" ? Is it because economically it makes sense because women are paid less? Or is it that the benefits packages of these corporations are designed to appeal more to women because the corporation wants more women for some other, maybe unfathomable reason?
The reason for pitching bennies to appeal to women is because the corporate HR flunkies and VPs are WOKE. They are virtue signaling that they have bought into the feminist nonsense spewed forth by their college indoctrinators. They are trying to be "equitable" and achieve "parity" between the sexes -- even though there are vastly more men in the market than women in these skills. It's wokeness all the way down.
Just ask any HR professional. They probably will tell you their pronouns for free.
"Stress on uncompensated, which is exploitation. It has terrible effects on the workforce, unless your model is cycling through 20-somethings, replacing them as they burn out. And Musk is saying this is permanent."
There is a privately held, $3B software company in my area which is noted for using exactly this model of labor engagement. Doesn't seem to have harmed them at all, based on their perpetual expansion and ongoing construction of their headquarters. They were major donors for the Lightbringer and push all manner of $$ to Dem and fascist Left causes. So maybe this isn't an uncommon model in the software development space, even in "mature" (not startup) companies. Or at least in Dem-run ones like this company or (now) Twitter.
And I promise you if you ask any questions of the HR people at this company, they will definitely tell you their pronouns whether wanted to know or not.
"Maybe he can’t make the company profitable without resorting to such extreme lengths because he doesn’t have what it takes."
What an odd conceit to say this when the dude had his first startup bought by Compaq for $307M back when the dot com bubble was bursting, he had a startup that merged with another company to become PayPal, became chairman and CEO (and product architect) of Tesla, and built SpaceX from scratch.
If you're gonna throw shade, you probably should be bigger than the intended victim.
Kay said...
effinayright said...
Kay said...
"This makes musk look insecure."
*************
Yeah. The "secure" thing for Musk to do would be to let his employees dictate their terms of employment to him, and then let them shit all over him.
Got it.
"Having a life outside of work is not shitting on your boss."
>>>> You said MUSK is insecure. You've deflected IOW.
>>>> But an employee demanding that his boss give in to the employees' demands is something no employee can make---unless the boss is violating laws or union contracts.
"Maybe he can’t make the company profitable without resorting to such extreme lengths....
>>>>AFTER a MONTH? You do realize that Amazon was unprofitable for many years...don't you?
>>>>Oh...you don't.
"...because he doesn’t have what it takes."
>>>> He doesn't have what it takes? Then why is he one of the world's richest men, a billionaire many times over?
SNORT
Anyone who hasn't worked in the oil, gas, or steam patch, I need to add some color to my statement above about getting a lot of reading done during bit trips. Upon rereading it, I think it sounds as if I'm contradicting Howard, which I emphatically am not.
A bit trip is when the rig hands on a drilling rig have to pull all the drill pipe out of the hole, unscrewing each length of pipe as they go, to change the worn-out bit at the bottom. At the Geysers, near Napa, we were drilling at 25,000-plus feet, and the rock was so hard that the bit would frequently last for only 6 to 10 ft. - drilling at a rate of a foot an hour or less. To put this in context, on some gas wells I worked on, the drill rate was more like 30 ft every 5 to 10 minutes, or even faster at the top of the hole. (The mudlogger job is also different there and can be very stressful!)
It took 24 hours to get all that pipe out of the hole, put a new bit at the bottom of it, and put it all back into the hole, 30 ft at a time. So yes, I got a lot of reading done during bit trips!
But as Howard said, the rig hands are called roughnecks for a reason: they are hard men, doing hard physical labor, often at great physical cost. My job out there, in part, was to monitor the steam coming out of the hole for hydrogen sulfide and to mitigate what did come out of the hole so that we didn't all die. At my company, I would work 12-hour shifts for 2-4 weeks on these wells, hot-sheeting with my opposite-shift counterpart.
In other words, I wholly back up Howard's comment about how many people do very hard jobs with no expectation of "work/life balance." I was just surprised to hear that someone here had done the same rather obscure job that I had done!
Having a life outside of work is not shitting on your boss. Maybe he can’t make the company profitable without resorting to such extreme lengths because he doesn’t have what it takes.
Forcing employees to actually show up for work and ending free lunches is extreme?!?
You won a lot of participation trophies as a kid didn't you?
Althouse horrified when she finds out how the real world works.
As someone who worked in IT for 37 years for multiple public companies, I can tell you this is pretty standard stuff. I lived through waves of layoffs that occurred on average about every 4 years. The difference being few people were ever offered 3 months severance unless they had 10 plus years of seniority.
I personally know of many fine people who fell victim to these boom and bust business cycles over the years. The difference being no one was ever given a choice as to whether they wished to continue their employment and no one in social media ever cried a single tear for any of those folks. Therefore, you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t get too overwrought about some self entitled Twitter employee who feels being asked to work hard (in an actual office) is somehow inhumane. Maybe they should seek employment in the public sector. I hear the IRS is hiring.
effinayright said...
Kay said...
effinayright said...
Kay said...
"This makes musk look insecure."
*************
Yeah. The "secure" thing for Musk to do would be to let his employees dictate their terms of employment to him, and then let them shit all over him.
Got it.
"Having a life outside of work is not shitting on your boss."
>>>> You said MUSK is insecure. You've deflected IOW.
>>>> But an employee demanding that his boss give in to the employees' demands is something no employee can make---unless the boss is violating laws or union contracts.
"Maybe he can’t make the company profitable without resorting to such extreme lengths....
>>>>AFTER a MONTH? You do realize that Amazon was unprofitable for many years...don't you?
>>>>Oh...you don't.
"...because he doesn’t have what it takes."
>>>> He doesn't have what it takes? Then why is he one of the world's richest men, a billionaire many times over?
SNORT
11/16/22, 3:56 PM
You know what? Great points. I change my mind. This make musk seem like he’s totally in charge.
Everyone see things through the priszm of their work experience.
A lawyer sees a lawsuit and the businessman sees it and in this instance the businessman did a min/max calculation and even after paying the lawyers and the settlement the savings from getting rid of the deadwood is more than worth the cost of the litigation.
Everyone see things through the priszm of their work experience.
A lawyer sees a lawsuit and the businessman sees it and in this instance the businessman did a min/max calculation and even after paying the lawyers and the settlement the savings from getting rid of the deadwood is more than worth the cost of the litigation.
Kay said, snarkily:
"You know what? Great points. I change my mind. This make musk seem like he’s totally in charge."
*****************
If you think posters here treat changing the subject, and instead offering poor arguments and snark, as "dispositive" gotchas , you will quickly learn otherwise.
Please post some more inanity.
You should sign up for a remedial "Critical Thinking" course. Or maybe just "Remedial Thinking" would be a better place to start.
I suspect you won't. It's far easier going full "Dunning-Kruger" and remain not know you're outing yourself as a Ditz.
When broke, drop woke.
When broke, drop woke.
"So, why exactly are they recruiting and retaining "most especially women""
Because often the best candidate is a women, and you need to be able to recruit and retain the best candidates.
Good point above that Musk probably is trying to turn it into a 20-somethings burn factory, to save as much as possible on labor costs.
Not sure I would call it exactly hostile conditions. If you are going to collect the big paycheck, you have to earn that big paycheck. That is the way of the world. I expect the actual performing software engineering staff at Twitter, those who work hard at it, will be glad to see the grifters and drifters go. Trust me, I spend enough time in industry to know that most of the work is done by 20% of the staff. Meaning 2 out of 10 are doing 60% of the work. The remaining 8 out of 10 are doing 40% of the work, and 2 of those 8 are making exactly zero contribution.
I read on one of the business sites that there was management to coding ratio of 10:1 on Twitter staff. This looks like he's trying to winnow out the truly useful management and let the rest go. He's in business to make money. You either add value to his idea or you walk.
Reported that not enough workers signing the pledge and so Musk backtracked on WFH ban.
Why does Ann construe "extremely hardcore" as a more difficult bar for women than men? Perhaps it would discourage parents, but most twits aren't.
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