So "X" - nothing to see here. Elon's in control - Part XXX

Cordell

He really is a tool but maybe that's the tool needed to fix Twitter.

What Twitter doesn't need is the incompetent Android app team, which according to the Twitter engineer own admission is poorly written, bloated and ridden with tech debt. And he spent 6 years working on it:

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876345#Comment_119876345

I wouldn't call that incompetence: point two about Tech Debt is very important here. What it says is that Twitter leadership emphasised fast delivery over good delivery. Which, TBH, is a fairly common approach among tech companies of late - the thinking that you constantly iterate and release, and the ideal that you include bug fixes and improvements as part of that natural momentum.

But what inevitably happens is Tech Debt[*] gets shunted down the priority lists as Management ask for more "stuff". The pressure to deliver a certain level of MVP means you fall foul of the whole "you can have it fast, good, or cheap - but you can only pick two". And if they're waiting for Network Responses ... then it sounds like their backend needs improving. Little the Android team can do if they're waiting for responses from Slow servers. Again, this is something we experienced in my own tech-stack, and working with the backend team we managed to identify slow resposnes that made the frontend "Feel" faster. But the frontend could only do so much magic before we had to push the backend team to make it better.

[*] For those who don't get it: Tech Debt is basically the accumulated "we'll fix or make it better later" tasks that come with delivering items at a certain speed, or based on a certain deadline. So you get it working first, then at an agreed point in the future, go back and make it better. Good tech management will give runway to do this - a bad one will just let the Tech Debt accumulate - as this developer notes. Eventually there'll be so much TEch Debt it's just functionally impossible to go back and rewrite code 'cos the live stuff has become a mess of "making do".

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876345#Comment_119876345

You have just described every application in production today. Every application contains poorly written code, technical debt etc its a fact of life. These applications often represent the best smart, experienced people can do given the hardware, software and business environment, They know where the problems and what the fixes are, its just that don’t have the means to fix it.

When you bring in a new set of engineers the first thing they’ll do is rewrite the application, oh it won’t be described as that! It will be paying back technical debt, bug fixing, refactoring etc… And yes some of the issues will disappear to be replaced by new issues now being worke on by under pressure inexperienced engineers.

When you don’t know what it takes to run these complex environments it really is better to leave it to people who actually do, as Musk will now demonstrate over the coming months and maybe a year or two before he comes up with some excuse to throw in the towel avoiding any recognition of his own stupidity for spending real money to buy a house of cards.

Cordell

It's not important who allowed an Android app, which is supposed to be a thin client, become bloated and overloaded with tech debt for 10 years and going to the point it can't be fixed without significant effort. What's important is that this shows incompetence and inept leadership and management and complacent engineers. And don't assume I haven't worked with systems with similar or greater complexity. And also don't assume I haven't seen the same :)

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876510#Comment_119876510

Not assuming anything; but "incompetence" is a needlessly hostile accusation to put at the feet of the developers, when many of these scenarios are complex and not remotely black & white. Self-analysis is the hardest of all, and it can be difficult to find the time or headspace to step back from an existing pipeline and re-assess one's own structure. Much easier in SMEs than corporations for sure.

The developers' arguments to Musk seem like perfectly reasonable explanations why the app remains a problem - but Musk's response, and demonstrated management style thus, don't give any indication that there'll be an attempt to arrest this culture, be it accidental or deliberate.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876345#Comment_119876345

yeah because he has done a bangup job so far. Imagine firing an employee that contradicted you when you were wrong.

How long before Musk does a John McAfee and buys a compound in Belize and then goes on the run before saying if he dies he was actually murdered.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876520#Comment_119876520

Is it? When a team's product becomes worse year after year for 10 years going, then what's that called? I think in the corporate world things became too cozy, incompetence and inefficiency and bad performance is not called out early and this too often results in small things getting piled up in a big disastrous event instead of being fixed when they need to be fixed.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876547#Comment_119876547

He is a tool and a horrible person, I always admitted to this. But maybe this is what needs to be happening, those engineers who instead of being proud of their work feel the need to have a public go at that very work and at their CEO may be not the right engineers needed to turn Twitter around as to make is profitable.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876579#Comment_119876579

you think contradicting elon is having a go? how very thin skinned of you.

jimmybobbyschweiz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876579#Comment_119876579

That Twitter employee admitting he has done a poor job the last few years says it all and the irony certainly seems to be lost on him by the great points he seems to think he is making.

It's the same as people thinking Twitter was not a cesspit before Elon took over when Twitter was Trump's platform of choice for years before Elon was ever involved! It just needs to disappear as a company at this stage.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876559#Comment_119876559

It's a shame that people remember John McAfee as a nutcase and not as the brilliant and visionary engineer that he was.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876592#Comment_119876592

did he admit he had done a poor job?

jimmybobbyschweiz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876600#Comment_119876600

It's what he is saying;

"I have worked on this the past few years and am therefore qualified to say it is a crock of crap".

Quin_Dub

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876596#Comment_119876596

Isn't that always the case though?

You can have had a lifetime of amazing work and achievement which you can flush by a single (or in McAfees case , many) act of stupidity.

Like the old joke goes -

A man goes into a pub in a small town and, for whatever reason, gets introduced to the clientele. There’s Farmer Jack, Barman Jim, Maurice “Dancer” and Sheep shagger John. After a few pints, the visitor’s curiosity gets the better of him and he asks John what’s with the nickname.

“See this pub?” asks John, “I built it, but they don’t call me Pub builder John? I’m the local doctor, I saved Barman Jim’s life once when he choked on a peanut, but they don’t call me Lifesaver John. Every year, I supply a huge Christmas tree for the village green, but the don’t call me Christmas Tree John.

“But you shag one lousy sheep…”

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876579#Comment_119876579

I don't entirely disagree with you - but it can come down to culture. And, for that matter, something as simple as who's still there after those 10 years. Easy to say "...call it out early", but what do you do when the original architects from tech to management have moved on and a bunch of developers inherit a PoS codebase? Depending on the culture it could be next to impossible for even the gutsiest new developer to put their oar in and say "we need to stop adding stuff and fix this app".

I've been there and just with a recent US corporation I worked for, can think of a couple of internal tools that fit that bill. Absolute atrocious pieces of shít apps but for a host of reasons "fixing" them was next to impossible. Not least because those with the largest hats in the company had the "it works, doesn't it?" and that kinda ended those conversations.

Mind you. Getting into a spat with Musk was the wrong move by those developers - and may cost them in any future interviews if they now get a reputation as the type to air their dirty laundry in public. Equally though, I can see why a disgruntled developer might have had enough of Musk waving his díck about in public and barking about things he doesn't know or understand. That in of itself might charm other companies. As I said, Musk shouldn't be doing the CTO's job, and doing it so badly. TRying to shame Twitter's tech department isn't going to instil loyalty or enthusiasm

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876600#Comment_119876600

Yes, he did. He said that we did these 3 bad things, and we did them for years on end, so much so that the solution to fix our bad job is basically start from scratch.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876613#Comment_119876613

it really isn't.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876620#Comment_119876620

he was criticising decisions made to prioritise velocity over quality. he didnt make those decisions.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876619#Comment_119876619

Some large corporations are profitable enough to afford that kind of "culture" but Twitter isn't. And even for those large ones, it comes a time when that culture come back to bite them in the arse. And indeed Musk shouldn't be doing the CTO's job, that is, if only Twitter had a competent one :)

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876627#Comment_119876627

He still did a bad job even if it wasn't his decision to do a bad job. You don't stay for 6 years in a team doing a bad job as directed from above and still call yourself a good engineer.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876648#Comment_119876648

how many years have you worked as a developer for a US multinational?

kerplun k

The guy (Frohnhoefer) is probably a savage engineer, Even if he's the top dev in his area, Musk was absolutely right to fire him. You can't openly criticise your boss like that. I'm thinking Frohnhoefer wanted to be fired and was looking for a severance package.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876662#Comment_119876662

For many years, for more than one. Relevance?

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876676#Comment_119876676

clearly in management then. Management make bad decisions and then blame the developers who have to implement those decisions.

Quin_Dub

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876648#Comment_119876648

Not necessarily - If every year you put forward a plan for $10M of investment for closing Tech Debt and new development , but they only give you $5m there's only so much you can do not matter how good of an engineer you are.

And given Twitters finances over the years I sincerely doubt that they've been getting their full IT budgets every year.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876686#Comment_119876686

You asked "as a developer" and yet you still conclude "in management". You would be a good match for pre-Musk Twitter ;)

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876596#Comment_119876596

yes, mcafee may have been so when he was younger, but life, and plenty of drugs, got the better of him, eventually making him a nutcase, unfortunately we could be watching the downfall of musk here, yes he done some incredibly things with tesla and space x, but he could very well be bankrupt at the end of this, its very unlikely he ll save twitter here.....

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876713#Comment_119876713

you must have worked for some magical companies if you have never had restrictions placed on the work you do. magical as in fantasy.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876736#Comment_119876736

And now you're calling me a liar. Nice.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876642#Comment_119876642

I think you're debating from a slightly unrealistic level of expectations WRT Tech Debt and that giant umbrella of "Making Code Better". Not everything's a question of competency, rather than of compromise and what's possible within the given timeframe, budget or priority. There's clearly a problem going on a Twitter, but it's doubtful it's a single point of failure - though thanks to Musk's idiot management with the arbitrary firings these problems are ultimately going to get worse as developers (presumably) multitask their ownerships.

TBH from the dev's comments it sounds like the ball is being dropped at the server level 'cos as I said, there's only so much an interface can do while it waits for slow servers to respond. I'd be slow to "blame" the Android team when it's clear they know the problem is happening at a point they can't contribute.

Cordell

My expectations from senior engineers is not just good code, it's also leadership, and planning and influencing the decision making from the technical perspective. And of course this single guy is not the root cause of all Twitter's failures, but he's definitely part of the problem - well, not anymore. And yes things are going to get a lot worse under Musk, but that's the only hope to get better, even though there's no guarantee.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876807#Comment_119876807

Ok, we need to stick one field here to try to make it easier to rationalise: if we stick to Senior Engineers, then what do you expect them to do beyond constantly asking for the time and runway to fix things? I don't think you can fairly call him part of the problem when for all we know he brings up these issues every single Retrospective Meeting. Aside from anything else, it's not necessarily a Senior Engineer's job to plan or influence decision-making - not sure where you work but seniors tend to only have very limited power there. They can suggest, but rarely influence - especially in a corporate environment.

There are undoubtedly bad developers - again, worked with them plenty of times and they're not always aware of their badness - but a top-down structure tends to ensure that if there's a rot, it starts at the summit - not in the trenches.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876876#Comment_119876876

Fair enough if he couldn't do anything about it, but still he stayed there for 6 years. So he was part of the problem, sometimes you can't be part of the solution and what remains is just to stop being part of the problem. He didn't make that choice so Musk made it for him.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119876922#Comment_119876922

Ah here. People have bills and mortgages to pay; a family to feed; I dunno, a drug habit to maintain. If you're now gonna attack how long he worked there for, we're on a hiding to nothing and does start to seem like you're determined to just blame him for something. It's not Auschwitz we're discussing, his very presence doesn't make him culpable for the sins of the app. Sins, I might add, we're both presuming and spitballing about.here

Maybe he was happy to just coast along and not think the app was that bad ... ... until of course some colossal díckhead started trash-talking his work in public like he's ... well, incompetent. I can understand why someone's dander might rise if their ostensible boss started dumping on their work - from a point of technical ignorance n' all. One thing to work within the constraints of the system - another to have the system then shít on you.

Cordell

Well since he went all out on the CEO I guess he wasn't worried about feeding his family. In any case working on a bad product is a career damaging decision, but then again, so it's what he did. But you're right, we're presuming too much here, better stop. I'm sure Musk will do something else soon :)

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119877073#Comment_119877073

The way Musk is revealing his tech obsolescence, I expect him to next declare Twitter was going back to HTML4 support only, cos everything afterwards was bloat and affectation.

Mind you, his fans would probably applaud that too, reckon Netscape's death was a liberal conspiracy.

steddyeddy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119877073#Comment_119877073

I'm sure he will but I'm not holding out much faith. My employer is the dep of energy in the US, specifically the Dep of Renewable Energy. They deal with Tesla all the time. His engineers think little of Elon and there's huge turnover numbers at the company. He's cushioned from most of the effects of this by large amounts of money but he isn't running Tesla or Twitter effectively.

MisterAnarchy

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592618665933156352

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592619267803185152

Look who are back.

gameoverdude

Hope they got a good severance package built into their contract.

Agent Coulson

Glad to see Elon having the craic as his company which he paid $44B for two weeks ago swirls down the toilet and he is sacking people left right and centre and advertises leave in their horades.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119879244#Comment_119879244

You'd like to think all those folks who have been rehired had the nous or ability to get some extra cheddar, severance and guardrails for coming back. Once bitten, twice shy n' all that. But in many respects, the damage will have been done here: it's very difficult to create a productive, inclusive and collaborative working environment - but it's really easy to destroy one.

For all the publicised returnees and chest-beating, I wonder how many devs, managers and so on read an email from HR inviting them to come back, thought for a second, then worded a polite version of "... please fúck off". If I were turfed out of a job that arbitrarily, I'd think twice about returning if I didn't have immediate financial pressures.

AndrewJRenko

I hear you’re a facist now Elon

https://twitter.com/elivalley/status/1592602516742864896?s=46&t=q4KwUKTs-u3VxuEmAIHQOg

pixelburp

https://youtu.be/yR1QL7CJltQ?t=11

...

FunLover18

https://twitter.com/RMac18/status/1592647727115927552?t=ri5dyi7xC5-Zl4ASKqSSlQ&s=19

...

Boggles

That is one bone china fragile massive ego.

Cordell

If you don't respect (respect, not like) the CEO of the company you're working for you should be looking for another company to work for.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119880727#Comment_119880727

BUT FREE SPEECH!!!!

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119880739#Comment_119880739

Free speech is not affected, only the employment status is.

AdamD

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119880727#Comment_119880727

Jesus people really will defend anything this guy does.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119880742#Comment_119880742

lol. you really do have a hardon for musk.