Whether intentionally or accidentally, the truth is that Twitter, being in the hands of Elon Musk, never fails to deliver the most captivating headlines (do not use other stronger qualifiers). At this point, beyond the conversations about each of the measures taken by the billionaire, the big conversation faces the big question: does everything correspond to a plan drawn to the millimeter by Musk and his advisers or, conversely, are we witnessing an exercise of extreme improvisation with a “toy” that cost him 44,000 million dollars, for which it is not yet clear how he will pay.
The enormous amount of this operation invites us to think about the second one Well, after all, who would risk such an amount of money, no matter how millionaires they are, by acting impulsively? It doesn’t seem logical to me and, therefore, I fully understand whoever takes that position. Elon Musk may be eccentric, but it doesn’t seem at all likely that he will be stupid, and we can’t imagine that his secret plan was to bring down Twitter.
However, the consequences of some of their actions are the perfect fertile ground for thinking that the need to minimize economic losses in the short term (toll-free numbers seem, to date, difficult to reach in the short term) added to its character peculiar , yes, they would be leading Musk not to analyze with due calm and delve into some of the decisions you’ve made in recent weeks.
The clearest example of this we found in the massive layoffs carried out by Twitter. Layoffs that drove some departments and completely eliminated others, leaving the social networking workforce at just a fraction of what it was just weeks ago. The problem is that, even intending the reduction of workers as a measure that allows to reduce costs, it seems that this has been carried out with little head, which has led the company to have to ask some workers, previously dismissed, to return at work. From programmers to the head of the access control system to the offices of the social network.
The list of developers remaining on the job after the first layoffs, the subsequent departure of subcontractors and, last week, those who did not accept the terms of creak work imposed by Musk, seems to have been reduced to its minimum expression, to the point that Musk would have temporarily moved some of Tesla’s engineers to Twitter. And now, how can we leather and Ars Technica, Elon Musk is looking for the remaining coders on Twitter being able to talk to them to try, he says, to better understand how the “thighs” of the social network work.
To this end, He has already sent three emails to all employees of the company, trying to meet each of them, in person or by video conference. Obviously, from what can be seen from the first of the leaked messages, before holding these meetings he wants to know what each of them has done in the last six months in the company:
«Anyone who actually writes software, report to the tenth floor at 2pm today. Before doing so, please email a bulleted summary of what your code commands have achieved in the last ~6 months, along with up to 10 screenshots of the most salient lines of code.» He also adds «These will be short technical interviews that will allow me to better understand the technology stack of Twitter.»
As I said earlier, I can understand that cutting Twitter staff was a necessary move to try and clean up their accounts, but given this need to meet with developers to better understand the technology behind the social network (a very smart move, indeed), it probably would have made a lot more sense to conduct these interviews before firing many of those responsible for that development. And is that now, with the engineers left, it is quite possible that there are enough black holes left on the map that he intends to draw. And that really makes me rethink improv, more than design.
