So Musk literally doesn’t give a shit about his employees?
“Prior to his arrival, Mazda posted an annual operating loss of over $US100 million. Fields instituted a turnaround plan that saw Mazda post a 2001 operating profit of $215 million by creating a culture of promoting for talent rather than seniority, reducing labor costs, and implementing a unified design product vision that led to the company’s “Zoom-Zoom” brand image of the 2000s.”
That guy did that when running Mazda. He literally cut the toilet paper budget. When employees complained, he said they shouldn’t have time to do that at work anyway. He literally said it in a company email which people of course forwarded.
Ford was actually pretty cutting edge. Way back then even, they had a project to analyze emails for keywords. The idea was to find redundancy and increase collaboration between people working on similar projects. There was a lot of opportunities with how the brands were structured and all the acquisitions. The top two topics were weekend and lunch, since everyone does those two things. They had to tell the executives the project didn’t work, because they were too scared to share the results.
A retired forensic chemist friend worked in the Santa Clara county crime lab in the 1980’s. They had a policy of throwing away any roll of toilet paper that was more than half used. He took them all home and stored them in his attic. He left work before 1990. He still hasn’t used up all the TP. Over 30 years now and he’s never bought the stuff.
1 Like
This is interesting how this long-promised feature will be able to compose long-form tweets.
“Musk also confirmed that there is a larger UI overhaul on the way and that this new feature is just the start. Another change coming to the UI is the addition of a Bookmark button in the Tweet details view, which, as per Musk, will serve as the defacto “silent like” on tweets and will be rolling out a week later. Bookmarking tweets has been available for some time, but it requires a couple of extra clicks.”
I never understood why they had so many engineers. I could say that about most tech companies, because they just aren’t innovating much anymore. The engineers must mostly be fixing bugs and dealing with tech debt. It’s why tech companies are constantly disrupted by smaller innovators.
6 Likes
They are working less hours per day.
Solution: go to four days week 
1 Like
When I worked in start-ups I had bosses that wanted a one pager like that weekly. I was quite honest with mine. I remember one week when I couldn’t get any of the inputs I needed to move forward. My report went something like “didn’t accomplish jack spit this week because everyone else’s managers have different priorities than you do.”
It’s good to be retired.
1 Like
I thought all of these engineers working from home the past three years had been historically productive? 
They might be doing a lot but the product people suck at deciding the right things to focus on. I see a lot of having no idea what’s important so focus on everything. It’s laughable.
2 Likes
I’m just giving you a little ribbing about the whole WFH debate. So many of these companies have doubled headcount since the pandemic started. I don’t believe the whole increased productivity argument…the data is too easily manipulated.
One of my co-workers commented how packed the freeways have gotten since the tech layoffs started. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Leadership is taking a stand and getting butts back in chairs (as opposed to taking team meetings while walking the dog with the camera off).
3 Likes
Fire all the clueless product people who want to build everything and managers of managers of managers who can’t even measure productivity 
, but that won’t happen we know that don’t we?
Btw, Amazon has too many product people IMO.
1 Like
.
Definitely at personal level.
Dogs are for emotional needs. Can’t deal with life or human relationship?
Need to change the KPIs before doing so. Can an organization accepts below structure…
… … … … … . SVP
… … … … … … .|
|… … … … … … |… … … … … … … … |
VP… … … … … Dir… … … … … … … Mgr
|… … … … … … |… … … … … … … … |
30 ICs… … … 15 ICs… … … … … … 5 ICs
1 Like
Coming back to the thread, Twitter seems to be doing well operationally even after 50%?? layoffs, not withstanding some hiccups which were taken care of subsequently.
My feeling most organizations can shed quite a bit, especially the FAT Cats, e.g FAANGs, and some other well known companies.
2 Likes
Quoting EM who runs Twitter now:
In an email sent just before Thanksgiving, Musk told employees that “all managers are expected to write a meaningful amount of software themselves” and equated one’s inability to code as an engineering manager to not being able to ride a horse as a cavalry captain.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1522609829553971200?s=20&t=-i5VuQkGNYWjH4uEdl0a3g
3 Likes
Managers in SV are project lead with glorified title. Project lead should know how to design, develop and code.
Your ratio are too low - With that, I should be a VP, but no
1 Like
.
I am just illustrating. I have no idea of ratio because no job experience in SV. I notice just because one is reporting to a SVP, he/she has to be a VP regardless of his/her job size/ impact to company bottomline/ number of reports. By ICs, I include the senior ones with architect title. Quite often, I notice just because the role is filled by a manager, it will be conveniently tucked under a senior manager who may not have the skillset to help the manager to succeed, even though a more senior manager e.g. Director/ VP is the one who can help.
Subtle bragging 
My experience (add Sr. title in between these bands)
Mgr = 5-15
Dir = 25-50
VP = 100+
I do what I can when I don’t have AAPL shares like you
1 Like
.
It means the higher you are, the easier the job.
VP manages 2+ Dir
Dir manages 2+ Mgr
Mgr sweats 
1 Like