Modern-day grifting in the technosphere.

Elon is my homie 🤙. Twitter being privatised is Lehmans. The mass staff wipeout is a good thing. Square these concepts, I dare you.

First off lets make some things very clear - I give 0 shits about Twitter. I've never had an account. I've never posted a tweet. I've never subscribed to a stream or thread or whatever they call it. The brief times I've dipped my toes in it over the last 10 years I've noped the fuck out really, really fast.

I also give 0 shits about whatever current green thing is in vogue. I don't own a Tesla. I will never own a Tesla. I like oil and petrol and turning wrenches and motorbikes that go really fast and are really loud. I praise the sausage creature.

Given my complete disinterest in all that he has accomplished, I still think we need to hail Elon - his acquisition of Twitter and his actions hence have caused the cockroaches at twitter to go scurrying. Quoting from Reuters

Hundreds of Twitter Inc employees are estimated to have decided to quit the beleaguered social media company following a Thursday deadline from new owner Elon Musk that staffers sign up for "long hours at high intensity," or leave.

The departures highlight the reluctance of some of Twitter's 3,000 or so employees to remain at a company where Musk earlier fired half of the workforce including top management, and is ruthlessly changing the culture to emphasize long hours and an intense pace.

Good riddance. Our industry is infested with the most entitled people in the world. Here is a few snippets from a post-acquisition draft letter formed by at least some section of Twitter employees.

A threat of this magnitude is reckless, undermines our users’ and customers’ trust in our platform, and is a transparent act of worker intimidation,” the letter said.

We demand to be treated with dignity, and to not be treated as mere pawns in a game played by billionaires... A threat to workers at Twitter is a threat to Twitter’s future. We cannot do our work in an environment of constant harassment and threats. Without our work, there is no Twitter.

The absolute fucking audacity. Can you imagine trying to pull something like that in any other profession? You'd be laughed at, mocked and swiftly kicked to the goddamned curb where you belong. For context, these were in response to a rumour that up to 75% of the workforce would be fired. Well, according to Reuters today, at least 50% of them are gone, with a lot more expected to drop off by the end of next week. Twitter still runs fine, so I think we can safely say "this sure didn't age well"

Without our work, there is no Twitter.`

As tech people we need to act like professionals. We serve the hand that pays us. We are not slaves to the hand that pays us, so we can leave any time. If you don't like it then go and find somewhere that makes you happy. The absolute hubris we express by demanding the hand that pays to conform to what we want is the height of arrogance. The company was losing $4 million A DAY. Whatever you were doing wasn't working, and its time shape up or ship out.

I have been wondering how long until the cavalcade of employee demands in tech ended, and boy oh boy do I hope this it. We are paid insane amounts of money, we take no personal physical risk, and we get to go and live our lives how we want. It is time that we displayed gratitude for our position in life.

How did we get here?

I don't know, but I have this sense that we are investment banking before 2009. There is a lot of money in what we do, and people are drawn to the money. A collorary to this is something like: to be a good investment banker in the past you had to be strong on multiple fronts - tax, accounting, math, relationships and have the ability and work ethic to spot opportunites and ensure that they could manifest.

So much money and success was found to be in the industry that people tried to leverage it by expanding operations with human capital; but this meant lowering standards. It worked for a while, but eventually the "bubble of human competence" burst, and then terrible decisions were made that caused the "bubble of sound economic activity" to burst, leading inevitably to the GFC.

We can see this in our industry. How many non-technical professionals now exist in our space. Do any of us really need Engineering Managers, Agile Coaches, or Culture Professionals? We all know the answer is no - we can survive without these parasites, but they can't survive without us. Our industry allows for huge reward and success, but it requires deep technical skill and knowledge that can only be learned by an individual over years. This requires an attitude for self improvement and a respect for craft that can only be learned through the merciless process of experience.

We used to have this attitude. When I first started I remember grizzled neck beards being absolutely brutal with feedback. I could be proud and smugly arrogant of something I'd built or claimed to know but holy hell would they pull it apart. They were never malicious, but they kept me in my place and forced me to get better. It was a challenging path, but at the end of it lies a glorious outcome. From older people I know in the industry this was very much the same path for finance professionals.

Just like Investment Banking, I think that our industry became soft and bloated and weak because so much money was to be made. Companies wanted to grow, there wasn't enough talent and thus emerged the parasites with promises of culture improvement and reflection. They promised to fix the problem, we just had to follow them. We had to be sweet and kind and understanding. We had to acquiesce to employees demands, delivered through the parasite. If we didn't do this then mediocre employee A might be snatched up by competitor B. This employee could be exceptional, we just had to listen to Xirs opinion and give no criticism, only "feedback". The reason they aren't getting better isn't because of them, and definitely not because of the parasites policies. No, the problem was the company was wrong, and the employee and the parasite are the guiding hand of wisdom that can fix this quandry. They latched onto agile and ruined any hope it had.

The parasites looked like saviours but they were the Pied Piper and they've stolen our children away. What we are left with is an industry full of adult cry babies that have been insulated from the real world, their lack of ability and their responsibility to the customers and the business. These same babies that made demands of a company losing $4million/day whilst making 6 figures annually.

The parasites are grifters - theives of the most insidious nature. And their presence in our industry has turned many of us into grifters too. We are banks in 2008 - lazy, bloated, weak, entitled and many of us incompetent. The twitter acquisition has bought this disease into the sunlight, the sunlight is sterilising it and I hope this is the domino that ends it.

git gud.