When Elon fired 80% of the company, I remember a lot of celebration on HN. Some of it was the perceived political bias within the employees and some of it was “The app works fine what were all those employees doing? They probably deserved it.”
At the time I remember talking about this becoming a norm as CEOs follow the lead and getting downvoted heavily. Its unfortunate that we are here, but also not surprising, given how limited empathy people have for each other at times here on HN. Unless we stand for each other, this won’t change.
When that happened, AI wasn’t even at today’s level. Elon clearly didn’t fire those people because AI would replace them. They were laid off because the company could run pretty well without them. And that’s exactly what happened.
You’re missing the point. You’re still holding on to the notion that somehow getting rid of people was fine because the company could run well without them (that’s debatable but it’s a tangent). The same logic is being applied now with AI. Doesn’t matter there was no AI back then or how good/bad AI is. People are being laid off and the companies are doing fine. You can’t cheer one and then complain about the other.
> You’re still holding on to the notion that somehow getting rid of people was fine because the company could run well without them
Yes? It's not an adult daycare. It's a commercial company. The premise is you are employed because you contribute to the functioning and the profitability of the company. If it's not the case, well, it sucks but you can't expect to be paid just for warming your seat. I mean, I wouldn't object somebody giving me six figures just for existing, but I hardly can expect and feel entitled for that to happen?
AI, without supervision, will not be able to match the same degree of quality as AI with a true engineer behind the scenes. Twitter had another clear and non IA related problem: it was a adult daycare company.
That's not from what I remember. I'm sure there was some skepticism about some of the roles that were there. But I do remember Ian Brown just completely dunking on that triobyte on Twitter Spaces. (Ian Brown is an ex-Twitter performance engineer, he pushed Musk on "what is non-performant, and you explicitly define it".. suffice to say gehot and Musk got a little embarassed and kicked him off the stream).
George Hotz’s entire tenure as a Twitter “intern” was so hilariously embarrassing. And the entire preamble at the time about basically “purging the parasites” and Heroic 100x Coders (the search still sucks)
> I was one of the people questioning why they needed so many people
Unfortunately that’s what managers, executives and investors are doing everywhere now. Everyone Should’ve been more careful with the reactions when the status quo was upended.
"We all know people are overpaid for doing nothing, but if we don't talk about it somehow it would continue forever"? Doesn't sound like a smart strategy to be honest. The truth will come out.
At the time I remember talking about this becoming a norm as CEOs follow the lead and getting downvoted heavily. Its unfortunate that we are here, but also not surprising, given how limited empathy people have for each other at times here on HN. Unless we stand for each other, this won’t change.