Musk summons engineers to Twitter HQ as millions await platform’s collapse | The Washington Post
The headline is probably overblown, but the problem is real. Here’s my take.
Since the Musk rat took over Twitter, thousands have been laid off or resigned. A significant number of those employees were engineers involved in maintaining Twitter’s computer infrastructure, which includes hardware, networks, operating systems and related software, and the applications that run on them. You’ll hear this work referred to as BAU (business as usual) and KTLO (keeping the lights on). Some teams apparently have no employees left. If part of the infrastructure stops working or malfunctions, the results could range from minor, such as delays in posting people’s tweets, to catastrophic, such as a prolonged web site outage.
I don’t have direct responsibility for infrastructure, but I spend a lot of time – probably 50% of my day right now – meeting with the people that do, making sure that the system for which I’m responsible is operating effectively and efficiently. My primary responsibility is to get new functionality introduced, but right now it’s more important to ensure that the functionality we have is available. There are development engineers that are doing the same thing. And that’s with a fully staffed infrastructure team.
I’m willing to bet that that’s what happening at Twitter right now. People are being pulled from their primary responsibilities to fill the empty infrastructure positions in order to keep the lights on. That’s a big problem. People are being asked to perform tasks that they don’t understand, may not be well-documented, and perhaps most importantly, that they don’t want to do. They could wind up leaving as well as a result. Twitter is likely trying to get people to come back (get ready for some serious compensation and work/life balance negotiations) or trying to hire new people (usually a weeks-long process in a tight job market for IT professionals) while doing everything possible to get the remaining people to stay (see my previous comment about negotiations). New development is going to suffer.
It’s not a situation that’s going to end well, at least in the near term. Long term, I don’t see a positive resolution unless Musk sells the company or reshapes it into a very different organization. I know that I wouldn’t work there right now.
Stay healthy and safe.
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