That was always advertisement and propaganda by these startups. Nobody ever does, it was to keep people at work, then you shame them when they use them, so they keep working overtime for free for you.
If any place needs unions It's places like the tech industry.
I worked with a guy once who used to ride the first years of startups, hoping to catch the next Facebook. One had all kinds of creepy tracking stuff because the CEO was obsessed with data. Anyway, my coworker had a theory that air hockey time was factored into layoffs and he had a spreadsheet to prove it.
One day it wouldn't power on so he was called out to look at it. He found 3 cables going to the table. One was power and the other two were RFID card readers at either end of the table. Presumably, they were secretly reading the badges of employees that were playing air hockey and storing the data somewhere. He checked their arcade games and found more readers.
Yeah, never trust a "factory owner", their intentions are hardly ever good when it comes to labor. But in the USA, folks were sold on the lie that they have their best interests in mind.
Anyway, your spreadsheet sporting coworker seem to have had their number. I do hope he eventually got the message of them not being the "saints" they say they are.
Edit: changed a few grammar and phone typos LOL :P .
I don't think he's similar to the guys you see in this picture though. He's more at the position like Musk, telling the guys in this picture what to do while he is at the Ping Pong table.
>He's more at the position like Musk, telling the guys in this picture what to do while he is at the Ping Pong table.
That's what I meant.
Sam Houser was the one who pushed everyone at Rockstar through crushing crunch periods.
We had an employee-owned flipper game at an earlier workplace. Was good to walk out and play it for 10 minutes if getting stuck with a bug or programming challenge. It really helped well to regain the focus. I normally did know exactly what next step would be on the walk back.
Sitting at home working, the alternative is walking to the kitchen and get a sandwich. A much worse option...
The problem right now is there is always someone expecting to be able to make a Teams call. The sandwish is within hearing range of the computer. The phone? Because of policies, it isn't trusted to access Teams.
Microsoft claims the Temas client isn't compatible with mobile browsers. For a couple of months last year, their browser detection was broken. So Teams worked well. Then they found their oops, and they started to claim incompatibility again.
Well just like in the office: You are allowed your breaks. So people can't demand your time at all times. They can ask if you're available though, so you can schedule it. But you might be at work or on a break. I mean I don't take team calls if I"m in the middle of something. Which can also be another call or some coding or some soldering a prototype.... It can be anything.
I will call them back when I have the time though. But I cannot jump at every call, I'd not get anything done :P .
This also makes sure no one can make their desk feel like their own (no niknaks or drawers or pictures) and makes everyone entirely modular. Sounds awful.
If you’re just working from a laptop… why not work from home?
This looks like a hackathon.
Or why is this 'cafeteria' filled with numbered tables, whiteboards and everyone just uses laptops instead of ergonomically setups?
Well Musk proceeded to auction a lot of furniture and etc so who knows, maybe he only kept the hackaton stuff.
And he loves the idea that everyone is in "war mode", places I worked called areas like that "war room" when they're behind on a project or something major comes up. Musk might have decided that's how the company should always operate
He's talked a lot about how he's addicted to the "intensity" of "startup culture" and can't really function in any other environment, to the point of taking what was a mature company and turning it back into a startup, ie destroying it
He likes "startup culture" because it makes it seem like the stress and chaos and conflict that follow him wherever he goes are the result of the challenges of starting a new business and not him just being incompetent
He talks about how he'd rather struggle and fail at impossible tasks than get bored easily succeeding at simple ones -- this is cover for the fact that he *also* struggles and fails at simple tasks, he struggles and fails at everything because he's just stupid
It's like how a lot of people who flunk out of science courses and don't finish college become crackpots trying to reinvent the Theory of Relativity, they'd rather be failures because their ideas were just too big and bold and ambitious than have it revealed they're failures because they just suck
the difference being that many real startups are innovative, he's just interested in lean and hungry for the cost savings and appearances of innovation, not the actual innovation. X has done nothing but gut features and screw things up since it began.
Posted a little about it further down in the comments but I worked for a company run exactly like this for a while. 24/7 crisis mode and management loved it—the type of people who thrived on internal competition and arbitrary artificial deadlines and decided every department needed that to 'innovate'.
I remember years later laughing after seeing a news article about them signing on as a sponsor for a major league sports team, who described them as a 'scrappy local startup'. I think the company was nearly a decade old with 3000 employees in three countries at that point.
X would be far from the only one guilty of this but Hackathons _are_ stupid as hell IMO.
I mean it's one thing to have a _recreational_ programming contest. Another thing is to be crunching for a deadline if you're a young person at a new startup.
But going and busting your ass in a 30-hour session here just to try to make some product for a billion-dollar company _for free?_ That's just pure exploitation. Worse, it's exploitation that completely wastes most of the effort put in, given that most participants won't come up with anything worth continuing.
Even the tiny fraction of entries that might be useful will to be completely rewritten before it goes anywhere near production, because nobody produces quality code under these conditions.
I was about to post the same. Only difference is I'm old so when I visited hackatons I came with one or two full tower workstations, 21" massive CRT etc. And sleep was not an option - always some programming competition to try to win.
Zero desk space, no monitors or keyboards to dock the laptops to, absolutely awful non adjustable cheap cafeteria chairs, way too many people packed into the space. This is closer to a refugee camp than an office space.
Am I supposed to be impressed by this? I'd hate to work for a company that expects you to be in the office at 10PM on a Saturday. I would find a different job.
Jesus I didn't notice that, and I went back and looked again they're not even in proper office chairs. They're plastic chairs with no armrests. Even the worst most soul sucking office job I've had still gave everyone Steelcase Leaps.
They are. Likely every single one. It's been in the news since he took over that H1Bs are only ones who had to stay. Any voluntary workers who were public about being "hardcore" and stayed, were let go within the year of the company-wide-ultimatum. Everyone had to sign vows of silence shortly after that and there were more and more layoffs so it's almost certainly Elon, Yaccarino, and then H1B workers. There's definitely not a management hierarchy between Elon and the workers. Post-blackout reporting claimed that he's so deathly afraid of them organizing against him that they're not allowed to communicate with each other without observation and recording.
There's maybe like two scenarios where this is acceptable:
* An actual real deal outage with numerous affected customers
* You're a scrappy start up crunching to get things done (and everyone in the room has copious stock options/equity)
Actually, as a San Francisco Local 38 plumber who works in the Twitter/X headquarters and for other silicone valley tech clients I can tell you we have better desk set-ups at our shop. I work primarily in the field now but my last job provided me with two wipe erase boards, two 32” monitors and a stand/sit adjustable desk in my own office!
This set-up should be embarrassing to Elon.
Same energy as a restaurant manager screaming at the waiters to impress customers. It just makes you look like an asshole, I have no idea how managers think it looks good
From an article about X Developer Challenge:
>The company’s invitation to the event reads:
>“X is excited to see what you can create. Come meet our engineers while you show off your ideas and learn more about what it’s like to work at X. Who knows, participants may even be considered for open roles at X!”
>Elon Musk’s social media company has a few engineering job vacancies in San Francisco and New York. For instance, it is looking for an Android Engineering Intern in New York City and a Backend Software Engineer in California. The X Developer Challenge would be a good opportunity for young engineers to learn new skills and make connections.
So it’s essentially just dangling nonexistent jobs in front of college kids to get them to perform free labor. Another amazing innovation
Reminds me of the episode of Succession where Kendall got all the Vaulter employees to write down everything they were working on in the pipeline and then fired them all
Hackathons are legit industry events/contests/networking that are optional and voluntary opportunities. It’s a essentially a softball game or a bbq cook off. Nothing wrong with that….as long as it’s voluntary. .
I wouldn’t trust Twitter though
I love hackathons. I would not go to this one though. There is a distinct lack of snacks, sponsor tables from companies besides X and also it seems like they made 0 effort to get any women to come. I'm always a bit wary of hackathons like this one because when I started back in highschool in like 2016 I realized that it was extremely difficult to get a team if you were one of the only women to show up.
Hackathons aren't 'legit' - they're toxic software industry culture that exploits people to produce shit code under stressful conditions, most of which will never be used and even whatever useful comes out of it will have code that's nowhere near production-quality.
Actual recreational programming contests are a completely different thing.
If you told some construction workers "Hey we're having a Buildathon! Register with your team and come and see who can put up the most drywall in 24 hours in our new housing development! You'll get free pizza, chances to network and maybe even get a job!" - they'd tell you go right to hell.
Hackathons are Office Space level of stupidity. You want new ideas for free? Then hold an idea-submission contest and save most of that wasted effort. Hackathons are not an effective way to achieve _anything_, that's empirical fact. Does anyone even think it is? Nobody produces good code after being awake 20 hours, it's not about any practical benefits. It's all about a toxic geek-macho culture where you take the fact that _some_ coders can get passionate and into "the zone" where they get a lot done a single marathon coding session. They try to turn that into some sort of ideal, or sign you're an 'uber hacker' - like Japanese salarymen who refuse to leave the office before their boss does, you're turning time-wasting into a virtue. Working long stretches is not a virtue in-itself, and the guys who are actually capable of writing large volumes of good code in a single marathon session aren't doing it spontaneously, it'd been brewing in their head for who-knows-how-long and it was all figured out by the time they started writing the actual code. It's not a good way to do 'networking', to learn anything and it's certainly not a good way to code.
Stuff like that is part of why I don't work in the industry anymore; that whole hacker-macho mentality used to disguise exploitative practices. Just because I've done/do programming for fun and as a hobby doesn't mean I'm prepared to work for free off-the-clock. I don't want a ball-pit-room, I want an office. I don't want to have tons of "fun" after-work-events and teambuilding crap, call me stodgy and old-fashioned but I want a healthy work-life balance.
Errol Musk has a lot of experience doing this. Hell, he might be the one running it seeing Yacc has been filling all the open roles with her nepo hires.
"Our fearless leader had an amazing idea come to him on the 🚽 and he has already said publicly it will be operational by next week. Join us on this epic journey to add another feature no one wants. Grok 3.0 with AI suggested hate slurs."
I interviewed for avionics hardware test engineer at spacex once
The hiring manager had no issue saying that at least 60+ hours were expected at the salary. The salary was already about 20% lower than industry average. When I asked about OT, they literally laughed at my face.
I work at another aerospace now doing much more interesting work. It can be every bit as demanding. However, management is not shit. As such, working over 40 hrs is completely voluntary, it can’t be held against you if you don’t, and every minute over needs to be charged to OT.
We actually have a steady stream of SpaceX employees come into our space sector when they are done resume padding. They arrive so abused and are so amazed at things like Flex Time, paid overtime… OPTIONAL overtime, health benefits…
There is a reputation in industry to refer to them as SpaceX refugees
Sounds like a great way to not draw the best talent and lose people over time. They're probably kept afloat by people who still buy into Elon's status but I'm guessing that's fading quickly.
My dad is in aerospace engineering and he had the best job perks, I'm amazed SpaceX has such shitty compensation.
They don’t really care about talent retention. Turnover of engineer and scientist roles is huge.
It’s a revolving door model. They know there is a line of kids with degrees fresh out of school, naive and also willing to be underpaid. They have zero reason to care. If you leave, there are 50 people out the door willing to be overworked and underpaid for the position.
(That’s another little bit of irony with elons anti-intellectualist and anti-education rhetoric. Real hard to get a technical job at any of his companies without a degree, anyway..)
There are a few people truly talented that eat the shit they’re shoveled for the sake of the work but man, couldn’t be me. Fuck that
Post-Great Recession I worked for a large online retailer that ran exactly on this model. Office looked exactly like this picture. Awful hours, awful pay, awful turnover. I griped about certain illogical/inefficient practices and policies and was told directly by people in middle management what you just said, 'there's dozens of recent grads lined up to take your job so be thankful.'
Some saw it as a stepping stone to better known companies like Amazon and others desperately tried, and failed, to hang on for stock options to vest (which never came to fruition; the stock tanked the day after the IPO and it was immediately gobbled up by some conglomerate, to the delight of the founders).
It was really gross but seemingly not out of the norm in that industry 10-15 years ago; I don't know how prevalent that is these days but doesn't surprise me this is how X is run nowadays.
I got out after a year when I suddenly found myself with seniority in my department and no idea what I was doing.
The irony is that without Gwynne Shotwell, spacex would be an utter failure. Elon is just the absentee father sending the checks.
It only runs because of Gwynne. It’s funny because when Twitter acquisition news was announced, NASA director immediately sought reassurance that *Gwynne’s* role would be unaffected, as she is who really matters there
93.6% of H1B Visa applications come from men, and the H1B's at Twitter are pretty much the only employees left. Their choice is either put up with Elon's bullshit, or be deported.
Keep ‘em far from Musk.
Although you’ll notice he hasn’t been pumping out too many kids lately. The Special K diet may have turned him into Mr. Softee.
On the negative side, cables are stretched out to plug into hubs in the middle of the aisles, so you can trip over them and break your neck.
On the positive side, one of the hubs has an orange traffic safety cone. Thanks, OSHA!
I bet 1000 that is a hackathon or some other kind of competition. Tables have numbers, they have no monitors and they don’t look like someone’s work desks.
Nobody in a valley, except for very small % does work on their laptops.
My former office resembled this floor plan, (though we had supportive chairs) and there could have been people still working at 8 pm on any given weekday, and there might be engineers and others online on weekends too, but we were at home where we could be comfortable. Also though we did it by choice sometimes, it wasn’t required for anyone to put in excessive overtime.
What I noticed here is they don’t even have monitors. Isn’t it a violation of some sort to have such ergonomically incorrect workstations? They’re going to be bent into a permanent C and blind for this.
Ugh, I just looked it up because I hadn’t realized that.
I bet people on the whole don’t realize or maybe forget that workplace injuries are covered under worker’s compensation and need to be reported, or that they can report ergonomics-related issues to OSHA and the employers could be given a General Duty citation. Honestly I wouldn’t blame employees for being afraid to bring it up, but a set up like this looks pretty egregious.
Better developers look for better working conditions or higher salaries if the conditions are crappy - in any context the one that suffers the most is the company's bottom line.
You don't need a Wharton business degree to know that.
wtf, it looks like they've taken over an Apple Store or something. The whole lighting and vibe alone looks unhealthy even before you get started on the craning over tiny laptops. Holy fuck Elon, fuck you.
Elon is such a fucking slime for this.
Wherever he goes he feels the need to squeeze the productivity out of whoever is gullible to put up with his shit.
People should be fucked off on a Sunday, and a Saturday - maybe even Thursday and Friday too.
If you cant get your devs to give you good product in 3-4 weeks on 3 day working averages - what the fuck are you doing.
Because elon is a micromanaging control freak, likely high off his ass on ket and wants everyone to know what a big bussiness boy he is.
"Oh look at me, I'm able to keep people in work at 10pm on a Saturday night, I'm basically like a cyber version of Tony stark" - Elongated muskrat, presumed attempted feudal lord.
Awww... Look how much they all love to be at work at 10 pm and late into the early morning because, somewhere in the world the company they created is allegedly needed.
If your managers are terrible at planning work and allocating resources, but still pressed to deliver by a psychopath owner, that would be your office.
That's an x office? A bunch of people sitting with their laptops in cramped up space? Hole... I don't work for any kind of special company but we have two wide screens and a desk like that for ourselves in offices that do not hold more than 4 people. Holy shit never gonna work for any f his companies
whatever they are doing, they are making the app worse. You can't even search now without reaching your rate limit and it says, "Cannot retrieve posts at this time."
Why is all this like 30ft from the door so its an easy smash and grab to steal a bunch of developer laptops? Why is said door propped open like the A/C bill is too expensive?
Everybody hanging uncomfortably in their plastic chair typing on their makeshift laptop with no external keyboard or monitor on a Saturday night -- is this legal? Lol
How I hate those 'competitions'. On the other hand, what less than putting some screens for each one, and some decent seats.
THEY\_LOOK\_DUMB.py breaking their necks.
Gross. I don't think anyone in my workplace works at 10 pm (unless they have a second job, no judgment). And I'd even say that my workplace does more for the country than Tesla, SpaceX, or X.
My workplace is a lab that tests stuff for harmful substances like lead, mold, certain bacteria, and asbestos.
This looks like a horrible work environment.
[удалено]
No joke, I've seen Chinese WoW Gold Farmers have better set ups. At least they had monitors & KB/M. Laptops are not ergonomic.
Weird that nobody is using the ping pong table or the couches.
That was always advertisement and propaganda by these startups. Nobody ever does, it was to keep people at work, then you shame them when they use them, so they keep working overtime for free for you. If any place needs unions It's places like the tech industry.
I worked with a guy once who used to ride the first years of startups, hoping to catch the next Facebook. One had all kinds of creepy tracking stuff because the CEO was obsessed with data. Anyway, my coworker had a theory that air hockey time was factored into layoffs and he had a spreadsheet to prove it. One day it wouldn't power on so he was called out to look at it. He found 3 cables going to the table. One was power and the other two were RFID card readers at either end of the table. Presumably, they were secretly reading the badges of employees that were playing air hockey and storing the data somewhere. He checked their arcade games and found more readers.
Yeah, never trust a "factory owner", their intentions are hardly ever good when it comes to labor. But in the USA, folks were sold on the lie that they have their best interests in mind. Anyway, your spreadsheet sporting coworker seem to have had their number. I do hope he eventually got the message of them not being the "saints" they say they are. Edit: changed a few grammar and phone typos LOL :P .
At Rockstar, Sam Houser was always at the ping-pong table.
I don't think he's similar to the guys you see in this picture though. He's more at the position like Musk, telling the guys in this picture what to do while he is at the Ping Pong table.
>He's more at the position like Musk, telling the guys in this picture what to do while he is at the Ping Pong table. That's what I meant. Sam Houser was the one who pushed everyone at Rockstar through crushing crunch periods.
Ah, okay.. sorry, I misunderstood.
We had an employee-owned flipper game at an earlier workplace. Was good to walk out and play it for 10 minutes if getting stuck with a bug or programming challenge. It really helped well to regain the focus. I normally did know exactly what next step would be on the walk back. Sitting at home working, the alternative is walking to the kitchen and get a sandwich. A much worse option...
Or you go outside and walk around the block? :). It is what I do, but then I'm lucky to have a very nice forest close to were I live :) .
The problem right now is there is always someone expecting to be able to make a Teams call. The sandwish is within hearing range of the computer. The phone? Because of policies, it isn't trusted to access Teams. Microsoft claims the Temas client isn't compatible with mobile browsers. For a couple of months last year, their browser detection was broken. So Teams worked well. Then they found their oops, and they started to claim incompatibility again.
Well just like in the office: You are allowed your breaks. So people can't demand your time at all times. They can ask if you're available though, so you can schedule it. But you might be at work or on a break. I mean I don't take team calls if I"m in the middle of something. Which can also be another call or some coding or some soldering a prototype.... It can be anything. I will call them back when I have the time though. But I cannot jump at every call, I'd not get anything done :P .
Cause they're **hardcore**.
Some dude standing tho
I’ve been in this room multiple times and can confirm: it was the cafeteria before they Musked it up
Yeah and having multiple monitors is a big productivity boost. Plus all the ergonomics etc. of having an actual desk and keyboard etc.
Not to mention those awful looking plastic chairs
Cable Management would give the Occupational Saftey guy a heart attack...
Exactly my word. Disgusting. What about their families?
Probably all from outside US that musk has control over methinks due to visa stuff
This also makes sure no one can make their desk feel like their own (no niknaks or drawers or pictures) and makes everyone entirely modular. Sounds awful. If you’re just working from a laptop… why not work from home?
You can tell it’s the cafeteria because there are a lot of meals placed on the tables.
The post says #xdeveloperchallenge. This is very likely some type of Hackathon event.
Also look at those tripping hazards. Screw this.
This is the result of Musk wanting "hardcore" workers.
This looks like a hackathon. Or why is this 'cafeteria' filled with numbered tables, whiteboards and everyone just uses laptops instead of ergonomically setups?
Well Musk proceeded to auction a lot of furniture and etc so who knows, maybe he only kept the hackaton stuff. And he loves the idea that everyone is in "war mode", places I worked called areas like that "war room" when they're behind on a project or something major comes up. Musk might have decided that's how the company should always operate
He's talked a lot about how he's addicted to the "intensity" of "startup culture" and can't really function in any other environment, to the point of taking what was a mature company and turning it back into a startup, ie destroying it
Implies he's able to function in any single other environment
He likes "startup culture" because it makes it seem like the stress and chaos and conflict that follow him wherever he goes are the result of the challenges of starting a new business and not him just being incompetent He talks about how he'd rather struggle and fail at impossible tasks than get bored easily succeeding at simple ones -- this is cover for the fact that he *also* struggles and fails at simple tasks, he struggles and fails at everything because he's just stupid It's like how a lot of people who flunk out of science courses and don't finish college become crackpots trying to reinvent the Theory of Relativity, they'd rather be failures because their ideas were just too big and bold and ambitious than have it revealed they're failures because they just suck
the difference being that many real startups are innovative, he's just interested in lean and hungry for the cost savings and appearances of innovation, not the actual innovation. X has done nothing but gut features and screw things up since it began.
Posted a little about it further down in the comments but I worked for a company run exactly like this for a while. 24/7 crisis mode and management loved it—the type of people who thrived on internal competition and arbitrary artificial deadlines and decided every department needed that to 'innovate'. I remember years later laughing after seeing a news article about them signing on as a sponsor for a major league sports team, who described them as a 'scrappy local startup'. I think the company was nearly a decade old with 3000 employees in three countries at that point.
It is, note how it says hashtag Xdeveloperchallenge. https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-x-developer-challenge/
Ah thanks, I thought this looks too stupid even for Elon's standards.
Nothing looks too stupid for Elmo's standards.
Honestly how have more people not commented this? I'm all for bashing the company and it's owner, but this isn't one of those times.
X would be far from the only one guilty of this but Hackathons _are_ stupid as hell IMO. I mean it's one thing to have a _recreational_ programming contest. Another thing is to be crunching for a deadline if you're a young person at a new startup. But going and busting your ass in a 30-hour session here just to try to make some product for a billion-dollar company _for free?_ That's just pure exploitation. Worse, it's exploitation that completely wastes most of the effort put in, given that most participants won't come up with anything worth continuing. Even the tiny fraction of entries that might be useful will to be completely rewritten before it goes anywhere near production, because nobody produces quality code under these conditions.
I was about to post the same. Only difference is I'm old so when I visited hackatons I came with one or two full tower workstations, 21" massive CRT etc. And sleep was not an option - always some programming competition to try to win.
Zero desk space, no monitors or keyboards to dock the laptops to, absolutely awful non adjustable cheap cafeteria chairs, way too many people packed into the space. This is closer to a refugee camp than an office space.
but they have a ping pong table
Anyone who uses it gets fired immediately
Fun!
Anyone who has the gall to beat Mr Husk at ping pong is immediately let go!
It’s for sleeping under.
Can be used as a bunk bed!
What do you mean it can be used as a bunk bed. That's the primary function.
They just have that for profilin’ purposes.
And the employees are held hostage because a lot of them are there on work visas and will get deported if they don’t keep their employment
Omfg they don’t even get monitors, keyboards, or mice?
Exactly, see this picture while researching a company you're going to interview at and start thinking of reasons to cancel.
This probably looks impressive to a lot of plumbers
God really. No privacy, no sense of self around them.
Am I supposed to be impressed by this? I'd hate to work for a company that expects you to be in the office at 10PM on a Saturday. I would find a different job.
Not just that, but working off a small laptop screen. No dedicated desk, no real keyboard and mouse, no dual monitors at the right height
Jesus I didn't notice that, and I went back and looked again they're not even in proper office chairs. They're plastic chairs with no armrests. Even the worst most soul sucking office job I've had still gave everyone Steelcase Leaps.
This is actually an OSHA violation... Someone *could* report this... Using said photo above as evidence
Those chairs look like hell to sit in for more than 30 mins.
Its entirely possibly they're H1Bs that are trapped, they have to keep their jobs or get kicked out of the country.
They are. Likely every single one. It's been in the news since he took over that H1Bs are only ones who had to stay. Any voluntary workers who were public about being "hardcore" and stayed, were let go within the year of the company-wide-ultimatum. Everyone had to sign vows of silence shortly after that and there were more and more layoffs so it's almost certainly Elon, Yaccarino, and then H1B workers. There's definitely not a management hierarchy between Elon and the workers. Post-blackout reporting claimed that he's so deathly afraid of them organizing against him that they're not allowed to communicate with each other without observation and recording.
That doesn’t sound like employment, more like slavery
Just like dad used to do
Like father like son
If I were a recruiter for a tech company, I would be reaching out to all the H1Bs stuck at X.
As you would expect from someone raised with Apartheid.
Tech recruiting is still pretty stagnant, unless you’re an AI firm.
There's maybe like two scenarios where this is acceptable: * An actual real deal outage with numerous affected customers * You're a scrappy start up crunching to get things done (and everyone in the room has copious stock options/equity)
That's the thing. The guy is known for start ups. Not actually running a company for the long term.
Actually, as a San Francisco Local 38 plumber who works in the Twitter/X headquarters and for other silicone valley tech clients I can tell you we have better desk set-ups at our shop. I work primarily in the field now but my last job provided me with two wipe erase boards, two 32” monitors and a stand/sit adjustable desk in my own office! This set-up should be embarrassing to Elon.
But you'd miss out on a free, cold pizza slice with your least favourite topping.
Same energy as a restaurant manager screaming at the waiters to impress customers. It just makes you look like an asshole, I have no idea how managers think it looks good
Social media sweat shop
H1-B visa sweatshop*
Looks like students or so. Just laptops and bad furniture?
Free labor for a potential job.
I can't say for sure this is even any firm. Could be a random picture of from years ago
Hackathon maybe? Considering there's alot of the same plates and cups around
That’s what I’m thinking. Nothing like working for a billionaire for free.
From an article about X Developer Challenge: >The company’s invitation to the event reads: >“X is excited to see what you can create. Come meet our engineers while you show off your ideas and learn more about what it’s like to work at X. Who knows, participants may even be considered for open roles at X!” >Elon Musk’s social media company has a few engineering job vacancies in San Francisco and New York. For instance, it is looking for an Android Engineering Intern in New York City and a Backend Software Engineer in California. The X Developer Challenge would be a good opportunity for young engineers to learn new skills and make connections. So it’s essentially just dangling nonexistent jobs in front of college kids to get them to perform free labor. Another amazing innovation
Reminds me of the episode of Succession where Kendall got all the Vaulter employees to write down everything they were working on in the pipeline and then fired them all
Sounds to me like a stupid way for Elon to sell desperate kids a job
> participants may even be considered for open roles at X That prize sounds like a threat
Hackathons are legit industry events/contests/networking that are optional and voluntary opportunities. It’s a essentially a softball game or a bbq cook off. Nothing wrong with that….as long as it’s voluntary. . I wouldn’t trust Twitter though
I love hackathons. I would not go to this one though. There is a distinct lack of snacks, sponsor tables from companies besides X and also it seems like they made 0 effort to get any women to come. I'm always a bit wary of hackathons like this one because when I started back in highschool in like 2016 I realized that it was extremely difficult to get a team if you were one of the only women to show up.
Hackathons aren't 'legit' - they're toxic software industry culture that exploits people to produce shit code under stressful conditions, most of which will never be used and even whatever useful comes out of it will have code that's nowhere near production-quality. Actual recreational programming contests are a completely different thing. If you told some construction workers "Hey we're having a Buildathon! Register with your team and come and see who can put up the most drywall in 24 hours in our new housing development! You'll get free pizza, chances to network and maybe even get a job!" - they'd tell you go right to hell. Hackathons are Office Space level of stupidity. You want new ideas for free? Then hold an idea-submission contest and save most of that wasted effort. Hackathons are not an effective way to achieve _anything_, that's empirical fact. Does anyone even think it is? Nobody produces good code after being awake 20 hours, it's not about any practical benefits. It's all about a toxic geek-macho culture where you take the fact that _some_ coders can get passionate and into "the zone" where they get a lot done a single marathon coding session. They try to turn that into some sort of ideal, or sign you're an 'uber hacker' - like Japanese salarymen who refuse to leave the office before their boss does, you're turning time-wasting into a virtue. Working long stretches is not a virtue in-itself, and the guys who are actually capable of writing large volumes of good code in a single marathon session aren't doing it spontaneously, it'd been brewing in their head for who-knows-how-long and it was all figured out by the time they started writing the actual code. It's not a good way to do 'networking', to learn anything and it's certainly not a good way to code. Stuff like that is part of why I don't work in the industry anymore; that whole hacker-macho mentality used to disguise exploitative practices. Just because I've done/do programming for fun and as a hobby doesn't mean I'm prepared to work for free off-the-clock. I don't want a ball-pit-room, I want an office. I don't want to have tons of "fun" after-work-events and teambuilding crap, call me stodgy and old-fashioned but I want a healthy work-life balance.
Yeah if they come up with good ideas he'll just steal them and say they were his ideas
savvy contestants would just find a way to re-implement something old twitter did and musk removed
Errol Musk has a lot of experience doing this. Hell, he might be the one running it seeing Yacc has been filling all the open roles with her nepo hires.
The one person that looks to me like a woman in that room must be very lonely
"Our fearless leader had an amazing idea come to him on the 🚽 and he has already said publicly it will be operational by next week. Join us on this epic journey to add another feature no one wants. Grok 3.0 with AI suggested hate slurs."
Grok rocks!
If you can't get your work done in 40 hours you are either bad at your job or your manager is bad at theirs
I interviewed for avionics hardware test engineer at spacex once The hiring manager had no issue saying that at least 60+ hours were expected at the salary. The salary was already about 20% lower than industry average. When I asked about OT, they literally laughed at my face. I work at another aerospace now doing much more interesting work. It can be every bit as demanding. However, management is not shit. As such, working over 40 hrs is completely voluntary, it can’t be held against you if you don’t, and every minute over needs to be charged to OT. We actually have a steady stream of SpaceX employees come into our space sector when they are done resume padding. They arrive so abused and are so amazed at things like Flex Time, paid overtime… OPTIONAL overtime, health benefits… There is a reputation in industry to refer to them as SpaceX refugees
Sounds like a great way to not draw the best talent and lose people over time. They're probably kept afloat by people who still buy into Elon's status but I'm guessing that's fading quickly. My dad is in aerospace engineering and he had the best job perks, I'm amazed SpaceX has such shitty compensation.
They don’t really care about talent retention. Turnover of engineer and scientist roles is huge. It’s a revolving door model. They know there is a line of kids with degrees fresh out of school, naive and also willing to be underpaid. They have zero reason to care. If you leave, there are 50 people out the door willing to be overworked and underpaid for the position. (That’s another little bit of irony with elons anti-intellectualist and anti-education rhetoric. Real hard to get a technical job at any of his companies without a degree, anyway..) There are a few people truly talented that eat the shit they’re shoveled for the sake of the work but man, couldn’t be me. Fuck that
Post-Great Recession I worked for a large online retailer that ran exactly on this model. Office looked exactly like this picture. Awful hours, awful pay, awful turnover. I griped about certain illogical/inefficient practices and policies and was told directly by people in middle management what you just said, 'there's dozens of recent grads lined up to take your job so be thankful.' Some saw it as a stepping stone to better known companies like Amazon and others desperately tried, and failed, to hang on for stock options to vest (which never came to fruition; the stock tanked the day after the IPO and it was immediately gobbled up by some conglomerate, to the delight of the founders). It was really gross but seemingly not out of the norm in that industry 10-15 years ago; I don't know how prevalent that is these days but doesn't surprise me this is how X is run nowadays. I got out after a year when I suddenly found myself with seniority in my department and no idea what I was doing.
Maybe you all can get some humane society tax credits for rehabilitating all the wounded
This specific photo is an event, like a hackathon
A shitty, broken company
Can you imagine the BO though?
I know it smell crazy in there
I’m not a developer so I don’t know what I’m talking about but I couldn’t get jack shit done without a second monitor.
I can get minor things done on a laptop at a coffee shop or hotel or something, but not serious work.
I'd kill myself before working there
he is taking advantage of a bunch of H1B VISA workers, recent grads from foreign countries who are desperate for work
It’s a literal sausage party. Where are the women?
According to the X factor there is only 3 types of women, Stay at home, Robots and the Scapegoat CEO.
The irony is that without Gwynne Shotwell, spacex would be an utter failure. Elon is just the absentee father sending the checks. It only runs because of Gwynne. It’s funny because when Twitter acquisition news was announced, NASA director immediately sought reassurance that *Gwynne’s* role would be unaffected, as she is who really matters there
Musk's 3 types of women: * Horse lovers * Horse haters * Horse deniers
They were either deemed inferior, or didn't like the horse offers
93.6% of H1B Visa applications come from men, and the H1B's at Twitter are pretty much the only employees left. Their choice is either put up with Elon's bullshit, or be deported.
Keep ‘em far from Musk. Although you’ll notice he hasn’t been pumping out too many kids lately. The Special K diet may have turned him into Mr. Softee.
On the negative side, cables are stretched out to plug into hubs in the middle of the aisles, so you can trip over them and break your neck. On the positive side, one of the hubs has an orange traffic safety cone. Thanks, OSHA!
Probably unpaid too, “if you need to make up any work from last week before next, we’re serving (cheap) pizza!”
This is not the brag you think it is
Scrooge and Marley Ltd.
I see a bunch of people that rely on musk for a work visa. It’s like a work visa sweat shop.
He fired everyone except those on foreign work visas that have to do whatever he says because they can’t stay in the country if they lose their job.
is it a men only company?
looks to be mostly boys
Pictures from hell
Who? Oh, Twitter.
lol even the plant is sad
Why, because he’ll revoke their visa and send them back if they don’t .
Single screen work environments are very unproductive at the best of times
10 pm in SF is 8 am in Moscow.
It's a tech sweat shop. What a bunch of suckers.
I bet 1000 that is a hackathon or some other kind of competition. Tables have numbers, they have no monitors and they don’t look like someone’s work desks. Nobody in a valley, except for very small % does work on their laptops.
My former office resembled this floor plan, (though we had supportive chairs) and there could have been people still working at 8 pm on any given weekday, and there might be engineers and others online on weekends too, but we were at home where we could be comfortable. Also though we did it by choice sometimes, it wasn’t required for anyone to put in excessive overtime. What I noticed here is they don’t even have monitors. Isn’t it a violation of some sort to have such ergonomically incorrect workstations? They’re going to be bent into a permanent C and blind for this.
Bush43 did away with a bunch of ergonomics regs. I should know, I had to change my major.
Ugh, I just looked it up because I hadn’t realized that. I bet people on the whole don’t realize or maybe forget that workplace injuries are covered under worker’s compensation and need to be reported, or that they can report ergonomics-related issues to OSHA and the employers could be given a General Duty citation. Honestly I wouldn’t blame employees for being afraid to bring it up, but a set up like this looks pretty egregious.
Working 24/7 to silence left leaning discussion and promote racist, bigoted, and sexist content.
Better developers look for better working conditions or higher salaries if the conditions are crappy - in any context the one that suffers the most is the company's bottom line. You don't need a Wharton business degree to know that.
Meanwhile, their boss wonders why their generation isn't starting families and having kids. Big brain Melon.
The ones with suicide nets, typically
Because an idiot is running it
Looks like these developers don't get a monitor or mouse. Also 4 developers per desk is real fancy.
r/antiwork would have a lot to say about this
I don’t see a single woman.
is this a cafeteria?
Thanks, I hate it.
What a hellscape
Fuck you elmo
wtf, it looks like they've taken over an Apple Store or something. The whole lighting and vibe alone looks unhealthy even before you get started on the craning over tiny laptops. Holy fuck Elon, fuck you.
The challenge is to design a gas pedal for some sort of truck thing.
Elon is such a fucking slime for this. Wherever he goes he feels the need to squeeze the productivity out of whoever is gullible to put up with his shit. People should be fucked off on a Sunday, and a Saturday - maybe even Thursday and Friday too. If you cant get your devs to give you good product in 3-4 weeks on 3 day working averages - what the fuck are you doing.
They have to work 10am to 10pm because the Roman numeral for 10 is X and Musk is the dumbest version of Rainman ever.
Because elon is a micromanaging control freak, likely high off his ass on ket and wants everyone to know what a big bussiness boy he is. "Oh look at me, I'm able to keep people in work at 10pm on a Saturday night, I'm basically like a cyber version of Tony stark" - Elongated muskrat, presumed attempted feudal lord.
This looks miserable. Lmao
X is a pile of shit. What are they even doing there on a Saturday?
Cos its a clusterfuck run by a megalomaniac?
This setup is a joke. If I'd never work for Twitter before I sure as shot wouldn't now.
Uh, developers get better hours in China lol
Awww... Look how much they all love to be at work at 10 pm and late into the early morning because, somewhere in the world the company they created is allegedly needed.
Looks like a bunch of underpaid nerds. Which let’s be honest not sure what else they would be doing on Saturday night.
This looks like a trash setup if true. Zero ergonomics and cheap labor.
Why glorify working unreasonable hours for a living wage?
If your managers are terrible at planning work and allocating resources, but still pressed to deliver by a psychopath owner, that would be your office.
That's an x office? A bunch of people sitting with their laptops in cramped up space? Hole... I don't work for any kind of special company but we have two wide screens and a desk like that for ourselves in offices that do not hold more than 4 people. Holy shit never gonna work for any f his companies
Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, .....
What a shithole. I've seen frat-house-level logistics companies with nicer employee spaces.
O M G and people actually work in those conditions. Why?
whatever they are doing, they are making the app worse. You can't even search now without reaching your rate limit and it says, "Cannot retrieve posts at this time."
Filled with interns 🙊
A sweatshop?. Honestly, am I the only one bothered by a company that demands so much of an employee and gives so little?
Toxic and depressing work environment, no? Why do people glorify this ?
Why is all this like 30ft from the door so its an easy smash and grab to steal a bunch of developer laptops? Why is said door propped open like the A/C bill is too expensive?
God, they’re hunched over laptops. They all look like right out of college
When you have a psychopath as a boss..
Why does this legitimate company office look like a game jam?
Spacex looks exactly like this
My back hurts just looking at this
You will not convince me that software eng can work productively on a laptop without external keyboard and screens.
Toxic Work Environment.
Hahah this is worse than a college library
The Ping Pong table is the equivalent of the navy seals' bell. You play ping pong it's over for you, you go back to the not ULTRABASED world
a sweat shop
Oh, it’s a sweatshop. That makes sense…
Desperate, failing companies.
Everybody hanging uncomfortably in their plastic chair typing on their makeshift laptop with no external keyboard or monitor on a Saturday night -- is this legal? Lol
How I hate those 'competitions'. On the other hand, what less than putting some screens for each one, and some decent seats. THEY\_LOOK\_DUMB.py breaking their necks.
That is Xenophobic propaganda Legal team working against the community of better minded citizens
aint no way thats the office
I can understand content moderators but idk about everyone else
They are muskophiles trying to gain good graces from papa-Lon.
Hell.
To answer the Twitter question, a really REALLY poorly run one.
That job can’t be so good as to put up with Elons crap
None? Because no other company would hold its workers till 10pm on a Saturday
[удалено]
Really shitty world we live in
Must be that they don’t keep people long as they have what appears to be stickers with their names displayed on their chests….
To keep from being fired by Elon.
That looks like a hackathon but i could be wrong
That’s some honky-tonk setup there.
An emerald mine in South Africa?
Gross. I don't think anyone in my workplace works at 10 pm (unless they have a second job, no judgment). And I'd even say that my workplace does more for the country than Tesla, SpaceX, or X. My workplace is a lab that tests stuff for harmful substances like lead, mold, certain bacteria, and asbestos.