#riptwitter

The list of things that have gone wrong at Twitter is, well, extensive. But the simplest one happened at the very start, was exacerbated by Musk’s subsequent communication, and was extremely, IMHO, predictable.

So, let’s talk about the difference between startups and established tech companies.

I worked at a startup as my first job out of college. Put five years in. It was an amazing experience and I was truly fortunate to have it; I was thrown into the deep end, learned things about software architecture that would serve me well throughout my whole career, and wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I also:

• broke off a date with my future wife because I was the only one of three team members who could make a demo work for the next day. We pulled an all-nighter.

• became well-familiar with the biker gang that pulled up to the bar across the street from our office every Saturday night; could set my clock by them arriving. Did often, on account of all the seven-day weeks.

• got the sickest I’d ever been, out three weeks. Week two, my CEO calls and checks to see if there’s any duty I could take on because we had no other hands to do it. I wrote some user-facing documentation. Three months later, someone caught all the obvious typos and asked “What idiot wrote this?” I dead-panned that I think I missed some issues on account of all the vivid hallucinations.

• had a conversation with my doctor about the indigestion that was waking me up at night. He suggested I relieve stress. I responded “I work at a startup, so what are the options that don’t require a career change?”

And eventually, I left because I was ready to stop living like that.

Here’s the thing: there is so much of the software dev ecosystem where you don’t live like that. You live like that because you’re working on something you’re willing to sacrifice yourself for it (I’m not talking about being passionate about the work—you can be passionate and have a work-life balance—I’m talking actual sacrifice; things you won’t get back) or you are expecting a huge payout relative to the invested effort. If those ingredients aren’t there? You don’t take that gig. And companies that aren’t willing to offer that payout or the kind of we-are-here-to-change-the-world opportunity don’t get those employees.

Twitter was once such a startup. It’s not anymore. It went public. Once a company goes public, it’s no longer a startup; it’s a place people who want a reliable paycheck and a reasonable work-life balance go to work. At Google, we were counseled to have a “startup mentality” by leadership, and people certainly tried to give it their all, but… You just don’t work like you’re at a startup at a 100,000-person company. You can’t. The buy-in isn’t there. It does you no good to pull seven-day weeks when the database team you’re relying upon works five-day weeks, holds all the credentials to modify the DB, and just won’t answer their email on a Saturday. What’s the point then? Go home, love your spouse, work on your house, hike in the park, touch grass.

Musk tried something I don’t think I’ve seen before: he tried taking a company that “won the game,” as it were, and roll it back to a startup. He took a place people had a stable job making a product people use and tried to make it a place where the future was uncertain again. And then he confirmed that, yes, he was expecting those employees to work seven-day weeks to realize a vision… A vision he didn’t even enunciate.

Twitter was a place steady hands were working to maintain a mature product for a reliable paycheck. A mass exodus is entirely expected. I don’t know why he didn’t expect it.