Musk and Twitter

[cordex]

Read further down at the link https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586108809772089345
Musk bad mouth them after firing them a couple of weeks ago and now he's like "my bad", welcome back!

I don't think you've quite got it yet.

[WLJ]

I don't think you've quite got it yet.

And now I see that.
Apparently I wasn't reading far enough 

Nevermind 

Too much soap opera crap and I start surface reading

[Hawkmoon]

I wonder if Musk understands the laws on overtime pay.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/16/elon-musk-demands-twitter-staff-commit-to-long-hours-or-leave.html

He is demanding that remaining employees commit to working “long hours at high intensity” or leave. Since he has already fired a bunch of senior executives, most of the employees left are probably not high enough in the corporate ladder to legally qualify as "exempt" (i.e. salaried) employees. That means if he wants all those remaining minions to work long hours, he has to pay them time-and-a-half for all their overtime.

My guess is that he has no intention of doing that.

It's interesting that, while demanding a commitment to working long hours, there's no indication of how many long hours.

I think if I were at Twitter, I'd take the three months severence package and find a real job, working for an employer who isn't an egotistical jerk.

[MillCreek]

^^^I suspect most employees there are exempt, just like any other dot com.  My nephew works at Microsoft, and virtually everyone who works in the actual IT/software area is exempt.

[Hawkmoon]

^^^I suspect most employees there are exempt, just like any other dot com.  My nephew works at Microsoft, and virtually everyone who works in the actual IT/software area is exempt.

How are they exempt? You're an attorney -- to be exempt, certain conditions have to be met. The person has to have executive or decision-making authority. They also can't have their pay docked when they take time off. For an employee to be exempt, it takes a lot more than the employer saying, 'You're salaried, so you don't get paid for overtime." (As one of my former employers found out the hard way.)

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/exempt-employee.asp

https://www.patriotsoftware.com/blog/payroll/exempt-employees-must-meet-specific-qualifications/

[DittoHead]

I'm sure they all make the minimum salary and would be considered "learned professionals". Almost anyone working in software or IT is exempt these days.
Not everyone can learn to code ya know?

[sumpnz]

How are they exempt? You're an attorney -- to be exempt, certain conditions have to be met. The person has to have executive or decision-making authority. They also can't have their pay docked when they take time off. For an employee to be exempt, it takes a lot more than the employer saying, 'You're salaried, so you don't get paid for overtime." (As one of my former employers found out the hard way.)

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/exempt-employee.asp

https://www.patriotsoftware.com/blog/payroll/exempt-employees-must-meet-specific-qualifications/

You don’t have to be a senior executive to be exempt.  Fresh out of undergrad engineers making $70k are usually exempt employees.

[cordex]

You don’t have to be a senior executive to be exempt.  Fresh out of undergrad engineers making $70k are usually exempt employees.

Yep.

From Hawkmoon's own link:

• The FLSA includes these job categories as exempt: professional, administrative, executive, outside sales, and computer-related.
• The details vary by state, but if an employee falls in the above categories, is salaried, and earns a minimum of $684 per week or $35,568 annually, then they are considered exempt.

I'm guessing most of the relevant Twitter employees are making more than $35,568 and can be considered one of the categories listed.

[MillCreek]

I point out that there may be state laws that are more restrictive than the Federal laws on dot com employees being exempt vs. non-exempt.  California is an example: effective January 1, 2022, there are a number of tests to determine if a computer professional is exempt or non-exempt for purposes of paying overtime. 

[MechAg94]

I started out of college as an engineer.  Been exempt my entire career.  Never had pay docked because I was sick, but never got paid extra for working over either.  Generally, if exempt people end up working too much OT or too much travel, they find another job.  When I have seen hourly guys switched over to salary, they were usually given a boost in base pay to try to account for the OT they were getting paid for.  Some are okay with that, others are not. 

I don't know what they mean by long hours.  That could just mean working a full 40 hours a week.  I am sure someone at Twitter was working, but it sure seemed like they were heavy with people who weren't doing much that was useful. 

[cordex]

I point out that there may be state laws that are more restrictive than the Federal laws on dot com employees being exempt vs. non-exempt.  California is an example: effective January 1, 2022, there are a number of tests to determine if a computer professional is exempt or non-exempt for purposes of paying overtime.

Good point on the state specific laws.

[bedlamite]

I don't know what they mean by long hours.  That could just mean working a full 40 hours a week.  I am sure someone at Twitter was working, but it sure seemed like they were heavy with people who weren't doing much that was useful.

This. I recall a Twitter employee complaining that they had to work like four hours a week a while back.

[sumpnz]

At PACCAR I have never been paid a dime for OT.  At aerospace companies I’ve been paid for OT, but only at straight time equivalent hourly rate, and in some cases the first 5 or 8 hours of OT was unpaid, or you had to work at least 5-8 hours of OT to get paid for any, but then you got paid for it all.

[Ben]

Even fed.gov employees have professional "exempt" categories. I was allowed limited comp time, but the only time I got OT was in special circumstance emergency response work. For the regular office stuff, I usually averaged 50hrs/week, no OT. Even for fieldwork, like diving and flying, while I got hazard pay (which was a joke of an amount), no OT, even on day trips where the boat left at 0300 and got back at 1900.

[Boomhauer]

Who are Ligma & Johnson?

Ligma Johnson

Close cousins of Ligma Balls

[Angel Eyes]

[WLJ]

 

Fired Twitter Employee Applies For First Real Job
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-voQsFY6SE

[Perd Hapley]

Poor girl on TV doesn't get L-M, either. 

https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2022/11/17/hill-tv-host-doesnt-think-ligma-and-johnson-looked-very-happy-being-welcomed-back-to-twitter/

[Ben]

One of my favorite parts of the takeover is the now balanced fact checking that is driving the left crazy (because they are now being fact checked for the first time in the history of twitter),

https://www.foxnews.com/media/surge-twitter-fact-checks-progressive-figures-praise-tech-watchdogs

I also saw another article where Elon sent an email requiring a mandatory yes or no answer about employees agreeing to actually work like normal people instead of putting in 5 hours a week from home. If they answered "no", they were automatically fired with three months severance. It started a spree of tantrum quitting, which is probably something he was hoping for.

[K Frame]

And the latest.

Those Twit employees who survived the mass layoff are now apparently resigning in droves because they don't want to commit to working hard.

You took my nap room! You took my free lunches! You took my emotional support puppies, kittens, and coloring books! And now you actually expect me to WORK? You're a monster!

https://www.foxnews.com/media/musk-triggers-liberals-email-urging-employees-commit-extremely-hardcore-work-musks-hellscape

 

Musk's only miscalculation in this entire mess is that he should have demanded this commitment FIRST, before laying off a ton of people. Had he done so it's likely he would have gotten the head count reductions he wanted and without having to resort to the axe.

[DittoHead]

Those Twit employees who survived the mass layoff are now apparently resigning in droves

Who's Elon going to be left with?
It's rarely the best and the brightest that stay behind when a company experiences a significant change or mass exodus like this. It tends to be the people who are in the country on work visas or aren't talented enough to easily find employment elsewhere.

You took my nap room! You took my free lunches!

Maybe it morphed into something else by now, but in the beginning many of these "perks" were just simple ways to keep employees from doing anything else besides working. Sleep at the office and work through your lunch break.

[WLJ]

Who's Elon going to be left with?
It's rarely the best and the brightest that stay behind when a company experiences a significant change or mass exodus like this. It tends to be the people who are in the country on work visas or aren't talented enough to easily find employment elsewhere.
Maybe it morphed into something else by now, but in the beginning many of these "perks" were just simple ways to keep employees from doing anything else besides working. Sleep at the office and work through your lunch break.

Bet most of the people leaving are basically worthless and aren't going to be missed.
Just how many people are required to run twitter? Probably a tiny fraction of the number that was there.

[Ben]

Bet most of the people leaving are basically worthless and aren't going to be missed.
Just how many people are required to run twitter? Probably a tiny fraction of the number that was there.

If they had titles like "content overlord" or whatever the *expletive deleted*ck other weird job titles there were for people with no real skills, who even cares if they were "the best and brightest" at that? It sounds like Elon wants all those jobs gone anyway and is looking for engineers and actual software coders.

Real engineers versus "social engineers". I'm sure he'll find plenty of skilled engineers that want to make a boatload of money and don't care about working 40-50 hours a week because they're doing that anyway at their current job.

[dogmush]

Just how many people are required to run twitter? Probably a tiny fraction of the number that was there.

Depends on what exactly you mean by "run Twitter".  Keep the site operational so folks can Tweet and see other tweets, or shape a worldwide societal narrative.

Real engineers versus "social engineers". I'm sure he'll find plenty of skilled engineers that want to make a boatload of money and don't care about working 40-50 hours a week because they're doing that anyway at their current job.

See above.

I think that's the real cause of all the Twitter [ex]employee, and liberal twitter user angst.  It's not that these social engineers weren't doing anything between there rounds of meditation, massage, and Kambucha.  It's that they WERE doing something they thought was important, and now they are told it's not important, and their work will be undone.  And to top it off, they can't say what they were really doing that has them so wound up, because they spent a decade wink, wink, nudge, nudge saying they weren't doing it. 

Personally I love to see unemployed collectivist social engineers as, like locusts, when they do labor they only destroy useful things.  I have also been entertained spending the morning reading about the end of Twitter, on Twitter.

It remains to be seen how many of the folks at Twitter are going to be onboard with it's new direction, and whether Elon can find enough over-dedicated folks to run it.  I think he's been successful at finding those folks to work at Tesla and SpaceX because he sells the companies to employees as transformative to humanity and doing important work.  Folks are more willing to work crazy hard hours and sacrifice downtime if they think they are changing the world*.  I don't know if Elon will be able to sell "Twitter 2.0" as the exciting, transformative, cutting edge place to be that attracts the type A personalities he wants to employ.  I guess we'll see how he brands it and what he says he plans to do with it.  SpaceX crashed a lot of rockets before they landed one.  I'd expect to see a similar number of "crashed" ideas at Twitter before (if) they manage some paradigm shifting social media product.


*Ironically, last year's Twitter employees seem to be the exception to this.  They thought they were shaping the world, but still weren't willing to work super hard.

[WLJ]

Can Elon buy DC?
As in the whole package.