zlacker

>>ZacnyL+(OP)
Speaking from very painful, personal experience, few things are more agitating than being forced to execute on something you fully know is a horrible idea, especially when you tried and failed to communicate this fact to the individual pushing you to go against your best judgement.

Even more so when that person later loudly proclaims that they never made such a request, even when provided with written proof.

I can of course not say whether the people currently working at Twitter did warn that the recent measures could have such major side effects, but I would not be surprised in the slightest, considering their leadership's mode of operation.

Even as someone who very much detests what Twitter has become over the last few months and in fact did not like Twitter before the acquisition, partly due to short format making nuance impossible, but mostly for the effect Tweets easy embeddability had on reporting (3 Tweets from random people should not serve as the main basis for an article in my opinion), I must say, I feel very sorry for the people forced to work at that company under that management.

>>Topfi+Ew
I'm curious about this: When you were experiencing this, why didn't you quit? I truly feel bummed for the people remaining at Twitter who are miserable but for whatever reason feel they can't just quit.

>>sander+2L
That is a good question, but on the two specific occasions when something of this sort did not make me leave instantly, there were very specific factors at play. I cannot comment on the first situation as that would require an extensive post with an obscene amount of context on my background, politics in my country, the people involved, weighing up the public good, etc. Simply, would go beyond a HN comment and I feel I couldn't do the situation justice anyway for someone who wasn't following local news at the time these things happened.

The second instance, I feel I can comment on, though allow me to leave out details to spare the people involved public embarrassment.

There, the changes, whilst annoying and born out of a complete misunderstanding of a core part of their alleged competency (Imagine a Botanist telling you leaves are always blue because that is the color of the sky), were not going to break anything, just look silly and create unnecessary, but compensated, work.

In that case, I also viewed the specific project finally launching as vitally important to our user base and wanted the results to go public for their benefit, so the decision was made to document and execute on their requests, so we could go live.

Of course, two weeks before our go live date, they changed their requests again ("leaves are not blue, they are violet because of the wave length of light") and had a hard time understanding that changes can have a knock on effect and some things are a bit more complex than Find and Replace. If I had been forced to make those changes at that point, I'd have packed my bags.

Simply said, when my work has the potential to benefit users and I know that arguing, even though I am correct, will lead to massive delays, I'd rather just put that silly request in writing and deal with these things after the users have received what has been worked on. Try to explain when someone is wrong, but if that doesn't work, finish the project, argue later.

Of course, if after the fact responsibility isn't taken, that finished project gets mentioned in my CV for the next employer.

>>Topfi+oC1
That makes sense, thanks for sharing. I definitely get the thing about not wanting to let people down. And I do wonder if that's how a lot of the people remaining at Twitter feel.