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
There are a lot of reasons people stay in positions. Not everyone has the same degree of mobility in terms of a job. Maybe they have little time in their personal life to deal with interview prepping. Maybe they're older and deal with age discrimination. Maybe they're on a work visa and know they're in a leveraged position. Maybe they're not good at negotiation. Maybe they loathe the market. Maybe they have a pile of debt and the current situation is less risky.

As an industry we need to stop perpetuating this idea that everyone is fully mobile and software engineers are some mythical creature that isn't also shackled to the same constraints the rest of the labor force is. It's a job and a lot of people are dependent on a steady income stream. Part of that is putting up with the least worst of the options they have reasonably available to them, or sometimes taking up worse options just because it balances other aspects out. Ultimately during certain times you may have more or less leverage to put up with or reject crap practices. SWEs tend to have a lot more leeway than say a retail worker of course so we can be a bit more demanding but we can't just say crud off, I don't deal with any BS, even in the best of times. Higher salaries give you some negotiation room as well as you can lower your TC expectations in terms of negotiating better working environments (i.e. taking lower rates but demanding things like less pressured schedules, make autonomy, etc.) and as the extreme sof the markets are high enough, even taking TC hits can still let you live comfortably (this is to contrast many other professions who don't have this flexibility).

Unless you've lived modestly and invested significantly or started some side venture to become financially independent of labor based income, you're ultimately giving up some degree of agency to employers. We like to pretend this isn't the case but it is the case for most people, even highly paid labor.