Musk's Hotel California erected at Twitter HQ, as some offices converted into bedrooms When Elon Musk told his Twitter engineers to go hardcore or go home, those who remained were clearly up for some marathon sessions, although perhaps they weren't signing up for a situation that looks like a reenactment of the Eagles' classic "Hotel California." According to Forbes' talkative sources, the multi-company CEO is …
Hm, are these facilities allowed to be used as "housing"? I think some local ordinance or law may say differently.
Before you know it, the authorities will do a midnight raid.
No, not that redundancy raid computer stuff, although, maybe just to remove more redundancy. Who knows...
Unannounced beds being installed? I guess those sexual harassment suits won't create themselves. Not that Elon has any history of that. of course.
A boss who does not listen to their educated, trained staff with years of experience. Where have I heard that before? Oh right, multiple times in my career and usually just before a massive amount of downtime or ludicrous loss of money. Funnily enough, those bosses never took responsibility. They typically blamed / fired someone who actually ended up fixing the issue. Why stop a stellar career arc by telling the truth?
Fair seas, Captain Elon of the fair ship Twitanic. Fair seas.
I was wondering the same thing. I'm sure the SF zoning authority is going to have some thoughts on this. Though Twitler has long bought into the idea that laws only apply to other people, so it'll probably take sending the cops in to remove the furnishings to affect any sort of change. Twitter will probably be out of business long before the city could go to court to enforce the payment of fines levied.
So has Mucky Musk.
I'm just surprised that Elon hasn't used his $10,000 fold-up homes for the accommodation... He's never one to shy away from a bit of self-preservation.
Either way, this has to be so that he can keep a very, very, very close eye on his wage slaves.
According to BBC, SF has started an investigation into potential Building Code Violations at Twitter HQ now.
Musk has responded with a wonderful bit of Whataboutery - that the city should prioritise protecting children from the consequences of opioid drug misuse instead. Because you know that's the focus of the Department of Building Inspections... They should drop all that work, making sure people stay safe by keeping their buildings code compliant, and instead go protect children from drug misuse. Somehow. Yep I totally see how that works. You tell 'em, musky...
What a wanker. Chief Twit indeed...
No doubt Musk will soon tweet about how terrible it is that the local government is trying to stop him from "fixing Twitter" by enforcing zoning laws.
Most likely the employees sleeping in the office are H1Bs who have no choice but to knuckle under and do whatever crazy things he tells them to, because the alternative is being fired and having to return home.
What a wanker.
Maybe it's worse than that. With Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Kanye West, we seem to have some sort of insane Trinity which has sprung into being.
The one with 'Predictions of End Times" in the pocket. No, that's the "QAnon Prophecies", the other pocket.
In my days, you would use space under your desk as a capsule hotel. 3 am, barely can type, put the sleeping pad on, go for a quick spliff and then jump in the sleeping bag, play some Cafe del Mar tunes on your headphones and drift away into heavenly sleep.
You wouldn't even have to think about setting an alarm clock, as the cleaners would be going round waking everyone up in the morning.
Yes, but that "conversion" into living space was both temporary and not officially sanctioned / created by the corporation.
Turning zoned office commercial space into residential space officially sanctioned by the owner / leasee, won't go over well with the Zoning Board. Nor the Fire Department (I'm sure the office space does not meet residential fire isolation codes, not at all), etc.
"In my days, you would use space under your desk as a capsule hotel. 3 am, barely can type, put the sleeping pad on, go for a quick spliff and then jump in the sleeping bag, play some Cafe del Mar tunes on your headphones and drift away into heavenly sleep."
In one city I had a facility, I learned that even having a nap was verboten at the office much less outfitting an office as a bedroom. I never bothered complying, but I wasn't out advertising it either.
When visiting remote offices, I often would have happily taken a properly-appointed suite in the office building over travel to and from a local hotel – much as I often walked to some local chippie or the like to get take-away dinner, and took it away to the office rather than the hotel, because why not? Better tables, better Internet service, free beverages, nicer facilities in general. All the office lacked was a private room with a bed and a shower.
But my employers certainly didn't expect me to spend after-hours time at the office, or working. If I did, it was because there wasn't anything else I was much inclined to do at the moment, after I'd had my evening stroll about town.
I worked for a very large, 2 letter name, US company for a while.
I out performed my peers by a considerable margin one year and was given a "role model" rating.
The next year I did the same and was rated as "average", as my performance scale was moved to reflect last years achievements.
Consequently, many of my peers gained a higher rating (and the associated pay increase) even though I provably was of greater value to the company.
"Copula hock in lido militum" I left.
Corporate egos should go, to be replace by work life balance.
That's more or less been my experience: performance simply raises the bar for recognition and it is never judged relative to the standards of others or to absolute, objective contribution. One is rewarded for exceeding their own past and the worst thing one can do is set that bar too high to sustain in the future.
After five years at one place, I approached management and told them that I was unhappy because promises to bring my pay-scale up to par with my industry, given my experience, had not been met despite the fact that the entire small business was then pretty much defined by what had been my own, personal prototype – started literally from file-new-project, by me, and grown, by me, into its overwhelmingly dominant position. They said they did not need me any more – they had the product, now – and that they did not care about my concerns. Wouldn't everyone like to earn more? Nobody else was getting bumped so why should I be? Absolute contribution and effort and excellence and the fact that I had stuck through the company's hard times – the very reason I was paid below par, then – were forgotten, as were the all-nighters, the coding-on-holiday, the support-calls-on-weekends and the rest.
After many such experiences, I've learned: one must go in with excessive demands that must be met to the letter and, then, one does the minimum and spares the horses – more is never rewarded but relative decline is never tolerated so excellence is only a route to disadvantage in the future.
Do these employees expect that their going-of-the-extra-mile, today, will lead to something in their future? If so: they're naiive fools – at best, they will be recognised as people who "can" and subsequently find themselves having to compensate for the shortcommings of others who "can't".
It is ironic that I would be less bitter and jaded, today, had I stood up for myself and demanded more from the start of my career instead of trusting the promises of corporations and believing the stupid fallacy that merit, effort and ingenuity were the routes to success.
Indeed, there are companies now, big companies, "Why can't we get employees to show company loyalty any more?" while the same big companies will cut xxx employees to save yyy dollars, then pay that same yyy dollars to the CEO as a bonus; will fire staff as soon as some project is done; will fire staff over one down quarter only to have to start hiring a bunch a quarter or two later (I can see if a company is on a total decline they may have to lay some staff off, but these companies that have mass firings every year or two, only to re-hire like 6 months later? Screw them.)
The icing on the cake -- pensions in the US have been virtually unheard of since the 1980s. And some of the companies that had (or have) pensions have been caught comingling the pension fund with company funds, so people go to get their pension and find the company has stolen it. (Typically, the claim is they "borrowed" money from it with the plan to replay it when the company was doing better; then of course either the company didn't do better, or it did but they didn't bother to replenish the pool.)
"And some of the companies that had (or have) pensions have been caught comingling the pension fund with company funds, so people go to get their pension and find the company has stolen it."
Government pensions are handled differently. They guarantee a certain interest rate for each workers contribution regardless of how the pension's investments have done. Since the guaranteed interest was ludicrous to start with, they rely on other government agencies to bail them out when the funds finally run dry.
I never saw any point in saving for retirement until I owned my own home. Why should I be putting money away at a paltry interest rate when paying much more interest elsewhere? I'm no model economist, but I don't have any current debt. I'm not loaded with cash either, but I have some saved up and my monthly costs are very manageable.
Caver_Dave,
Finally decyphered your latin-esque comment !!! :)
Yes, I know the 'very large, 2 letter name, US company' very well ..... this is standard practice !!!
Work/life balance is only noticed when you 'suddenly' reach the point of 'needing to remove' all the knives from your back and question if it is worth it !!!
:)
When you start working at a company you must figure out the pace things are going at and then try to work below it, so that managers are unhappy, but not unhappy enough to fire you. Never try to be the best - it will only get shareholders better off, never yourself.
Relevant Office Space:
Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.
Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?
Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?
Peter Gibbons: Eight bosses.
Bob Slydell: Eight?
Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.
This statement is akin to the UK's previous Chief Inspector of Schools claiming that, and here I quote, "satisfactory isn't good enough".
WTF does "Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade" mean? Can everyone be 'exceptional'? Does 'exceptional' refer to comparison with people outside Twitter, maybe in Musk's other enterprises, or the 'industry' in general?
Reminds me of what an RAF Wing Commander told me about rating RAF staff in their annual reviews. Everyone was "above average", because if you were only rated "average" that was the end of your career.
You'll have to excuse me now, I need to re-set my hyperbole alarm.
Its like when a company asks for a survey on how they did and always expects a "10"
Normally I don't bother but when asked why "only" an 8, I had to explain that anything over this is because they went "above and beyond" normal service to resolve some issue - not providing what I consider a "standard" service
I once did a survey where, after the fact, we were informed the scale went 1-3, Poor, 4 Average, 5 Excellent. WTF? No distinction between 1-3 and sooo many people scored items as "average", ie 3 in the expected rather than actual scaling.
There is the KPI 0-10 scale, where I always used to score 'never used'/'I have no opinion' as 5, thinking that would be about as neutral as you could get... until I discovered that 0-6 is defined as 'detractor', 7-8 as 'passive' and only 9-10 as a 'promotor'
I now refuse to partake in any survey that doesn't offer 'no opinion' as an option (unless you really want all zeroes!)
Similarly, I'll generally only submit a survey response if something extraordinary – good or bad – happened. That way I can offer praise or criticism when it's due. There simply isn't a way to indicate on these things that business was conducted in a business-like fashion and both parties left satisfied with the result.
If I were running a survey program like this, every question would have an optional text response area (what we used to refer to as a "narrative" response option), with a reasonably high limit on length; and then four choices: something like "disappointed", "satisfied", "better than expected", "no opinion". And maybe a short prefatory statement noting that employees wouldn't be penalized for "satisfied".
But even with something like that, I'm dubious about its value.
I learned many decades ago to never trust an employer. No one listened to me when I told them the reasons why.
Then the reasons only got worse. And still, my fellow proles insisted I was being negative.
Then it got even worse and I am no longer nice to people who kiss employers asses nor care when they get the wrong end of the stick. People who insist on hurting themselves are best avoided at all times.
"People who insist on hurting themselves are best avoided at all times."
We have been trained to hurt ourselves. At best, we aren't trained to NOT hurt ourselves. When I was in school, there was no household budgeting class. No teaching about interest rates and how to build a solid net worth. Nothing taught about researching which jobs pay the best vs what it costs to prepare for that role. I didn't get any guidance on when it's a good idea to rent a flat and when to buy a home and how to tell one situation from the other.
I suppose that people that insist on hurting themselves are the ones that haven't figured out the above on their own.
"Much of what you describe is a parents job, not the educations systems job :-)"
Both in the US and UK there is an unwritten taboo about discussing financial matters with children or strangers. The economy was also much different when I was first out on my own vs. when my parents left home. My dad did teach me about some financial decisions, but not in planned and rigorous way.
I'm with you on parents taking a more active role in teaching their kids, but a school teacher should have more skills presenting and explaining topics. Getting the information from both places or using the classroom instruction as a basis for discussion at home is even better.
There's another more worrying explanation for the arrival of the beds considering he said this
OK finally I understand how he's going to make Twitter profitable!
Might not go over well with the religious chunk of the right wing, but they were willing to overlook Trump banging a porn star and paying her hush money, they will overlook Musk's burgeoning porno empire so long as he lets the white nationalists back onto Twitter.
"Ghastly as this is, I wonder how many other Big Tech offices have similar facilities."
Some big companies do have accommodations at their offices. If a company VIP is on their own and will only be in town for a day or two, it can be more convenient than a hotel. It's also handy when execs are traveling overseas and their internal time is far different and it's long before a hotel's check-in time. I've seen some pretty swank set-ups and they aren't usually easy to find so building inspectors and fire inspectors would have to have really good spatial skills to detect they haven't seen the whole space. That was decades ago when I worked at a home theatre/home automation company.
Right. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with having some sleeping space in an office building. It can be a nice perk, and sometimes someone needs a bit of rest in the middle of the day, particularly if the alternative is driving themselves home when they're dangerously tired.
As usual, the problems in this case are that Musk's intentions are suspect (because of previous actions and reputation); the facilities don't seem to be very nice; he's made himself the World's Richest Vein of Humor over the past month; and he's been tone-deaf in communicating (or apparently not communicating) about it.
In a previous career I opened and ran a restaurant. Not a chain, no outside investors. Long hours, often no money left over for me, often tired. I had a hammock that I could string up in the storeroom/office, and I used it a lot. (Alone, so stop that snickering in the back.)
Which was okay because I was working for myself. It would have been less okay if it were for some billionaire who regularly talked trash about the work my colleagues and I have done.
The factual part of Forbes article:
> On Monday, employees returning to work at the company’s San Francisco location were greeted by modest bedrooms featuring unmade mattresses, drab curtains and giant conference-room telepresence monitors
Then there's a few hundred more words of idle but not necessarily innocent speculation.
The register then does a rehash of Forbes article and adds some more speculation.
I don't care if we're talking about Genghis Khan's evil cousin here. This is not news, it's entertainment at best, propaganda at worst.
Go on, now express your displeasure with me pointing out the obvious.
"Go on, now express your displeasure with me."
Your wish has been granted.
Hint: your conclusion was neither obvious nor warranted. The 'idle speculation' seems a lot closer to the mark, given Elon's recent behavior.
If I worked at Twitter I would be urgently researching other jobs. Indeed, I would have been urgently researching other jobs since Elon arrived, and my search would only have intensified once I saw those 'bedrooms'. I suspect that there is about to be another mass exodus.
"The 'idle speculation' seems a lot closer to the mark, given Elon's recent behavior."
So your idle speculation is that the idle speculation may be correct. And therefore it is incorrect to call it idle speculation, because speculation that may be correct is not speculation?
There is no favorable explanation for converting offices into hotbunk dorms for your H1-B slave labor. Especially when you've made the completely unreasonable demand that everyone work in the office for a job that's entirely software (minus a very few people).
Or perhaps you're suggesting that these aren't for workers to sleep in, they're so Elmo can have spontaneous non-consensual sex with his unable to say no H1-B drones? Well I guess that's possible, so we shouldn't entirely jump to conclusions.
I think the biggest thing here is that he didn't even bother telling employees what was going on.
just remember that 90% of everything is crap.
So, in the face of the mystery, wonder, and brevity of life why waste it being a slave to someone else's crap;
it's enough to learn to deal with our own, and then do something worthwhile with the other 10%.
If you're going to quote Theodore Sturgeon, at least get the quote right.
And on that hangs Sturgeon’s revelation. It came to him that [science fiction] is indeed ninety-percent crud, but that also – Eureka! – ninety-percent of everything is crud. All things – cars, books, cheeses, hairstyles, people, and pins are, to the expert and discerning eye, crud, except for the acceptable tithe which we each happen to like.
The subtlety, of course, is that the 10% which is not crud, is largely a matter of personal opinion.
This post has been deleted by its author
The number of times a couple of hours nap when exhausted would have made my working afternoon more productive ...
Also the number of times I've shlepped home to literally go to bed and get up and do it all again ...
A free room instead would actually have been handy!
I guess he might as well do something with the space. With the office at well under 25% occupancy there's plenty of empty space. (But seriously, I agree with those saying this is disrespectful. Netscape brought in some cots and such, but this was Jamie Zawinski etc. choosing to put in huge hours, choosing to do crunch time to ship out nestcape 1.0. It wasn't some a'hole firing too much staff then telling the rest they must put in crunch hours on what is after all an already developed and running product.
Musk happened to be in the right place at the right time with Paypal. Nothing indicates he is much of a coder, he just talks a lot and got lucky at the time. For this reason, I'm not surprised to see him in his current situation.The Tesla name will probably be sold off. Musk is just that, a smell. Twitter will fade away.
Since Tesla survives on selling carbon indulgences to other car companies and SpaceX survives on government contracts based on future performance, the real answer might be found in combing the San Francisco city council's minutes to see if any new contracts for housing the homeless have been issued recently. https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/san-francisco-sros
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
"Elsewhere TikTok continues to grow and Telegram attracts more people looking for more like minded people."
And Elon defends any city actions directed at his repurposing the building outside of what the zoning allows by claiming that the building department/code enforcement would be better out keeping kids off of drugs. I imagine the city does have departments that worry about that sort of thing. They also have a department that regulates how buildings are used so unscrupulous bastards aren't renting out inappropriate living quarters.
On a side note, employers that provide accommodations must asses them as compensation to the employee on their payroll statements. There are guidelines about the minimum rates for housing and food provided by the company. Usually, that sort of accounting is found in places such as off-shore oil rigs, cruise ships, etc. I don't have a link handy, but I remember it when I was learning all about payroll when I first started my own company with employees. Of course Elon is keeping track of who uses these rooms and notifies payroll so the use is being apportioned correctly to those employees accounts.
I know a lot of people who'd ditch their $2000-$5000 a month urban living costs for a bedroom in the office. The intersection of hardcore Musk fans, people who can write code, and people who'd live in the office is probably in the tens of thousands. It would be another step towards failure for the business but Musk would have the hardcode fanatics he personally needs.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
