Peering over the edge

Over the years I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Twitter. While I enjoy being able to use it as a live-feed of opinions and emotions during sporting events, it’s also a terrible time suck that results in so much wasted time. The acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk has me really questioning if I want to be affiliated with the application any longer.

The immediately purge of talent that took place after the acquisition was a bold move but I understand that the new ownership is attempting to trim the organization down to help move towards profitability. That is not a surprising move during a leveraged buyout situation. The latest news of the CEO giving the remaining workers about 9 hours to decide if they want to be part of a “hardcore” Twitter or leave is a troublesome move. I’ve been part of death march projects in the past but those have typically sneaked up due to changing requirements or customer expectations. The thing about death march projects is the hope that comes from knowing that it’s going to end when a milestone is met. The article quotes the CEO as saying: “This will mean working long hours at high intensity”. In my opinion, this message is kicking off a self-induced death march within Twitter that carries with it no sign of an end. For an organization who saw engineers sleeping on the floor to complete a rush project for the same CEO immediately after the acquisition (which ended up being rolled back), this should be a warning sign for the employees of Twitter.

Seeing this news break, I really am struggling internally about whether or not supporting such an organization with my attention is a good idea or not. It seems that the new ownership of the company has a much different vision for it than what drew me to it in the first place. If Twitter does end up no longer being a source of information for me, I will truly miss it. As I mentioned before, it’s a great way to keep up with sports and tech news. On the other hand, I will not miss the miserable cesspool that it becomes during election cycles.

I’m not proclaiming that I’m leaving the nest quite yet but it does have me peering over the edge thinking more about when I will, not if.