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by m_ke 1311 days ago
Engineers interested in cars or rockets have way fewer exciting options than web devs working at Twitter.
5 comments

Very much this.

Anecdote time: I have an acquaintance who’s an engineer who works on nuclear power plant technology. They’ve wanted out of their current employer for over a decade now.

Why have they stuck around? Because their current employer is the only one in a several thousand kilometer radius with any use for their expertise, one of only a couple they could work for without leaving the country, and one of only a handful whose primary language of business is one that they speak.

Tesla, SpaceX, and perhaps even the Boring Company have much more in common with that situation than they do with Twitter.

Exactly. I don’t think people realize that a below average software engineer or product manager at Twitter has way better career prospects than a top rocket scientist at SpaceX.
Eh, I'd be willing to wager that a skilled and experienced physicist at SpaceX could probably leave whenever they wanted and go to any other space rocketry company owned and run by an insecure, egotistical, self-centred, human-exploiting, planet-destroying billionaire.
Sadly, Blue Origin is also a dystopian meat grinder... who don't seem to be all that good at launching rockets either.
While true, engineers ae SpaceX are much much harder to replace that web devs/engineers at Twitter, which are a dime a dozen. With so many in the Valley cutting jobs, if Twitter needs to hire new engineers, I don't think they'll have issues finding them.
Sure, Twitter can probably find new engineers to hire.

But replacing all of the random but critical bits of knowledge in the heads of the people walking out the door is much harder.

And by "a dime" I mean "a significant total comp package"
... that is going to lack meaningful stock and bonuses... or work life balance for a while.
For me it's not so certain; I think that most of the devs/engineers at Meta, Twitter, et. al., might get a bit of cold feet with the biggest tech companies and with Silicon Valley in general.

I think smaller companies and upstarts have a chance to get some great talent that will be strongly considering their living situation and looking for something more stable, but I'm not so sure that Twitter is going to have its pick of the litter for a long time until it demonstrates a stable and mature environment to work in.

I have no doubts some persons will be very nervous and take the opportunity, and I wish them luck. I'm not so sure others will be as eager.

Upstarts that I know of are struggling with funding, so I don't think that opportunity is as big as it once was.
If this were true, they'd be earning more.
The difference is working for a startup with the potential to make some good money vs working just for salary.
Those options are culling their workforce right now.