Purges, Reorgs, and Cronyism Ruin Culture - Senior Software Engineer X Employee Review

1.0
Feb 17, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- smart coworkers - cool brand - standard tech company perks Industry best practices can be learnt here. The compensation is competitive.

Cons

- new products and features often don't ship - not a meritocracy After the IPO there were a lot of high-level firings, and each of those induced a re-org and blew away the product and feature development that occurred underneath. So, a lot of times yo'd see a feature developed, then abandoned or delayed, then attempted again six months later by another team. On acquihires, problems arise when there's an obvious conflict of interest (e.g. someone high in the company is old pal's with the acquihired company's CEO), when good people are displaced and/or fired to make room for acquihired folk, and when acquihired folk parachute into the org with outsized titles and compensation, screwing over everyone who came in the front door and who had been working honestly. Tolerance and encouragement of this sort of cronyism is destructive not just to rank-and-file employees but to all shareholders. Twitter presents itself externally as this hyper-ethical company super-concerned with noble ideas like user safety, but on the inside odd things happen, like a time a bunch of employees were fired with no notice and the survivors were told they could not ask questions and that no explanation would be given. Given these conditions, employees are incentivized to leave the company as soon as they vest some stock and the learning slows, which happens at the two year mark, on average.

Explore other reviews about X

5.0
Jun 11, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

great community for web engineers. lots of mentorship available sessions to knowledge share really helped with growth

Cons

lots of projects do not make it to production lots of hoops before projects have a chance to be developed or make it hopefully to production

4.0
Jun 5, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Good salary - High Ownership - Interesting Work - Get to learn more broadly of how things work at scale compared to other global social media companies - Equity Growth Overall I have gotten to take on really interesting work here and am alongside colleagues I respect and appreciate. Equity has appreciated significantly.

Cons

- Constant Layoffs/poor attrition rates - Understaffed - Lack of organization/communication from leadership

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