Eh, "operating at such high scales" is relevant only to developers that need to worry about that part of the system. E.g. I'm a front-end guy so I'm good (not "just average") at UI/UX stuff (now, to your point, 80% of front-end people - at least - are not, don't care about the little details that make the difference, etc, but anyway) but have very little knowledge/experience dealing with making the back-end performant.
Now, that said, Twitter's UI is more or less baked so yes the priorities for improvement (as Elon has posted) are on the back end - I wouldn't have anything to do at Twitter obviously.
Frontend can easily have big scale problems especially in a SaaS business. I do full stack development, we use micro frontends and serve dozens of fortune 500 companies. Our backend architecture is massive, with 30+ microservices that are monoliths in their own right. My company is nowhere near the size of Twitter. With all these firings, it's going to be difficult to fill up those spots. Twitter operates at a gargantuan scale.
I like to differentiate between developers (traditional websites) and engineers (web apps). People assume they're firing the former when the latter (which is much harder to find competent talent in) is who they are actually firing. I can guarantee every engineer (key word being engineer, not diversity HR) fired from Twitter will find a job within 2 weeks. Industry still needs talent even with the recession going on.
All true but my point is (as a full-stack myself, though one that has basically gravitated to front-end, and one who hasn't really had to deal with big data/scaling issues even when doing the full-stack part) that your differentiation about what makes a good vs average developer/engineer only looks at one aspect of the problem.
I'd also argue that there's no such thing as an expert full-stack developer/engineer (whatever you want to call it) as it's a very big ask to expect people to be experts at all levels of the stack, there's way too many nuances to each. The wish lists for dev/engr jobs for full-stacks are often eye-rolling. E.g. advanced SQL skills are something I'd not expect from anyone but dedicated SQL developers.
Edit: If your microservices are "monoliths in their own right" I'm not sure I'd ride as high a horse as you are.
Its not that there isn't such a thing as expert full stack developers, it's just exceedingly rare. I work with several. Most front end engineers are required to have strong grasp of their backend. I wouldn't expect someone to have advanced SQL skills but I'd expect them to be competent enough to know what to do.
The code I write effects about 10% of Americans in a major economic sector. Some of the singular services we offer would be another companies entire product. We are operating at a large scale but nowhere near Twitters size. To give you a rough estimate, 1 of our 30 services costs about 500k per month to host on AWS. We regularly close 25m+ contracts and are consistently gaining market share.
Edit: If your microservices are "monoliths in their own right" I'm not sure I'd ride as high a horse as you are.
Without showing you any code, it's hard to tell you why. We aren't making to-do apps :). One man's microservice is another man's monoliths. It depends on the size and scale of your product.
I don't know what type of company you're with or how long you've been in industry, but when you do hit those big data/scale problems you'll see what I mean.
80% of programmers are just average. Very few can operate at such high scales. Good thing for Elon is that he has the best engineers on tap
True of all occupations actually
Teachers at the low end...
Eh, "operating at such high scales" is relevant only to developers that need to worry about that part of the system. E.g. I'm a front-end guy so I'm good (not "just average") at UI/UX stuff (now, to your point, 80% of front-end people - at least - are not, don't care about the little details that make the difference, etc, but anyway) but have very little knowledge/experience dealing with making the back-end performant.
Now, that said, Twitter's UI is more or less baked so yes the priorities for improvement (as Elon has posted) are on the back end - I wouldn't have anything to do at Twitter obviously.
Frontend can easily have big scale problems especially in a SaaS business. I do full stack development, we use micro frontends and serve dozens of fortune 500 companies. Our backend architecture is massive, with 30+ microservices that are monoliths in their own right. My company is nowhere near the size of Twitter. With all these firings, it's going to be difficult to fill up those spots. Twitter operates at a gargantuan scale.
I like to differentiate between developers (traditional websites) and engineers (web apps). People assume they're firing the former when the latter (which is much harder to find competent talent in) is who they are actually firing. I can guarantee every engineer (key word being engineer, not diversity HR) fired from Twitter will find a job within 2 weeks. Industry still needs talent even with the recession going on.
All true but my point is (as a full-stack myself, though one that has basically gravitated to front-end, and one who hasn't really had to deal with big data/scaling issues even when doing the full-stack part) that your differentiation about what makes a good vs average developer/engineer only looks at one aspect of the problem.
I'd also argue that there's no such thing as an expert full-stack developer/engineer (whatever you want to call it) as it's a very big ask to expect people to be experts at all levels of the stack, there's way too many nuances to each. The wish lists for dev/engr jobs for full-stacks are often eye-rolling. E.g. advanced SQL skills are something I'd not expect from anyone but dedicated SQL developers.
Edit: If your microservices are "monoliths in their own right" I'm not sure I'd ride as high a horse as you are.
Its not that there isn't such a thing as expert full stack developers, it's just exceedingly rare. I work with several. Most front end engineers are required to have strong grasp of their backend. I wouldn't expect someone to have advanced SQL skills but I'd expect them to be competent enough to know what to do.
The code I write effects about 10% of Americans in a major economic sector. Some of the singular services we offer would be another companies entire product. We are operating at a large scale but nowhere near Twitters size. To give you a rough estimate, 1 of our 30 services costs about 500k per month to host on AWS. We regularly close 25m+ contracts and are consistently gaining market share.
Without showing you any code, it's hard to tell you why. We aren't making to-do apps :). One man's microservice is another man's monoliths. It depends on the size and scale of your product.
I don't know what type of company you're with or how long you've been in industry, but when you do hit those big data/scale problems you'll see what I mean.
I find twatter to be horrible to use.