Twilio Blog

[Klacee Sawatzky]

Asof this week and after almost four years, I'm not a Twilio employee anymore. I'm writing this while I work through a range of conflicting emotions, and try to adapt to new daily routines without Twilio in my life. Before you jump to conclusions let me clarify that I have not been laid off. The decision to leave the company was mine alone.

The three words in this billboard are possibly one of the best marketing campaigns of all times (I'm not the only one who thinks so). With such a simple message, Twilio established itself as a company for and by developers. Even though I never lived in San Francisco, I visited for work and pleasure countless times, and have always considered the Twilio billboard a welcoming landmark as I drove from the airport to the city. When I eventually joined Twilio, it was a dream come true for me.

You can see in the picture above that there is some additional text in small print to the right of the Twilio logo. Through the years this billboard has been up, a few different messages appeared in that part of the sign. The two most used were:

I'd risk that now most travelers on the 101 are confused by this sign and forget they saw it a second or two after passing it by. The message in the bottom right of the billboard, which now reads Customer Engagement Platform is also, in my opinion, too vague and less indicative of what the company stands for.

The changes made to the billboard are actually a reflection of the internal changes that are ongoing inside Twilio. Before, the company was laser-focused on helping developers become the heroes of their companies by equipping them with best-in-class APIs to solve their communication problems. Now, the goals have shifted and the vision is not as clear as it used to be, so much that the new billboard needs an explanatory blog post.

Sadly, us developers are not at the center of everything anymore at Twilio. The new Twilio wants to help companies collect, use and even make up customer data, all with the goal to drive more sales. For me it was easy to identify with a company that helps people communicate. My views on online privacy, however, make it difficult to find alignment anymore.

In spite of two rounds of mass layoffs and some attrition, many of my friends and colleagues are still employed and continue to be awesome as they adapt to new company goals. I have no idea what's going to happen in the future, but my hope is that those who are staying are able to help Twilio find its way back to greatness.

I'm sure you want to know what the future has in store for me. The short answer is I don't know yet. My plan is to take my time to look for a new great company with a developer-first culture that wants to have me. Do you have any leads? Be sure to let me know!

In the meantime, I'll have some extra time to dedicate to my open source projects. I'm also making some time to work on short or medium-term projects on a contract basis, so if you or your company have something you think I can help you with, I'll be more than happy to chat with you. See my Consulting page for details.

I recently switched it as a customer from Twilio to Telnyx for much the same reason. I would imagine that Telnyx could use a developer of your stature with your passion for excellence. I can't speak to any current openings but I have enjoyed using them thus far as developer myself

Twilio is going downhill. It's as if the corporate goons are in control now. Between the price fixing and monopolistic purchase of ZipWhip, it's only a matter of time before there's a revolt and a congressional inquiry. They treat customers very poorly if you can even reach anyone. Their rules/policies, implementation, and enforcement are mostly arbitrary and change like the direction of the wind making them an unreliable partner.

All. the best in your next journey. Would it be safe to say that this is an opportunity to write the 3rd edition of the Flask Web Development book? I have read and seen the reviews and planning to buy one but i think the 2018 edition is a little behind compared to how tech stack changes frequently.

@Stephen: tell this to O'Reilly! They are the decision makers. If they see that the demand exists, they'll give the 3rd edition the green light. I have asked a few times and so far they consider the changes to the stack minimal and not worthy of a new edition.

I have no lead in mind, but man, I've learned a ton from you. Catching up on your journey prior to Twilio, and then your time at Twilio ... has been a blessing. Still comparatively new in the field; all that there is is to move with you wherever you go.

Your honest and selfless dedication to software engineering is impressive. Without knowing, a lot of us from different walks of life and various backgrounds are finding a foot in the domain, thanks to you.

Ahoy hoy and welcome to the newly minted Twilio engineering blog! We the Twilio engineering team will be sharing some of the unique challenges we face bridging the 100-year-old world of realtime telecom with the world of HTTP and the web. Using cloud infrastructure to implement a communications platform has required us to build a highly automated, self-healing distributed platform that can be deployed across thousands of servers. We are extremely excited to share details on building this infrastructure and how we are developing an engineering organization and processes for telecom-grade scale and available. A few of the topics we are looking forward to covering include:

Last year, Twilio launched quick deploy video applications for developers to get up and running with Programmable Video in five minutes or less. Today, we are excited to announce the latest enhancement to the open source ReactJS application: out-of-the-box chat support for textual and file-based messaging.

Whether you are using the app as a launching off point or a canonical reference during development, by adding this feature to the open source ReactJS application we hope to accelerate your development as you look to build chat within your video experience.

Chat interactions persist throughout the lifetime of the call, meaning users will still have access to the chat history if they are added to the call late and need to catch up, happen to get disconnected, or have to leave momentarily and rejoin at a later point.

Check out the new chat feature in action and start sharing text-based messages, links, or relevant files to teammates in minutes. The Twilio Video quick deploy applications utilize the Twilio CLI RTC plugin, recently updated to include the server-side logic needed for Participants to connect to a Conversation upon joining a Room. You can get started with the ReactJS application by visiting the README, or deploy the application in these seven steps:

Sean Coleman is a Product Manager on the Programmable Video team, focused on Developer Experience. Prior to joining Twilio, Sean was helping develop low-altitude airspace management solutions to unlock safe and efficient drone operations at scale. He can be reached at scoleman [at] twilio.com.

If this is your first time using the Twilio CLI, run twilio login before proceeding. Log in using the Account SID and Auth Token of the Twilio account you used in the previous steps.

On August 4, 2022, Twilio became aware of unauthorized access to information related to a limited number of Twilio customer accounts through a sophisticated social engineering attack designed to steal employee credentials. This broad based attack against our employee base succeeded in fooling some employees into providing their credentials. The attackers then used the stolen credentials to gain access to some of our internal systems, where they were able to access certain customer data. We continue to notify and are working directly with customers who were affected by this incident. We are still early in our investigation, which is ongoing.

Based on these factors, we have reason to believe the threat actors are well-organized, sophisticated and methodical in their actions. We have not yet identified the specific threat actors at work here, but have liaised with law enforcement in our efforts. Socially engineered attacks are -- by their very nature -- complex, advanced, and built to challenge even the most advanced defenses.

Once Twilio confirmed the incident, our security team revoked access to the compromised employee accounts to mitigate the attack. A leading forensics firm was engaged to aid our ongoing investigation.

We have reemphasized our security training to ensure employees are on high alert for social engineering attacks, and have issued security advisories on the specific tactics being utilized by malicious actors since they first started to appear several weeks ago. We have also instituted additional mandatory awareness training on social engineering attacks in recent weeks. Separately, we are examining additional technical precautions as the investigation progresses.

Trust is paramount at Twilio, and, we know the security of our systems is an important part of earning and keeping your trust. We sincerely apologize that this happened. While we maintain a well-staffed security team using modern and sophisticated threat detection and deterrence measures, it pains us to have to write this note. We will of course perform an extensive post-mortem on this incident and begin instituting betterments to address the root causes of the compromise immediately. We thank you for your business, and are here to help impacted customers in every way possible.

The Twilio Security Incident Response Team will post additional updates here if there are any changes. Also note that Twilio will never ask for your password or ask you to provide two-factor authentication information anywhere other than through the twilio.com portal.

Virtual agents can handle a high volume of simple, repetitive tasks, such as answering frequently asked questions, freeing up human agents to focus on more complex interactions. Additionally, virtual agents can offer 24/7 availability, quick response times, and personalized experiences through the use of data and can interact with customers through multiple channels.

3a8082e126