Earlier quoted context omitted.
You just don’t know them enough as yet.
So the two options here are that you're right or you're right - regardless of anyone's reported experience that runs contrary?
Yes
Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?
241–250 of 258 posts
Re: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?
#242His management style is not the worst thing about the guy. If all the legends about him were true (superhuman BS detector, genius level IQ, laser sharp focus) I'd be happy to be part of the team. Unfortunately, I think his main talent is the uncanny ability to overhype himself. He is lucky that a side effect of this ability helped him hire and motivate really good engineers. Thay might not be sufficient in the long r…
I was listening to Andrej Karpathy's interview on the Lex Friedman podcast. Karpathy said that Elon's superpower is "human engineering" and limiting "entropy" in large organizations. If you trust Karpathy as a source, it seems like working for Elon would be the opposite of working for a bureaucracy.
You realize nobody like that would ever publicly say anything bad about Elon, right? It's all driven by incentives. Just like would publicly say anything bad about FTX's SBF because they need to stay on his good side. Statements like that from people who have a horse in the race are totally meaningless.
Re: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you are broadly correct. However, recall Elon's takeover of Twitter was all about "free speech" so in my opinion it's a bad look. A "bigger man" would say "put some time on my calendar and I'd love to hear more". I value flat hierarchy companies where you don't just blindly kowtow to your leaders.
If you think this is about "kowtowing", you're still totally in the wrong headspace and completely fail to understand the situation. Elon basically can't not fire the guy. It wasn't even an option, so criticizing him for failing to take the non-option is missing the point. It wouldn't have been an option for Jack, it wouldn't have been an option for any other CEO. You don't get license to speak publicly for the compa…
This is a pretty context-free take on the matter. Elon Musk effectively slandered the engineers on the team with incorrect technical statements that implied they were incompetent. He told all future employers that the engs from Twitter did something stupid that they didn't actually do.
It might make sense for the company to fire employees for public corrections, but it also makes sense for the employees to correct these lies for their long term career prospects. This entire scenario was created by Elon Musk. Your context-free take implies that the employees damaged the company unnecessarily when it was a reasonable reaction to targeted slander. Avoiding the liability of this public correction was easy, none of these employees were new, what was new was Elon's unprovoked slander. Maybe if you don't want the legal liability of an employee saying things that might be ammunition, don't do it to them first.
If you want to know what happens when this kind of slander goes unchecked, look up Mick Gordon. On top of his professional reputation being muddied, he received harassment and death threats over a company's false allegation that he was responsible for the incompetent failure of the Doom Eternal soundtrack.
Re: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t understand how he has driven Twitter into the ground? It only feels even more active than before
Plenty advertiser pulled out due to ultra right wingers, then due to this whole twitter badge controversy (which did at least result in many genuinely funny posts, r/realtwitteraccounts ). Also, one can only imagine the lost business knowledge of all the fired people that will soon creep up on the remaining team.
Advertisers will come back if Twitter still has users and engagement.
Imo, if you're running a social media business, a key metric to optimize for is traffic and engagement. Elon seems to be doing that well enough at least.
Re: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?
#245I think it would depend on compensation, working hours, and if the project was interesting.
Re: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're impying recruiters would see someone thriving in Twitter under Elon as a bad thing, you're either deeply deluded and have no idea how recruitment works, projecting your own subjective feelings onto the whole industry, or a paid shill hired to badmouth Elon on the internet.
Let me clarify my original comment. It's not just about the company name on your résumé. It's about what your stint there says about you. If I sensed that a candidate saw the environment that Elon is creating at Twitter as a positive thing? Huge red flag. And if someone joined after seeing how Elon wants to run things, I'm gonna assume they're into it. I don't want that productivity-destroying toxicity anywhere near…
I'll work wherever I want, thank you for your input. If you consider a person "toxic" for suceeding in whatever environment you dislike personally, perhaps it is you who is toxic.
Re: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Elon puts a lot of focus on ability and skill over formalities and organizations I'm curious what this means to you, because when I see people from inside Twitter correct him on Twitter, with specific technical statements describing what's going on—and then he fires them—that seems like formalities way outranking ability and skill.
"I'm curious what this means to you, because when I see people from inside Twitter correct him on Twitter, with specific technical statements describing what's going on—and then he fires them—that seems like formalities way outranking ability and skill." I'm curious... do you not understand why this person was fired? If I publicly corrected my CEO, I would expect to be fired. I do not work for Elon, and I make this s…
Great speech, explain this one: https://twitter.com/skilldrick/status/1592525923475390464
> My twitter account was protected at the time, so I can only assume this was for not showing 100% loyalty in slack. I’ve heard the same thing has happened to many others now.
No public corrections, only internal Slack messages.
Re: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?
#248I would fire Elon :)
Re: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?
#249Ok regardless of his recently showcased lack of technical abilities and preference for 996: Isn’t it pretty clear that he’s super unstable and spiraling quickly? He was forced to buy Twitter because his history of stock market manipulation blew a 420 joke out of proportion, and now he’s worrying about bankruptcy and rolling out features that crash and burn within 24h. Not to mention the many, many reports of the toxi…
What's the 420 joke? Citation please
The original 420 joke was about Tesla: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776. It got him into trouble with the SEC.
He did set the share price for his Twitter offer to 54.20 as a reference to that, but it wasn't the cause for his offer for the company. I think quite a lot of people are conflating the two events.
Re: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me clarify my original comment. It's not just about the company name on your résumé. It's about what your stint there says about you. If I sensed that a candidate saw the environment that Elon is creating at Twitter as a positive thing? Huge red flag. And if someone joined after seeing how Elon wants to run things, I'm gonna assume they're into it. I don't want that productivity-destroying toxicity anywhere near…
I'll work wherever I want, thank you for your input. If you consider a person "toxic" for suceeding in whatever environment you dislike personally, perhaps it is you who is toxic.
If you want to work for Elon, go for it! I’m not trying to dissuade you. But don’t be surprised when people infer from that what type of work environment you value.