Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#561

Post by Denvercoder9 » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:48 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #235

SemanticStrengh wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crypto crisis should significantly diminish musk wealth no?

No, why would you think that? His wealth is mostly owning 20% of Tesla, plus some extra few billions from owning significant fractions of SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Neuralink. Presumably there’s some cash in there as well, but on his scale a hundred million is a rounding error.

Musk's share of SpaceX is worth more than an "extra few billions". SpaceX is valued at around $100B, and Elon Musk owns about 47% of it.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#562

Post by HelloMcFly » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:49 PM UTC

the_doctah wrote: post #509

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit always has had community moderators which ensured that the subreddits were respecting the rules of their communities. For example, on LGBTQ issues subreddits telling people that they are groomers is not tolerated. If it was, people would quickly go away. While on some other subreddit, it might be tolerated but the targeted people are not present and will not see those messages. It is similar on Facebook where…

>I use hate-speech as an example because the "groomer" as a slur issue is at a peak right now and is fresh in my head. Mm. I think the problem is that censorship advocates like you try to add words like this into the lexicon of "hate speech" and try to have it censored. It's not, and it shouldn't be, and you should be ashamed of even thinking it. It is not other people's responsibility to stay up to date on what may…

> It's not, and it shouldn't be, and you should be ashamed of even thinking it.

I didn't see the OP advocating for censorship, but for the enablement of moderation for unacceptable content within a community. Do you think LGBTQ spaces on reddit - for instance - should be prevented from banning users that compare them all to child molesters? Is that "censorship" that the OP should be ashamed of? Must all spaces be entirely laissez-faire about all user-generated content legal within the confines of the law? I do not think so.

You may quibble with a segment of our population being derided as "groomers" as "not hate speech", but at the very least it is received as hateful by many. We're not talking about legal statutes in this conversation, we're talking about community moderation.

Frankly, I think you should be ashamed of your own comment. It was incredibly aggressive, presumptuous, and built on a straw-man argument.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#563

Post by JohnBooty » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:52 PM UTC

SemanticStrengh wrote: post #352

paganel wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are competitive cars vs tesla for electric It is my belief that those "competitive cars" wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for Tesla.

But why? Did tesla open source key scientific innovations in the scaling of batteries? Don't think so. See e.g. The seres f5 from Huawei. I don't know wether it's great but about the main metric, it has a higher range than teslas (1000km)

Zoom out a little and try and think about the bigger picture.

In many industries, you can see these "bar-raisers."

Starbucks didn't invent coffee, but they created a mass market for a more premium sort of coffee in a country that previously didn't see coffee as something more that a thing you chug down in the morning so you can wake up.

Nintendo didn't invent video games, but they raised the bar for home consoles after the "great video game crash" and have repeated the feat several times since despite rarely if ever being on the cutting edge of tech.

And so on.

Tesla did something similar. Previously, electric cars and hybrids were seen as dorky and decidedly uncool by most. Tesla changed that public perception. It's hard to imagine the "luxury" electric car market existing without them. Perhaps another company might have accomplished the same feat, but Tesla was the first one to pull it off.

From a raw innovation standpoint, these advances are huge because by creating new market segments, they ensure a flow of money into those markets. Tesla's expense has paved the way for billions if not trillions of dollars into EV R&D and battery R&D. That matters, a lot.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#564

Post by Sebb767 » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:53 PM UTC

0xy wrote: post #127

RyanShook wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is Parag trying to keep his job?

Pretty laughable, considering Parag as CTO presided over the slowest product velocity at pretty much any major tech company. The product is almost unchanged, except additional censorship, since he started as CTO in October 2017. With that track record, one must assume his head will be one of the first on the chopping block.

I don't see slow change as a net negative. It's not necessarily positive, either, but not trying to fix things that work perfectly well is a good mantra (looking at you, Google).

Also, he was recently promoted to CEO, which would be strange if the common opinion at Twitter was that he failed as a CTO.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#565

Post by AviationAtom » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:53 PM UTC

fleddr wrote: post #480

Just a spring cleaning that is about a decade late. Twitter under-performs in every aspect imaginable: financially, product quality, product innovation. Nothing ever gets released and whilst this pace has improved in recent years, those "innovations" don't really deliver. They're barely used, copycats from other apps, and so on. Meanwhile, age-old problems are never addressed, like bots and the extremely hostile mob…

I've learned that, when speaking with a certain half of society, any narrative other than Twitter's future being bleak, and it current state good, is not accepted.

Twitter has huge monetary potential, and adoption potential (beyond the niche audience it current has), but if the status quo is kept them that potential will likely never be realized.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#566

Post by throwaway-jim » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:55 PM UTC

DantesKite wrote: post #501

fleddr wrote: post #480

Just a spring cleaning that is about a decade late. Twitter under-performs in every aspect imaginable: financially, product quality, product innovation. Nothing ever gets released and whilst this pace has improved in recent years, those "innovations" don't really deliver. They're barely used, copycats from other apps, and so on. Meanwhile, age-old problems are never addressed, like bots and the extremely hostile mob…

You're 100% correct. They shut down Vine. TikTok is now a billion dollar industry. As far as I'm concerned, every product manager involved in that decision shouldn't be involved with Twitter anymore, because they display an astonishingly level of incompetence.

I will never understand this. I thought vine was going to be the next big thing right until the day they decided to shut it down.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#567

Post by heartbreak » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:55 PM UTC

SemanticStrengh wrote: post #179

fny wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It maximizes his chance of survival either way. The probability that Elon is margin called by year end is roughly 40% according to option prices. - 60% chance you get fired either by Musk or investors if you don't turn the ship. - 40% chance you Musk is margin called and doesn't take over, but still might be fired by investors or acquired by someone else who may in turn can him.

The crypto crisis should significantly diminish musk wealth no?

You’re getting downvoted for no apparent reason, but there’s an argument to be made here that crypto crashing would cause retail investors to pull out of investments altogether, and meme stocks like Tesla would take a hit. Bloomberg, WSJ, etc. are all writing about this potential contagion effect today.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#568

Post by faangiq » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:56 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #84

So there's two options right - the first is that Parag is for some reason making big strategic decisions about the direction of the company despite the fact that we all know he'll be gone if the deal closes. Or he's making big strategic changes at the behest of the acquirers before the deal closes. Neither of these things seem particularly kosher moves to make. The question is how to figure out which one it is. It wo…

Burn his reputation? No one knew who this guy was 2 weeks ago. Now he will just fail up like all other execs.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#569

Post by ilamont » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

fleddr wrote: post #480

Just a spring cleaning that is about a decade late. Twitter under-performs in every aspect imaginable: financially, product quality, product innovation. Nothing ever gets released and whilst this pace has improved in recent years, those "innovations" don't really deliver. They're barely used, copycats from other apps, and so on. Meanwhile, age-old problems are never addressed, like bots and the extremely hostile mob…

> Twitter under-performs [in] product innovation.

I see things differently. The number of customer-facing feature releases in recent years has been significant.

Yes, some are irritating (GIF integration). Others miss the mark (endless iterations of topics/explore/algo changes). Still others haven't been attempted but are sorely needed (editing tweets, clear verified account policies).

But a few innovations are trying to solve real problems identified by subsets of users (Twitter Professional, Twitter Blue) or help everyone a lot (photos, doubling tweet length, improvements to RT functionality, reporting tools).

Another thing to keep in mind: When discussion forums try to shoehorn too many things into the feature set, often to compete with other platforms, the results can alienate existing users. I see this with Instagram bolting on TikTok-like features, to the detriment of everyone who just likes to share photos.

(I am thankful most of HN's feature improvements have been restrained. Slashdot tried to do too much with new features, and it hurt rather than helped the community)

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#570

Post by tinktank » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:59 PM UTC

0xy wrote: post #127

RyanShook wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is Parag trying to keep his job?

Pretty laughable, considering Parag as CTO presided over the slowest product velocity at pretty much any major tech company. The product is almost unchanged, except additional censorship, since he started as CTO in October 2017. With that track record, one must assume his head will be one of the first on the chopping block.

> The product is almost unchanged,

That we can see. Either the entire leadership is stupid and promoted a dud, or maybe there's more going on than meets the eye?