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Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

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Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#841

Growing up outside of the US, I feel kinda cringed when he said he was "INSANELY proud of our collective teams achieved". Such an interesting cultural difference.

This quirk of dialect should be called the California Superlative. Everything is awesome, amazing, radical, insane, great, gnarly, not to mention sick, ill, righteous, dope. Californians just love superlatives, use them constantly, wear them out, and need new ones. This spreads like a fine coating of mold over the rest of the country before going on to annoy the Commonwealth, and then we repeat. It's pretty cool.

Considering this is Norcal, you forgot hella.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#842
post #582
post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my knowledge, none of these companies were run at a profit during Musk's involvement. While this is a normal part of growing a business, it leads to a bias on what people think could happen - rather than what does happen. How much money did musk really make? how much of it is an artifact of monetary policy.

80% of Musk's wealth is either confidence in Tesla's future, or memes, depnding on your perspective. It's not even pretending to be about completed work.

Let's see if TSLA is over 500 two weeks from now...

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#843
post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the revolution? There are competitive cars vs tesla for electric. Even if tesla have an edge, it's evolutionary, not at all revolutionary.

Tesla produced the first ICE-equivalent EV sedan that was not merely a "compliance vehicle" in decades. Then, it turned out, people bought them by the hundreds of thousands, single-handedly recreating the market for EVs. Then, other manufacturers noticed, and started realizing they might be left behind if they didn't take EVs seriously. Now, sure, there are many competitors, but even still they have only been built i…

Don't forget the importance of charging either. When the 3 came out, GM was considering the Bolt a direct competitor. They had the mindset that people were only buying these as city cars.

To this day, GM sells that "direct competitor" with a ~55kw charging limit.

Tesla is what made the other manufacturers realize that people were willing to wait 15-25 minutes on DCFC while road tripping electric cars.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#844
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're discounting the very real possibility that Parag is operating as if the deal will not go through, and is making large strategic decisions in anticipation of that being the case. For Parag, I don't see it "burning his reputation" at all, considering either a) he's right and will face the tall task of helming a Twitter that continues to disappoint its investors or b) he's wrong and it won't be his problem when E…

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 probability that Elon is margin called by year end is roughly 40% according to option prices.

This sounds like “two more weeks, MOASS, trust me bro” level of analysis. How can you possibly have enough insight into Musk’s financial holdings to make such an assertion? Nevermind the structure of the Twitter deal itself, which doesn’t exactly require him to fork over $40 billion in cash.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#845
post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've stated what I've observed and experienced. Whether it's a "trap" or "sensible" is irrelevant.

Fair point. But it’s a bit ridiculous to get 42 million USD and not be satisfied. And the original comment is ridiculous to suggest that it’s not sufficient compensation.

If your salary was $25k/year (a respectable amount for the majority of world population), would $1M seem like a lifetime financial stability? I think so. Yet if your salary is $250k/year, it probably wouldn't, and this would sound ridiculous to people who make $25k/year.

If you make 25k/year getting 1M is almost as good as getting 42M, because you are not used to thinking about anything you can do with 42M that you can't do with 1M. However, if your salary has been 10M/year, you most likely can easily see many ways to spend 42M, which are not something you think about often when you make 250k/year.

Does this make sense?

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#846
post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla produced the first ICE-equivalent EV sedan that was not merely a "compliance vehicle" in decades. Then, it turned out, people bought them by the hundreds of thousands, single-handedly recreating the market for EVs. Then, other manufacturers noticed, and started realizing they might be left behind if they didn't take EVs seriously. Now, sure, there are many competitors, but even still they have only been built i…

I am not an expert in cars and yet I know the Renault Zoe was commercialized in 2012, the year of the model S, for a reasonable autonomy and a much, much cheaper price. I believe tesla were the first to sell low volume, pricey EV cars. Their range and timing advance is only because of choosing the rich over the middle class, aka a lesser impact. Although it's true EV were and remain not cheap but it's getting quickly…

Didn't the Zoe have a 22kwh battery? I don't doubt that it was practical for some things, but that was exactly the kind of car that many (especially in the US) used as an example of the "impracticality" of electric back then.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#847

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Twitter supports videos now, therefore Vine is redundant! Shut it down and 100% of Vine users will post their videos on Twitter!" —Twitter PMs, probably

Thanks for the reminder. Yes, this was pretty much 100% the rationale from Twitter at the time.

What was your position at Twitter at the time? I'm interested to know where you heard it from, to the extent that you can disclose.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#848
post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corrected for inflation, John D. Rockefeller is probably the richest American ever.

Hmm, according to this calculator [1], Rockefeller's net worth of $1.4B in 1937 would be worth $28B today. Elon's is around $240B, so it sounds like 10x the amount. Even by different calculations, it seems like an order of magnitude is a big difference. By GDP, they are both worth around 1% of the US GDP, but the US GDP is many times what it was then, particularly post-WWII. Musk's buying power seems significantly mo…

I think Rockefeller probably wins when the contest is 'fraction of available wealth captured'. The world is far richer today than it was in his days. We have wealthier people, even inflation adjusted, but I don't think we've had any one since who owned so much of what existed.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#849

I've been using Twitter since it's main novelty was that it was a successful Ruby on Rails app, and honestly I've been trying to figure out where the exit is for my personal use of Twitter lately. If the acquisition goes through, Twitter won't make enough money to service it's debt, and the things they will do to fix that are pretty much guaranteed to lower the quality of the platform, which frankly has never worked…

Just delete your account, I got rid of mine a few weeks ago - can’t think of anything I miss tbh

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#850
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEOs of large companies that are forced out during acquisitions often fail upward. It really depends on how they behave right before the close. Effectively, the CEO has to advocate for the company and get the most out of the acquisition, and if they do, they are often rewarded (with seats on board or choice of next job). realistically, he will be able to retire for life after this if he chooses, and will be able to s…

Job offer or not, $42 million for doing almost nothing is a great deal.

> $42 million

I would be happy enough right now with an extra $420,000!

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