Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work • Hacker News Board

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#631

Post by ur-whale » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:15 PM UTC

autospeaker22 wrote: post #549

I keep thinking it'd be much cheaper for Elon to have paid to build an entirely new Twitter that has the features he's looking for. Let's say Elon had set aside a budget to hire some of the best developers he's ever worked with or heard of, and lets give them an imaginary salary of 1.5 million total comp per year, at about 10 devs for easy math. And let's say another 500k for bennies. So our operating expense for top…

> I keep thinking it'd be much cheaper for Elon to have paid to build an entirely new Twitter that has the features he's looking for.

Two things to counter that idea:

1. Social apps aren't about features, they're about the network effect and the user base. Rebuilding that of Twitter at this stage would have been very hard.

2. Even assuming that was possible, the time it would take to rebuild something like it means guaranteed failure.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#632

Post by blindseer » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:16 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #208

Let's say you run a company and you want to reduce staff. Let's also say you want to make an unpopular decision (or multiple unpopular decisions) that you know will drive a certain percentage of your staff to leave the company. Wouldn't it make the most sense to announce those decisions before making layoffs? Let people self select whether they want to stay and work for you and then make your layoffs after to ensure…

You are giving Musk too much credit. He’s a classic control freak and micromanager, and right now he’s trying to run twitter like 6 person start-up that running low on funds.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#633

Post by heavyset_go » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:16 PM UTC

ericmcer wrote: post #604

nonrandomstring wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a half-joke here on HN a few months ago that Musk was buying Twitter just to destroy it for the lols. Maybe everyone's wasting their time with rational economic analysis, trying to figure out a pretty simple guy with an obscene pile of fuck-you money and an axe to grind.

Everyone is looking at it too short term. Twitter isn’t going to disappear and he has shown a willingness to ride through rough economic times to reach his vision. Social Media is how people interact with the world now, most info we receive is filtered through it in some form. In the last 10 or so years the idea that these platforms need tight moderation to control what and who is speaking on them has become ubiquito…

Is that why Twitter is suspending accounts that tweet things that hurt Musk's feelings? That sounds like tight content restrictions to me.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#634

Post by the_doctah » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:16 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #186

madrox wrote: post #149

I see we're still deep in the "fuck around" stage and have yet to reach "find out."

What if the allegedly bad result doesn't ensue?

This will all be memory holed and never spoken of again

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#635

Post by mahkeiro » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:16 PM UTC

barbazoo wrote: post #575

nonrandomstring wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a half-joke here on HN a few months ago that Musk was buying Twitter just to destroy it for the lols. Maybe everyone's wasting their time with rational economic analysis, trying to figure out a pretty simple guy with an obscene pile of fuck-you money and an axe to grind.

Is it true that $13bn came in the form of loans and that those loans are secured by Twitter, not Musk or any entity he'd personally be responsible for? If so, how does that work?

Just google LBO, plenty of site explain that better than me

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#636

Post by stormbrew » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:16 PM UTC

autospeaker22 wrote: post #577

misiti3780 wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the people (or most of the people) that matter would not have left Twitter for Elon's new company. Tons of people have tried this. Remember Dalton Caldwell's App.net. That didn't even get off the ground and it had a ton of YC press. Network affects are real.

I think for an insane comp and equity in a new company led by Elon, lots of people would consider leaving. Network affects are real and is probably a top 10 world individual as far as the power of his network is concerned. Having a ton of YC press is way different than being Elon. Even still he could pay people to use his application. Pay businesses $20 a month for a verified business account. Pay individual users $1…

Go check out Mixer and Facebook's game streaming if you want to see how well buying influencers onto your platform works.

It doesn't. No one's ever made it work. You need users and creators and users are considerably more stubborn than creators.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#637

Post by rmbyrro » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:17 PM UTC

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #583

autospeaker22 wrote: post #549

I keep thinking it'd be much cheaper for Elon to have paid to build an entirely new Twitter that has the features he's looking for. Let's say Elon had set aside a budget to hire some of the best developers he's ever worked with or heard of, and lets give them an imaginary salary of 1.5 million total comp per year, at about 10 devs for easy math. And let's say another 500k for bennies. So our operating expense for top…

> I keep thinking it'd be much cheaper for Elon to have paid to build an entirely new Twitter that has the features he's looking for. It'd be even cheaper if he had the sense to not play chicken with Twitter's board only to get called on his bluff. Nothing about how he's handled Twitter thus far suggests that he ever took his offer to buy them seriously. He was showboating from the beginning and screwed up, and thous…

I think he did want to buy since the beginning. He's got bigger plans for it beyond short messages. The free speech thing is just marketing.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#638

Post by autospeaker22 » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:18 PM UTC

jensvdh wrote: post #607

autospeaker22 wrote: post #549

I keep thinking it'd be much cheaper for Elon to have paid to build an entirely new Twitter that has the features he's looking for. Let's say Elon had set aside a budget to hire some of the best developers he's ever worked with or heard of, and lets give them an imaginary salary of 1.5 million total comp per year, at about 10 devs for easy math. And let's say another 500k for bennies. So our operating expense for top…

If you paid me anywhere between 750-1.5M a year just go on in the office 40 hours a week I'd take that offer any day every day. I did the same for less than half of that not even 2 years ago. The problem with Musk companies is 1) It'll be MINIMUM 40 hours a week, no WLB 2) His companies aren't known for paying competitively

Didn't know that about the comp at his companies. Kind of crazy considering the risk to human life associated with many of his companies. Would've expected them to pay top tier.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#639

Post by eftychis » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:18 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #605

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I keep thinking it'd be much cheaper for Elon to have paid to build an entirely new Twitter that has the features he's looking for. It'd be even cheaper if he had the sense to not play chicken with Twitter's board only to get called on his bluff. Nothing about how he's handled Twitter thus far suggests that he ever took his offer to buy them seriously. He was showboating from the beginning and screwed up, and thous…

I may be missing something, but would it have been that hard to fail to get financing and get out of it, since it was a bad deal that others shouldn't want to finance, if he had started working on failing to get financing before he... succefully lined up financing? I guess it would have been a hit to his ego if he had failed to get financing... it'll probably be a bigger one to drive twitter into the ground and throw…

They would have liquidated him -- and that would have crashed the Tesla stock (more than now anyways).

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#640

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:18 PM UTC

ericmcer wrote: post #604

nonrandomstring wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a half-joke here on HN a few months ago that Musk was buying Twitter just to destroy it for the lols. Maybe everyone's wasting their time with rational economic analysis, trying to figure out a pretty simple guy with an obscene pile of fuck-you money and an axe to grind.

Everyone is looking at it too short term. Twitter isn’t going to disappear and he has shown a willingness to ride through rough economic times to reach his vision. Social Media is how people interact with the world now, most info we receive is filtered through it in some form. In the last 10 or so years the idea that these platforms need tight moderation to control what and who is speaking on them has become ubiquito…

> Twitter isn’t going to disappear

You seem more confident than Musk is reported to have been in today's sudden all-hands meeting; what do you know that Musk doesn’t?

EDIT: see, e.g., https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-10/musk-tell...