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

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

#701

Post by simonebrunozzi » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:48 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…

Disagree, a lot.

Most people underestimate two things, IMHO. One is obvious: the cost of convincing everyone that Muskitter is the place to go.

The second one? You could NOT build a twitter equivalent for a billion dollars. I'd be happy to take bets.

Corollary to number two: building it means actually two things: one, building it, and two, having a team that can start from the moment of finished building it, and continue developing and bug fixing and supporting the platform from T+1 onwards.

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

#702

Post by Consultant32452 » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:48 PM UTC

autospeaker22 wrote: post #584

throwuwu wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with your proposal is that Elons Twitter followers do not equal a profitable market. He needs Twitter’s brand and established user base to bootstrap whatever X is (something payment related probably). If it were just a bunch of his fans it wouldn’t have the penetration needed to loop more people in.

I'd argue his followers are his greatest chance at profit. Many people despise him and have been closing their twitter accounts. So despite it still being twitter brand and established users, they don't like Elon so they don't want to support the platform.

Elon reported on Nov 7 that Twitter usage was at an all time high. Do you believe that is dishonest? Or do you believe this uptick will be short-lived?

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

#703

Post by brewdad » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:48 PM UTC

Firmwarrior wrote: post #412

DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO the ideal situation would be for people to work in their own offices, with doors that closed, and short commutes. Easy to work distraction-free alone, easy to have group meetings and random chats. But real estate costs have made this approach untenable, so something has to give.

I don't know how much commercial real estate costs, but in the region around Twitter's HQ it's about $5-$6k for a 1000 square foot apartment Assuming it's the same price per square foot for commercial space, that's less than $1000 a month for a 100 square foot office for each employee. Considering these employees are making more than 20x that, if offices could improve their productivity, it seems like it'd be well wo…

But since the cost of building those offices will be reflected in this quarter's earnings and destroy some executive bonuses, while the benefits won't be reflected in earnings for at least a full quarter and possibly longer, building individual workspaces is impossible.

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

#704

Post by joshe » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:49 PM UTC

Would be wonderfully ironic if Elon saves downtown SF.

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

#705

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:49 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #609

danans wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the stupidity was in the non-contingent offer to purchase it. Now he's trying to pay for that stupidity. Maybe he's doing that stupidly too, but only time will tell.

This. He let emotion laden political nonsense lead him into making an extraordinarily bad deal. OK. Fine. Not what prudent businessmen would have done, but now he's where he is with the Twitter deal. So at this point it's all about leading from where you are, and sometimes where you are is in a place where there are zero good options. Every option is terrible, and probably won't work to extricate you from your situat…

I'm not convinced Elon has actually considered all his options. He didn't have the company for any time at all before he start trying desperately to massively change things. Personally I feel like taking a minute or two to figure out the state of things before slashing and burning would be helpful for choosing the right path instead of making moves that get reverted the same day they are implemented.

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

#706

Post by joshstrange » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:49 PM UTC

gw98 wrote: post #567

abxytg wrote: post #481

Or -- he's stupid.

I suspect this is the real problem. Stupid people with money can look like they are clever because the layer of people immediately underneath them actually wields the clue stick. Stupid people with no money look stupid because they can't afford the layer of clever people underneath them. Clever people are either abstracting the liability via stupid person in the layer above them or don't need that kind of shit in the…

Yep, it's a whole class of equating X thing with being "virtuous" (or similar). Your height, your sex, your weight, your hairline, your income/savings, etc. It's uncomfortable to talk about or admit but people regularly take controllable (or uncontrollable) traits and assign value to them even though it doesn't have any actual bearing.

"Oh that billionaire did something that seems odd/crazy to me? Well he must know something I don't else how would be be a billionaire!" - Yeah, that's not how things work. What's the line? "Past performance is not indicative of future results", paraphrasing it: "Past advantages are not indicative of future results". Very, very few "self-made million/billionaires" are anything of the sort. I'm not saying their lives have never been hard or that they have never worked hard at something but I think you'd find that, at scale, most people would succeed if put into that position (from birth, which is why this is near-impossible to prove).

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

#707

Post by norwalkbear » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:50 PM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #633

ericmcer wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hurt his feelings or impersonating him. I've seen him replying to people insulting him and not suspending them.

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

#708

Post by LAC-Tech » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:50 PM UTC

uxcolumbo wrote: post #599

poszlem wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's stupid is people thinking that someone who successfully rules over some of the most influential companies in the world is stupid. Reminds me of all those people who claim that Trump or Putin[1] are "stupid" where in reality they just mean "I don't like them". [1] You can be a murderous dictator and not stupid, I would actually wager a guess that those people tend to actually be cleverer than average. Some appl…

Putin's and Musk's massive ego and narcissism will be their downfall. By invading Ukraine, Putin has achieved the exact opposite he wanted to achieve. The West is now more united than ever and more Russia border countries are going to join NATO. On top of that he has destroyed Russian economy. Tell me how that's not stupid? I don't even have to go into Musk's actions. He massively overpaid for Twitter and to service…

By invading Ukraine, Putin has achieved the exact opposite he wanted to achieve. The West is now more united than ever and more Russia border countries are going to join NATO. On top of that he has destroyed Russian economy. Tell me how that's not stupid?

But he likely saw the alternative as Ukraine in NATO, colour revolutions spreading to Russia, and ending up like Gadaffi (whose gruesome death he was said to have watched on video over and over again).

Probably he regrets not doing it sooner, when the Ukranian military was in much worse shape.

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

#709

Post by d23 » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:50 PM UTC

lightbendover wrote: post #347

VLM wrote: post #269

Interesting strategic window: You can't innovate and software engineer using 1950s style "butts in seats". Maybe this is a signal twitter isn't going to innovate, develop, and maybe even operate, internally, at least going forward. You need code for a new feature? Buy a startup that already wrote it. You need to keep something running? Contract out instead of employees. Very few companies have a full time plumber or…

> You can't innovate and software engineer using 1950s style "butts in seats" This seems to be pulled from thin air. Nobody would have murmured it 3 years ago. You really think the whole world changed that much in the past 3 years that you can lay down such a superlative?

That's not a superlative, plenty of people had that opinion before three years ago, and sure, why not, it's a web forum.

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

#710

Post by edwnj » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 10:50 PM UTC

ok_dad wrote: post #438

edwnj wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difference is you served (or are serving) during peacetime. This is wartime.. Twitter is in a shit load of trouble and unlike Meta & Snap which are crashing like a shitcoin.. Elon bought Twitter at 2x-3x what its actually worth. Unlike the past decade, where these companies had easy access to funny money during a tech bull market.. now we are entering a uuge recession.. Twitter (or any company for that matter) which…

The Navy doesn't differentiate between wartime and peacetime for training or operations, generally. The difference would lie in what type of ordnance we used (real during wartime, inert during peace) and the measures we operated under at sea (we'd emit less signals and dog the hatches). Also, in wartime, it's actually even more important that a new CO didn't upset the delicate balance or change procedures, because yo…

I meant no disrespect, just an educated guess since there has been no major war after WWII..

I'm mainly talking about the difference in strategy/posture during wartime vs peacetime.. Just look at whats happening in Ukraine rn, Russia changing commanders to go full scorched earth.

To save a company like Twitter, this is exactly the kind of thing u need to do. Private equity does this all the time.