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Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

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

#731

Post by gw98 »

jackmott42 wrote: post #721
gw98 wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It would be a remarkable bit of luck that Elon stumbled into both Tesla and SpaceX, took on the role of lead rocket designer at spaceX, built both companies into unlikely leaders in their industry with powerful people trying to crush them all the way, while being a total idiot. A similar but more charitable theory is that Elon is very good at leading a company to build actual hardware that has to solve hard physics p…

This is true. The answer is actually that he's a liar / marketer.

Colonise Mars? It's never going to happen. But you'll win defence and commercial contracts on the way as a side effect.

Saving the future with electric cars? It's never going to happen. But you'll sell a lot of luxury cars as a side effect.

Saving free speech with Twitter? It's never going to happen. But you'll pacify the SEC dogs snarling at your door after you fucked up.

His pitch is changing the world. His reality is not really improving it measurably.

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

#732

Post by _jal »

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…

More or less similar to my view of where he is, although I think I'm a bit less charitably inclined.

Given his priors and the fact that he doesn't understand social media, free speech, moderation or advertising, the only question is if he can control his ego long enough to find someone to run the place before he burns it to the ground, and whether anyone who could save it would trust him enough to take the gig.

I rather doubt that will happen, but maybe. Assuming he hasn't already done too much damage - I'm not sure where that line is, but it seems like we're approaching it rapidly.

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

#733

Post by humanistbot »

rgovostes wrote: post #152

> over the next few days, the absolute top priority is finding and suspending any verified bots/trolls/spam. Would it improve the situation to simply require a CAPTCHA once per day per non-subscriber to tweet? I would think it would greatly increase the cost to operate a troll farm, but have minimal impact on real users (setting aside accessibility and third-party clients a moment). If it causes attrition because som…

There are already clickworker farms that will solve CAPTCHAs as a service. A CAPTCHA once per day would cost next to nothing for a bot farm.

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

#735

Post by supertrope »

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?

If the business under new ownership turns a profit their bankers make money. If the business folds or is not turned around then the loans sour but the private equity owner also loses their money. In bankruptcy bond holders get paid before shareholders.

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

#736

Post by insane_dreamer »

ok_dad wrote: post #558
luckylion wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, each ship works completely different from the other ships, there are no established generic procedures, the crew just figures out how they want to do encryption? When you transfer onto another ship, do you need a long onboarding as well, does each ship have its own culture? How do they coordinate?

> Wait, each ship works completely different from the other ships, there are no established generic procedures, the crew just figures out how they want to do encryption? There's some commonality, but it's like a fork of other ships. When a new ship is stood up and built, the pre-comissioning crew will write the SOPs for the new ship. Most of the time, you crib it from an old ship and make changes you think are useful…

Interesting. I would have expected each class of ships to have the same operating procedures on the technology side.

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

#737

Post by rchaud »

janoc wrote: post #685
danans wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 all teams are properly staffed. He's got huge debt and declining revenue - both of his own making - so he doesn't have time for employees to self-select based on minor incentives. He has to strip down the car fast while someho…

>then start hiring as necessary with the kind of people you want. That assumes that people will still want to work for Twitter after all of this. Given that there is no shortage of jobs for engineers even after massive layoffs at Facebook/Meta and Twitter, many people are going to think twice about signing up to work for a company and owner that have a reputation for treating people as disposable trash. Employees are…

I'm sure he can drag some Tesla software engineers in for a few months to fill the gaps. That's how this works, right? /s

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

#738

Post by lovich »

heavyset_go wrote: post #626
lovich wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making a bunch of unpopular changes and waiting a month still seems more prudent. The people most likely carrying that culture are gonna be the ones most inclined to leave over changes, and if they are leaving on their own that would decrease costs associated with benefits or the increase to the unemployment tax that comes with layoffs

Changes to terms of employment make employees who quit because of them eligible to collect unemployment. It's one of the few reasons workers are eligible for unemployment when they voluntarily quit.

Yea was just reading how this likely prompted facebooks giving the November vest to their laid off employees was likely driven by similar labor protection laws. After having worked for a Georgia headquartered company for 2 years I don’t think I can work for a company outside a blue state again. The worker protections, minimal as they are in the US, kicked in multiple times as the company kept trying to fuck us over

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

#739

Post by fortuna86 »

tjpnz wrote: post #15
SillyUsername wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also leads to more mistakes and cutting corners (usually hidden), so in the long term as they accumulate this will bite him in the ass when a particularly bad one gets out in the wild unnoticed. And I thought this guy had a high IQ, clearly he's not that bright after all.

Having a high IQ doesn't make you immune from cockups.

Sometimes it makes you less self aware that you might be wrong.

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

#740

Post by thetli8 »

selectout wrote: post #682
throw8383833jj wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody can build a twitter at a tiny fraction of the cost of Twitter. The problem is always user acquisition. It's extraodinarily difficult to get a vast segment of the userbase to switch to your platform. Even getting a tiny handful would cost vast sums of money. Think about it. If it could be done, it would be done and we'd see a largely segmented social media landscape with hundreds of twitter clones. It's not th…

I'm always curious if he just set aside say $250k/year (2 year contract maybe?) to the top 100 content creators at Twitter/IG/TikTok today. Add $25 million to the annual costs and have the chicken/egg problem semi-saved.

my (limited) understanding is that, most of the time, the problem lies in aggregating demand vs owning the supply. it's harder to figure out demand.

it is a good thought experiment here (and HBS business case-worthy) to see who truly has the power - the creators or the platform.

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