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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

#761

Post by exclusiv »

jmyeet wrote: post #623
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…

If you view every employee as interchangeable this makes sense. Clearly that isn't the case. What ends up happening when you do things like this (ie to accelerate natural attrition) is the best people leave first. So you haven't really solved the problem. You may have made it worse.

Yes but he may be optimizing for the younger, unmarried with no kids employees he can manage like he wants. Remove remote work and this filters out the types that are less likely to put up with his demands and managerial style, expectations, etc.

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

#762

Post by nonrandomstring »

fortuna86 wrote: post #713
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.

Not for the lols, I dont care how rich you are losing 44b hurts. But he is clearly out of his depth.

> Not for the lols, I don't care how rich you are losing 44b hurts.

A band named KLF burned a million quid back in the mid 90s. It was ostensibly "performance art" [1].

In 2000 formative internet commerce pioneer Josh Harris blew about 80 million in a few weeks on an "arts project". He is the subject of Ondi Timoner's 2009 documentary "We Live in Public" [2] He described it as "liberating" and said that other dot-com millionaires had "wasted their money" and didn't "know how to live".

Maybe Elon fancies himself as an artist?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Qu...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Live_in_Public

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

#764

Post by braingenious »

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?

>Nobody would have murmured it 3 years ago.

Isn’t the word “nobody” literally a superlative?

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

#765

Post by crmd »

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…

Elon Musk is a lead rocket designer like Donald Trump is a real estate magnate.

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

#766

Post by ashwagary »

wittycardio wrote: post #534
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…

Success is not really a measure of intelligence. I actually think Elon is likely quite intelligent but a lot of success is determined by luck, ambition and attitude rather than pure intelligence. I definitely do not think Donald Trump is very intelligent, but he has undoubtedly been very successful.

>a lot of success is determined by luck, ambition, attitude

...and a decent inheritance.

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

#767

Post by stephc_int13 »

I used to naively believe in the Elon Musk hype.

I started to be suspicious about his super-human intellect a few years ago.

The more I dig and the more I observe his behavior, the less impressed I am, there is a huge number of red flags.

I think he is much closer to Elizabeth Holmes than most people realize.

I will be a financial bloodbath when the fraud will be unmasked.

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

#768

Post by brailsafe »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #514

" at least 40 hours in the office" Why would anyone work for this douche? Even if you make a lot of money, you aren't going to get your time back later. There's no reward for killing yourself to appease a rich workaholic. The only prize you win is burning out or getting laid off.

I suppose that'd apply to any place though, especially in the U.S wouldn't it?

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

#770

Post by borissk »

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…

No, you're obviously wrong. Firing people first lets one get rid of the underperformes, while announcing the unpopular decisions first gets rid of the overperformers.
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