Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

871–880 of 1001 posts

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

#871

Post by IMTDb »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #619
notacop31337 wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made this comment to a friend recently that I don't think enough people are considering that he might actually be mad enough to have spent $44B to destroy a toxic business.

The hole in that theory is that by all appearances, Elon Musk really, really likes using Twitter. I don't think he wants to kill it. I think the madness is two-fold: (1) he approached this with a "pfft, I could run that business better than the bozos in charge" attitude -- it's not as if Twitter has been known for great management up to this point, right? -- but never actually came up with a plan beyond "not what the…

> The best case is that this will be his Steve Jobs Exiled From Apple moment

Didn't Steve Jobs return to this company when it was bleeding money, cut 4000 employees as his first move and turned it into a cash cow ?

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

#872

Post by cowpig »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #550
alistairSH wrote: post #275

So, he fires thousands of them while hob-knobbing with other billionaires on the other side of the country. And his first company-wide communication is rescinding previous WFH policies without much reason. What an absolute knob. Edit to add... He demanded a company-wide all-hands on one hours notice, then appeared 15 minute late. I hope every employee worth their salary walks, Twitter implodes, and Musk loses much of…

I think the notion of a CEO doing all the things their workers do purely out of solidarity to be shallow and condescending. Obviously his job is different from theirs and he is going to have a different set of rules. And I doubt any of them would want to put in the number of hours he puts in. He's clearly a workaholic.

Showing up late to an all-hands meeting of thousands of employees is wasting thousands of hours of peoples' time. I don't care how important you think his time is that's not going to add up to a rational choice

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

#873

Post by dr-detroit »

foxylad wrote: post #804
abxytg wrote: post #481

Or -- he's stupid.

He's not stupid in the domains he understands. I think his problem is impulse control, and he's impulsively bought into a business that he knows little about. I do think hard times are coming for Musk. As well as burning billions on Twitter, Tesla is no longer the vangard of the EV market, Boring seems to be a dead end, and I haven't heard anything about the solar enterprise for years. Space X seems to be still innov…

No post body was provided.

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

#874

Post by type0 »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #528
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…

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.

He wants to turn it into Wechat-like platform.

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

#875

Post by bottlepalm »

esalman wrote: post #133

Twitter is going down. The question is whether it will take Musk down with it.

Saying and repeating Twitter is going down doesn't actually make it go down. It's an internet hivemind narrative. I'm looking forward to some actual data.

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

#876

Post by 1letterunixname »

Because butt-in-seat mentality, working 80 hrs a week, and moving a rocking horse really fast equals morale and productivity.

Any employee with self-respect should go on strike and put their resume in somewhere else.

I have the feeling Elon only makes money off people who enable him to act like a bully.

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

#877

Post by 1letterunixname »

georgyo wrote: post #523
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…

I worked at a place that did this in 2009. The problem with this method is that many people DID relocate to keep their jobs. And then were layed off two months later. Imagine uplifting your life for your job, and then being told you need to find a new job anyway.

Yes. It's never wise to cede anything to pushy jerks like that because they'll just take and take without end. The only answer they respect is "no".

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

#878

Post by sixothree »

memish wrote: post #827
abxytg wrote: post #481

Or -- he's stupid.

It's intellectual dishonest to the extreme to say he's stupid. If you really can't see the evidence in front of your eyes, here's John Carmack: "Elon is definitely an engineer. He is deeply involved with technical decisions at spacex and Tesla. He doesn’t write code or do CAD today, but he is perfectly capable of doing so." Here's Kevin Watson, who developed the avionics for Falcon 9 and Dragon and previously managed…

Have you listened to him speak for any length of time? It's painful.

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

#879

Post by chitowneats »

scarface_74 wrote: post #854
janoc wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> Given that there is no shortage of jobs for engineers Where are these jobs? At startups that see they may not get another round of funding soon? At unprofitable recently IPOd unicorns that are losing money and cutting back staff? At Amazon (where I work) that just announced a hiring freeze? At Google where they admitted over hiring?

The categories you just mentioned probably don't even equal half of SWE employment in the U.S.

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

#880

Post by bergenty »

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…

It’s not a new idea though, having a completely open platform. It quickly devolves into cp, racism and general abstract violence. We’ve learned this lesson already at this point.
Post reply on HN