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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

#951

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What has Twitter innovated on in the past decade? While I don't agree with the way Elon has been making this move, it's sure looking like he's trying to clear the place out so he can establish a new culture. These policy changes are likely to scare mobile, top-performers off to other companies. This likely clears out a lot of internal dissent and heal digging to make room for new "top performers". I wouldn't be shock…

Why would any competent engineer sign up to work in the environment Musk has created? I’ve seen no upside to employees offered, only brutal management and benefit reduction with a promise of hard work for less.

For Tesla or SpaceX, it's obvious what the payoff for the burnout is. You get to pull off things that have never been done before, which missions that matter to humanity.

With Twitter...? So, maybe they copy TikTok and Youtube and some crypto payments system. Who cares?

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

#952
post #417
post #357

Everytime a new Commanding Officer (CO) showed up when I was in the Navy we tried to bet which type it was: 1) The kind who investigated the goings-on in the ship, interviewed the officers and chiefs, and learned how the ship was being run, then made small changes over time to optimize the operations based on what they learned. Sometimes big changes in one specific area, if it was required (like fixing the ship's cry…

and generally acted like they owned the place To be fair, he actually does own the place.

Only, he doesn't. His lenders do. And he's already talking bankruptcy.

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

#953
post #827
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…

also can you please explain why you have all of these quotes about elon on deck.... are you elon? or just a little obsessed

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

#954
post #685

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>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…

> That assumes that people will still want to work for Twitter after all of this. Just a data point, but Twitter is now much more interesting to me (as a place of work) than it was before. Which is to say, it went from zero interest to "maybe?" * Chaos provides opportunities to make real changes instead of being just a tiny cog doing what you're told. * Advancement is going to be faster in a fast-changing organizatio…

I’m sure the folks at Yahoo thought the same as it muffled along for years…

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

#955
post #139

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Don't typical contracts for people like Twitter's staff in the US come with timing requirements on quitting? As in, you can't really quit "on the day", you have to leave proper notice and so on? I understand that in practice once someone says "I quit!" there might be little interest from the employer to keep them around, but in a scenario like you outline I would be very afraid of legal ramifications. Just a thought,…

Most states in the US are "At will employment". You can quit on the day! It is just not considered "polite" / "professional".

Are there any restrictions on timing your quitting so that it damages your employer as much as possible? Like, I don't know, a senior sale person quitting 2 minutes into a meeting to sign a massive contract, the company lawyer quitting 5 minutes before representing the company in a trial, or somesuch.

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

#956

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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.

In 2020 the company I worked for did ~25% temp salary reduction so they could feel safe that they could keep everyone employed and such. 3 months after everyone did it they said "thank you thank you we are so happy we don't need to let anyone go". 2 months later they laid off ~50% of the development team and people throughout the company... At the end of the year they said no bonuses, followed by an email saying desp…

> they made a profit

That's literally the raison d'etre of commercial companies. So, yeah, most will do what it takes to remain profitable.

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

#957
post #933
post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I didn't meant to paint stupid as an absolute. He is smart too. Some of the smartest people I know are some of the stupidest people I know and vice versa -- its all relative. I think in this arena he's behaving stupidly. I mean hey I think he does in those other arena too but I'm not going to argue against technical people that have been in those rooms with him.

This backpedaling is atrocious. Your comment had absolutely no qualifiers. Just “he’s stupid”.

It’s okay to be like, “oh, now after seeing that my preconceived notions of him based on Twitter hot takes were wrong, I retract my statement.”

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

#958
post #953
post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

also can you please explain why you have all of these quotes about elon on deck.... are you elon? or just a little obsessed

It’s political. It’s no different than having quotes about Biden, Trump, etc. When people have a habit of habitually lying about people who support missions you believe in, you tend to save evidence to the contrary.

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

#959

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…

That second point is something I think we see a lot in widely-praised successful people. I think this is also what lead George Lucas to make the Star Wars prequels on his own, instead of having others refine his characters, story and dialogue like he did with the originals.

I can't help but think about something I learned in school about the Roman Empire: when generals returned to Rome after a military conquest, they were paraded around the city on a chariot with everybody cheering him. But behind him on the chariot was someone constantly whispering in his ear: "You are only mortal". I think when everybody constantly heaps praise on you, it's tempting to start to believe that you are a god, a genius, or otherwise high above everybody else. Having people around you who keep you grounded is probably good for your sanity.

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

#960
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…

> That assumes that people will still want to work for Twitter after all of this. Just a data point, but Twitter is now much more interesting to me (as a place of work) than it was before. Which is to say, it went from zero interest to "maybe?" * Chaos provides opportunities to make real changes instead of being just a tiny cog doing what you're told. * Advancement is going to be faster in a fast-changing organizatio…

Can't be very far left if you think Musk is anything but human garbage.
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