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Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
21–30 of 59 posts
Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
#22A "wartime" business person is a hilarious idea. Gotta feel manly somehow, I guess!
I cringe when I see businesses using the vernacular of war to describe really mundane, essentially riskless goals. One company I was at had a "war room" dedicated to... increasing MRR to the arbitrary goals they'd set that quarter. They put a sign on the door. Another CEO told us in an all hands that the company was on a "war footing" until we found product market fit, and he'd use phrases like "total war" all the time. Jesus Christ, we're nerds trying to make money for investors.
Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
#23Companies often seem to employ terms related to armed conflict to heighten the sense of urgency and action. In reality noone working at a software company is "getting their asses shot off" or even "goes to war". Stop using silly terms like that in business. We are not here to murder people or commit genocide, using this vernacular diminishes and marginalizes the immense suffering of humans caught in an actual war for…
> using this vernacular diminishes and marginalizes the immense suffering of humans caught in an actual war for any reason. I don’t know that anyone (or at least a sizeable number of people) in an actual war views it this way. What is the causal link in your mind? Should we also ban the phrase “I’m starving”? What about “I’m sick and tired…”? Upping the intensity factor, what about “the underdog annihilated the #1 ra…
Yeah I see this argument a lot in the infosec industry where military terms are used quite a bit, but its never passed the sniff test. Usually the argument is that the toxicity, shitty work-life balance, and lack of minorities all comes from ex-military people or whatever, meanwhile:
- RTFM, flaming, and calling people noobs comes from IRC culture
- The OSCP (_the_ standard red team certification) is 48 hours long, the company offering it currently woman-led
- The most common background in my experience for minorities in this industry is ex-military
Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
#24Companies often seem to employ terms related to armed conflict to heighten the sense of urgency and action. In reality noone working at a software company is "getting their asses shot off" or even "goes to war". Stop using silly terms like that in business. We are not here to murder people or commit genocide, using this vernacular diminishes and marginalizes the immense suffering of humans caught in an actual war for…
Upvoting because words matter. You forgot to mention the fetishization of conflict we seem to have here in the US.
Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Ship of Theseus adjacent, when does Twitter stop being “twitter”? When the users that people are interested in - politicians, news organizations, certain brand accounts, celebrities - go away. The problem for Twitter is that politicians and celebrities don't really want to hang around on a platform where they have to deal with abusive content all the time.
> The problem for Twitter is that politicians and celebrities don't really want to hang around on a platform where they have to deal with abusive content all the time. Maybe. At a certain point, that's probably true, but are we close to that? Sometimes you have to look at what people do, not what they say. It costs a celebrity nothing to say nice things about seeking peace and love and opposing hatred and wanting to…
A couple of months ago Elon posted some notes on usage that indicated that the users with huge followings were in fact going away. This was later confirmed by a leaked internal research document[1]. So yes; we are close to that and quite possibly are at that point already.
It's not clear to me that any of the changes he's made so far are oriented towards reversing that flow. It's possible that he didn't actually care about that, I suppose.
1. https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-where-did-tweet...
Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
#26A "wartime" business person is a hilarious idea. Gotta feel manly somehow, I guess!
I cringe when I see businesses using the vernacular of war to describe really mundane, essentially riskless goals. One company I was at had a "war room" dedicated to... increasing MRR to the arbitrary goals they'd set that quarter. They put a sign on the door. Another CEO told us in an all hands that the company was on a "war footing" until we found product market fit, and he'd use phrases like "total war" all the ti…
It also can be actively harmful to accomplishing the mission. It removes the sense of proportion needed to wisely weigh tradeoffs.
It suggests that people play out roles in the Drama Triangle (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovrVv_RlCMw) instead of focusing on building things, solving problems, and helping each other learn.
Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is certainly true. But my understanding of Twitter - and this may be flawed - was that it was always a mission driven company over a profit driven one. Elon said he wanted to continue that tradition, but with the debt load Twitter is literally in an existential crisis. So this begs the question, can Twitter be successful being “twitter”? My guess is no, Musk can make a lot of money going after video or m…
I think Twitter can continue to operate and even be profitable. But without completely adding a new product offering it's hard for me to imagine it growing to be worth a lot more than what Elon paid for it.
> I think Twitter can continue to operate and even be profitable
Im curious to hear more on this, in my mind the biggest problem with adding a new product offering would be diluting the text based content which may drive people to more “entertaining / TikTok” content than text content, I think one reason Twitter works as the public square is _because_ text is low effort for celebs/politicians/journalists/etc. Hard to imagine journalists driving as much traffic to their articles over video, especially if you go the Instagram route of starting to prioritize video over classic format (text/images) Again twitter as public square, not Twitter as some yet to be defined TikTok rival)
Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My guess is that most celebrities would figuratively crawl through a field of broken glass to get their fix of attention and kudos from their supporters. Yeah I think the network effects are stronger than anyone would like to admit. I think Twitter has a lot of challenges going forward and my analytical read of the situation says he’ll fail, but my gut says he’ll succeed, now it just remains to be seen — succeed at…
Instinct is jet fuel to help work through uncertainty.
I think most of my instinct is just fear of going against the “smart money” support of Elon.
Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
#29A "wartime" business person is a hilarious idea. Gotta feel manly somehow, I guess!
Poking fun at what other people choose to hold important is childish, imo.
Because, ultimately what people choose to value is subjective, and there’s no right or wrong.
Put another way, what you perceive as valuable is equally hilarious from many others’ valid perspectives.
As long as they’re not hurting anyone, people are free to choose their own adventure.
Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
#30Companies often seem to employ terms related to armed conflict to heighten the sense of urgency and action. In reality noone working at a software company is "getting their asses shot off" or even "goes to war". Stop using silly terms like that in business. We are not here to murder people or commit genocide, using this vernacular diminishes and marginalizes the immense suffering of humans caught in an actual war for…
Related, I've seen many business leaders overuse sports analogies in talk. (I don't really follow sports that much.) The message ends up being very white male cis, and not inclusive. It muddies the message, especially in tech companies with a diverse group of employees.