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Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

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Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#301
post #109

In my opinion Elon miscalculated the type of people at Twitter. These aren’t people like the ones in Tesla or SpaceX where there is some sort of idealization of Elon. The number of fan boys he has at Twitter must be super low. None of the Twitter employees signed up to work for him, it’s pretty obvious from the public tweets that most of the staff has posted that they don’t have much respect for him. On top of that,…

I would guess, though I don't know for sure, that having your hero buy your company and then fire a bunch of your friends and valued colleagues seemingly arbitrarily, including entire teams that exist for actual reasons, probably would dampen your opinion of him somewhat.

Like, I like Steve Jobs, he could be a dick sometimes but I think he had the right idea and the right vision overall, but if he came in and bought my employer and then just started firing whole teams and fucking up the product while taking away perks and demanding more work, I would have soured on him pretty fast.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#302
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No such vision exists. “Twitter 2.0” is still vaguely about free speech, somehow making lots of money from verified users, and also WeChat-of-the-West style payments (as if anyone would trust their money to this company).

I'd almost put money on twitter 2.0 going on a blockchain

Funnily enough that's the one stupid idea he isn't into, SBF tried to get into the twitter buyout on the idea of putting on the block chain and Elon shot it down.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too and I feel quite vindicated as I have been saying it for a long time that Musk is an incompetent fraud with incredible amounts of luck. Edit: actually less vindicated but more happy that I don't have to hear from people how great Elon is any more.

I wish I could upvote you twice. Totally incompetent fraud. I mean SpaceX was a total stroke of luck. Sometimes you just get the right mixture of methane and oxygen by accident and the rocket just blasts off by itself. And we definitely wouldn't have to go grovel to the Russians had SpaceX not been the only company in US capable of delivering astronauts to ISS. Same with Tesla and his other previous companies - just…

Elon enjoys a massive following for his moonshots. And people have dedicated their life to his vision. Outside of it many investors and customers have supported him to be part of his grand vision.

But last week has shown his true colors. He's no visionary. Just your neighborhood slavedriver with mastery in storytelling. At this stage I am willing to use deceptive to describe Elon. On a public square he broke his persona. He's weak and dangerous as far as I am concerned.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me you have never worked in a large enterprise without telling me that you haven't. Elon seems completely out of his depth in handling Twitter. And so does many people endorsing him. For them, Twitter is a glorified website.

Twitter is undoubtedly overstaffed. Their website is a trash fire that fails in spectacular ways to deliver the most basic funcionality inherent in the browser : show some text and some pictures. And it's been this way for years while they are patting themselves on the back for "creating the best PWA app in the world". However, what Musk is doing is absolutely hillarious, and is a much bigger trash fire that has noth…

I would not underestimate the challenges they face operating on the scale they do. I would expect problems in databases, servers, message queues propagate pretty quickly all over the system. Then you need a specific expertise to locate and fix such problems.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it would be a big a big boon for my career to work at Twitter.. And I'm not even sure it would be a big career boost to join twitter at this point. The way things are going there you'd probably be burned out pretty quickly which would mean a shortish tenure.

I think there's actually some risk of too much time at Elon twitter making your resume toxic. It's no secret what kind of environment he's fostering there, and many companies simply don't want to hire the type of person who thrives in that situation, regardless of how technically skilled they are.

I suspect you're right. His brand is definitely tarnished at this point.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#306
post #215
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers interested in cars or rockets have way fewer exciting options than web devs working at Twitter.

Exactly. I don’t think people realize that a below average software engineer or product manager at Twitter has way better career prospects than a top rocket scientist at SpaceX.

Eh, I'd be willing to wager that a skilled and experienced physicist at SpaceX could probably leave whenever they wanted and go to any other space rocketry company owned and run by an insecure, egotistical, self-centred, human-exploiting, planet-destroying billionaire.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#307

He is ingeniously driving up engagement with Twitter by using Twitter itself. Many people want him to fail, expect him to fail, are willing him to fail. Past evidence of his failures had yet to be found.

I haven't seen any indicators of Twitter failing besides 2FA failures; but every time I read anything on HN, it is doomed to fail. I feel like some of the resentful people here will try to hack into Twitter possibly get caught and see jail time? May be they will do something bad because this kind kind of irrational hate for a billionaire is not normal. Hell, even Peter Thiel doesn't get this vitroil. It reminds me of…

An alternate read on the situation- these strong reactions aren't indications of hatred, they're indications of irritation. Elon Musk, like his friend Kanye West, like the previous POTUS, like Charlie Sheen back in 2011, has become one of those hugely polarizing, hugely attention-seeking celebrity figures. The way he currently injects himself into controversy and actively courts it, the way he actively trolls everyone, the way he tries to steal limelight with initiatives that go nowhere like the Thai cave submarine or Starlink to Ukraine - there isn't really a partisan angle to why this public behavior can seem annoying. Over the last few years, Musk went from a typical technologist CEO to a social media celebrity, and a particularly obnoxious one at that. Even he and Grimes' child has a name that is inscrutable and pretentious, which is something Hollywood celebs are known for. So that's one reason why he elicits such strong responses.

Compare him to some similar cases. Larry Ellison is a cutthroat executive, huge Republican donor, and is known to make abrasive and belligerent public statements. He was even temporarily the richest man in the world (there was a week in the early 2000s where Microsoft's stock dipped, putting Gates at #2). But he doesn't get the irritation that Musk gets because he stays off Twitter. He doesn't try to stick himself and his brand everywhere. Brian Armstrong banned activism at Coinbase and that also attracted backlash, but he's not seen as a hugely toxic figure. That's because that announcement was in the form of a long dry company policy statement, not by declaring himself to be a free speech absolutist or some sort of protector of not being political in the workplace.

So long story short is, beyond Musk's corporate actions and political stances, he has made himself to be a public irritant. People who don't like his actions and stances are going to be extra-aggrieved by it. I think in some ways there is a certain strategy to it, as we've seen since 2015, to use the negative emotions stirred up in social media to bolster one's aims. Musk has embraced the mantle of a universal celebrity, one who can produce infinite amounts of admiration from his devotees... and infinite amounts of annoyance from those who disagree strongly.

A pretty good video likening that public style to magician's tricks here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkvvAQxxo_0

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#308
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"halve your effective comp" And also work double time for the indefinite future. So effective comp is quartered, by my accounting.

I was thinking of double time (hence talking about effective comp), I didn't see mentions of salary being cut but mayhaps I just missed it?

Stock, "$400" lunches, remote option, etc. Everything that's not a paycheck seems slashed.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> on something truly innovative. like twitter? apparently elon's master plan is 2000s-era blogspot citizen journalism?

> 2000s-era blogspot citizen journalism What's wrong with 2000s-era blogspot citizen journalism.

98% of it was/is just opinion articles. There's very little research or real information gathering involved.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#310
post #109

In my opinion Elon miscalculated the type of people at Twitter. These aren’t people like the ones in Tesla or SpaceX where there is some sort of idealization of Elon. The number of fan boys he has at Twitter must be super low. None of the Twitter employees signed up to work for him, it’s pretty obvious from the public tweets that most of the staff has posted that they don’t have much respect for him. On top of that,…

Elon's internal memos read as if Twitter engineers were below his standards. I don't doubt that there are some truths in it, but there are also many great engineers who want to build great stuff, who make progress despite the infighting culture of Twitter, and who have built pretty scalable and autonomous systems in the past years. They may feel dignified by Elon's policies and memos, for good or for bad, and then chose to leave - a net loss for Twitter.

And what's so hardcore about Payroll system? Shouldn't we demand quality instead and I'm not sure if working 80 hours a week would lead to better quality of the system.

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