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Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

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Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#71

Post by ajross »

belligeront wrote: post #15

Amazing that just a month ago he tweeted[1]: "It's remarkable how many people who've never run any kind of company think they know how to run a tech company better than someone who's run Tesla and SpaceX.". It's been fascinating watching so many VC types ignore so many red flags just because some of Elon's early actions validated their priors (e.g. tech companies are bloated and need to layoff staff). [1] https://twi…

OK, but to be fair[1], that's what we want, right? Our thought leaders should change their minds when they turn out to have been wrong, and correct. pg is doing good here, and that needs to be celebrated and not mocked. We all get stuff mixed up.

[1] And for the record I think pg indeed ignored WAY too many red flags for WAY too long in this particular case.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#72

Post by notatoad »

threeseed wrote: post #21

There’s an old adage about never meeting your heroes that applies well to PG. Some of his daily takes were so embarrassing and insipid that it was hard to maintain respect. It’s funny because his long form posts which are often insightful were likely reviewed/edited by a third person. A concept he has actually said only exists in the modern commercial publishing era.

>were likely reviewed/edited by a third person

or else just had the benefit of more time to think about them. i certainly know i say some dumb stuff, but if i write it down and think about it for a week before saying it to anybody else, i'm going to censor like 90% of the stuff that comes out of my head.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#73

Post by pclmulqdq »

ceejayoz wrote: post #24
eastendguy wrote: post #14

Wow, Twitter is collapsing much faster than I expected. With PG and some other high-profile accounts gone, many will loose interest in their Twitter feed fast. Rinse and repeat.

I thought it'd collapse on the tech side before the policy side. Rather shocked the mask has come off this quickly on what "free speech" actually meant.

Large distributed systems that have already been built can often limp along for a very long time before falling over. I would give Twitter at least another 3-6 months for stuff to start breaking.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#74

Post by coffeebeqn »

threeseed wrote: post #21

There’s an old adage about never meeting your heroes that applies well to PG. Some of his daily takes were so embarrassing and insipid that it was hard to maintain respect. It’s funny because his long form posts which are often insightful were likely reviewed/edited by a third person. A concept he has actually said only exists in the modern commercial publishing era.

There’s another one: the medium is the message

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#75

Post by wpietri »

belligeront wrote: post #15

Amazing that just a month ago he tweeted[1]: "It's remarkable how many people who've never run any kind of company think they know how to run a tech company better than someone who's run Tesla and SpaceX.". It's been fascinating watching so many VC types ignore so many red flags just because some of Elon's early actions validated their priors (e.g. tech companies are bloated and need to layoff staff). [1] https://twi…

For sure. Given that Musk was fired from [deleted, see note 1] and PayPal, you'd think they might have had more questions. But people look at failure much more carefully than they look at success.

I think the next wave of interesting questions is around the extent to which Musk contributed the apparent successes, SpaceX and Tesla. We won't know for a long time, as a lot of the people in the know have a strong incentive to keep quiet. But one possible explanation is that he is good at PR and using hype to raise money, but is not a competent manager without help. Consider, for example, this bit from someone who says they were a SpaceX intern: https://www.tumblr.com/numberonecatwinner/701567544684855296...

I asked a former SpaceX person about that and was told it seemed right, that SpaceX worked because everybody believed in the mission and worked hard at managing Elon so that they could get the actual work done.

[1] I incorrectly thought he was fired by the board from Zip2, but they just refused to make him CEO. Thanks to dontknowwhyihn for the correction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34042958

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#76

Post by [deleted] »

belligeront wrote: post #15

Amazing that just a month ago he tweeted[1]: "It's remarkable how many people who've never run any kind of company think they know how to run a tech company better than someone who's run Tesla and SpaceX.". It's been fascinating watching so many VC types ignore so many red flags just because some of Elon's early actions validated their priors (e.g. tech companies are bloated and need to layoff staff). [1] https://twi…

[deleted]

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#77

Post by cesarb »

thepasswordis wrote: post #46

Okay so I tried to join his new mastadon server and it says I can't. So...what?

You can join any other Mastodon server, and still follow him even though you're on a different server. Just put his handle (the one you can find on his site) on the search bar of your Mastodon server after logging in.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#78

Post by pavlov »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #2

It's interesting to see these tech influencers and their lag time on giving Elon the benefit of the doubt before they've had enough. Will Elon ever have a "coming to jesus moment" and realize that he's alienated so many of his peers that he is, in fact, in the wrong? Or is he so delusional that he really does believe he has the answers?

Musk seems to be speedrunning into Howard Hughes status.

He has so much wealth that, like Hughes, he could alienate every business contact and still spend the rest of his life making leftfield investments and watching movies naked in a dark hotel room. (Well, replace watching movies with tweeting, I suppose.)

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#79

Post by DiNovi »

adastra22 wrote: post #57
DiNovi wrote: post #18

Paul is an out of touch reactionary billionaire. when you’ve lost your own, maybe it’s time to acknowledge you don’t know what you’re doing

Are you confusing Paul Graham with Peter Thiel? PS: You're posting this on pg's site.

no i’m not confused, and yes i’m aware where i am
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