Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#101

Post by richmarr » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 4:20 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #91

kylebgorman wrote: post #44

I'm short Twitter. The fact of the matter is it that Twitter should never have become a multibillion-dollar company. There is no barrier to entry into this space---any competent web developer could make a non-scaling Twitter in an afternoon---except network effects, and those have proved weak due to poor user experience, particularly for new users. Twitter should have treated itself like a utility, and focused less o…

lol if it's so easy, I implore you to create a Twitter competitor... and to make your challenge easier, instead of it being worth $20 billion, we'll lower the bar to, say, $150 million. It's already been done..every major web 2.0 success has many clones that all tried but failed to gain the necessary momentum and marketshare to become as successful as Twitter or Dropbox, for example. Even Evernote, despite all the at…

kylebgorman posted that comment 2 hours ago, he must be half way done building his Twitter-but-better by now. I'm on the edge of my seat, I can tell you.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#102

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 4:22 PM UTC

seiji wrote: post #60

ar7hur wrote: post #12

I still think it's impossible to run two companies that both require so much attention, given their stage. Yes Jobs had Apple and Pixar, and Musk has Tesla and SpaceX. But both Pixar and SpaceX don't really require day-to-day CEO attention, they follow long term plans (movies, rockets). That's really different from Square and Twitter, which are both, in their own ways, in a kind of trouble. I'd love to be proven wron…

Musk lives in LA and takes his private jet up to San Jose every week to work at Tesla (then back to LA to work at SpaceX). If anything, Musk has two full time jobs (priorities: 1. SpaceX; 2. Tesla; 3. everything else) and actually does 80-100 hours per week of work. He's not out creating vanity designer clothing lines in his spare time. You can't create world class products or companies while maintaing a silly "becau…

Is there any reason that Musk couldn't colocate SpaceX and Tesla in Freemont instead of SpaceX being located in Hawthorne? What's the benefit of SpaceX being in the LA area?

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#103

Post by sgustard » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 4:24 PM UTC

code4tee wrote: post #15

nreece wrote: post #2

Here's his announcement on Twitter, among other details: https://twitter.com/jack/status/651003190628872192

Totally unreadable. This sums up a lot of what's wrong with Twitter. If even the CEO struggles to communicate effectively using the platform then...

Similarly, his CEO announcement at Square was published in a series of micropayments.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#104

Post by seiji » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 4:28 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #102

seiji wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk lives in LA and takes his private jet up to San Jose every week to work at Tesla (then back to LA to work at SpaceX). If anything, Musk has two full time jobs (priorities: 1. SpaceX; 2. Tesla; 3. everything else) and actually does 80-100 hours per week of work. He's not out creating vanity designer clothing lines in his spare time. You can't create world class products or companies while maintaing a silly "becau…

Is there any reason that Musk couldn't colocate SpaceX and Tesla in Freemont instead of SpaceX being located in Hawthorne? What's the benefit of SpaceX being in the LA area?

SpaceX is located on a campus previously created for building aircraft, so it seems they are where they need to be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#Facilities

Also, that part of LA (hawthorne, el segundo), has a history of aviation and rocketry companies, so it has better facilities and a larger built-in talent pool too.

They do co-locate some operations (tesla designer lives in the SpaceX office, not the tesla office), but it makes sense for Tesla, as a consumer brand, to be located in the most densely concentrated location of multimillionaires and billionaires in the world.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#105

Post by tootie » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 4:30 PM UTC

code4tee wrote: post #15

nreece wrote: post #2

Here's his announcement on Twitter, among other details: https://twitter.com/jack/status/651003190628872192

Totally unreadable. This sums up a lot of what's wrong with Twitter. If even the CEO struggles to communicate effectively using the platform then...

The entire concept of Twitter still makes no sense regardless of how many people are using it. It's coasting on momentum at this point and might give out any second.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#106

Post by codingdave » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 4:31 PM UTC

jes5199 wrote: post #90

austenallred wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed]. Seriously though, are you an employee at Twitter or Square, or are you basing this statement on the fact that you (presumably someone who doesn't see what's going on within Twitter and Square) only see Jack in interviews, and he tells the same story? I mean, I'm by no means a big time CEO, but the only contact people outside my company have with what's going on internally are interviews. And when I…

I worked at Square when it was relatively small (<100 people) and Jack seemed to only be around for weekly presentations. But! That seems to be normal for CEOs? It's not like their job is actually to play pingpong with software developers all day.

How much they are around matters much less than whether or not they have set a clear strategy for the company, whether their direct reports have the autonomy and ability to execute on their pieces of the strategy, whether they have built and maintain a culture that keeps the organization productive, and if they are available to their direct reports when needed.

If all those things are true, then they can be in the office as much or little as they want. If one or more of those are missing, then the CEO has work to do.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#107

Post by sjg007 » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 4:32 PM UTC

Stay tuned for twitter square integration. Buy with twitter should go through square.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#108

Post by derrekl » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 4:35 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #102

seiji wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk lives in LA and takes his private jet up to San Jose every week to work at Tesla (then back to LA to work at SpaceX). If anything, Musk has two full time jobs (priorities: 1. SpaceX; 2. Tesla; 3. everything else) and actually does 80-100 hours per week of work. He's not out creating vanity designer clothing lines in his spare time. You can't create world class products or companies while maintaing a silly "becau…

Is there any reason that Musk couldn't colocate SpaceX and Tesla in Freemont instead of SpaceX being located in Hawthorne? What's the benefit of SpaceX being in the LA area?

Los Angeles has a very large aerospace industry and long history in it. Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and SpaceX all have a large presence in Los Angeles's South Bay. It's not as large as it was during the "cold war" but a lot of skilled employees still live in the area.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#109

Post by Osmium » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 4:41 PM UTC

ar7hur wrote: post #12

I still think it's impossible to run two companies that both require so much attention, given their stage. Yes Jobs had Apple and Pixar, and Musk has Tesla and SpaceX. But both Pixar and SpaceX don't really require day-to-day CEO attention, they follow long term plans (movies, rockets). That's really different from Square and Twitter, which are both, in their own ways, in a kind of trouble. I'd love to be proven wron…

> SpaceX [doesn't] really require day-to-day CEO attention

Really? What's special about SpaceX that it doesn't require a full-time CEO? I'd imagine, considering the scope of their task and the scale of their ambition, it'd require more hands-on time than most.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#110

Post by tcdent » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

seiji wrote: post #104

toomuchtodo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any reason that Musk couldn't colocate SpaceX and Tesla in Freemont instead of SpaceX being located in Hawthorne? What's the benefit of SpaceX being in the LA area?

SpaceX is located on a campus previously created for building aircraft, so it seems they are where they need to be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#Facilities Also, that part of LA (hawthorne, el segundo), has a history of aviation and rocketry companies, so it has better facilities and a larger built-in talent pool too. They do co-locate some operations (tesla designer lives in the SpaceX office, not the tesla…

Los Angeles in general is pretty supportive of aviation. Not just adjacent to LAX, where you'll find SpaceX and Raytheon, but throughout the North from Pasadena into the West valley.

The trend has been decreasing for a long time, but amazingly there are still a lot of activity in aerospace. Most of the big names have left and their campuses turned into shopping malls, but there are still a lot of small specialty shops working on prototype parts.