Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022 • Hacker News Board

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#321

Post by abruzzi » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 2:35 PM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #159

tazjin wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that once your middle management is infested with the wrong kind of non-tech people (because you couldn't resist "growing" forever), you don't stand a chance anymore. To me it seems this is what happened to Larry & Sergey, too.

People misunderstand the Peter Principle. Why do you think our startup heroes were failed from below, rather than simply "having been promoted to the level of their incompetence"? Dilbert, et al, rewrote the principle as, you promote the incompetent so they don't interfere with the real work. Or maybe that brown-nosers get promoted until they get fired. Or that the more incompetent you are the more you get promoted.…

yup. I live the Peter principle every day. Its really that your promoted because you were good at your old job, but that doesn't guarantee that you are good at your new job, and eventually you get promoted to a job you're not good at. Where I work, a lot of excellent tech people have been promoted into management positions, and we all suck at it. We're better at tech.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#322

Post by memish » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

Some other noteworthy texts.

Musk: I interface way better with engineers who are able to do hardcore programming than with program manager / MBA types of people

Agrawal: In our next convo- treat me like an engineer instead of CEO and lets see where we get to.

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Musk: I basically following your advice!

Dorsey: I know and I appreciate you. This is the right and only path. I’ll continue to do whatever it takes to make it work.

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Marc Benioff: Happy to talk about it if this is interesting: Twitter conversational OS- the townsquare for your digital life

Musk: Well I down own it yet

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Satya Nadella: Thx for the chat. Will stay in touch. And will for sure follow-up on Teams feedback!

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Musk: Please send me anyone who actually writes good software

Steve Jurvetson: Ok, no management good coders, got it.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#323

Post by achenet » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

dis-sys wrote: post #143

currenciessfe wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are both right and wrong. Bloomberg IS a tech company. But the journalists obviously don't mingle with that part.

> Bloomberg IS a tech company. This is like saying Microsoft is a charity - worst joke I heard in Sept 2022.

uh, Bloomberg's original business was selling computer systems.

" Bloomberg developed and built his own computerized system to provide real-time market data, financial calculations and other financial analytics to Wall Street firms. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_L.P.

Microsoft's original thing was NOT philanthropy.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#324

Post by adolph » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

jwozn wrote: post #256

adolph wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's right, CEO needs to focus on those quarterly numbers. For example, Apple should never have let that phone operation cannibalize their perfectly good music player business. Total mistake to let a CEO have that much control and "vision."

I don't think this argument is in good faith. Generally, a CEO does need to focus on the fundamentals of a company. Answering to investors ultimately means answering to a group of individuals or who are more or less interested in the long-term outlook of a company. The stock price is a function of future cash flows (or is when the market is rational), and I find it hard to believe that people don't expect some sort o…

> Answering to investors ultimately means answering to a group of individuals or who are more or less interested in the long-term outlook of a company.

Said no-one ever about public exchange investors. Why do you think Michael Dell had to take Dell private to restructure it? Jobs had more latitude since Apple was "90 days from bankrupcy" when he returned.

Michael Dell has the won the battle for control of the computer company that he created, after shareholders backed his $24.8bn (£15.7bn) offer to take Dell private and revive the struggling business away from the incessant pressure of Wall Street.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/12/michael-d...

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#325

Post by sneak » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 2:45 PM UTC

CharlesW wrote: post #259

sneak wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also plainly stated that the thing he wants to start is a protocol, not a company, so it is hard to class it as “a competitor” in the traditional sense. Does gmail compete with smtp?

> He also plainly stated that the thing he wants to start is a protocol… Yes, but not that one. He wants a protocol he can monetize using various forms of Web3 grifts.

Your anti-cryptocurrency bias is blinding you to the fact that neither party to these conversations needs or wants any more money than they have presently.

When you're a multibillionaire and you're still building new shit from scratch, you build to build. Monetary gains are a side effect.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#326

Post by flavius29663 » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

Schroedingersat wrote: post #161

swalsh wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intelligence has diminishing returns. Not enough, and that is a problem, but as you get more it becomes worth less and less by itself. The most valuable commodity in our economy is productive attention. A dude with a 105 IQ who "grinds" 16 hours a day will out-compete a dude with a 130 IQ who has a million ideas and thoughts, but can't grind them to reality. Of course someone who is high in both, can become Elon Musk…

You forgot the bit where you inherit an apartheid emerald fortune.

emerald fortune? His father paid 275k USD or so for that mine. It's not that much...average people on HN make that in a year.

He says his father invested 20k or so in his business, again very little by comparison.

Elon Musk was definitely privileged, but he built himself up.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#327

Post by chrisco255 » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

ricardobayes wrote: post #99

once_inc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering Dorsey's active participation and evangelising on Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, I expect that he will be working in that direction; building a messaging protocol based on the Lighting Network that allows users to upvote with satoshis. This monetises the user engagement and makes bots less feasible, aligning user incentives.

It sounds good at first, but then the biggest issue is that a platform like this becomes really susceptible to manipulation/pushing an agenda etc. Anonymous 'vote buying' is even worse than working with ads.

Twitter likes / retweets are already regularly paid for. There are paid networks of accounts that will upvote and follow for money.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#328

Post by j0hnyl » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

Trufa wrote: post #30

Unlike everyone else here apparently, I find his attitude pretty positive. You all act as if you would have know what twitter would become from the beginning and you would have done better, I've been in infinitesimally smaller projects with pressures that have nothing to do with building Twitter and still I thought like I was losing control of the direction the product was going.

Same, I also thought this was a positive conversation and I'm not sure why folks are interpreting it otherwise.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#329

Post by Nimitz14 » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

SilverBirch wrote: post #279

piaste wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very blissfully unengaged in Twitter as well, could you kindly spell out what it is you are referring to as the "elephant in the room"?

The Elephant in the room is that Musk is pretty much the perfect example of what makes Twitter terrible, and Dorsey had more than enough opportunity to fix it because he was literally in charge of the company for years and did nothing. All the shit Musk is throwing at Twitter now is stuff Dorsey was responsible for.

That's just your uninformed opinion.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#330

Post by j0hnyl » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 2:54 PM UTC

Huh1337 wrote: post #192

birdman3131 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can mean that or more likely means "We have gone past the usefulness of async short texts as a means of conversations." Text/tweets are useful but are sub optimal for actually discussing stuff like this. Voice is so much better in this case.

What? I've literally never felt this way. Every time someone wanted to have a call with me, it was so they could push me into something with their whining, or so they could misinterpret what was said without me being able to point at a timestamped sentence. For these reasons I always refuse calls about anything important - and never had any problems solving various business issues over text. How specifically is text…

You might be in the minority, I much prefer a 2 minute phone call over 15 minutes and aching thumbs.