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Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

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Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#931

" at least 40 hours in the office" Why would anyone work for this douche? Even if you make a lot of money, you aren't going to get your time back later. There's no reward for killing yourself to appease a rich workaholic. The only prize you win is burning out or getting laid off.

> a rich workaholic

Umm, does he actually work-work? Or is he in meetings yapping all day?

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#932

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a half-joke here on HN a few months ago that Musk was buying Twitter just to destroy it for the lols. Maybe everyone's wasting their time with rational economic analysis, trying to figure out a pretty simple guy with an obscene pile of fuck-you money and an axe to grind.

Everyone is looking at it too short term. Twitter isn’t going to disappear and he has shown a willingness to ride through rough economic times to reach his vision. Social Media is how people interact with the world now, most info we receive is filtered through it in some form. In the last 10 or so years the idea that these platforms need tight moderation to control what and who is speaking on them has become ubiquito…

He has runway as long as he is able to fund it, so there’s an upper bound.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#933
post #827
post #481

Or -- he's stupid.

It's intellectual dishonest to the extreme to say he's stupid. If you really can't see the evidence in front of your eyes, here's John Carmack: "Elon is definitely an engineer. He is deeply involved with technical decisions at spacex and Tesla. He doesn’t write code or do CAD today, but he is perfectly capable of doing so." Here's Kevin Watson, who developed the avionics for Falcon 9 and Dragon and previously managed…

I didn't meant to paint stupid as an absolute. He is smart too. Some of the smartest people I know are some of the stupidest people I know and vice versa -- its all relative. I think in this arena he's behaving stupidly. I mean hey I think he does in those other arena too but I'm not going to argue against technical people that have been in those rooms with him.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#934
post #685
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't it make the most sense to announce those decisions before making layoffs? Let people self select whether they want to stay and work for you and then make your layoffs after to ensure all teams are properly staffed. He's got huge debt and declining revenue - both of his own making - so he doesn't have time for employees to self-select based on minor incentives. He has to strip down the car fast while someho…

>then start hiring as necessary with the kind of people you want. That assumes that people will still want to work for Twitter after all of this. Given that there is no shortage of jobs for engineers even after massive layoffs at Facebook/Meta and Twitter, many people are going to think twice about signing up to work for a company and owner that have a reputation for treating people as disposable trash. Employees are…

There will be people who want to work for Musk.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#935
post #481

Or -- he's stupid.

US typically uses pretty strong adjectives. Like my kid keeps on "hating" everything, and there are no shades of gray. Maybe that's how you are using "stupid"? Haha.

Yea definitely a similar usage to hating, being a hater.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#936
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't it make the most sense to announce those decisions before making layoffs? Let people self select whether they want to stay and work for you and then make your layoffs after to ensure all teams are properly staffed. He's got huge debt and declining revenue - both of his own making - so he doesn't have time for employees to self-select based on minor incentives. He has to strip down the car fast while someho…

> He also wants to recreate the place per his own vision, so it makes sense to get rid of as many people carrying the previous culture as you can and then start hiring as necessary with the kind of people you want So, he's destroying all of the institutional knowledge, the brand image, and the existing business relationships, while pivoting to a radically different market. He wanted a fresh startup to sink $44 billio…

Institutional knowledge is over-rated. Someone said "the graveyards are full of indispensable men."

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#937
post #933
post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's intellectual dishonest to the extreme to say he's stupid. If you really can't see the evidence in front of your eyes, here's John Carmack: "Elon is definitely an engineer. He is deeply involved with technical decisions at spacex and Tesla. He doesn’t write code or do CAD today, but he is perfectly capable of doing so." Here's Kevin Watson, who developed the avionics for Falcon 9 and Dragon and previously managed…

I didn't meant to paint stupid as an absolute. He is smart too. Some of the smartest people I know are some of the stupidest people I know and vice versa -- its all relative. I think in this arena he's behaving stupidly. I mean hey I think he does in those other arena too but I'm not going to argue against technical people that have been in those rooms with him.

Sounds like you’re arguing that he has engineer’s disease, and that other people are falling prey to it in their perception of him. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Engineer%20S...

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#938
post #208

Let's say you run a company and you want to reduce staff. Let's also say you want to make an unpopular decision (or multiple unpopular decisions) that you know will drive a certain percentage of your staff to leave the company. Wouldn't it make the most sense to announce those decisions before making layoffs? Let people self select whether they want to stay and work for you and then make your layoffs after to ensure…

Great plan. Now you got rid of all the people with options and you've kept all the deadweight. Many companies do exactly this with voluntary redundancies!

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#939
post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>then start hiring as necessary with the kind of people you want. That assumes that people will still want to work for Twitter after all of this. Given that there is no shortage of jobs for engineers even after massive layoffs at Facebook/Meta and Twitter, many people are going to think twice about signing up to work for a company and owner that have a reputation for treating people as disposable trash. Employees are…

> That assumes that people will still want to work for Twitter after all of this. Just a data point, but Twitter is now much more interesting to me (as a place of work) than it was before. Which is to say, it went from zero interest to "maybe?" * Chaos provides opportunities to make real changes instead of being just a tiny cog doing what you're told. * Advancement is going to be faster in a fast-changing organizatio…

> I'm left-of-center, yet... I find political tribalism really fucking annoying. Musk could only improve Twitter in this regard.

I'm not so sure about this, anything he gets involved in only seems to get worse in this regard.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#940

So, he fires thousands of them while hob-knobbing with other billionaires on the other side of the country. And his first company-wide communication is rescinding previous WFH policies without much reason. What an absolute knob. Edit to add... He demanded a company-wide all-hands on one hours notice, then appeared 15 minute late. I hope every employee worth their salary walks, Twitter implodes, and Musk loses much of…

I think the notion of a CEO doing all the things their workers do purely out of solidarity to be shallow and condescending. Obviously his job is different from theirs and he is going to have a different set of rules. And I doubt any of them would want to put in the number of hours he puts in. He's clearly a workaholic.

You almost make it sound like we're back to aristocracy. He's the fucking CEO, not a Lord over his servants.
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