Folks, just to set expectations here, it’s gonna be like this for a couple years. He’s going to be nanomanaging the company and learning from scratch the entire business and doing wild shit until he figures it out. And it’s going to be chaos internally and leaks left and right and ten crazy stories like this a week. The signal to noise ratio is gonna be ridiculously low and everyone’s going to get whipped up in every direction. Personally, I recommend getting off Twitter (not because of Elon per se but because of the unhealthy existing design) and checking in next year around this time to see if it’s any better. Better than drive yourself crazy by mainlining Elon Twitter drama.
It is literally catastrophe-tourism at this point. You can’t just temporarily remove the people on a social media platform, it is dying and unless something happens very quickly, it is good as dead.
The most we can do is enjoy the comedic content while it lasts, I personally had a really great time reading these: r/RealTwitterAccounts
There's a number of subtle but vast pro-Elon takes subtly woven in, which I generally don't agree with.
But also, it loathes what I loath, which is that we're going to be hearing about this shit for a long long long long time, and the bias will be immensely one directionally negative. Which is almost certainly true. And, probably, for a long time, incredibly fantastically well deserved. But more so: this post questions the value of these proceedings. With that, I think there is truth... although it lends upon a pro-Fog-of-War notion, it leans upon apathy, which I think are weak responses, not good reasons for de-escallating one's popcorn munching tendencies.
I'd like to find a more general way to issue a call for moderation, or just a warning. The news is not bad, not slanted, but just attending to it regularly & dutifully makes us trapped in the cycle of news. There's drama here, a perpetual cliff hanger, and obvious damage & loss & redemption seems improbable (managing the world's most connected network is vastly more intricate & complicated than the much more directed & clear tasks of blasting shit into space). But most of this isn't really that important, doesn't really impact the long fate, even the dumb shit, and letting it take-over too much head-space is dangerous.
What I like about this post is that it talks about the long drama. This is going to be a semi-perpetual fixture of the news cycle. I disagree with a core point which is that the SnR will be low: I think a lot of the leaks & revelations & events will be very telling, very revealing.
But I'm not sure how significant or interesting or useful, as salacious & dirty as they are.
But there is enormous human resilience, & our ability to account for "will it matter" varies, and this is indeed a long game. This is the most inter-connected social network on the planet, by far. Short of real collapse or major fuckery, there's probably just not much that will in fact really change, for those on the network. For all the sound and thunder, storm and stress, it's enormously questionable whether there's any power here. The only noticable change most people can even imagine is ruin, is the end, and that's enormously telling, and also semi-unlikely. What has higher likeliness to change is what part of the vast capitalist system holds the reigns, who is "in charge," but this is a story of powerlessness. All this storm & stress is mostly, for the long forseeable, kind of pointless. This post, although pro-Elon, holds some hint of that perspective. How much attention we give, how readily we strap ourselves in for the ride, & bother with this long act of determining whether anything significant at all will happen, is the realest question. It's the ultimate social question. Does it matter?
After seeing Elon mixing up all async services that happen in backend with Android client making as many requests, I wonder if I thought this guy is smart because I know nothing about building cars or launching space rockets.
Edit: "guy is smart" probably should be "guy is technically competent". I am sure Elon is smart, I think he is being Phony while acting technically competent in every area.
I still believe that his insistence on only using computer vision for Tesla’s self driving was profoundly wrong. I got my ivy-league graduate degree in a related field right around the time when he probably was making the decision (2015) and it was obvious to everyone around me that we are not even close to having the kind of generic, reliable CV you would need for a car. Obviously, in grant proposals and papers we painted a much rosier picture, but on the inside everyone knew it’s just exaggerated, best-case scenarios that have little bearing on reality.
I don’t know, throwing a hissy-fit whenever something doesn’t work out as he intended (pedo-guy, everyday twitter posts that are later altered/removed, etc), coming up with “a tunnel, but with cars” that is a fire hazard and has the capacity of horse-pulled metros from the 19th century, having only a single contribution to teslas in the form of a.. door handle (did you honestly think he knows anything about cars and rockets?), and having a tendency of overhyping and underdelivering with all of his stocks being grossly huge bubbles, meanwhile those companies have considerable government funding, and literally forcing himself into buying a company way overpriced that has never turner a profit and driving it into the ground —- I’ve never gotten the impression that he would be what I consider smart. He definitely wants to sell that image, but he is just a narcissist manchild.
he doesn't need to be smart, if you are building something yourself, then you should be smart about that stuff, but if you are managing people to build, then it is enough if you can manage the execution well (including hiring, funding and everything else)
>I'm a Staff Software engineer and co-Tech Lead of the Core API Platform Team at Twitter helping build the next generation API with GraphQL and Scala. I currently serve on the GraphQL Governing Board as a representative of Twitter, as well as on the Technical Steering Committee for GraphQL.
Amazing stuff. I thought I knew how to risk my career just for the sake of comedy, this lass shows that she's varsity and I'm
not even cleaning the jv bench
>If he fires all the engineers with a bad attitude
Where I work it's in the contract that you don't talk shit about the company on social media. I think that's common sense too. I'm sure Elon is an irritating piece of shit, especially as a superior, but shit-flinging online like this is just not something I'd want in my company either.
I'm surprised at the number of people defending Elon here, how would you feel if your CEO literally shit on your work in public to millions of people and not only that was completely totally wrong about it.
Like I'm not surprised that they got fired because Elon behaves like a toddler but god damn if your response isn't to salute two people who got axed for speaking the truth then you have your priorities ass backwards.
Forums like this one are made up of a large number of temporarily embarrassed tech billionaires. It's no surprise that they think Musk's behavior is okay. They fantasize about doing the same to their own employees one day.
This is a web site originally set up by some of Elon's cronies for people to "pick me!" into jobs. It's hardly surprising that there's no shortage of bootlickers.
I would not equate suggesting that there is an absurdity about having the opinion that publicly shitting on your CEO (any CEO at any company) should not get you fired with defending Elon.
I dont know if it's true in this case. But I've worked at many places where things have gone wrong and nobody says anything about it. So it's nice to see things shaken up a bit.
Much of the controversy around this stems from the fact that he said the "app" is doing RPCs instead of the endpoints which it calls, that in turn assemble the instructions to render the timeline?
Seems like many are going out of the way to frame it as nonsense.
It's dubious that this only affects some countries. Is it likely that there are some extra pieces of logic for some parts of the world and not others? My guess is yes, although it seems unlikely that the impact would be so high.
As for this specific issue only affecting Android - that was never the claim. Instead he asked an entirely separate question about Android performance to this developer who replied to the tweet with the original claim.
Overall, aside from this specific incident - his attitude towards the way the company way being run is extremely hostile, and has naturally upset a lot of folks at the company who were happy with what they were doing.
Personally, my view would be that if this happens and it bothers someone a lot, the honorable thing to do is to quit or sit back and watch the company fall apart and own their bet that the new direction will be a disaster.
If one is not on board with the vision and direction of the company from new leadership, quit instead of getting in the way.
Actively sabotaging the company's new direction is not only immoral but also reflects a mean-spirited attitude towards one's fellow co-workers who don't share that view. I have seen tweets from current employees calling their fellow team members bootlickers, etc. which I find to be quite vile.
Seems like some folks are likening the whole thing to a Cardassian occupation.
I would love to hear from Twitter engineers who survived layoffs and aren't actively looking for other jobs right now. What is going on in your head? Are you okay with all the changes Musk is making? Did he fire the "right" people? Do you think you will have stable employment and a reasonable work environment for the next 1-3 years?
SpaceX is also now buying ads on Twitter, in something close to a direct cash transfer from the other minority investors in SpaceX to a business owned on leverage.
When SolarCity was on the verge of bankruptcy, owing SpaceX billions in credits, he arranged for Tesla to buy SolarCity and essentially bail out SpaceX. And yes of course Elon owned all 3 companies.
Both Tesla and SpaceX could put every dollar of their marketing budget into Twitter ads and that still wouldn't get it out of the $2B+/year hole it is in.
Looks like Elon tries to act like a chief architect of Twitter[1] even though he still seems to confuse that 1000 RPCs are serially sent[2] from the app[3]? Why don't we do a public technical design interview session for Elon to see if he is technically competent enough for architecting one of the most famous social network? :sigh:
IANAL but I follow some: fired and laid off employees may have a recourse beyond the WARN Act, state legislation regarding layoffs and even unlawful dismissal.
The contract Elon signed to acquire TWitter included promises on layoffs and the treatment of employees. This makes the employees what are called "third-party beneficiaries to the contract".
This is to say that in addition to legal restrictions on firings and layoffs these people can potentially sue under Elon's own acquisition contract.
I find it annoying that the greatest source of information regarding the ongoing implosion of Twitter seems to be Twitter itself. I'm eager to watch it die but I'm still unwilling to load their horrendously slow and visually offensive web interface.
I love how Elon is supposedly destroying Twitter because he is removing all those thousands of employee he supposedly needs to run it, and then the same people who say that supposedly are fleeing and so happy with the alternative Mastodon, developed for free by a tiny team of volunteers and ran by a few volunteers for free.
Which is it? Can you run Twitter or an alternative basically for free? Or do you need thousands of employees?
I think it is becoming pretty clear pretty quickly that the alternative being run and developed for free doesn’t scale to anywhere near Twitter size at all, that’s one thing that’s for sure.
I have a question. A person of such incompetence could have achieved such great success, how is that possible? In addition to being technically incompetent, he seems to be incompetent when it comes to managing people and running a business.
We all conflate success with merit and competence but in reality is much more complex than that. Having the means (cash) and insight or luck to make a bet at the right time gets you most of the way there. For the rest, you don't have to be that competent, just not completely incompetent.
Elons biggest virtue is his stubbornness on two very successful bets, those two finance and cover all of his other failures (and successes) and character flaws. For now, at least.
He's always been a shitty boss and terrible people manager. But where are you going to work if you want to be around the sexiest rockets ever made? Or even the new hotness all electric vehicle? At least for Tesla, the appeal is diminishing but the market for hardware engineers and embedded is much different than general software and there is plenty of dumb people who think is cool to work under him, he has infinite cannon fodder to burn.
His biggest mistake with twitter is to buy a company where revenue is tied to public relations and being a person who despises public relations with a passion. There is no product to sell and optimize, he didn't get a good idea that needs polishing and perfecting, he has to come up with one. That is much, much harder.
Does a person who invested 44B get away with minimal consequences if he brings the company down, files for bankruptcy? I am trying to understand the financial risks at play here.
Far from having consequences, chapter 11 bankruptcy is actually a very powerful and advantageous financial tool in cases like this. Elon can likely wipe away the $13B+ of debt, get rid of all employee stock obligations, and continue to run the company himself under the temporary observation of a bankruptcy court. Chapter 11 filings are a very common outcome of leveraged buyouts like this one.
[+] [-] wilg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paxys|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaba0|3 years ago|reply
The most we can do is enjoy the comedic content while it lasts, I personally had a really great time reading these: r/RealTwitterAccounts
[+] [-] rektide|3 years ago|reply
There's a number of subtle but vast pro-Elon takes subtly woven in, which I generally don't agree with.
But also, it loathes what I loath, which is that we're going to be hearing about this shit for a long long long long time, and the bias will be immensely one directionally negative. Which is almost certainly true. And, probably, for a long time, incredibly fantastically well deserved. But more so: this post questions the value of these proceedings. With that, I think there is truth... although it lends upon a pro-Fog-of-War notion, it leans upon apathy, which I think are weak responses, not good reasons for de-escallating one's popcorn munching tendencies.
I'd like to find a more general way to issue a call for moderation, or just a warning. The news is not bad, not slanted, but just attending to it regularly & dutifully makes us trapped in the cycle of news. There's drama here, a perpetual cliff hanger, and obvious damage & loss & redemption seems improbable (managing the world's most connected network is vastly more intricate & complicated than the much more directed & clear tasks of blasting shit into space). But most of this isn't really that important, doesn't really impact the long fate, even the dumb shit, and letting it take-over too much head-space is dangerous.
What I like about this post is that it talks about the long drama. This is going to be a semi-perpetual fixture of the news cycle. I disagree with a core point which is that the SnR will be low: I think a lot of the leaks & revelations & events will be very telling, very revealing.
But I'm not sure how significant or interesting or useful, as salacious & dirty as they are.
But there is enormous human resilience, & our ability to account for "will it matter" varies, and this is indeed a long game. This is the most inter-connected social network on the planet, by far. Short of real collapse or major fuckery, there's probably just not much that will in fact really change, for those on the network. For all the sound and thunder, storm and stress, it's enormously questionable whether there's any power here. The only noticable change most people can even imagine is ruin, is the end, and that's enormously telling, and also semi-unlikely. What has higher likeliness to change is what part of the vast capitalist system holds the reigns, who is "in charge," but this is a story of powerlessness. All this storm & stress is mostly, for the long forseeable, kind of pointless. This post, although pro-Elon, holds some hint of that perspective. How much attention we give, how readily we strap ourselves in for the ride, & bother with this long act of determining whether anything significant at all will happen, is the realest question. It's the ultimate social question. Does it matter?
[+] [-] jsnell|3 years ago|reply
So Musk then fired him with a Tweet: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592186302379982849
[+] [-] kumarm|3 years ago|reply
Edit: "guy is smart" probably should be "guy is technically competent". I am sure Elon is smart, I think he is being Phony while acting technically competent in every area.
[+] [-] voramok|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaba0|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] phphphphp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tuyguntn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fnordpiglet|3 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/sachee/status/1592308273071681536?s=46&t...
If he fires all the engineers with a bad attitude it’ll just be the product managers left.
[+] [-] neuronexmachina|3 years ago|reply
> you did not just layoff almost all of infra and then make some sassy remark about how we do batching
>like did you bother to even learn how graphql works
>you don’t get to shit on our infra if you don’t know what the fuck it does while you’re also scrambling to rehire folks you laid off
Her background: https://sashatsolomon.com/
>I'm a Staff Software engineer and co-Tech Lead of the Core API Platform Team at Twitter helping build the next generation API with GraphQL and Scala. I currently serve on the GraphQL Governing Board as a representative of Twitter, as well as on the Technical Steering Committee for GraphQL.
[+] [-] jimmywetnips|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] npteljes|3 years ago|reply
Where I work it's in the contract that you don't talk shit about the company on social media. I think that's common sense too. I'm sure Elon is an irritating piece of shit, especially as a superior, but shit-flinging online like this is just not something I'd want in my company either.
[+] [-] bottlepalm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sieabahlpark|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bergenty|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] amatwl|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spivak|3 years ago|reply
Like I'm not surprised that they got fired because Elon behaves like a toddler but god damn if your response isn't to salute two people who got axed for speaking the truth then you have your priorities ass backwards.
[+] [-] paxys|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rodgerd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kcplate|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] postalrat|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fareesh|3 years ago|reply
Seems like many are going out of the way to frame it as nonsense.
It's dubious that this only affects some countries. Is it likely that there are some extra pieces of logic for some parts of the world and not others? My guess is yes, although it seems unlikely that the impact would be so high.
As for this specific issue only affecting Android - that was never the claim. Instead he asked an entirely separate question about Android performance to this developer who replied to the tweet with the original claim.
Overall, aside from this specific incident - his attitude towards the way the company way being run is extremely hostile, and has naturally upset a lot of folks at the company who were happy with what they were doing.
Personally, my view would be that if this happens and it bothers someone a lot, the honorable thing to do is to quit or sit back and watch the company fall apart and own their bet that the new direction will be a disaster.
If one is not on board with the vision and direction of the company from new leadership, quit instead of getting in the way.
Actively sabotaging the company's new direction is not only immoral but also reflects a mean-spirited attitude towards one's fellow co-workers who don't share that view. I have seen tweets from current employees calling their fellow team members bootlickers, etc. which I find to be quite vile.
Seems like some folks are likening the whole thing to a Cardassian occupation.
[+] [-] paxys|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cma|3 years ago|reply
SpaceX is also now buying ads on Twitter, in something close to a direct cash transfer from the other minority investors in SpaceX to a business owned on leverage.
[+] [-] jmyeet|3 years ago|reply
When SolarCity was on the verge of bankruptcy, owing SpaceX billions in credits, he arranged for Tesla to buy SolarCity and essentially bail out SpaceX. And yes of course Elon owned all 3 companies.
[+] [-] paxys|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] summerlight|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592177471654604800 [2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592178814993383425 [3] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1591853644944932865
[+] [-] TulliusCicero|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lazylion2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmyeet|3 years ago|reply
The contract Elon signed to acquire TWitter included promises on layoffs and the treatment of employees. This makes the employees what are called "third-party beneficiaries to the contract".
This is to say that in addition to legal restrictions on firings and layoffs these people can potentially sue under Elon's own acquisition contract.
[+] [-] uncletammy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dshpala|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jgb1984|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tinus_hn|3 years ago|reply
Which is it? Can you run Twitter or an alternative basically for free? Or do you need thousands of employees?
I think it is becoming pretty clear pretty quickly that the alternative being run and developed for free doesn’t scale to anywhere near Twitter size at all, that’s one thing that’s for sure.
[+] [-] metadat|3 years ago|reply
Musk also fired Twitter Infrastructure Engineer Sachee today for “shitposting”
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33604292
[+] [-] joenathanone|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meibo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superchroma|3 years ago|reply
how much does it cost to run some microservices, what a tool
[+] [-] groffee|3 years ago|reply
It's like the Emperors new clothes, we're all trying to see some kind of genius that just isn't there.
[+] [-] trashface|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kuraj|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SunghoYahng|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guax|3 years ago|reply
Elons biggest virtue is his stubbornness on two very successful bets, those two finance and cover all of his other failures (and successes) and character flaws. For now, at least.
He's always been a shitty boss and terrible people manager. But where are you going to work if you want to be around the sexiest rockets ever made? Or even the new hotness all electric vehicle? At least for Tesla, the appeal is diminishing but the market for hardware engineers and embedded is much different than general software and there is plenty of dumb people who think is cool to work under him, he has infinite cannon fodder to burn.
His biggest mistake with twitter is to buy a company where revenue is tied to public relations and being a person who despises public relations with a passion. There is no product to sell and optimize, he didn't get a good idea that needs polishing and perfecting, he has to come up with one. That is much, much harder.
[+] [-] thr83away|3 years ago|reply
Elon is not entirely marketing dude but also not really technically skilled. He is on a different dimension.
[+] [-] orsenthil|3 years ago|reply
Does a person who invested 44B get away with minimal consequences if he brings the company down, files for bankruptcy? I am trying to understand the financial risks at play here.
[+] [-] paxys|3 years ago|reply