In my opinion Elon miscalculated the type of people at Twitter. These aren’t people like the ones in Tesla or SpaceX where there is some sort of idealization of Elon. The number of fan boys he has at Twitter must be super low. None of the Twitter employees signed up to work for him, it’s pretty obvious from the public tweets that most of the staff has posted that they don’t have much respect for him. On top of that, as others have mentioned, Twitter as a product doesn’t comprare to SpaceX and Tesla and just saying “we’re gonna build Twitter 2.0 the bestest thing ever!” Isn’t particularly motivating enough to give up your work-life balance. Elon came in to a place that already has a culture established… and the people that are there that know how much they’re worth don’t really feel the need to put up with his bullying “my way or the high way”. Props to the people at Twitter for sticking to their beliefs. I think Elon also miscalculated the importance of work from home. I assume a lot of the engineers have the “millennial” mentality of “I work not live, I don’t live to work”.
There's also no clarity on what the upside is "stock like spacex and tesla"... rockets are Long on investing and the future. Twitter isn't even close to on that time horizon. If I was asked to stay to build 2.0 I'd want to know what the plan was and how my equity compensation was going to work in real terms. Especially since months prior I would get equity and could sell it in immediate compensation and now I'm back to an early stage startup.
Even more materially, many of those employees are likely spending over their base on their lifestyle and investments. So say they were making $300k all told and they're now down to $150k base, If they were spending even near the base they've just massively changed their income trajectory even to the point of obvious insolvency. Eg "I can't afford this house anymore". I've talked to some people that are smart on investing and I've talked to others who say they're spending 67% post tax on their "lifestyle" of total comp which is insane to me. Stock moves any which way and you are eating into savings which likely also just dropped.
Anyone in that situation would be out like the rats.
An other component is that if you're working on rockets or EVs you might consider that rewarding in and of itself, and accept lower comp or worse conditions.
Twitter? I'm sure twitter employees were proud of their work and doing things they believed meaningful, but not "halve your effective comp', in a company with all the joy of an abattoir, for a narcissistic egomaniac.
And if you're a rocket engineer, the field is way smaller. That means less competitors, but also less places to work at.
I would guess, though I don't know for sure, that having your hero buy your company and then fire a bunch of your friends and valued colleagues seemingly arbitrarily, including entire teams that exist for actual reasons, probably would dampen your opinion of him somewhat.
Like, I like Steve Jobs, he could be a dick sometimes but I think he had the right idea and the right vision overall, but if he came in and bought my employer and then just started firing whole teams and fucking up the product while taking away perks and demanding more work, I would have soured on him pretty fast.
The people who worked on SpaceX and Tesla were probably incredibly ideologically aligned with Elon genuinely believing they were changing the world for the better. Its really easy to pitch someone to work long hours when you are making one of the worlds first mass market electric car and honest to god rocket ships.
Meanwhile we are a years into total disenfranchisement with entire concept of social media. The sell just isn't there like his earlier ventures.
Not just that. Elon forgot the basic rule of modern management "Treat your workers with respect". Moreover, Engineers are knowledge workers and need to treated with respect.
What's most amusing to me is Elon takes the advice from Youtubers & Influenceers but won't listen to his own engineers.
He's a techno-feudalist. The lord doesn't need to explain to his serfs why his demands are required.
Elon's previous companies are populated by true believers (albeit because of a shared vision ie: colonizing Mars) who behave more like serfs when pushed. With Twitter, it's like Elon started governing a democracy and didn't realize that almost everyone (except H1B holders) can just leave and do something else.
No such vision exists. “Twitter 2.0” is still vaguely about free speech, somehow making lots of money from verified users, and also WeChat-of-the-West style payments (as if anyone would trust their money to this company).
And the thing is, if you're increasing the hours I need to work by 1.5 or 2x -- then you better increase my pay. Otherwise, saying you're reducing bloat seems like a lie. If you're reducing bloat then I expect my hours to stay flat -- or heck maybe even go down by reducing internal comms. I'd expect more vacation time and shorter hours!
yeah if there's no roadmap or direction then what are they doing differently than before? heh just spending the extra 40hrs twiddling their thumbs in the office in the middle of the night? like what exactly does Musk plan to do with that extra effort? I've said it before, Twitter is a cancer and no one is immune. It certainly got a hold of Musk, I hope it's not his downfall but it's not out of the realm of possibility.
Working for one of Elon Musk's companies sounds brutal, but I can understand the appeal of burning hot and bright on something truly innovative. I would feel proud and motivated to work like crazy on something like Starship, but this is Twitter. I suspect Musk's strategy of appealing to people who want to change the world and be on the bleeding edge of technology won't hold up the same way as it did for his other companies.
He wanted to add payments and digital identity and whatnot to the mobile app. Maybe cool if adoption is universal for some reason. Not exactly revolutionizing energy and transportation or colonizing Mars.
Seeing Elon flail about so publicly like this is just hilarious to me.
I feel like we're way off track right now from his original purpose of buying twitter (more free speech or something??? then it was bots then 8$ checkmarks and I can't even keep up anymore)
This is what happens when you habitually work hundred plus hour weeks and perhaps get only five hours sleep a night. There's little to no method to his madness at this point.
I've been eating sooo much popcorn, watching this. No, I am not at all happy for the people directly affected by this, or even for my own enjoyment of the platform, but because seeing what Musk is doing to himself is such a spectacle.
Those are all fairly related. If you want real free opinions, armies of bots running amok trying to create narratives is bad. And advertisers tend not to like some real opinions(and get weaponized fairly frequently when people see some opinions) so you need to reduce your reliance on them as well. Not that I think that a real free opinion forum would be very interesting, we already have 4chan.
At this point, I'm kinda wondering if Musk's deal to finance the Twitter acquisition included some Brewster's Millions-style clause where he gets to keep the company and the $44B if the company goes bankrupt within 90 days.
It would be interesting to know what portion of Twitter employees are on work visas and can’t easily take the offer to quit.
I’d guess an international company like Twitter had several hundred people on H-1B, L1 and similar visas. After these voluntary layoffs it seems like there might be 2,000 employees left, so at least 10% of them would be on work visas by this napkin math.
Apparently Hacker news have some kind of anti-flamewar protection that automatically downwheighs threads with a lot of activity. I don't know how it works or if it's true, but I've seen high activity posts drop like a stone in their rating and quickly go from front page to several pages down.
I had the same thought, but as noahtallen pointed out there's been two on the front page in the last 24 hours, including one with over a thousand points.
I'd be interested to hear dang explain how the ranking mechanics are at work in these posts, but I hunch it may simply be because there's not actually much there to engage community interest for very long. The downspiral has been very rapid but it's essentially just been one headline after another. There's only so much speculation to be made about how and why this is happening and only so many jokes to crack about it. And if the discussions are mostly cruft I wouldn't be surprised if they're being downranked.
I look forward to seeing some in depth post-mortems and discussions about them here when the dust has settled, but for now it feels more like we're standing around a bonfire and nodding at one another.
worst part of this whole thing is how musk's attitude of how work should be done contributes to toxic work culture. rhetoric like "mission driven work", "long hours are the only way to change the world and get ahead", and "my way or the highway" as a successful businessman preys on people's (especially young people's) desire for social status, meaningful work, and money while in reality just enables overwork, underpay, shitty bosses, and every other aspect for a bad workplace
I don't know if you can compare SpaceX or Tesla to running a CRUD app. Engineering rockets is probably 100x harder than building twitter, but there is something very reassuring when all of the complexity of your product is embodied in a physical object you can touch and see, compared to an information context where you don't even know how many layers of abstractions you are working with.
Putting aside how this was handled, Elon is looking at a business which is losing money and doesn't have a clear path to make money, and acting accordingly.
His priority is not to preserve the business - the business is broken as defined by cash flows.
Can it be more 'broken'? Sure. Elon is taking that risk in exchange for increasing the probability (in his opinion) of reinventing Twitter as a sustainable business. That is a risk that each Twitter employee needs to decide if makes sense for their situation.
So this unfortunate in many regards, but I don't think the core of this is materially different in scope than the type of situations which could develop at just about any one of our employer's (albeit it at a much larger scale than most).
I noticed yesterday on one website that was quoting a tweet that it looked all funny, like the service that places a tweet on another site wasn't working.
I've always wanted to work for Musk, but never felt like I was skilled enough to work on spaceships or cars... But Twitter? I am thinking about applying, so go ahead and quit.
[+] [-] rem7|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grogenaut|3 years ago|reply
Even more materially, many of those employees are likely spending over their base on their lifestyle and investments. So say they were making $300k all told and they're now down to $150k base, If they were spending even near the base they've just massively changed their income trajectory even to the point of obvious insolvency. Eg "I can't afford this house anymore". I've talked to some people that are smart on investing and I've talked to others who say they're spending 67% post tax on their "lifestyle" of total comp which is insane to me. Stock moves any which way and you are eating into savings which likely also just dropped.
Anyone in that situation would be out like the rats.
[+] [-] m_ke|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masklinn|3 years ago|reply
Twitter? I'm sure twitter employees were proud of their work and doing things they believed meaningful, but not "halve your effective comp', in a company with all the joy of an abattoir, for a narcissistic egomaniac.
And if you're a rocket engineer, the field is way smaller. That means less competitors, but also less places to work at.
Software?
[+] [-] danudey|3 years ago|reply
Like, I like Steve Jobs, he could be a dick sometimes but I think he had the right idea and the right vision overall, but if he came in and bought my employer and then just started firing whole teams and fucking up the product while taking away perks and demanding more work, I would have soured on him pretty fast.
[+] [-] impalallama|3 years ago|reply
Meanwhile we are a years into total disenfranchisement with entire concept of social media. The sell just isn't there like his earlier ventures.
[+] [-] rajeshp1986|3 years ago|reply
What's most amusing to me is Elon takes the advice from Youtubers & Influenceers but won't listen to his own engineers.
[+] [-] KVFinn|3 years ago|reply
"Stay at Twitter because we're moving to 80 hour work weeks and cancelling Christmas" can't be the argument by itself, right?
It's got to be something like "Stay at Twitter because we're building exciting new project X, but we'll need 80 hour work weeks to pull this off..."
[+] [-] boc|3 years ago|reply
Elon's previous companies are populated by true believers (albeit because of a shared vision ie: colonizing Mars) who behave more like serfs when pushed. With Twitter, it's like Elon started governing a democracy and didn't realize that almost everyone (except H1B holders) can just leave and do something else.
[+] [-] pavlov|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kenjackson|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SkyMarshal|3 years ago|reply
Not only that, but "... and they'll receive larger compensation and/or share of the company."
[+] [-] chasd00|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BitwiseFool|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raisedbyninjas|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Moctogo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coolbreezetft22|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sschueller|3 years ago|reply
Edit: actually less vindicated but more happy that I don't have to hear from people how great Elon is any more.
[+] [-] tjpnz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] themadturk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thatguy0900|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giaour|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavlov|3 years ago|reply
I’d guess an international company like Twitter had several hundred people on H-1B, L1 and similar visas. After these voluntary layoffs it seems like there might be 2,000 employees left, so at least 10% of them would be on work visas by this napkin math.
[+] [-] UncleOxidant|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sorenjan|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mustacheemperor|3 years ago|reply
I'd be interested to hear dang explain how the ranking mechanics are at work in these posts, but I hunch it may simply be because there's not actually much there to engage community interest for very long. The downspiral has been very rapid but it's essentially just been one headline after another. There's only so much speculation to be made about how and why this is happening and only so many jokes to crack about it. And if the discussions are mostly cruft I wouldn't be surprised if they're being downranked.
I look forward to seeing some in depth post-mortems and discussions about them here when the dust has settled, but for now it feels more like we're standing around a bonfire and nodding at one another.
[+] [-] snvzz|3 years ago|reply
Another way to look at it is: Too many are making it.
[+] [-] humanistbot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ifyoubuildit|3 years ago|reply
It's mostly schadenfreude and naysaying. Which may even be justified, but it kinda makes for dull reading after a short while.
[+] [-] kidme5|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ausbah|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] porknubbins|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluepoint|3 years ago|reply
Doesn’t look good.
[+] [-] memish|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnTHaller|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thatguy0900|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grogenaut|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0x5345414e|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deeblering4|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gz5|3 years ago|reply
His priority is not to preserve the business - the business is broken as defined by cash flows.
Can it be more 'broken'? Sure. Elon is taking that risk in exchange for increasing the probability (in his opinion) of reinventing Twitter as a sustainable business. That is a risk that each Twitter employee needs to decide if makes sense for their situation.
So this unfortunate in many regards, but I don't think the core of this is materially different in scope than the type of situations which could develop at just about any one of our employer's (albeit it at a much larger scale than most).
[+] [-] WeylandYutani|3 years ago|reply
No wonder everyone gets burned out and is desperate to retire at 40.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] coding123|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DeathArrow|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burkaman|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dboreham|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] elunmask|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GenerocUsername|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhacker|3 years ago|reply
https://www.newsweek.com/tantrum-twitter-reveals-how-privile...
We're pretty damn spoiled.