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Elon has a fascinating ability to make people look at things from his point of view. Suppose the story was something like “Jeff Bezos acquires company, immedia

Elon has a fascinating ability to make people look at things from his point of view. Suppose the story was something like “Jeff Bezos acquires company, immediately slashes workforce, maneuvers to avoid paying severance, reportedly forces engineers to work nights and weekends under threat of dismissal (and probably will lay them off anyway).” The tech community would be pretty united in saying the engineers would have to take care of themselves first in this situation. But when it comes to Musk, the community is more amenable to looking at it from a business perspective. I have seen a sentiment of “tough shit, if you don’t like it then quit, he has no obligation to you.” There are many who call the engineers entitled or otherwise resent them for pursuing a strategy of “weather the storm until assured of some kind of severance and then immediately quit.” Hackers are a community that rail against upper management for being out of touch and implementing stupid processes, but when it comes to Musk allegedly telling engineers to print their code on paper, some say “well that’s not too much effort, plus you’re being paid to do what management asks, so don’t whine about it.”

jmeister 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference... Hackers may have even more contempt for the slackers and sanctimonious activists currently at Twitter. This is just like the far-left and the far-right aligning with Russia, because they loathe their immediate opposition so much.
- kweingar 4y ago
  Ahh, this makes sense to me. I have been accused of looking at this entirely through the lens of hating Musk, but I imagine that many are looking at this entirely through the lens of hating Twitter. Pretty short-sighted imo. My opinion about new leadership forcing engineers to work nights and weekends is entirely unaffected by the company’s former PR strategy for handling culture war issues.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    > through the lens of hating Musk, but I imagine that many are looking at this entirely through the lens of hating Twitter. The "internet of beefs" is very real. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/ (not a Rao supporter, but this essay is so spot on at describing the phenomenon)
matthewdgreen 4y ago
I think most people in the community recognize that Musk is a pretty abusive boss, and everyone really good is leaving the company. There are a few people who can't protect themselves from a predator, and those people will get relentlessly predated upon until they learn their lesson. It may well be fine: even Truth Social (mostly) works, and nobody thinks they're hiring the best engineers in the world. I mean as long as nobody tries to hack or exploit Twitter, in which case things are gonna go very badly. Particularly since the people he's firing probably have root on a lot of boxes.
- illuminerdy 4y ago
  > "...and everyone really good is leaving the company." Then all of those people should have absolutely no problem finding another job. As for Musk and Twitter, it's been such a cesspool and a biased bubble of groupthink that I think many outsiders (i.e. your average user) is willing to give Musk a chance at doing what he thinks needs to be done.
- Psyonic 4y ago
  You really think Tesla and SpaceX have accomplished as much as they have with no one good at the company? Why is Twitter different?
  - deltarholamda 4y ago
    Yeah, that was a really weird post. Labelling Musk "abusive" and characterizing him as a "predator," and then a veiled threat about possible hacking from all of the people who have root on the boxes.
    - matthewdgreen 4y ago
      For something to be a threat I would have to be at Twitter, which I'm not. It's not a threat: I think it's a risk. You announce you're going to fire 75% of a company on day one, you haven't taken steps to secure the infrastructure before spreading chaos, that's a huge gamble. I'm sure the folks at Twitter are all ethical enough that nothing bad will happen, but doing this this way is sure playing with fire. Telling people to "ship a feature in a week or you're fired" is abusive as hell. And this isn't some clever three-dimensional gambit to get people to quit: Musk has done this elsewhere as well. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-reportedly-terrified-tesla-staff-with-his-firing-sprees-2018-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-reportedly-terrifi...
tablespoon 4y ago
> Elon has a fascinating ability to make people look at things from his point of view. Honestly, he seems to have a very effective propaganda (i.e. "public relations") effort behind him. With unusual frequency, I'll see someone regurgitate some propagandistic talking point without any hint of irony (e.g. answering criticism of him with "Musk is literally saving humanity, what have you done?"). I don't know how much of that is from effort (e.g. astroturf) or just hitting the right nerve and getting people to work for him for free (e.g. very online nerds who believe in sci-fi, so put their faith in Musk personally because he constantly claims he'll make some their sci-fi dreams come true).
- parineum 4y ago
  I feel like I'm often accused of being that person but it's not just with him, it's usually with any divisive person. I greatly dislike the habit of people try and dismiss everything a person has done because they have done one or several things that they are against so I'm often seen "defending" controversial figures. I don't have any particular love for Musk nor would I want to work for any of his companies but it's incredibly frustrating to me to see people pretend like taking EVs mainstream and re-usable rockets aren't an incredible feats that he's played a large part in accomplishing (even if it's just by funding, for the people who say "he didn't do any of that work!"). And he's objectively a good businessman, given that the metric for business is money. Some communities are incapable of espousing anything positive about people that they've deemed the enemy.
throwayyy479087 4y ago
I absolutely despise Twitter and their mods, so seeing layoffs is lovely schadenfreude. You cannot remove a sitting President when you’re functionally the town square. We now know COVID almost certainly was a lab leak. You don’t get to enforce your views on the world forever - this is gravity pulling down the bubble.
nebula8804 4y ago
I've always thought that those people are the ones who must have made out like bandits when TSLA was in the upswing. There used to be stories about TSLA millionaires. Those people still exist somewhere. I assume many are thinking Musk can do no wrong given he changed their lives.
flashgordon 4y ago
This kind of reminds me of the same attitude engineers (I can't speak for other cohorts) had about Apples appstore rules. It is a private entity. It is apple. Apples cares about it's users. Use something else. Yada yada yada. Now the same engineers complain about how unfair and monopolistic it is. Different horses for different courses!

jmeister 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference... Hackers may have even more contempt for the slackers and sanctimonious activists currently at Twitter. This is just like the far-left and the far-right aligning with Russia, because they loathe their immediate opposition so much.

kweingar 4y ago
Ahh, this makes sense to me. I have been accused of looking at this entirely through the lens of hating Musk, but I imagine that many are looking at this entirely through the lens of hating Twitter. Pretty short-sighted imo. My opinion about new leadership forcing engineers to work nights and weekends is entirely unaffected by the company’s former PR strategy for handling culture war issues.
- pjc50 4y ago
  > through the lens of hating Musk, but I imagine that many are looking at this entirely through the lens of hating Twitter. The "internet of beefs" is very real. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/ (not a Rao supporter, but this essay is so spot on at describing the phenomenon)

matthewdgreen 4y ago

I think most people in the community recognize that Musk is a pretty abusive boss, and everyone really good is leaving the company. There are a few people who can't protect themselves from a predator, and those people will get relentlessly predated upon until they learn their lesson. It may well be fine: even Truth Social (mostly) works, and nobody thinks they're hiring the best engineers in the world. I mean as long as nobody tries to hack or exploit Twitter, in which case things are gonna go very badly. Particularly since the people he's firing probably have root on a lot of boxes.

illuminerdy 4y ago
> "...and everyone really good is leaving the company." Then all of those people should have absolutely no problem finding another job. As for Musk and Twitter, it's been such a cesspool and a biased bubble of groupthink that I think many outsiders (i.e. your average user) is willing to give Musk a chance at doing what he thinks needs to be done.
Psyonic 4y ago
You really think Tesla and SpaceX have accomplished as much as they have with no one good at the company? Why is Twitter different?
- deltarholamda 4y ago
  Yeah, that was a really weird post. Labelling Musk "abusive" and characterizing him as a "predator," and then a veiled threat about possible hacking from all of the people who have root on the boxes.
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    For something to be a threat I would have to be at Twitter, which I'm not. It's not a threat: I think it's a risk. You announce you're going to fire 75% of a company on day one, you haven't taken steps to secure the infrastructure before spreading chaos, that's a huge gamble. I'm sure the folks at Twitter are all ethical enough that nothing bad will happen, but doing this this way is sure playing with fire. Telling people to "ship a feature in a week or you're fired" is abusive as hell. And this isn't some clever three-dimensional gambit to get people to quit: Musk has done this elsewhere as well. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-reportedly-terrified-tesla-staff-with-his-firing-sprees-2018-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-reportedly-terrifi...

tablespoon 4y ago

> Elon has a fascinating ability to make people look at things from his point of view. Honestly, he seems to have a very effective propaganda (i.e. "public relations") effort behind him. With unusual frequency, I'll see someone regurgitate some propagandistic talking point without any hint of irony (e.g. answering criticism of him with "Musk is literally saving humanity, what have you done?"). I don't know how much of that is from effort (e.g. astroturf) or just hitting the right nerve and getting people to work for him for free (e.g. very online nerds who believe in sci-fi, so put their faith in Musk personally because he constantly claims he'll make some their sci-fi dreams come true).

parineum 4y ago
I feel like I'm often accused of being that person but it's not just with him, it's usually with any divisive person. I greatly dislike the habit of people try and dismiss everything a person has done because they have done one or several things that they are against so I'm often seen "defending" controversial figures. I don't have any particular love for Musk nor would I want to work for any of his companies but it's incredibly frustrating to me to see people pretend like taking EVs mainstream and re-usable rockets aren't an incredible feats that he's played a large part in accomplishing (even if it's just by funding, for the people who say "he didn't do any of that work!"). And he's objectively a good businessman, given that the metric for business is money. Some communities are incapable of espousing anything positive about people that they've deemed the enemy.

throwayyy479087 4y ago

I absolutely despise Twitter and their mods, so seeing layoffs is lovely schadenfreude. You cannot remove a sitting President when you’re functionally the town square. We now know COVID almost certainly was a lab leak. You don’t get to enforce your views on the world forever - this is gravity pulling down the bubble.

nebula8804 4y ago

I've always thought that those people are the ones who must have made out like bandits when TSLA was in the upswing. There used to be stories about TSLA millionaires. Those people still exist somewhere. I assume many are thinking Musk can do no wrong given he changed their lives.

flashgordon 4y ago

This kind of reminds me of the same attitude engineers (I can't speak for other cohorts) had about Apples appstore rules. It is a private entity. It is apple. Apples cares about it's users. Use something else. Yada yada yada. Now the same engineers complain about how unfair and monopolistic it is. Different horses for different courses!