7 ms·

Elon Musk publicly feuding with and firing his developers on Twitter

44 points by MonkeyMalarky 4y ago

sho_hn 4y ago
How unsavory. Rather glad speaking "truth to power" is a generally respected move at my current employer, and tussles like this - if they even happen - don't result in firings.
- david927 4y ago
  Twitter, from day one, has been poorly architected. Defending that is pretty stupid and then to do it publicly is, well, kind of asking for it.
  - sho_hn 4y ago
    I'm coming at this from a different angle. It should be possible to have a heated disagreement, even in public, and not have it result in a same-day firing. In fact, some countries have it explicitly on the law books. All this does is create an environment where people are afraid to voice opinions and address issues, e.g. because they're afraid of shoot-the-messenger. In my line of work (I make cars), dysfunctional discourse environments like that can get people killed.
    - david927 4y ago
      Sure, and I'm a big proponent of labor. Musk is certainly not. That said, Twitter's architecture is a Rube Goldberg contraption and Musk is clearly on a warpath to fix it, so to come out publicly and yell, "It's fine," is kind of crazy. It's not fine and you're saying you're not interested in fixing it.
      - sho_hn 4y ago
        Looking at the exchange, he did confirm that it's slow on Android/iOS. He claimed it's for other reasons and gave examples. He might be wrong (I haven't looked at Twitter's architecture, commentary on the technical content of the exchange would be interesting), but I wouldn't say he said "It's fine".
        david927 4y ago
        He said it's "net spend" and that's another way of saying, "It's fine." It's the equivalent of admitting the engine is running hot, but saying, it's not a problem with the engine, it just needs lots of oil." Frankly, I think the developer is embarrassed. There's no reason for it to be as slow as it is, other than he and the other engineers simply don't know what they're doing. I think Musk is calling it out because he wants to see who wants to fix it and who wants to defend it.
        sho_hn 4y ago
        I think you misread "Ad spend" as "net spend" in his tweet (I can't locate any using the phrase "net spend"). He mentioned that performance work correlates well with "UAM and Ad spend", which to me reads as "it's worth working more on this problem" and is indicating the willingness you're looking for. From what I can see, he offered an opinion that the number of client requests (he gives a number of 20) and the number of internal RPCs (he gives 200) is not the primary reason the app is slow. I can't tell you whether he's right or wrong.
        david927 4y ago
        Thanks for the correction. You're right, and I can't tell you either, so I shouldn't really argue.
        sho_hn 4y ago
        FWIW, if he actually had written "just throw more money at it to make it go faster", I would understand your more negative opinion. :-)
        david927 4y ago
        I mean how does he know it's not "thousands of RPC calls" -- he spent six years and never got it to perform, so he doesn't know. "You're wrong!" ? Based on what? If I worked for six years on something and it still didn't work and someone came in and said it's "x", I would say, "I'm excited to see that data because I really want to fix this." I think I'm more upset at his attitude than anything. In all honesty, I think what he meant was "I spent six years and failed to fix something that is fixable, and then outside consultants came in a clearly found clear problems in a couple weeks, and now I'm humiliated," but he has too big of an ego for that.
    - viig99 4y ago
      Clearly these engineers have never done customer feedback for developing nations, twitter interactions clearly provide evidence for what musk said, but some engineers seem to be in denial, imho the firing is cause worthy.
      - sho_hn 4y ago
        I think that's misreading the exchange. He was challenging Musk on the fact that "1000 RPC calls" isn't what's happening and isn't the reason for the slowdown in his opinion, but did not deny that there are performance issues - and even cited other reasons it's slow. I don't see the denial you see.
        viig99 4y ago
        Said engineer, said 1000 RPC calls are not the issue, and when questioned further on proving a tracepath / perf result casually exited the conversation, to me it looks like they are not ready to do better or listen to valid criticism, leading conversations on semantics is just creating noise instead of acting on signals. Also 1000 RPC's are a very valid performance bottleneck, 1000 * latency caused by serde+ network can compounds easily based on data locality + container network orchestration, no data was provided otherwise even when asked for.
        fragmede 4y ago
        Except that you can open the dev console in a browser and load Twitter.com yourself and you won't find 1000's of XHR requests.
        sho_hn 4y ago
        That's client-side requests. Musk was talking about internal RPC calls to microservices needed to ultimately respond to the client-side requests. If the internal arch is heavy on microservices and you're putting together, say, 50 tweets you're at 1000 RPC calls with just 20 per tweet. It's not inconceivable. The developer puts the real number at 200.
    - FormerBandmate 4y ago
      Good thing Musk isn't in charge of a car company
  - Comevius 4y ago
    Many software are like that, especially those that have been around for some time. You don't see the CEO of Microsoft spewing nonsense about Windows publicly, and then punching down on an employee for correcting him. There is no need for the circus. Technical debt is a fact of business, it can be dealt with professionally. It's not a reason to treat people badly.
    - david927 4y ago
      The developer, Eric, is in the wrong here. The product is especially bad. The new CEO is trying to reform it. Eric is saying "spend more," which is the refuge of bad architecture. That's not the answer. And instead of privately working together to review it, he's publicly arguing. I wouldn't accept that either.
      - Comevius 4y ago
        He called Musk's public statement out, because it was wrong. Twitter shouldn't be the place for this, but it's on Musk for creating such unprofessional atmosphere in the first place. Imagine the same thing with Microsoft. We all know Windows is held together with scotch tape, not to mention that 7 years after Windows 10 they still haven't quite manage to unify the old and the new interfaces, not that Windows 11's new interfaces are any good. What a mess. Except it's not, it's business as usual. Big software projects are messy and hard to manage, but these issues are unimportant when you get the bigger picture right. For Windows the bigger picture is that it runs all your application. This is what makes Windows a good product, the rest is details and can be fixed over time. Preferably in a professional manner.
      - fzeroracer 4y ago
        How is Musk trying to 'reform' it when since he's owned it Twitter has had worse performance than ever, degraded features due to his bull-headed decisions and is literally burning money because he's chasing advertisers? And the only one that started a public argument was Musk by making an incorrect claim and defacto blaming the engineers for something he clearly doesn't understand. He's trying to pull another Paypal and it's blowing up in his face now like it did then.
  - salad-fan 4y ago
    Eric didn’t defend the entire architecture though. Space Karen made a specific claim (“>1000 RPCs to render the time line”) and Eric refuted just that one claim.
    - david927 4y ago
      Eric essentially said, "That's not why the engine is running hot, it just needs lots of oil." That's a stupid response.
      - salad-fan 4y ago
        No he didn’t. Eric essentially said “the clients don’t make >1000 RPCs to build the time line”, a direct refutation of Space Karen’s original assertion.
        david927 4y ago
        Yes, but he went on to say that it is truly slow and that it needs more spend, which is another way of saying, "You're wrong! It's not that! ... but I have no idea what it is," which isn't a very good response.
        salad-fan 4y ago
        That’s a pretty uncharitable interpretation. I read it as “You’re wrong” (which is correct - Space Karen was wrong in his claim about why things were slow) “and we should figure out why, which will take time & effort (i.e. investment).”
        david927 4y ago
        You could be right. But how do you know the consultants Musk hired are wrong? How does Eric know? Maybe there was a situation found where that did, in fact, happen. Certainly with a large number of microservices, it could happen. Maybe Musk is saying "edge case" and Eric is saying "on average." Personally I feel outside consultants could have very well found problems that the internal team did not see. What everyone agrees on is that Twitter's architecture is deeply broken. Eric's been there six years, so he's probably at least a little culpable in that. If I'm Eric, and was part of a team that fucked up that badly for six years, I certainly wouldn't argue back with that much confidence.
faefox 4y ago
Good for Eric. What kind of CEO trashes his own employees (and the product which he now owns) in public like this? It's a good thing Musk wants to reduce headcount because it's hard to imagine anyone taking an offer from Twitter at this point.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  If there's anything about Musk's leadership style I find the most... confusing? it's that he doesn't seem to like to be challenged. I would consider the people most willing to productively call me out are my most valuable assets.
  - Zigurd 4y ago
    This is a very interesting aspect of the very visible way that Musk has taken over Twitter. For example, not knowing his style, one would assume that decisions like making full self-driving use only camera sensors was discussed in depth and contrary points of view were carefully considered. That might have happened. But based on what we all now see, it also might not have happened at all. The same goes for Starship. Is it a breakthrough innovation? Or is it an idiosyncratic founder's Spruce Goose?
    - FormerBandmate 4y ago
      Tesla's board has had well-known independence issues for a while. Musk's insanity while running Twitter adds credibility to Musk's detractors at Tesla tho, which is probably why Tesla's been plunging lately
- minimaxir 4y ago
  > because it's hard to imagine anyone taking an offer from Twitter at this point That's what increased compensation is for. Except in this case, Elon has both pushed for cutting costs (negating the ability to pay increased compensation) and also pushed for a much worse work-life balance to the point that increased compensation may still result in worse $/hr than another tech job.
Comevius 4y ago
Eric Frohnhoefer may not have a job at Twitter anymore, but him fact checking dear leader constantly spewing nonsense about things he doesn't understand was a sweet moment.
- memish 4y ago
  Elon was talking about internal RPCs. Eric was talking about client side requests, as though that was a dunk. Eric was both wrong and attempted to insult his boss in public at the same time.
  - Comevius 4y ago
    Take into account that between the two of them Eric is the expert. It was Musk who failed to keep things professional. His first post was literally humiliating his own employees for writing bad code. It's his own company, he may not have been around, but it's his people now. Even if Twitter's Android client is not the best, playing the blame game is callous and petty. There is no point to trying to show that you are better than your employees either. It's the opposite of what a functional CEO should do.
    - memish 4y ago
      "I was told ~1200 RPCs independently by several engineers at Twitter, which matches # of microservices. The ex-employee is wrong. Same app in US takes ~2 secs to refresh (too long), but ~20 secs in India, due to bad batching/verbose comms. Actually useful data transferred is low." https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592176202873085952 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592176202873085952
      - Comevius 4y ago
        There is no way to tell if this is right or wrong, we are not engineers at Twitter, and I suspect that no engineer there would dare to correct him. I'm pretty sure Twitter has an API gateway of some sort, it doesn't make sense that it's a batching issue. But it doesn't matter who is right or wrong. The unprofessional atmosphere, the callousness, the one-upmanship is the problem. He is the CEO for God's sake. This is a PR nightmare. I know that it worked for Trump, but it isn't working even for him anymore.
seydor 4y ago
At this point he's trying too hard to maintain interest. And good for that employee to earn a good and public severance package.
- joegahona 4y ago
  Are we sure he'll get severance?
  - dymk 4y ago
    HR is going to do their best to make sure he absolutely does not get any severance
legitster 4y ago
Elon apologizes for the poorly written app and argues that it needs to be completely rewritten. A developer unnecessarily jumps in front of the bullet to take the blame and say that Elon is wrong. It is poorly written in a different and vague set of ways. And the only solution is a complete rewrite: https://twitter.com/EricFrohnhoefer/status/1591968463849152513 https://twitter.com/EricFrohnhoefer/status/15919684638491525... Not defending Musk here, but this is a learning moment in managing up - it doesn't matter where you work, you probably shouldn't be publicly ridiculing your boss, especially for being technically incorrect. Especially when that boss was trying to hand you a blank check to give you what you want.
prirun 4y ago
So much for Musk's grand vision of a town square for everyone to be heard. He can't even handle 1 "maybe-critical" remark without firing the guy. Sheesh.
- memish 4y ago
  Who isn't being heard? Did he silence the tweets?
  - fzeroracer 4y ago
    I believe Elon did what people would call a textbook cancelling. That is, he harassed them over Twitter and then caused them to lose their job due to making false statements.
  - subsection1h 4y ago
    LOL. This guy has a 9-month old account and has posted dozens of comments praising or defending Musk. It looks like half of his comments are about Musk. His very first comment was praise of Thiel. Hilarious.
    - moistly 4y ago
      Every sufficiently wealthy and famous person hires a publicity team to manage their public image. The service includes paying interns to go around social media praising and/or defending their client. Some people will do anything for a paycheque, including debasing themselves for an obnoxious billionaire.
ginjk 4y ago
Looks like Eric didn't give a shit and probably wanted to get fired, might as well go out with a bang in that case. Anyone that openly slaps down that asshole Musk is doing a public service, in my book. I hope more employees exit like this.
sbf501 4y ago
Sure it was suicidal of an employee to call out their boss in public, but even more destructive for a CEO to spout nonsense without researching first, because it makes him look like an incompetent ninny. EDIT: Steve Jobs wouldn't have whined like Musk, if anything he would have denied the problem existed while choking-throats behind the scenes to fix it (unless the "bad thing" happened live during the Apple developer conference...).
- rasz 4y ago
  famous Steve Jobs 1997 opendoc question https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o
nharada 4y ago
It honestly doesn't matter who is correct on the technical details here, for Musk to so publicly go after his employee is a really bad look.
moistly 4y ago
Elon needs Eric one hell of a lot more than Eric needs Elon. Eric will have a new job within days. Elon will have a developer with six years deep knowledge and experience with Twitter code… in about six years.
6510 4y ago
The free speech absolutism isn't very strong in this one.
spcldvlpr 4y ago
Any screenshots?

44 points by MonkeyMalarky 4y ago

How unsavory. Rather glad speaking "truth to power" is a generally respected move at my current employer, and tussles like this - if they even happen - don't result in firings.

david927 4y ago
Twitter, from day one, has been poorly architected. Defending that is pretty stupid and then to do it publicly is, well, kind of asking for it.
- sho_hn 4y ago
  I'm coming at this from a different angle. It should be possible to have a heated disagreement, even in public, and not have it result in a same-day firing. In fact, some countries have it explicitly on the law books. All this does is create an environment where people are afraid to voice opinions and address issues, e.g. because they're afraid of shoot-the-messenger. In my line of work (I make cars), dysfunctional discourse environments like that can get people killed.
  - david927 4y ago
    Sure, and I'm a big proponent of labor. Musk is certainly not. That said, Twitter's architecture is a Rube Goldberg contraption and Musk is clearly on a warpath to fix it, so to come out publicly and yell, "It's fine," is kind of crazy. It's not fine and you're saying you're not interested in fixing it.
    - sho_hn 4y ago
      Looking at the exchange, he did confirm that it's slow on Android/iOS. He claimed it's for other reasons and gave examples. He might be wrong (I haven't looked at Twitter's architecture, commentary on the technical content of the exchange would be interesting), but I wouldn't say he said "It's fine".
      - david927 4y ago
        He said it's "net spend" and that's another way of saying, "It's fine." It's the equivalent of admitting the engine is running hot, but saying, it's not a problem with the engine, it just needs lots of oil." Frankly, I think the developer is embarrassed. There's no reason for it to be as slow as it is, other than he and the other engineers simply don't know what they're doing. I think Musk is calling it out because he wants to see who wants to fix it and who wants to defend it.
        sho_hn 4y ago
        I think you misread "Ad spend" as "net spend" in his tweet (I can't locate any using the phrase "net spend"). He mentioned that performance work correlates well with "UAM and Ad spend", which to me reads as "it's worth working more on this problem" and is indicating the willingness you're looking for. From what I can see, he offered an opinion that the number of client requests (he gives a number of 20) and the number of internal RPCs (he gives 200) is not the primary reason the app is slow. I can't tell you whether he's right or wrong.
        david927 4y ago
        Thanks for the correction. You're right, and I can't tell you either, so I shouldn't really argue.
        sho_hn 4y ago
        FWIW, if he actually had written "just throw more money at it to make it go faster", I would understand your more negative opinion. :-)
        david927 4y ago
        I mean how does he know it's not "thousands of RPC calls" -- he spent six years and never got it to perform, so he doesn't know. "You're wrong!" ? Based on what? If I worked for six years on something and it still didn't work and someone came in and said it's "x", I would say, "I'm excited to see that data because I really want to fix this." I think I'm more upset at his attitude than anything. In all honesty, I think what he meant was "I spent six years and failed to fix something that is fixable, and then outside consultants came in a clearly found clear problems in a couple weeks, and now I'm humiliated," but he has too big of an ego for that.
  - viig99 4y ago
    Clearly these engineers have never done customer feedback for developing nations, twitter interactions clearly provide evidence for what musk said, but some engineers seem to be in denial, imho the firing is cause worthy.
    - sho_hn 4y ago
      I think that's misreading the exchange. He was challenging Musk on the fact that "1000 RPC calls" isn't what's happening and isn't the reason for the slowdown in his opinion, but did not deny that there are performance issues - and even cited other reasons it's slow. I don't see the denial you see.
      - viig99 4y ago
        Said engineer, said 1000 RPC calls are not the issue, and when questioned further on proving a tracepath / perf result casually exited the conversation, to me it looks like they are not ready to do better or listen to valid criticism, leading conversations on semantics is just creating noise instead of acting on signals. Also 1000 RPC's are a very valid performance bottleneck, 1000 * latency caused by serde+ network can compounds easily based on data locality + container network orchestration, no data was provided otherwise even when asked for.
        fragmede 4y ago
        Except that you can open the dev console in a browser and load Twitter.com yourself and you won't find 1000's of XHR requests.
        sho_hn 4y ago
        That's client-side requests. Musk was talking about internal RPC calls to microservices needed to ultimately respond to the client-side requests. If the internal arch is heavy on microservices and you're putting together, say, 50 tweets you're at 1000 RPC calls with just 20 per tweet. It's not inconceivable. The developer puts the real number at 200.
  - FormerBandmate 4y ago
    Good thing Musk isn't in charge of a car company
- Comevius 4y ago
  Many software are like that, especially those that have been around for some time. You don't see the CEO of Microsoft spewing nonsense about Windows publicly, and then punching down on an employee for correcting him. There is no need for the circus. Technical debt is a fact of business, it can be dealt with professionally. It's not a reason to treat people badly.
  - david927 4y ago
    The developer, Eric, is in the wrong here. The product is especially bad. The new CEO is trying to reform it. Eric is saying "spend more," which is the refuge of bad architecture. That's not the answer. And instead of privately working together to review it, he's publicly arguing. I wouldn't accept that either.
    - Comevius 4y ago
      He called Musk's public statement out, because it was wrong. Twitter shouldn't be the place for this, but it's on Musk for creating such unprofessional atmosphere in the first place. Imagine the same thing with Microsoft. We all know Windows is held together with scotch tape, not to mention that 7 years after Windows 10 they still haven't quite manage to unify the old and the new interfaces, not that Windows 11's new interfaces are any good. What a mess. Except it's not, it's business as usual. Big software projects are messy and hard to manage, but these issues are unimportant when you get the bigger picture right. For Windows the bigger picture is that it runs all your application. This is what makes Windows a good product, the rest is details and can be fixed over time. Preferably in a professional manner.
    - fzeroracer 4y ago
      How is Musk trying to 'reform' it when since he's owned it Twitter has had worse performance than ever, degraded features due to his bull-headed decisions and is literally burning money because he's chasing advertisers? And the only one that started a public argument was Musk by making an incorrect claim and defacto blaming the engineers for something he clearly doesn't understand. He's trying to pull another Paypal and it's blowing up in his face now like it did then.
- salad-fan 4y ago
  Eric didn’t defend the entire architecture though. Space Karen made a specific claim (“>1000 RPCs to render the time line”) and Eric refuted just that one claim.
  - david927 4y ago
    Eric essentially said, "That's not why the engine is running hot, it just needs lots of oil." That's a stupid response.
    - salad-fan 4y ago
      No he didn’t. Eric essentially said “the clients don’t make >1000 RPCs to build the time line”, a direct refutation of Space Karen’s original assertion.
      - david927 4y ago
        Yes, but he went on to say that it is truly slow and that it needs more spend, which is another way of saying, "You're wrong! It's not that! ... but I have no idea what it is," which isn't a very good response.
        salad-fan 4y ago
        That’s a pretty uncharitable interpretation. I read it as “You’re wrong” (which is correct - Space Karen was wrong in his claim about why things were slow) “and we should figure out why, which will take time & effort (i.e. investment).”
        david927 4y ago
        You could be right. But how do you know the consultants Musk hired are wrong? How does Eric know? Maybe there was a situation found where that did, in fact, happen. Certainly with a large number of microservices, it could happen. Maybe Musk is saying "edge case" and Eric is saying "on average." Personally I feel outside consultants could have very well found problems that the internal team did not see. What everyone agrees on is that Twitter's architecture is deeply broken. Eric's been there six years, so he's probably at least a little culpable in that. If I'm Eric, and was part of a team that fucked up that badly for six years, I certainly wouldn't argue back with that much confidence.

faefox 4y ago

Good for Eric. What kind of CEO trashes his own employees (and the product which he now owns) in public like this? It's a good thing Musk wants to reduce headcount because it's hard to imagine anyone taking an offer from Twitter at this point.

mikkergp 4y ago
If there's anything about Musk's leadership style I find the most... confusing? it's that he doesn't seem to like to be challenged. I would consider the people most willing to productively call me out are my most valuable assets.
- Zigurd 4y ago
  This is a very interesting aspect of the very visible way that Musk has taken over Twitter. For example, not knowing his style, one would assume that decisions like making full self-driving use only camera sensors was discussed in depth and contrary points of view were carefully considered. That might have happened. But based on what we all now see, it also might not have happened at all. The same goes for Starship. Is it a breakthrough innovation? Or is it an idiosyncratic founder's Spruce Goose?
  - FormerBandmate 4y ago
    Tesla's board has had well-known independence issues for a while. Musk's insanity while running Twitter adds credibility to Musk's detractors at Tesla tho, which is probably why Tesla's been plunging lately
minimaxir 4y ago
> because it's hard to imagine anyone taking an offer from Twitter at this point That's what increased compensation is for. Except in this case, Elon has both pushed for cutting costs (negating the ability to pay increased compensation) and also pushed for a much worse work-life balance to the point that increased compensation may still result in worse $/hr than another tech job.

Comevius 4y ago

Eric Frohnhoefer may not have a job at Twitter anymore, but him fact checking dear leader constantly spewing nonsense about things he doesn't understand was a sweet moment.

memish 4y ago
Elon was talking about internal RPCs. Eric was talking about client side requests, as though that was a dunk. Eric was both wrong and attempted to insult his boss in public at the same time.
- Comevius 4y ago
  Take into account that between the two of them Eric is the expert. It was Musk who failed to keep things professional. His first post was literally humiliating his own employees for writing bad code. It's his own company, he may not have been around, but it's his people now. Even if Twitter's Android client is not the best, playing the blame game is callous and petty. There is no point to trying to show that you are better than your employees either. It's the opposite of what a functional CEO should do.
  - memish 4y ago
    "I was told ~1200 RPCs independently by several engineers at Twitter, which matches # of microservices. The ex-employee is wrong. Same app in US takes ~2 secs to refresh (too long), but ~20 secs in India, due to bad batching/verbose comms. Actually useful data transferred is low." https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592176202873085952 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592176202873085952
    - Comevius 4y ago
      There is no way to tell if this is right or wrong, we are not engineers at Twitter, and I suspect that no engineer there would dare to correct him. I'm pretty sure Twitter has an API gateway of some sort, it doesn't make sense that it's a batching issue. But it doesn't matter who is right or wrong. The unprofessional atmosphere, the callousness, the one-upmanship is the problem. He is the CEO for God's sake. This is a PR nightmare. I know that it worked for Trump, but it isn't working even for him anymore.

seydor 4y ago

At this point he's trying too hard to maintain interest. And good for that employee to earn a good and public severance package.

joegahona 4y ago
Are we sure he'll get severance?
- dymk 4y ago
  HR is going to do their best to make sure he absolutely does not get any severance

legitster 4y ago

Elon apologizes for the poorly written app and argues that it needs to be completely rewritten. A developer unnecessarily jumps in front of the bullet to take the blame and say that Elon is wrong. It is poorly written in a different and vague set of ways. And the only solution is a complete rewrite: https://twitter.com/EricFrohnhoefer/status/1591968463849152513 https://twitter.com/EricFrohnhoefer/status/15919684638491525... Not defending Musk here, but this is a learning moment in managing up - it doesn't matter where you work, you probably shouldn't be publicly ridiculing your boss, especially for being technically incorrect. Especially when that boss was trying to hand you a blank check to give you what you want.

prirun 4y ago

So much for Musk's grand vision of a town square for everyone to be heard. He can't even handle 1 "maybe-critical" remark without firing the guy. Sheesh.

memish 4y ago
Who isn't being heard? Did he silence the tweets?
- fzeroracer 4y ago
  I believe Elon did what people would call a textbook cancelling. That is, he harassed them over Twitter and then caused them to lose their job due to making false statements.
- subsection1h 4y ago
  LOL. This guy has a 9-month old account and has posted dozens of comments praising or defending Musk. It looks like half of his comments are about Musk. His very first comment was praise of Thiel. Hilarious.
  - moistly 4y ago
    Every sufficiently wealthy and famous person hires a publicity team to manage their public image. The service includes paying interns to go around social media praising and/or defending their client. Some people will do anything for a paycheque, including debasing themselves for an obnoxious billionaire.

ginjk 4y ago

Looks like Eric didn't give a shit and probably wanted to get fired, might as well go out with a bang in that case. Anyone that openly slaps down that asshole Musk is doing a public service, in my book. I hope more employees exit like this.

sbf501 4y ago

Sure it was suicidal of an employee to call out their boss in public, but even more destructive for a CEO to spout nonsense without researching first, because it makes him look like an incompetent ninny. EDIT: Steve Jobs wouldn't have whined like Musk, if anything he would have denied the problem existed while choking-throats behind the scenes to fix it (unless the "bad thing" happened live during the Apple developer conference...).

rasz 4y ago
famous Steve Jobs 1997 opendoc question https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o

nharada 4y ago

It honestly doesn't matter who is correct on the technical details here, for Musk to so publicly go after his employee is a really bad look.

moistly 4y ago

Elon needs Eric one hell of a lot more than Eric needs Elon. Eric will have a new job within days. Elon will have a developer with six years deep knowledge and experience with Twitter code… in about six years.

6510 4y ago

The free speech absolutism isn't very strong in this one.

spcldvlpr 4y ago

Any screenshots?