6 ms·

If I'm giving Elon the benefit of the doubt, A. he's intelligent B. He has 20+ years of corporate experience running companies, I would assume that there was so

If I'm giving Elon the benefit of the doubt, A. he's intelligent B. He has 20+ years of corporate experience running companies, I would assume that there was some method to this madness. If I had to guess, he came in with the assumption that forces in the company would be hostile to him based on their beliefs. In order to weed those forces out, he engineered some of this madness to shake those people out. Unfortunately it seems like it may be backfiring.

brookst 4y ago
I try to leave the “it looks crazy but it’s all part of the master plan that will eventually be revealed as brilliant” stuff to Qanon.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  He has been nothing but transparent about wanting to gut the company. It's just his plainly communicated plan. There is no conspiracy here.
photoGrant 4y ago
Yeah, he's said this so many times it's a bore. He deletes. First. After deleting 'LAST'. So he's doing exactly as we all should expect, he's literally said it. I used to delete last Now I delete first.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
noobermin 4y ago
I'm amazed at how naive some of the people are here. Why not just accept what you're seeing with your own two eyes? Why look for an alternate explanation?
- poulpy123 4y ago
  The cult of Billionaires is something else
  - bmitc 4y ago
    Agreed. I have seen some disturbing stuff on Twitter where people say things like “why are you arguing with the smartest man alive?”, “this person invented modern rockets”, “you should just do what your boss says”, and more just complete falsehoods parroted by followers who seemingly have no upside to doing so. It’s weird and bothersome.
- Zpalmtree 4y ago
  Twitter is still online. Where's the huge fire everyone is talking about?
  - __warlord__ 4y ago
    75-ish% of people left/got fired... is that not enough fire?
    - nomel 4y ago
      75% cut was clearly communicated to investors: https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-social-media-1a9005b6653b07b5764ed61053554d1f https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-...
      - onion2k 4y ago
        It's likely he wamted to have some say in which 75%. I doubt he planned to axe entire teams that were critical to running the company all at once. But then again, it's Elon, so who knows.
        Belphemur 4y ago
        I mean, if he takes the same approach to people as to microservices... Cut it before understanding what it does, I don't think anything good is going to come from this. Remember, cutting off the MFA microservice ?
nomel 4y ago
As some evidence, a desire for a 75% cut was widely reported: https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-social-media-1a9005b6653b07b5764ed61053554d1f https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-...
inerte 4y ago
I also agree he's a good (master?) business man. But did he have to be so cruel? Post this picture https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592618665933156352 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592618665933156352 while 5k people lost their jobs? And all the other stuff... I mean... it's one thing to "tell it like it is", which is a trait a lot of people admire. But he's just doing a bunch of stuff that deep down only abominable human beings would think and let alone act on it.
- pjc50 4y ago
  "The cruelty is the point". There's an increasingly blunt divide these days between people who think cruelty is a good signal because it's in some way "realistic", and people who think avoidable suffering is bad and should be avoided. This is almost exactly the "woke"/"antiwoke" split.
  - notacoward 4y ago
    Thank you for making this point. It's basically confusing correlation with causation, or even reversing causation. Cargo cult thinking. Positive long term change often causes shorter term harm to some people, and this causes shorter term harm to some people, so this must be positive long term change. Poking at a wound, or exercising to overload, precisely because it hurts, because the hurt has become overly associated with progress. Some people make the error innocently. Others use it as an excuse, and make up fancy terms like "technocracy" (Musk's grandfather) or "longtermism" (Musk himself) to dress up the rationalization. Really, it's about essentializing harm itself.
    - inerte 4y ago
      Thank you both pjc50 and notacoward because I heard the phrase "cruelty is the point" and I've always interpreted as the person doing the cruelty enjoys what they do, as if the cruelty by itself is the goal, not a means to an end. This might map with the idea how the military first needs to break a person to rebuild them in something that's capable of doing what society has taught us to never do (namely, kill others), and more strongly to what I've been increasingly hearing lately in the business world which is "antifragility". In no way I am equating killing with building resilient systems, but I can see a thread connecting them when someone thinks that cruelty can produce better and improved new behaviors or systems.
lazide 4y ago
Right, it’s all 4D chess instead of the more obvious answer - he’s overwhelmed and embarrassed, and like many workaholic insecure bosses, it lashing out at folks and cutting his own throat?
RavingGoat 4y ago
He is playing Candyland while everyone else is playing chess
- wstuartcl 4y ago
  At least trying to take the wrapper off the box -- not sure if he has figured out how to play yet.. Word on the street is full teams (including most of infra) have clicked "no". He may be in a state where the site can't even stay up as he coasts on employee fumes.
Fricken 4y ago
Unlike with Tesla and SpaceX, nobody at Twitter signed up under the auspices that taking it in the ass from Elon will help humanity get to Mars.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Twitter's headcount doubled between 2018 and 2022. They added literally 2500+ people in the two pandemic years itself. 50% layoffs gets them back to their 2018 headcount. As far as I can remember, Twitter was functioning fine in 2018 as well. And it certainly didn't grow enough or add enough features to warrant 50% headcount increase in two pandemic years.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Yes but which 50% left matters. Engineers in a big complicated system like that are NOT replaceable and NOBODY properly manages their bus-factor. If you spent the past five years basically babying the twitter infra and making sure it stays working and understanding it and building on it and convincing yourself at night that it's okay how stupid and poorly engineered it is because it gets the job done and now elon comes in and spends his time calling you incompetent and overpaid and offers you a 3 month severance, you aren't staying.
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    My take is that there's a personality type that sees Elon hyping up the "hardcore-ness" and WANTS to get in. Remember that some people willingly put themselves through extremely situations - obsctacle races, bootcamps, etc. 80hrs/week doesn't bother them. Work-life balance isn't something they care about. The David Goggins types. Elon has built his career seeking out such people. Couple all of this "hardcore" talk with some elaborate BS about "Twitter's mission" (and he IS an excellent hype man) and I can totally see certain type of engineers jumping through hoops just to get in.
caskstrength 4y ago
> Unfortunately it seems like it may be backfiring. Why do you consider that "unfortunate"?

brookst 4y ago

I try to leave the “it looks crazy but it’s all part of the master plan that will eventually be revealed as brilliant” stuff to Qanon.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nonethewiser 4y ago
He has been nothing but transparent about wanting to gut the company. It's just his plainly communicated plan. There is no conspiracy here.

photoGrant 4y ago

Yeah, he's said this so many times it's a bore. He deletes. First. After deleting 'LAST'. So he's doing exactly as we all should expect, he's literally said it. I used to delete last Now I delete first.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

noobermin 4y ago

I'm amazed at how naive some of the people are here. Why not just accept what you're seeing with your own two eyes? Why look for an alternate explanation?

poulpy123 4y ago
The cult of Billionaires is something else
- bmitc 4y ago
  Agreed. I have seen some disturbing stuff on Twitter where people say things like “why are you arguing with the smartest man alive?”, “this person invented modern rockets”, “you should just do what your boss says”, and more just complete falsehoods parroted by followers who seemingly have no upside to doing so. It’s weird and bothersome.
Zpalmtree 4y ago
Twitter is still online. Where's the huge fire everyone is talking about?
- __warlord__ 4y ago
  75-ish% of people left/got fired... is that not enough fire?
  - nomel 4y ago
    75% cut was clearly communicated to investors: https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-social-media-1a9005b6653b07b5764ed61053554d1f https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-...
    - onion2k 4y ago
      It's likely he wamted to have some say in which 75%. I doubt he planned to axe entire teams that were critical to running the company all at once. But then again, it's Elon, so who knows.
      - Belphemur 4y ago
        I mean, if he takes the same approach to people as to microservices... Cut it before understanding what it does, I don't think anything good is going to come from this. Remember, cutting off the MFA microservice ?

nomel 4y ago

As some evidence, a desire for a 75% cut was widely reported: https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-social-media-1a9005b6653b07b5764ed61053554d1f https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-...

inerte 4y ago

I also agree he's a good (master?) business man. But did he have to be so cruel? Post this picture https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592618665933156352 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592618665933156352 while 5k people lost their jobs? And all the other stuff... I mean... it's one thing to "tell it like it is", which is a trait a lot of people admire. But he's just doing a bunch of stuff that deep down only abominable human beings would think and let alone act on it.

pjc50 4y ago
"The cruelty is the point". There's an increasingly blunt divide these days between people who think cruelty is a good signal because it's in some way "realistic", and people who think avoidable suffering is bad and should be avoided. This is almost exactly the "woke"/"antiwoke" split.
- notacoward 4y ago
  Thank you for making this point. It's basically confusing correlation with causation, or even reversing causation. Cargo cult thinking. Positive long term change often causes shorter term harm to some people, and this causes shorter term harm to some people, so this must be positive long term change. Poking at a wound, or exercising to overload, precisely because it hurts, because the hurt has become overly associated with progress. Some people make the error innocently. Others use it as an excuse, and make up fancy terms like "technocracy" (Musk's grandfather) or "longtermism" (Musk himself) to dress up the rationalization. Really, it's about essentializing harm itself.
  - inerte 4y ago
    Thank you both pjc50 and notacoward because I heard the phrase "cruelty is the point" and I've always interpreted as the person doing the cruelty enjoys what they do, as if the cruelty by itself is the goal, not a means to an end. This might map with the idea how the military first needs to break a person to rebuild them in something that's capable of doing what society has taught us to never do (namely, kill others), and more strongly to what I've been increasingly hearing lately in the business world which is "antifragility". In no way I am equating killing with building resilient systems, but I can see a thread connecting them when someone thinks that cruelty can produce better and improved new behaviors or systems.

lazide 4y ago

Right, it’s all 4D chess instead of the more obvious answer - he’s overwhelmed and embarrassed, and like many workaholic insecure bosses, it lashing out at folks and cutting his own throat?

RavingGoat 4y ago

He is playing Candyland while everyone else is playing chess

wstuartcl 4y ago
At least trying to take the wrapper off the box -- not sure if he has figured out how to play yet.. Word on the street is full teams (including most of infra) have clicked "no". He may be in a state where the site can't even stay up as he coasts on employee fumes.

Fricken 4y ago

Unlike with Tesla and SpaceX, nobody at Twitter signed up under the auspices that taking it in the ass from Elon will help humanity get to Mars.

spaceman_2020 4y ago

Twitter's headcount doubled between 2018 and 2022. They added literally 2500+ people in the two pandemic years itself. 50% layoffs gets them back to their 2018 headcount. As far as I can remember, Twitter was functioning fine in 2018 as well. And it certainly didn't grow enough or add enough features to warrant 50% headcount increase in two pandemic years.

mrguyorama 4y ago
Yes but which 50% left matters. Engineers in a big complicated system like that are NOT replaceable and NOBODY properly manages their bus-factor. If you spent the past five years basically babying the twitter infra and making sure it stays working and understanding it and building on it and convincing yourself at night that it's okay how stupid and poorly engineered it is because it gets the job done and now elon comes in and spends his time calling you incompetent and overpaid and offers you a 3 month severance, you aren't staying.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  My take is that there's a personality type that sees Elon hyping up the "hardcore-ness" and WANTS to get in. Remember that some people willingly put themselves through extremely situations - obsctacle races, bootcamps, etc. 80hrs/week doesn't bother them. Work-life balance isn't something they care about. The David Goggins types. Elon has built his career seeking out such people. Couple all of this "hardcore" talk with some elaborate BS about "Twitter's mission" (and he IS an excellent hype man) and I can totally see certain type of engineers jumping through hoops just to get in.

caskstrength 4y ago

> Unfortunately it seems like it may be backfiring. Why do you consider that "unfortunate"?