6 ms·

The overall gist of what Elon is doing -- reduce complexity, reduce headcount, rethink conventional wisdom, and challenge regulators -- isnt necessarily bad, an

The overall gist of what Elon is doing -- reduce complexity, reduce headcount, rethink conventional wisdom, and challenge regulators -- isnt necessarily bad, and maybe necessarily since he paid so much for this "asset." The chaotic way this has all this has all been done, though, seems like an extremely risky way to run any of kind of business.

stephc_int13 4y ago
Agreed. He is not entirely wrong on the principles, but his management style is clearly extremely risky here. I am curious to see the outcome, difficult to predict, I don't know if there are any precedent. I believe that software only companies can be run with a relatively small staff, but this is not easy and should be built in the company culture from the start. My intuition is that company culture can only change quickly when it is degrading.
wwkeyboard 4y ago
It's going to be hard to sell the premise of extreme work and unwavering dedication with the looming knowledge they will cut you out at a moments notice.
- Macha 4y ago
  And a lot harder to inspire the kind of mission-based drive for Twitter as for mars colonies or electric cars
- Aqua_Geek 4y ago
  And for what benefit? A higher salary? Stock options in case Twitter somehow survives and goes public again?
tonetheman 4y ago
The problem is really just him. Had he hired an adult and done all of those changes with some thought instead of what he did I doubt anyone would have batted an eye. It does seem like they were heavy with staff but that reduction could have been thoughtfully and with more tact. At the point that you fired half of the staff and then the next day started asking those some people back speaks volume to the chaos HE is causing and probably killed motivation/morale of the staff left. Publicly firing someone on twitter for disagreeing with you is also just wrong. He just purchased the company and the amount of arrogance and gall to think you know more than someone who had been working on it for years is just staggering... misguided... hubris. There are really not enough words to say bad the optics appear. He absolutely should have talked to that person privately and said look do not attack me in public. Now tell me why I am wrong. But that would require some humility and humanity, which HE seems short of. Then that grade school letter that HE sent at midnight. Do you love me? Do you want to stay and work in super hard core mode? Again it is hard to fathom how stupid of a move that was. Engineering is needed and is core to keeping the place running and moving forward but that alone is not enough. He needs real product people who understand the product. HE clearly does not. All of it is fixable but HE needs out of it day to day. Immediately. Get/keep your core staff you need to keep things running. Step out of the visible light and let and adult run the company. Get some good product people and brainstorm and vet ideas for making it better in private. Then execute.
- that_guy_iain 4y ago
  > Had he hired an adult and done all of those changes with some thought instead of what he did I doubt anyone would have batted an eye. I'm pretty sure he has a bunch of "adults" working on this making these decisions.
  - tonetheman 4y ago
    Oh I agree with you. I read somewhere there was a war room. It is hard to reconcile that though with the actions. The actions are bad and seemingly not well thought out. I hope there is someone advising him maybe he is just not listening.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    I guess he only has yes-men around him, as he can’t stand any disagreement over his stupid ideas.
- jdminhbg 4y ago
  > Had he hired an adult and done all of those changes with some thought instead of what he did I doubt anyone would have batted an eye. I think that would probably have been a better plan, but people would still have absolutely lost their minds over it, because it's Elon.
that_guy_iain 4y ago
> The chaotic way this has all this has all been done, though, seems like an extremely risky way to run any of kind of business. The chaotic way he is doing it is one of the reasons he said the company needed to go private. If you made these sweeping changes to a company that is public you're getting fired. Also, I think doing a massive sweeping changes all in one go and changing the culture straight away is better than the other option. I've been part of companies while they've changed cultures slowly. Everyone left, just slowly and it was a constant reminder how much things had changed and how bad things were in comparison because everytime someone left it was a "yea, they finally see it". Right now, Twitter will have lots of people who are quite simply unhappy because Musk. From a HR and company view, these are people you want/need to get rid of. Disengaged employees are a massive drain, actively disengaged are an even bigger drain. They affect the ones who are engaged and can drag a team/company down. What annoys me is, every time Musk tweets something about the tech at Twitter people think he's gone in and had a look at things and came to that opinion instead of being told it. For example, the 1200 RPCs for the timeline to be loaded in the app. Everyone jumps on the fact those requests are done server-side instead of the app. Basically jumping on a technicality. If they are making 1200 RPCs via GraphQL that is still completely nuts. And the performance of Twitter isn't exactly good. Another example, he said they were turning off 20% of the microservices. The sms microservice got disabled or something. People act like he was the one deciding which ones get turned off. Instead of it being someone whose job it is to know this screwing up. Another thing that grinds my gears, people care more about the Twitter tech team making 300k a year not getting a free lunch than they do about Bezos and his army of people having to pee in bottles for 30k a year.
- NationalPark 4y ago
  Out of curiosity, what's the largest scale distributed system you've ever been on-call for?
  - that_guy_iain 4y ago
    Not sure to be honest. Either one of the largest EMSP in Europe, or the largest Food ordering service in Asia, or the small social media site. What does that have to do with my points?
BurningFrog 4y ago
You can see the chaos as a way to drive a lot of traffic to the site. There is no bad PR if you live off page views!
- Jare 4y ago
  Ads have virtually vanished from my Twitter timeline. There's no living off page views if nobody is paying for those views.
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    Sure, but that has to be temporary. There are good eyeballs for sale, and someone will buy them. It might take some time to shift over to a new advertiser cohort.

stephc_int13 4y ago

Agreed. He is not entirely wrong on the principles, but his management style is clearly extremely risky here. I am curious to see the outcome, difficult to predict, I don't know if there are any precedent. I believe that software only companies can be run with a relatively small staff, but this is not easy and should be built in the company culture from the start. My intuition is that company culture can only change quickly when it is degrading.

wwkeyboard 4y ago

It's going to be hard to sell the premise of extreme work and unwavering dedication with the looming knowledge they will cut you out at a moments notice.

Macha 4y ago
And a lot harder to inspire the kind of mission-based drive for Twitter as for mars colonies or electric cars
Aqua_Geek 4y ago
And for what benefit? A higher salary? Stock options in case Twitter somehow survives and goes public again?

tonetheman 4y ago

The problem is really just him. Had he hired an adult and done all of those changes with some thought instead of what he did I doubt anyone would have batted an eye. It does seem like they were heavy with staff but that reduction could have been thoughtfully and with more tact. At the point that you fired half of the staff and then the next day started asking those some people back speaks volume to the chaos HE is causing and probably killed motivation/morale of the staff left. Publicly firing someone on twitter for disagreeing with you is also just wrong. He just purchased the company and the amount of arrogance and gall to think you know more than someone who had been working on it for years is just staggering... misguided... hubris. There are really not enough words to say bad the optics appear. He absolutely should have talked to that person privately and said look do not attack me in public. Now tell me why I am wrong. But that would require some humility and humanity, which HE seems short of. Then that grade school letter that HE sent at midnight. Do you love me? Do you want to stay and work in super hard core mode? Again it is hard to fathom how stupid of a move that was. Engineering is needed and is core to keeping the place running and moving forward but that alone is not enough. He needs real product people who understand the product. HE clearly does not. All of it is fixable but HE needs out of it day to day. Immediately. Get/keep your core staff you need to keep things running. Step out of the visible light and let and adult run the company. Get some good product people and brainstorm and vet ideas for making it better in private. Then execute.

that_guy_iain 4y ago
> Had he hired an adult and done all of those changes with some thought instead of what he did I doubt anyone would have batted an eye. I'm pretty sure he has a bunch of "adults" working on this making these decisions.
- tonetheman 4y ago
  Oh I agree with you. I read somewhere there was a war room. It is hard to reconcile that though with the actions. The actions are bad and seemingly not well thought out. I hope there is someone advising him maybe he is just not listening.
- kaba0 4y ago
  I guess he only has yes-men around him, as he can’t stand any disagreement over his stupid ideas.
jdminhbg 4y ago
> Had he hired an adult and done all of those changes with some thought instead of what he did I doubt anyone would have batted an eye. I think that would probably have been a better plan, but people would still have absolutely lost their minds over it, because it's Elon.

that_guy_iain 4y ago

> The chaotic way this has all this has all been done, though, seems like an extremely risky way to run any of kind of business. The chaotic way he is doing it is one of the reasons he said the company needed to go private. If you made these sweeping changes to a company that is public you're getting fired. Also, I think doing a massive sweeping changes all in one go and changing the culture straight away is better than the other option. I've been part of companies while they've changed cultures slowly. Everyone left, just slowly and it was a constant reminder how much things had changed and how bad things were in comparison because everytime someone left it was a "yea, they finally see it". Right now, Twitter will have lots of people who are quite simply unhappy because Musk. From a HR and company view, these are people you want/need to get rid of. Disengaged employees are a massive drain, actively disengaged are an even bigger drain. They affect the ones who are engaged and can drag a team/company down. What annoys me is, every time Musk tweets something about the tech at Twitter people think he's gone in and had a look at things and came to that opinion instead of being told it. For example, the 1200 RPCs for the timeline to be loaded in the app. Everyone jumps on the fact those requests are done server-side instead of the app. Basically jumping on a technicality. If they are making 1200 RPCs via GraphQL that is still completely nuts. And the performance of Twitter isn't exactly good. Another example, he said they were turning off 20% of the microservices. The sms microservice got disabled or something. People act like he was the one deciding which ones get turned off. Instead of it being someone whose job it is to know this screwing up. Another thing that grinds my gears, people care more about the Twitter tech team making 300k a year not getting a free lunch than they do about Bezos and his army of people having to pee in bottles for 30k a year.

NationalPark 4y ago
Out of curiosity, what's the largest scale distributed system you've ever been on-call for?
- that_guy_iain 4y ago
  Not sure to be honest. Either one of the largest EMSP in Europe, or the largest Food ordering service in Asia, or the small social media site. What does that have to do with my points?

BurningFrog 4y ago

You can see the chaos as a way to drive a lot of traffic to the site. There is no bad PR if you live off page views!

Jare 4y ago
Ads have virtually vanished from my Twitter timeline. There's no living off page views if nobody is paying for those views.
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  Sure, but that has to be temporary. There are good eyeballs for sale, and someone will buy them. It might take some time to shift over to a new advertiser cohort.