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Even as long-time skeptic of Musk's ballyhooed business/engineering acumen, I have no clue what's going on here. Surely nobody at this level could be this braze

by rchaud 4y ago

Even as long-time skeptic of Musk's ballyhooed business/engineering acumen, I have no clue what's going on here. Surely nobody at this level could be this brazenly incompetent when it comes to communicating a vision and building some sense of unity. Even the biggest fakers in the world are self-aware about the importance of maintaining the illusion of power and control. If you had told me that these emails were being written by Kanye as he scrambled to find a new shoe partner after Adidas, I would have believed you.

belfalas 4y ago
You truly wonder at this? Look at the state of the world the last few years. If you’re lucky or brazen enough they may even let you run a whole country! Qualifications make the people suffer less but historically have never been required for leaders in any venue. In Europe awful kings were simply born to the throne and people had to accept it, for example. We remember ‘X the Cruel’ but none of their subjects. The victors write the history books.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  It's funny how historically a lot of "kings" were more like dictatorial mayors of small cities to largish collections of huts and many great battles were actually more like cattle raids. The only reason Musk is getting away with any of this is that we've got the pending recession going on and others doing layoffs to jumping jobs isn't as easy for those who remain. I certainly would never go through that dance to prove my worth.
  - jonathankoren 4y ago
    > The only reason Musk is getting away with any of this Is he though? There are reports of very few people left, and I suspect many of those are stuck on h1bs, rather than there by allegiance to the new mad king.
colechristensen 4y ago
I think what happens is his strange behavior is proportional to how little he sleeps. He has a spectrum between mildly unusual to full Kanye. While I'm usually not in favor of professional unions for programmers, I think that's the only option at Twitter at this point unless people are ready to quit en mass.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  It would actually be really interesting if the remaining staff at Twitter tried forming a union at this juncture. How many more of his employees would Musk be willing to fire or make enemies over this without completely ruining the shell of a company he still owns?
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    He'd probably do something just wildly violating labor laws.
  - licebmi__at__ 4y ago
    By the way things are developing, he just might call the Pinkertons to beat Twitter employees.
- papito 4y ago
  I am really wildly speculating here, but I wonder if his source of energy is something like Aderall, and if that has any effects on people who are already “troubled” by their giant egos. And lack of sleep doesn’t help.
- bagels 4y ago
  All of us should be considering it. If it (hostile takeover and or maniacal management) could happen at Twitter, it could happen almost anywhere else. Better before it happens again. I used to think it unnecessary for software, but I was wrong.
AdamH12113 4y ago
I've gotten the impression that a lot of people at high levels get there through a kind of self-perpetuating prestige cycle, often starting at an elite school and jumping between high-prestige jobs from there. The measure of success is not what they've done (which is mostly taking credit for other people's work), but what it looks like they've done. Starting a big-name company matters more than whether that company goes belly-up five years later. The people who end up on top are the ones who get extra-lucky and capitalize on it. A recent example from tech is Adam Neumann (the WeWork guy) who came up with an absurd business model for commercial real estate, led a widely-ridiculed IPO, and lit a billion dollars of other people's money on fire. A couple years later a16z announces they're giving him a third of a billion dollars to fail again because (paraphrasing from memory) he was the only person who made a profound effort to transform the real estate market. You can also see smaller-scale examples in media. There are New York Times op ed columnists who have been wrong about everything for decades, but they keep getting invitations from talk shows and universities and publishing companies because of the prestige of being a NYT columnist. But a big reason they're still a columnist is because of all the prestige they get from doing that other stuff. It's a circular process, and it seems to be hard to fall out of unless you fail publicly and catastrophically. Sometimes it takes multiple such failures. These people all run in the same social circles, which probably also helps. I suspect an awful lot of elites would fare poorly in a real skill-based competition for their official jobs, and consciously or unconsciously act to prevent such a culture from developing. I don't know any of these people personally, so take this with a large grain of salt. But in the case of Musk, it's clear to me that nobody who spends that much time being a flamboyant asshole on Twitter can be getting any real work done, much less running 2-4 different companies at a time. His real job is prestige development. I'm not sure he has anything in his playbook that doesn't rely on a pre-existing desire to work with The Great Elon Musk and his Great World-Changing Companies. Like many elites, when forced to focus on his official job, he is mediocre at best.
danans 4y ago
> Surely nobody at this level could be this brazenly incompetent when it comes to communicating a vision and building some sense of unity. Why don't you think someone at that level could be so incompetent? Megalomania and being out-of-touch reinforce each other. History, from ancient to the present, is full of wealthy, powerful, and paranoid people acting incompetently and thereby doing tremendous damage in the process.
- cyanydeez 4y ago
  And we just had half a decade of watching someone who's only skill was grifting peoples beliefs

by rchaud 4y ago

belfalas 4y ago

You truly wonder at this? Look at the state of the world the last few years. If you’re lucky or brazen enough they may even let you run a whole country! Qualifications make the people suffer less but historically have never been required for leaders in any venue. In Europe awful kings were simply born to the throne and people had to accept it, for example. We remember ‘X the Cruel’ but none of their subjects. The victors write the history books.

colechristensen 4y ago
It's funny how historically a lot of "kings" were more like dictatorial mayors of small cities to largish collections of huts and many great battles were actually more like cattle raids. The only reason Musk is getting away with any of this is that we've got the pending recession going on and others doing layoffs to jumping jobs isn't as easy for those who remain. I certainly would never go through that dance to prove my worth.
- jonathankoren 4y ago
  > The only reason Musk is getting away with any of this Is he though? There are reports of very few people left, and I suspect many of those are stuck on h1bs, rather than there by allegiance to the new mad king.

colechristensen 4y ago

I think what happens is his strange behavior is proportional to how little he sleeps. He has a spectrum between mildly unusual to full Kanye. While I'm usually not in favor of professional unions for programmers, I think that's the only option at Twitter at this point unless people are ready to quit en mass.

pmoriarty 4y ago
It would actually be really interesting if the remaining staff at Twitter tried forming a union at this juncture. How many more of his employees would Musk be willing to fire or make enemies over this without completely ruining the shell of a company he still owns?
- colechristensen 4y ago
  He'd probably do something just wildly violating labor laws.
- licebmi__at__ 4y ago
  By the way things are developing, he just might call the Pinkertons to beat Twitter employees.
papito 4y ago
I am really wildly speculating here, but I wonder if his source of energy is something like Aderall, and if that has any effects on people who are already “troubled” by their giant egos. And lack of sleep doesn’t help.
bagels 4y ago
All of us should be considering it. If it (hostile takeover and or maniacal management) could happen at Twitter, it could happen almost anywhere else. Better before it happens again. I used to think it unnecessary for software, but I was wrong.

AdamH12113 4y ago

I've gotten the impression that a lot of people at high levels get there through a kind of self-perpetuating prestige cycle, often starting at an elite school and jumping between high-prestige jobs from there. The measure of success is not what they've done (which is mostly taking credit for other people's work), but what it looks like they've done. Starting a big-name company matters more than whether that company goes belly-up five years later. The people who end up on top are the ones who get extra-lucky and capitalize on it. A recent example from tech is Adam Neumann (the WeWork guy) who came up with an absurd business model for commercial real estate, led a widely-ridiculed IPO, and lit a billion dollars of other people's money on fire. A couple years later a16z announces they're giving him a third of a billion dollars to fail again because (paraphrasing from memory) he was the only person who made a profound effort to transform the real estate market. You can also see smaller-scale examples in media. There are New York Times op ed columnists who have been wrong about everything for decades, but they keep getting invitations from talk shows and universities and publishing companies because of the prestige of being a NYT columnist. But a big reason they're still a columnist is because of all the prestige they get from doing that other stuff. It's a circular process, and it seems to be hard to fall out of unless you fail publicly and catastrophically. Sometimes it takes multiple such failures. These people all run in the same social circles, which probably also helps. I suspect an awful lot of elites would fare poorly in a real skill-based competition for their official jobs, and consciously or unconsciously act to prevent such a culture from developing. I don't know any of these people personally, so take this with a large grain of salt. But in the case of Musk, it's clear to me that nobody who spends that much time being a flamboyant asshole on Twitter can be getting any real work done, much less running 2-4 different companies at a time. His real job is prestige development. I'm not sure he has anything in his playbook that doesn't rely on a pre-existing desire to work with The Great Elon Musk and his Great World-Changing Companies. Like many elites, when forced to focus on his official job, he is mediocre at best.

danans 4y ago

> Surely nobody at this level could be this brazenly incompetent when it comes to communicating a vision and building some sense of unity. Why don't you think someone at that level could be so incompetent? Megalomania and being out-of-touch reinforce each other. History, from ancient to the present, is full of wealthy, powerful, and paranoid people acting incompetently and thereby doing tremendous damage in the process.

cyanydeez 4y ago
And we just had half a decade of watching someone who's only skill was grifting peoples beliefs