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This is delusional. When you have a big tech company with thousands of employees, the pareto principle comes into play in a huge way: proably only 10% of these

by hsn915 4y ago

This is delusional. When you have a big tech company with thousands of employees, the pareto principle comes into play in a huge way: proably only 10% of these people are actually doing any work that directly impacts the platform. At least half the employees are probably not doing anything really useful. This applies even to tech companies with a mere 100 total employees. At 3000 employees it's probably even more so. Specially with the majority "working from home". There are probably only about 10 key engineers who understand at a deep level how things are working. On the other hand, Musk is bootstrapping a hardcode engineering culture where a lot of the platform can be implemented from scratch in a few weeks by top engineers if he can hire them, and I'm pretty sure he can. His "Fork in the road" email is actually brilliant, many just don't realize it. He is good at making engineers a "high status class"; see this analysis by Samo Burja: https://samoburja.com/how-elon-musk-is-making-engineers-cool-again/ https://samoburja.com/how-elon-musk-is-making-engineers-cool... There are many top teir engineers who are eager to work for him.

camdat 4y ago
>He is good at making engineers a "high status class" From what I've seen, Elon's companies pay below-market for most roles. Levels.fyi indicates that, on average, engs take a 10-15% pay cut by deciding to work for Tesla. I'm sure there are a handful of engineers that exist that could save Twitter single-handedly, but none that would do it for the pay he's offering.
- seti0Cha 4y ago
  He can get away with paying below market rates to Tesla engineers for the same reason video game companies can do it: people think it would be cool to work there. It doesn't seem plausible to me that if Musk can't get people to work at Twitter for cheap he wouldn't just offer more rather than let it die.
  - sidibe 4y ago
    Waymo is working in the same "cool" field as many of the Tesla SWEs and pays much better than equivalent positions at Tesla, with less stress from impossible constraints and deadlines. He can get away with it because either he doesn't think he needs the top talent or some engineers are willing to make sacrifices to work for their idol
    - seti0Cha 4y ago
      Well, either way, the fact that he's getting what he wants for a lot less than Waymo has to pay doesn't mean he can't or won't pay more if he has to. And if there are engineers who idolize him so much, why do you think he'll have trouble recruiting for Twitter? I think it's Tesla they idolize, not Musk, so he'll need to pay a lot more to get people for Twitter.
- hsn915 4y ago
  High status != high pay This is the relevant part of the "Fork in the road" email: > Design and product management will still be very important and report to me, but those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway. Most companies put engineers _below_ design and product management: the designers and product people make decisions, and programmers just implement. Once you're past the $120k/year mark does a higher salary matter that much really? It only matters if you don't find anything fulfilling about your job. What would you rather? $180k/year with great say over the product or $220k/year with little say on the product?
  - erik_seaberg 4y ago
    An extra $900/month on DTI adds $140K to a mortgage you can qualify for. You might be choosing between say over someone else’s product, or a house.
mhoad 4y ago
I’d maybe take it easy calling others delusional if I were you.
terminatornet 4y ago
love to do the work of 10 people, receive the pay of 1, and getting fired because i wasn't "hardcore" enough
- hsn915 4y ago
  This is not about you.
notyourwork 4y ago
> where a lot of the platform can be implemented from scratch in a few weeks by top engineers I stopped reading at this point.
- threeseed 4y ago
  Nobody who knows what they are talking about thinks Twitter is a simple system to build and scale. Especially given it's highly distributed, fan-out architecture is not one that everyday engineers typically deal with.

by hsn915 4y ago

camdat 4y ago

>He is good at making engineers a "high status class" From what I've seen, Elon's companies pay below-market for most roles. Levels.fyi indicates that, on average, engs take a 10-15% pay cut by deciding to work for Tesla. I'm sure there are a handful of engineers that exist that could save Twitter single-handedly, but none that would do it for the pay he's offering.

seti0Cha 4y ago
He can get away with paying below market rates to Tesla engineers for the same reason video game companies can do it: people think it would be cool to work there. It doesn't seem plausible to me that if Musk can't get people to work at Twitter for cheap he wouldn't just offer more rather than let it die.
- sidibe 4y ago
  Waymo is working in the same "cool" field as many of the Tesla SWEs and pays much better than equivalent positions at Tesla, with less stress from impossible constraints and deadlines. He can get away with it because either he doesn't think he needs the top talent or some engineers are willing to make sacrifices to work for their idol
  - seti0Cha 4y ago
    Well, either way, the fact that he's getting what he wants for a lot less than Waymo has to pay doesn't mean he can't or won't pay more if he has to. And if there are engineers who idolize him so much, why do you think he'll have trouble recruiting for Twitter? I think it's Tesla they idolize, not Musk, so he'll need to pay a lot more to get people for Twitter.
hsn915 4y ago
High status != high pay This is the relevant part of the "Fork in the road" email: > Design and product management will still be very important and report to me, but those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway. Most companies put engineers _below_ design and product management: the designers and product people make decisions, and programmers just implement. Once you're past the $120k/year mark does a higher salary matter that much really? It only matters if you don't find anything fulfilling about your job. What would you rather? $180k/year with great say over the product or $220k/year with little say on the product?
- erik_seaberg 4y ago
  An extra $900/month on DTI adds $140K to a mortgage you can qualify for. You might be choosing between say over someone else’s product, or a house.

mhoad 4y ago

I’d maybe take it easy calling others delusional if I were you.

terminatornet 4y ago

love to do the work of 10 people, receive the pay of 1, and getting fired because i wasn't "hardcore" enough

hsn915 4y ago
This is not about you.

notyourwork 4y ago

> where a lot of the platform can be implemented from scratch in a few weeks by top engineers I stopped reading at this point.

threeseed 4y ago
Nobody who knows what they are talking about thinks Twitter is a simple system to build and scale. Especially given it's highly distributed, fan-out architecture is not one that everyday engineers typically deal with.