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All this does is point out that smart people worked at Twitter who may now no longer work there, whether on their own accord, or due to Elon’s bulldogging tacti

by ulkesh 4y ago

All this does is point out that smart people worked at Twitter who may now no longer work there, whether on their own accord, or due to Elon’s bulldogging tactics. Elon thinks he knows what he’s doing, but what he is going to be left with are people who are willing to work hard by his standards, but not necessarily smart. The simple truth is Elon knows nothing about the actual work involved in tech. He knows words or elicits help from others on what to say that sounds like tech speak (RPCs!), but when it comes to being truly knowledgeable in this space, he is losing his most valuable assets because of his amazingly poor managerial and ownership style. I know there are a lot of Elon fans on this site, and will disagree with all of this; but his abilities have not at all been proven. Yes, he knows how to spend money to claim credit for technical advances, but until he actually has his hands dirty in the muck of the hard work of tech, he will always be a glorified self-promoter with no substance. And Twitter will suffer for it.

kfrzcode 4y ago
[flagged]
philistine 4y ago
And Twitter's problem are nowhere near technological. The site needed to make more money, not reengineer the whole thing while advertisers are fleeing because Trump is back on on a whim!
- taolegal 4y ago
  So should the platform be guided by advertisers? Especially one that’s apparently the de facto public square?
  - etchalon 4y ago
    I don't think "should" is really a function here. "Must" might be. No one has figured out a way to monetize a social network without advertising, at least not at the scale Twitter has to operate.
    - headsoup 4y ago
      $8 blue check marks :p Not sure that has long term profitability... I think the statement probably is more like "no one has figured out an easier way to monetize a social network"...
      - etchalon 4y ago
        There are no successful subscription-only social networks. It's been tried. It has not worked.
        busymom0 4y ago
        Spacex and Tesla were also first time successful concepts. Elon is used to somehow achieving the impossible.
        FartyMcFarter 4y ago
        Elon was not a founder of Tesla though.
    - hotpotamus 4y ago
      I say everyone can join for free and gets one post a day. $8/month plan includes 10 posts a day, and unlimited for $20. While I have no interest in Twitter, I'm told it's quite addictive, so make the first taste free and then reel them in once they're hooked.
      - wrycoder 4y ago
        It would be great if 99% would stay in the free tier.
      - etchalon 4y ago
        I don't think it'd work.
  - acdha 4y ago
    What choice do they have? The company was hovering around profitable (2021 would’ve been without a lawsuit settlement) but that was before they were saddled with a ton of new debt. It’s possible that they could find new revenue models - that pay for checkmark scheme isn’t it but maybe a smart businessman could come up with a better variant - but that takes time and has to be done carefully since they have to keep the lights on in the middle. Driving away advertisers before finding that new revenue source doesn’t leave much time to iterate.
    - naveen99 4y ago
      Debt and equity are just different ways for investors to invest in a company. If company isn’t generating any return on investment, keeping the lights on is not sustainable.
  - wwweston 4y ago
    If that's it's business model then sure, that's how it works. A "de facto public square" would be public in conception, construction, and support from the start, which is one of the ways we know that Twitter is no such thing. Though it would likely also have some rules for how speech is/isn't conducted. And all things considered, advertiser-friendliness is a sort of low-resolution but approximate passable democratic mechanism for marking boundaries of civilized discourse.
    - taolegal 4y ago
      > advertiser-friendliness is a sort of low-resolution but approximate passable democratic mechanism for marking boundaries of civilized discourse This reminds me that progressives have historically always supported corporations as complex hierarchies, scientific enterprises, run (ideally) by “experts.”
      - wwweston 4y ago
        Nowhere was a claim forwarded it was progressive or ideal. The claim is more or less that advertisers have some of the same concerns that elected representatives do because consumers have something like a vote. But then again, if you're scare-quoting expertise, maybe that's not the conversation you're here to have.
        taolegal 4y ago
        I'm scare-quoting expertise because it seems like you think there's an expert way to run a corporation. And that's a very progressive sensibility towards corporations, and precisely why they actually like them (what's more appealing to a progressive other than a huge centrally-planned organization run by credentialed experts) despite claiming otherwise.
        wwweston 4y ago
        LOL. If you think that progressives are generally friendly towards corporations then you've never actually talked with a progressive, have you? And corporations are not generally progressive in outlook either, there are too many values higher up on ladder of concerns. Advertisers are one subset that bring a rough approximation of democratic to their decisions, knowing that each person in the market they hope to reach will be deploying something like a vote with their dollars. As with any democratic approximation, it's only progressive to the extent that population is, though it's poor compared to other democratic mechanisms. You can take issue with whether democratic decisions are good decisions, of course, but that's likely to be an unpopular opinion for obvious reasons. And hey, I hear the person currently running twitter recently went so far as to say vox populi vox dei. Was his expertise in running corporations part of what you meant to scare quote, or is your challenge to expertise, shall we say, selective?
  - NineStarPoint 4y ago
    That depends on Musk’s goals. If his goal is to make money to pay off the massive amount of debt he gained as part of buying twitter, (as the attempted quick roll out of twitter blue would indicate), then yes he probably needs to care about what advertisers think. If he just wanted to leverage his position as one of the richest men in the world to ensure that twitter was a haven for free speech and screw the profitability, then no he wouldn’t need to be guided by advertisers. He probably can’t both want immediate returns on his investment and to quickly rock the boat though.
  - bergenty 4y ago
    In this case yes because you need to be profitable.
  - lr4444lr 4y ago
    Television and radio pretty much works that way. Print media too.
- headsoup 4y ago
  Was Twitter 'good' aside Musk purchased it? Without that event, would it still need substantial changes to be profitable and useful going forward?
- NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
  >while advertisers are fleeing because Trump is back on [citation needed] CNN's ratings were never better than under Trump. He's fantastic for advertising. So is Musk. All controversial figures are. That, oddly, isn't controversial in advertising. >on a whim! He created a public poll, and when people voted for Trump to be allowed back won, he unbanned him, tweeting "vox populi, vox dei" ("the will of the people is the will of god"). Had he unbanned him despite the poll saying "no" you could argue it was a whim, but that isn't the reality we're in. He also refused to unban Alex Jones, citing exploitation of child deaths and a personal story. Not unbanning Alex Jones was more whimsical than unbanning Trump was, factually speaking. Why do people always misrepresent his actions? And why is it always upvoted and not flagged here?
  - philistine 4y ago
    Let me ask you this: did he need to make a poll about Trump's return?
headsoup 4y ago
Nothing beats an internet random telling us how much a successful person is silly and also can't meet their own superior standards. It's not about being a fan or not, it's that you're not actually providing any real insight other than signalling how smart you are.
- theclansman 4y ago
  These people behave just like the irrational fanboys, except they just do the exact opposite. Being a sheep and being a contrarian sheep are the same thing.
  - intelVISA 4y ago
    I've no dog in this race but I'm excited to see what influence, if any, this will have on the topology of similarly inflated tech companies.
    - Loughla 4y ago
      Honestly, I'm hopeful that other coastal tech companies do clean house. I genuinely believe it could lead to a resurgence in the lives of Midwest/middle American states and cities. There is an absolute vacuum of technology specialists in the middle of the US, because no one wants to "live in the middle of nowhere," and they don't want to earn less than FAANG (MAMAA?) salaries, when half of those salaries can give you an amazing life in the middle of the country (source: my piss-poor salary compared to yours).
  - memish 4y ago
    "Knowing that haters are just fanboys with the sign bit flipped makes it much easier to deal with them" http://paulgraham.com/fh.html http://paulgraham.com/fh.html
emodendroket 4y ago
You aren't wrong, but his playbook is familiar to anyone who's gone through acquisitions (especially leveraged ones) and many companies were in a strong enough position to start with that they do manage to limp through and get sold off despite all the abuse.
nverno 4y ago
Judging by some of the old patents he's filed [1], I'd guess he has at least a decent understanding of the tech involved. Probably less so, when it comes to the details of more modern distributed systems, but I also wouldn't be surprised if he's spent some effort towards all that as well - he's been working in/around pretty cutting edge tech for quite a while. Could he sit down and code it himself? probably not, but that's hardly required in his situation. 1. https://patents.justia.com/inventor/elon-musk https://patents.justia.com/inventor/elon-musk
- HyperSane 4y ago
  Musk was fired from PayPal because he wanted to replace all the Unix servers with Windows.
  - mapme 4y ago
    Source?
    - timmytokyo 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#X.com_and_PayPal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#X.com_and_PayPal
- lupire 4y ago
  The CEO get to put his name on the company's patents, yes.
WalterBright 4y ago
America is such a great country that a random person can just fecklessly blunder into creating a revolutionary electric car company and cluelessly blunder into creating a rocket company that is the envy of the world.
- edmundsauto 4y ago
  Automotive and aerospace are not that similar to social media. People buying into the vision of "get the planet off fossil fuels for transport" and "get this species to Mars" are probably willing to make sacrifices that people working on social media are not. It's the Halo Effect fallacy to think competence in one field automatically translates to another. Especially when the founder in question has displayed increasingly erratic behavior in the meantime. Is today's Elon capable of doing what Elon from 15 years ago did at Tesla? I don't think that is necessarily in evidence, much less in a very different industry.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Automotive and aerospace are not similar to each other, either. I don't know any other outfit that was successful at both. > It's the Halo Effect fallacy to think competence in one field automatically translates to another I didn't say it was. I was responding the notion that Musk blundered into success at Tesla and SpaceX.
    - vba616 4y ago
      What I think makes people skeptical of him is that deep down we all believe in nominative determinism. Who do you think runs a rocket company behind the scenes, "Shotwell" or "Musk"?
    - duckmysick 4y ago
      > Automotive and aerospace are not similar to each other, either. I don't know any other outfit that was successful at both. Rolls-Royce (of the last century) would qualify, but it was more aero than space.
acknorabotr 4y ago
It's crazy to think a guy who builds reusable rockets thinks he can run a complex technology operation like Twitter.
- tiborsaas 4y ago
  Well, he's definitely not afraid of blowing up complex systems :)
  - mcosta 4y ago
    Run fast, break things
- nikau 4y ago
  s/builds/obtains funding to get other people to build
memish 4y ago
John Carmack, "Elon is definitely an engineer. He is deeply involved with technical decisions at spacex and Tesla. He doesn’t write code or do CAD today, but he is perfectly capable of doing so." Kevin Watson, who developed the avionics for Falcon 9 and Dragon and previously managed the Advanced Computer Systems and Technologies Group within the Autonomous Systems Division at NASA's Jet Propulsion laboratory: "Elon is brilliant. He’s involved in just about everything. He understands everything. If he asks you a question, you learn very quickly not to go give him a gut reaction. He wants answers that get down to the fundamental laws of physics. One thing he understands really well is the physics of the rockets. He understands that like nobody else. The stuff I have seen him do in his head is crazy. He can get in discussions about flying a satellite and whether we can make the right orbit and deliver Dragon at the same time and solve all these equations in real time. It’s amazing to watch the amount of knowledge he has accumulated over the years."
- minhazm 4y ago
  Many people who have worked with Musk have shared similar sentiments in interviews. But it seems that people just refuse to believe any of it. People think that there's no way it's possible for someone to be that deeply technical and be a CEO of multiple companies at the same time. I've talked to people about it and they straight up refuse to believe it saying that it's impossible and that any evidence of him being technical in interviews is all set up and that he was trained on the materials and questions ahead of time.
  - akira2501 4y ago
    With a handful of tricks or a patsy in your pocket, it's easy enough to pull things like this off. These are all self-reported encounters, which lends some doubt to them; as I've never seen any public performance of his that suggests he has this exceptional intelligence or that he isn't subject to the same amount of irrational thinking that most humans are. You may be able to do some type of rocket equation in your head, but if you constantly promise things that aren't ultimately delivered.. people have good reason to question this narrative. He clearly does know how to make incredible sums of money. Why that's not enough and people need to find excuses to exaggerate or demean his intelligence is beyond me.
lelanthran 4y ago
You know, I think Musk is an ass, and would never work for him, but don't you think that someone who has managed to launch and then run many successful and complex technology projects might actually know a thing or two about launching and running simpler technology projects? And if you're going to claim that his successes have been due to the people surrounding him who actually know what they are doing, then all that tells me is that you are acknowledging that he knows how to surround himself with people who know what they are doing. We're not fans (I'm certainly not), but it takes a special kind of mind to look at Musk's track record of successes and conclude that his latest project is doomed.
- gjulianm 4y ago
  Well, I think the issue is precisely considering Twitter a "simple technology project", and it's the same mistake that Musk does. Twitter isn't a "software and servers business" as he said. Twitter is a social community, and while in some regards it might be easier, it's also far more difficult in others. Just compare how many business and institutions can reliably launch rockets or create cars, and how many can reliably create social networks.
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    > Well, I think the issue is precisely considering Twitter a "simple technology project" But I didn't call it "simple", I called it "simpler", and it is.
    - gjulianm 4y ago
      Point still stands if you call it a "simpler technology project". It's not about the tech, it's about the community, and communities are far harder to predict and manage than a rocket or a car.
      - lelanthran 4y ago
        > Point still stands if you call it a "simpler technology project". Which point? > It's not about the tech, it's about the community, and communities are far harder to predict and manage than a rocket or a car. While I broadly agree with you, and also agree that twitters founders and/or leaders are better equipped to manage a community than Musk is, I fail to see how having someone with a track record of success (some in turning around failing businesses) automatically dooms the company. That was the point I was responding to, in the original post. It's also why I ended of with "it takes a special kind of mind to automatically assume something is doomed just because someone with a track record of successes took it over".
jillesvangurp 4y ago
You underestimate Elon Musk. Many people have done that before and lost that bet. If anything, he repeatedly succeeded in building world class software and hardware teams for Tesla, SpaceX, and a few other companies. The notion that he won't be able to attract world class talent is ludicrous. Yes, he is a bit of a liability and his management style is obnoxious and unconventional. But he does get things right once in a while. And he hates bloated inefficient teams. His decrees on meetings are infamous. Tripling the team at Twitter implies a lot of internal politics, fiefdoms, communication overhead, and generally a lot of headless chickens running around. There's no nice way to fix such a team. A sledge hammer is one way to fix it and obviously he likes getting results quickly. So, the notion of laying off most of that team was a foregone conclusion. The notion that a lot of the better people would get upset about that and leave as well is also highly predictable. What's left is a team with some gaps but also a lot of breathing room. And he can always lure key people back in by throwing money at them. Simple plan. It might actually work. At the cost of a bit of drama, temporary instability, and lots of free publicity. Exactly his style. Cringe worthy and effective. I can see the logic here.
- mazurnification 4y ago
  Agree, I wonder how much it is thought through strategy and how much is just "natural" style applied indiscriminately. I think one more important part is that he has money/resources to be able to make mistakes without bankrupting and stubbornness to plough thru even when things go wrong.
- gjulianm 4y ago
  > If anything, he repeatedly succeeded in building world class software and hardware teams for Tesla, SpaceX, and a few other companies The point is that Twitter doesn't really needed someone to build a world class software and hardware team. The technical challenges in reliability and speed seemed pretty much solved or on track to be solved already. The problem of Twitter was that they never knew how to properly manage the community and make the company profitable. Twitter doesn't have a tech problem, it has a community problem.
  - 4y ago
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Man, it's not about tech. This is simply about leveraging the "Musk halo effect" on a highly visible, failing business. You can screenshot this: Musk will cut down costs, make Twitter profitable, and take it public again when markets are better placed. The markets will give the newly listed Twitter the same "Musk-boost" as Tesla and ramp up the valuation to $100B.
triggercut 4y ago
Years ago I had a massively downvoted comment when I criticised his AR for CAD vapour ware. As someone who was fully in that area at the time, what he was showing while looking fancy had no practical application in the area of design he was talking about. Ever watch someone do CAD/CAM modelling? They need extreme precision of input that AR sausage fingers just aren't going to help with. You need a num-pad and a good mouse with a stepped click wheel. I get it. We share some similar neurodivergence traits. He wants to be right in the detail. Constantly jumping from interest to interest, seeing the hidden patterns and connections that aren't apparent to others. But there are a times when I know I just need to shut up and let someone more experienced talk despite my brain wanting to lead every discussion right into solution mode, or providing additional context mode. I've spent the last 6 years in management consulting (without formal business education), I agree with him when he says MBAs are useless. We know that the best solutions come from diverse teams with diverse backgrounds, skills and knowledge. Not 5 clones who know how to build value driver trees, not to say the tools they bring aren't useful, but they can be incredibly limiting. For someone who hates MBAs he's sure going about this take-over like someone who barely passed one (i.e. knows more than enough to be dangerous). Sure, you're hemorrhaging money in operations. You need to cut costs and find new revenue streams. What are your biggest costs? Labor. Slash / Burn. The old McKinsey 7% FTE reduction will give you some extra operating cash from the years remaining budget and you know it's not so much that people (in fear of their jobs) won't just pick up the slack to keep everything moving. Do it quick because you need to rip the band-aid off and get rid of all that accrued leave, restricted cash etc. off your books too. Equipment. Redundancy? Sounds like unused resources we can fire sale. Contracts. Renegotiate? The only two meaningful levers are price and quantity. Start cutting quantity now, renegotiate price later. This is all dummies guide stuff and tends to go terribly in reality when implemented all at once all together. For instance, research has shown companies that lay-off when under pressure end up underperforming against the ones who chose not to. Now who's going to help build and operate those new revenue streams? Quick fixes for a quick buck and a whole lot of extra risk.

by ulkesh 4y ago

kfrzcode 4y ago

[flagged]

philistine 4y ago

And Twitter's problem are nowhere near technological. The site needed to make more money, not reengineer the whole thing while advertisers are fleeing because Trump is back on on a whim!

taolegal 4y ago
So should the platform be guided by advertisers? Especially one that’s apparently the de facto public square?
- etchalon 4y ago
  I don't think "should" is really a function here. "Must" might be. No one has figured out a way to monetize a social network without advertising, at least not at the scale Twitter has to operate.
  - headsoup 4y ago
    $8 blue check marks :p Not sure that has long term profitability... I think the statement probably is more like "no one has figured out an easier way to monetize a social network"...
    - etchalon 4y ago
      There are no successful subscription-only social networks. It's been tried. It has not worked.
      - busymom0 4y ago
        Spacex and Tesla were also first time successful concepts. Elon is used to somehow achieving the impossible.
        FartyMcFarter 4y ago
        Elon was not a founder of Tesla though.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    I say everyone can join for free and gets one post a day. $8/month plan includes 10 posts a day, and unlimited for $20. While I have no interest in Twitter, I'm told it's quite addictive, so make the first taste free and then reel them in once they're hooked.
    - wrycoder 4y ago
      It would be great if 99% would stay in the free tier.
    - etchalon 4y ago
      I don't think it'd work.
- acdha 4y ago
  What choice do they have? The company was hovering around profitable (2021 would’ve been without a lawsuit settlement) but that was before they were saddled with a ton of new debt. It’s possible that they could find new revenue models - that pay for checkmark scheme isn’t it but maybe a smart businessman could come up with a better variant - but that takes time and has to be done carefully since they have to keep the lights on in the middle. Driving away advertisers before finding that new revenue source doesn’t leave much time to iterate.
  - naveen99 4y ago
    Debt and equity are just different ways for investors to invest in a company. If company isn’t generating any return on investment, keeping the lights on is not sustainable.
- wwweston 4y ago
  If that's it's business model then sure, that's how it works. A "de facto public square" would be public in conception, construction, and support from the start, which is one of the ways we know that Twitter is no such thing. Though it would likely also have some rules for how speech is/isn't conducted. And all things considered, advertiser-friendliness is a sort of low-resolution but approximate passable democratic mechanism for marking boundaries of civilized discourse.
  - taolegal 4y ago
    > advertiser-friendliness is a sort of low-resolution but approximate passable democratic mechanism for marking boundaries of civilized discourse This reminds me that progressives have historically always supported corporations as complex hierarchies, scientific enterprises, run (ideally) by “experts.”
    - wwweston 4y ago
      Nowhere was a claim forwarded it was progressive or ideal. The claim is more or less that advertisers have some of the same concerns that elected representatives do because consumers have something like a vote. But then again, if you're scare-quoting expertise, maybe that's not the conversation you're here to have.
      - taolegal 4y ago
        I'm scare-quoting expertise because it seems like you think there's an expert way to run a corporation. And that's a very progressive sensibility towards corporations, and precisely why they actually like them (what's more appealing to a progressive other than a huge centrally-planned organization run by credentialed experts) despite claiming otherwise.
        wwweston 4y ago
        LOL. If you think that progressives are generally friendly towards corporations then you've never actually talked with a progressive, have you? And corporations are not generally progressive in outlook either, there are too many values higher up on ladder of concerns. Advertisers are one subset that bring a rough approximation of democratic to their decisions, knowing that each person in the market they hope to reach will be deploying something like a vote with their dollars. As with any democratic approximation, it's only progressive to the extent that population is, though it's poor compared to other democratic mechanisms. You can take issue with whether democratic decisions are good decisions, of course, but that's likely to be an unpopular opinion for obvious reasons. And hey, I hear the person currently running twitter recently went so far as to say vox populi vox dei. Was his expertise in running corporations part of what you meant to scare quote, or is your challenge to expertise, shall we say, selective?
- NineStarPoint 4y ago
  That depends on Musk’s goals. If his goal is to make money to pay off the massive amount of debt he gained as part of buying twitter, (as the attempted quick roll out of twitter blue would indicate), then yes he probably needs to care about what advertisers think. If he just wanted to leverage his position as one of the richest men in the world to ensure that twitter was a haven for free speech and screw the profitability, then no he wouldn’t need to be guided by advertisers. He probably can’t both want immediate returns on his investment and to quickly rock the boat though.
- bergenty 4y ago
  In this case yes because you need to be profitable.
- lr4444lr 4y ago
  Television and radio pretty much works that way. Print media too.
headsoup 4y ago
Was Twitter 'good' aside Musk purchased it? Without that event, would it still need substantial changes to be profitable and useful going forward?
NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
>while advertisers are fleeing because Trump is back on [citation needed] CNN's ratings were never better than under Trump. He's fantastic for advertising. So is Musk. All controversial figures are. That, oddly, isn't controversial in advertising. >on a whim! He created a public poll, and when people voted for Trump to be allowed back won, he unbanned him, tweeting "vox populi, vox dei" ("the will of the people is the will of god"). Had he unbanned him despite the poll saying "no" you could argue it was a whim, but that isn't the reality we're in. He also refused to unban Alex Jones, citing exploitation of child deaths and a personal story. Not unbanning Alex Jones was more whimsical than unbanning Trump was, factually speaking. Why do people always misrepresent his actions? And why is it always upvoted and not flagged here?
- philistine 4y ago
  Let me ask you this: did he need to make a poll about Trump's return?

headsoup 4y ago

Nothing beats an internet random telling us how much a successful person is silly and also can't meet their own superior standards. It's not about being a fan or not, it's that you're not actually providing any real insight other than signalling how smart you are.

theclansman 4y ago
These people behave just like the irrational fanboys, except they just do the exact opposite. Being a sheep and being a contrarian sheep are the same thing.
- intelVISA 4y ago
  I've no dog in this race but I'm excited to see what influence, if any, this will have on the topology of similarly inflated tech companies.
  - Loughla 4y ago
    Honestly, I'm hopeful that other coastal tech companies do clean house. I genuinely believe it could lead to a resurgence in the lives of Midwest/middle American states and cities. There is an absolute vacuum of technology specialists in the middle of the US, because no one wants to "live in the middle of nowhere," and they don't want to earn less than FAANG (MAMAA?) salaries, when half of those salaries can give you an amazing life in the middle of the country (source: my piss-poor salary compared to yours).
- memish 4y ago
  "Knowing that haters are just fanboys with the sign bit flipped makes it much easier to deal with them" http://paulgraham.com/fh.html http://paulgraham.com/fh.html

emodendroket 4y ago

You aren't wrong, but his playbook is familiar to anyone who's gone through acquisitions (especially leveraged ones) and many companies were in a strong enough position to start with that they do manage to limp through and get sold off despite all the abuse.

nverno 4y ago

Judging by some of the old patents he's filed [1], I'd guess he has at least a decent understanding of the tech involved. Probably less so, when it comes to the details of more modern distributed systems, but I also wouldn't be surprised if he's spent some effort towards all that as well - he's been working in/around pretty cutting edge tech for quite a while. Could he sit down and code it himself? probably not, but that's hardly required in his situation. 1. https://patents.justia.com/inventor/elon-musk https://patents.justia.com/inventor/elon-musk

HyperSane 4y ago
Musk was fired from PayPal because he wanted to replace all the Unix servers with Windows.
- mapme 4y ago
  Source?
  - timmytokyo 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#X.com_and_PayPal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#X.com_and_PayPal
lupire 4y ago
The CEO get to put his name on the company's patents, yes.

WalterBright 4y ago

America is such a great country that a random person can just fecklessly blunder into creating a revolutionary electric car company and cluelessly blunder into creating a rocket company that is the envy of the world.

edmundsauto 4y ago
Automotive and aerospace are not that similar to social media. People buying into the vision of "get the planet off fossil fuels for transport" and "get this species to Mars" are probably willing to make sacrifices that people working on social media are not. It's the Halo Effect fallacy to think competence in one field automatically translates to another. Especially when the founder in question has displayed increasingly erratic behavior in the meantime. Is today's Elon capable of doing what Elon from 15 years ago did at Tesla? I don't think that is necessarily in evidence, much less in a very different industry.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Automotive and aerospace are not similar to each other, either. I don't know any other outfit that was successful at both. > It's the Halo Effect fallacy to think competence in one field automatically translates to another I didn't say it was. I was responding the notion that Musk blundered into success at Tesla and SpaceX.
  - vba616 4y ago
    What I think makes people skeptical of him is that deep down we all believe in nominative determinism. Who do you think runs a rocket company behind the scenes, "Shotwell" or "Musk"?
  - duckmysick 4y ago
    > Automotive and aerospace are not similar to each other, either. I don't know any other outfit that was successful at both. Rolls-Royce (of the last century) would qualify, but it was more aero than space.

acknorabotr 4y ago

It's crazy to think a guy who builds reusable rockets thinks he can run a complex technology operation like Twitter.

tiborsaas 4y ago
Well, he's definitely not afraid of blowing up complex systems :)
- mcosta 4y ago
  Run fast, break things
nikau 4y ago
s/builds/obtains funding to get other people to build

memish 4y ago

John Carmack, "Elon is definitely an engineer. He is deeply involved with technical decisions at spacex and Tesla. He doesn’t write code or do CAD today, but he is perfectly capable of doing so." Kevin Watson, who developed the avionics for Falcon 9 and Dragon and previously managed the Advanced Computer Systems and Technologies Group within the Autonomous Systems Division at NASA's Jet Propulsion laboratory: "Elon is brilliant. He’s involved in just about everything. He understands everything. If he asks you a question, you learn very quickly not to go give him a gut reaction. He wants answers that get down to the fundamental laws of physics. One thing he understands really well is the physics of the rockets. He understands that like nobody else. The stuff I have seen him do in his head is crazy. He can get in discussions about flying a satellite and whether we can make the right orbit and deliver Dragon at the same time and solve all these equations in real time. It’s amazing to watch the amount of knowledge he has accumulated over the years."

minhazm 4y ago
Many people who have worked with Musk have shared similar sentiments in interviews. But it seems that people just refuse to believe any of it. People think that there's no way it's possible for someone to be that deeply technical and be a CEO of multiple companies at the same time. I've talked to people about it and they straight up refuse to believe it saying that it's impossible and that any evidence of him being technical in interviews is all set up and that he was trained on the materials and questions ahead of time.
- akira2501 4y ago
  With a handful of tricks or a patsy in your pocket, it's easy enough to pull things like this off. These are all self-reported encounters, which lends some doubt to them; as I've never seen any public performance of his that suggests he has this exceptional intelligence or that he isn't subject to the same amount of irrational thinking that most humans are. You may be able to do some type of rocket equation in your head, but if you constantly promise things that aren't ultimately delivered.. people have good reason to question this narrative. He clearly does know how to make incredible sums of money. Why that's not enough and people need to find excuses to exaggerate or demean his intelligence is beyond me.

lelanthran 4y ago

You know, I think Musk is an ass, and would never work for him, but don't you think that someone who has managed to launch and then run many successful and complex technology projects might actually know a thing or two about launching and running simpler technology projects? And if you're going to claim that his successes have been due to the people surrounding him who actually know what they are doing, then all that tells me is that you are acknowledging that he knows how to surround himself with people who know what they are doing. We're not fans (I'm certainly not), but it takes a special kind of mind to look at Musk's track record of successes and conclude that his latest project is doomed.

gjulianm 4y ago
Well, I think the issue is precisely considering Twitter a "simple technology project", and it's the same mistake that Musk does. Twitter isn't a "software and servers business" as he said. Twitter is a social community, and while in some regards it might be easier, it's also far more difficult in others. Just compare how many business and institutions can reliably launch rockets or create cars, and how many can reliably create social networks.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > Well, I think the issue is precisely considering Twitter a "simple technology project" But I didn't call it "simple", I called it "simpler", and it is.
  - gjulianm 4y ago
    Point still stands if you call it a "simpler technology project". It's not about the tech, it's about the community, and communities are far harder to predict and manage than a rocket or a car.
    - lelanthran 4y ago
      > Point still stands if you call it a "simpler technology project". Which point? > It's not about the tech, it's about the community, and communities are far harder to predict and manage than a rocket or a car. While I broadly agree with you, and also agree that twitters founders and/or leaders are better equipped to manage a community than Musk is, I fail to see how having someone with a track record of success (some in turning around failing businesses) automatically dooms the company. That was the point I was responding to, in the original post. It's also why I ended of with "it takes a special kind of mind to automatically assume something is doomed just because someone with a track record of successes took it over".

jillesvangurp 4y ago

You underestimate Elon Musk. Many people have done that before and lost that bet. If anything, he repeatedly succeeded in building world class software and hardware teams for Tesla, SpaceX, and a few other companies. The notion that he won't be able to attract world class talent is ludicrous. Yes, he is a bit of a liability and his management style is obnoxious and unconventional. But he does get things right once in a while. And he hates bloated inefficient teams. His decrees on meetings are infamous. Tripling the team at Twitter implies a lot of internal politics, fiefdoms, communication overhead, and generally a lot of headless chickens running around. There's no nice way to fix such a team. A sledge hammer is one way to fix it and obviously he likes getting results quickly. So, the notion of laying off most of that team was a foregone conclusion. The notion that a lot of the better people would get upset about that and leave as well is also highly predictable. What's left is a team with some gaps but also a lot of breathing room. And he can always lure key people back in by throwing money at them. Simple plan. It might actually work. At the cost of a bit of drama, temporary instability, and lots of free publicity. Exactly his style. Cringe worthy and effective. I can see the logic here.

mazurnification 4y ago
Agree, I wonder how much it is thought through strategy and how much is just "natural" style applied indiscriminately. I think one more important part is that he has money/resources to be able to make mistakes without bankrupting and stubbornness to plough thru even when things go wrong.
gjulianm 4y ago
> If anything, he repeatedly succeeded in building world class software and hardware teams for Tesla, SpaceX, and a few other companies The point is that Twitter doesn't really needed someone to build a world class software and hardware team. The technical challenges in reliability and speed seemed pretty much solved or on track to be solved already. The problem of Twitter was that they never knew how to properly manage the community and make the company profitable. Twitter doesn't have a tech problem, it has a community problem.
- 4y ago

spaceman_2020 4y ago

Man, it's not about tech. This is simply about leveraging the "Musk halo effect" on a highly visible, failing business. You can screenshot this: Musk will cut down costs, make Twitter profitable, and take it public again when markets are better placed. The markets will give the newly listed Twitter the same "Musk-boost" as Tesla and ramp up the valuation to $100B.

triggercut 4y ago

Years ago I had a massively downvoted comment when I criticised his AR for CAD vapour ware. As someone who was fully in that area at the time, what he was showing while looking fancy had no practical application in the area of design he was talking about. Ever watch someone do CAD/CAM modelling? They need extreme precision of input that AR sausage fingers just aren't going to help with. You need a num-pad and a good mouse with a stepped click wheel. I get it. We share some similar neurodivergence traits. He wants to be right in the detail. Constantly jumping from interest to interest, seeing the hidden patterns and connections that aren't apparent to others. But there are a times when I know I just need to shut up and let someone more experienced talk despite my brain wanting to lead every discussion right into solution mode, or providing additional context mode. I've spent the last 6 years in management consulting (without formal business education), I agree with him when he says MBAs are useless. We know that the best solutions come from diverse teams with diverse backgrounds, skills and knowledge. Not 5 clones who know how to build value driver trees, not to say the tools they bring aren't useful, but they can be incredibly limiting. For someone who hates MBAs he's sure going about this take-over like someone who barely passed one (i.e. knows more than enough to be dangerous). Sure, you're hemorrhaging money in operations. You need to cut costs and find new revenue streams. What are your biggest costs? Labor. Slash / Burn. The old McKinsey 7% FTE reduction will give you some extra operating cash from the years remaining budget and you know it's not so much that people (in fear of their jobs) won't just pick up the slack to keep everything moving. Do it quick because you need to rip the band-aid off and get rid of all that accrued leave, restricted cash etc. off your books too. Equipment. Redundancy? Sounds like unused resources we can fire sale. Contracts. Renegotiate? The only two meaningful levers are price and quantity. Start cutting quantity now, renegotiate price later. This is all dummies guide stuff and tends to go terribly in reality when implemented all at once all together. For instance, research has shown companies that lay-off when under pressure end up underperforming against the ones who chose not to. Now who's going to help build and operate those new revenue streams? Quick fixes for a quick buck and a whole lot of extra risk.