4 ms·

Tesla also got funded through zero-emissions vehicle credits so I'd say the problem is always political. Same for the Staged combustion cycle engines, wouldn't

Tesla also got funded through zero-emissions vehicle credits so I'd say the problem is always political. Same for the Staged combustion cycle engines, wouldn't it been for the US gov access to the N1 descendants I seriously doubt they'd been able to make such a progress. Not sure why it should be different for a company like Twitter dependant on global access.

bartread 4y ago
Sure, but getting those credits entails a much smaller group of people to avoid pissing off, and a much smaller corpus of regulation to avoid falling foul of. A much (much) larger proportion of the hard work with Tesla was on vehicle development. Just look at the story of the development of the original roadster, which started out in concept as a modified Lotus Elise, but ended up being basically a completely reengineered car, and the reengineering was made that much more difficult by starting from an existing platform rather than from scratch with a clean slate. With Twitter you have a clumsily handled set of layoffs, with lots of talk about Musk wanting to see code samples from engineers (and frankly way too much talk about Twitter's engineering in general), carried out in front of an already more-politicised-than-the-general-population userbase, features retired, introduced, withdrawn, etc., and in general lots of thrashing around. And all of this in view of an entire audience with a greater-than-the-general-population bias towards kicking off and taking matters viral. Tesla started small: Twitter was already (relatively) a giant company with thousands of employees. It's just a fundamentally less "make it soable" situation than a small, primarily engineering focussed, car startup.
- eagleal 4y ago
  Given he was forced to follow up on the deal or face a market manipulation lawsuit, my personal opinion is that Musk wanted to work directly hands-on on Twitter's direction, overestimating his knowledge and know-how from the early dotcom. Given thefame he got from SpaceX and Tesla he seems to have fallen victim of his own illusory superiority. It's just a website right? For the matter I really have my doubts of him being able to personally code review a modern complex stack). This is the only difference I spot, meaning no one was oversighting his internal management of the company. His inputs went live into operations as if they were tweets.
  - bartread 4y ago
    Yeah, I think we're probably in agreement for the most part. From both points of view he overvalued his prior experience, and the skills gained, in a scenario with which he was unfamiliar.

bartread 4y ago

Sure, but getting those credits entails a much smaller group of people to avoid pissing off, and a much smaller corpus of regulation to avoid falling foul of. A much (much) larger proportion of the hard work with Tesla was on vehicle development. Just look at the story of the development of the original roadster, which started out in concept as a modified Lotus Elise, but ended up being basically a completely reengineered car, and the reengineering was made that much more difficult by starting from an existing platform rather than from scratch with a clean slate. With Twitter you have a clumsily handled set of layoffs, with lots of talk about Musk wanting to see code samples from engineers (and frankly way too much talk about Twitter's engineering in general), carried out in front of an already more-politicised-than-the-general-population userbase, features retired, introduced, withdrawn, etc., and in general lots of thrashing around. And all of this in view of an entire audience with a greater-than-the-general-population bias towards kicking off and taking matters viral. Tesla started small: Twitter was already (relatively) a giant company with thousands of employees. It's just a fundamentally less "make it soable" situation than a small, primarily engineering focussed, car startup.

eagleal 4y ago
Given he was forced to follow up on the deal or face a market manipulation lawsuit, my personal opinion is that Musk wanted to work directly hands-on on Twitter's direction, overestimating his knowledge and know-how from the early dotcom. Given thefame he got from SpaceX and Tesla he seems to have fallen victim of his own illusory superiority. It's just a website right? For the matter I really have my doubts of him being able to personally code review a modern complex stack). This is the only difference I spot, meaning no one was oversighting his internal management of the company. His inputs went live into operations as if they were tweets.
- bartread 4y ago
  Yeah, I think we're probably in agreement for the most part. From both points of view he overvalued his prior experience, and the skills gained, in a scenario with which he was unfamiliar.