6 ms·

Elon Musk fires a top Twitter engineer over his declining view count

99 points by minimaxir 4y ago

nagonago 4y ago
As much as I hate Musk and want this story to be true, it smells awfully fishy to me. It's all based on a story told by a single unverifiable source to Platformer, not exactly the pinnacle of journalistic integrity. It could easily be a yarn spun by somebody who read Musk's tweets and invented a emperor's new clothes story around it. Or even somebody who does work at Twitter and exaggerated the situation.
gadnuk 4y ago
There's a reason the turnover rate at all of his companies is very high. Not exactly the easiest or nicest guy to work for. His companies have succeeded despite him, because they have the right people at the helm leading operations (example: Shotwell at SpaceX). Musk at Twitter gives you a glimpse as to why he was fired from PayPal 2 decades ago.
- mgiannopoulos 4y ago
  Are there any other examples of successful companies with explosive growth like Tesla and SpaceX despite the founder/CEO being a complete megalomaniac idiot?
  - papito 4y ago
    Most companies in the US stay afloat even despite the incompetent, self-sabotaging geniuses at the top. Only because the employees are hard-working little bees saving the companies from themselves. We can't get fired - need health insurance and all that.
    - mgiannopoulos 4y ago
      Tesla and SpaceX are not simply staying afloat though. They are dominating their respective fields.
      - brazzledazzle 4y ago
        Tesla is substantially reliant on the promise that full self-driving is just around the corner when it's likely not. Between lawsuits about it, rumors that they're abandoning a vision-only strategy in newer models and the threat of regulatory action due to growing safety concerns. That haphazardness that seems to be characteristic of Musk is coming home to roost for tesla. SpaceX is a different beast entirely and one might consider the contributions of Gwynne Shotwell and Thomas Mueller.
        mgiannopoulos 4y ago
        The grand majority of Tesla buyers don’t purchase the FSD package. At the same time, Tesla grows revenues by 50% every year. Yet somehow Tesla’s death is just around the corner?
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - dbsmith83 4y ago
        There is a difference between dominating a field and being a pioneer in a field. Competition is coming for Tesla. We'll see what happens soon enough
  - ProAm 4y ago
    WeWork?
    - mgiannopoulos 4y ago
      It’s not doing so well as it used to and billions of dollars of investment were lost while the founders were kicked off the company. Doesn’t seem a good comparison imho.
  - Dudelander 4y ago
    Ironically Genius is in this category.
strangeloops85 4y ago
Telling the emperor he has no clothes only works if he has any self awareness..
- labrador 4y ago
  I'm old enough to remember the insanity of the brilliant engineer Howard Hughes, who (to myself) I often compare with Musk. So far Musk's mental decline and erratic behavior seems to be right on track. If this continues, a decade from now he'll be living in a darkened luxury hotel growing out his finger nails not seeing anyone because germs.
  - hindsightbias 4y ago
    In space
  - TechBro8615 4y ago
    Is it really erratic if it's predictable? Seems like he has a regularly reoccurring manic episode every few months. Those are probably also when he's done his best work throughout his career, so you gotta take the good with the bad. But I hope he's introspective enough to recognize this pattern in himself, because otherwise he'll go crazy.
    - labrador 4y ago
      As someone with bipolar, I've learned that it's possible to have several problems at the same time: Bipolar, autism, schizophrenia, etc... He should probably turns his duties over to others and take a long sabbatical to figure out his personal life.
      - ModernMech 4y ago
        > several problems at the same time: Bipolar, autism, schizophrenia, etc... Curious if you could expand on this. I think a BP/schizophrenia diagnosis would be very hard to make, as most of the schizophrenia symptoms could be attributed to BP1. If you don’t mind sharing, is this how you’ve been diagnosed? Only reason I ask is because I know someone with BP1 and I’ve wondered if they could be schizophrenic, but my research caused me to conclude the BP1 diagnosis explained the symptoms.
kenjackson 4y ago
< When Musk or the goons ask questions, employees are torn between giving the right answer and the safe answer. Musk has created a culture of fear. And he's not as charismatic as Jobs was. I don't see how this can possibly end well unless he changes himself quickly.
- standardUser 4y ago
  I've noticed that "ability to change" does not seem to be a core competency of most egomaniac billionaires.
- papito 4y ago
  This is not new. It has been well-known that the surefire way to get shitcanned with Musk is to utter any remote synonym of "no" or "not possible". The best thing is to just completely avoid meetings where he is present.
- bambax 4y ago
  > he's not as charismatic as Jobs was No, but he's obviously a very-stable-genius™.
labrador 4y ago
“As the adage goes, ‘you ship your org chart,’” said one current employee. “It’s chaos here right now, so we’re shipping chaos.”
- thefourthchime 4y ago
  Conway’s Law
adharmad 4y ago
It is surprising that a for someone who portrays himself as hyper-logical, Musk cannot see simple cause and effect.
- justapassenger 4y ago
  Musk portrays himself as many things. Free speech absolutist who's removing content about himself. Centrist who's hanging out mostly with far-right nuts. Pro environmental guy flying private jet around the world just to see the world cup. Workaholic, working every waking hour, who's constantly shitposting and often talks about games he plays. And many, many more. If Musk says something, it's very likely that it's not true.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
cbtacy 4y ago
"One of the company’s two remaining principal engineers..." Says it all.
TechBro8615 4y ago
What happened to replacing himself as CEO? The best move Musk could make right now, for Twitter and his own mental health, would be to put some distance between Twitter and himself. It's a mistake to make his hobby his career. He needs to appoint an engineer-friendly CEO (read: someone who will open the API) and focus on his rockets and cars.
- hindsightbias 4y ago
  The venn of qualified, acceptable to Elon and stupid enough to take the job is apparently not that large.
- BizarroLand 4y ago
  The best move Elon could have made was not making a credible threat to purchase Twitter with his own money. That's going to go down as either one of the biggest blunders of the early 21st century, and if not, it will be a near miss. He's never getting his money back. He's never getting his credibility back. He's never getting his supporters back. He has passed the zenith of his life and all that is left is the long slow march to obscurity.
  - TechBro8615 4y ago
    He will get his money back when he takes it public for $50+ billion. The market is full of idiots. Remember when TSLA did a 5x stock split and then hit the exact price from before the split, effectively increasing value by 5x for no discernible reason? That was about as rational as the value added by the hard fork to BCH (when anyone holding BTC instantly got the same value of BCH, which shortly became tradeable on Coinbase, during a time when IIRC some Coinbase employees were later charged with insider trading). Anyway, the market will go up again, and it will probably go irrationally high. After all, that's what's always happened... ;) ... So, Twitter will benefit from this, pretty much regardless of their actual revenue - if anything, the $40bn Musk paid for it will serve as an anchor for the IPO, meaning it will be almost definitionally unlikely to go public for less than Musk paid for it, assuming Twitter can survive long enough to credibly go public.
cratermoon 4y ago
"‘this one person says they can’t do this one thing on the platform,’ and then we have to run around chasing some outlier use case for one person" I've been in a similar situation. The whole company jumps every time this one Special customer says so. The whole company folds when the Special customer stops using the product after all the other customers have left because none of their concerns were ever addressed.
- rsynnott 4y ago
  There are probably cases where, for better or for worse, one Very Special Customer _can_ dictate to a company. However, and this is important, unless you are actually in the kitty litter industry, that customer should not have the words "cat" and "turd" in their name.
- johntb86 4y ago
  This might be more similar to a Bezos "question-mark" email: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-bezos/with-bezos-out-as-amazon-ceo-is-this-the-end-of-his-ominous-question-mark-emails-idUSKBN2A32Z8 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-bezos/with-bez...
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    It's probably an urban legend, but I read somewhere that at Amazon, they had a secret, special frontend just for Bezos's account. Whenever he went into a fit of product micromanagement, they'd add his requested feature to the "Bezos frontend" to mollify him, but without polluting the working (public) product. Like I said, probably an urban legend, but I've seen the pressure at other companies that would incentivize this kind of activity.
ddmma 4y ago
Problem is that due to ego level will never accept defeat and hopefully made a positive checkup on the startups portfolio. Dealing with humans it’s bit more complicated than predictive machinery. Hardy this comes with cold hearted decisions for the profit gains. It’s a great momentum to get more specialised support on dealerships with social/ human interaction, this will help.
anigbrowl 4y ago
Life imitates art yet again https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/boardroom-suggestion https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/boardroom-suggestion
mgiannopoulos 4y ago
The impressions on Musk’s tweets are still in the millions. So either the article is based on a story that never happened or the issue is fixed.
- corbulo 4y ago
  It was an issue that he spotted and replied to multiple accounts about it, then tested it on his own account. It's really unfortunate to see so many people here in lockstep with the Musk is Tech Hitler media corps. I thought this place was different. I think I saw someone say Musk isn't as charismatic as Jobs was. Hilariously revealing. They're both difficult bosses in the extremis, but neither are Tech Hitler.
  - cactusplant7374 4y ago
    How did he fix Google Trends?
    - mgiannopoulos 4y ago
      This never had anything to do with Google Trends, this was a really silly suggestion if someone made it. Telling your boss that you and hundreds other users are simply imagining a bug is a bad idea.
      - cactusplant7374 4y ago
        It's in the article. Employees should tell their employer if they are wrong. I don't see anything that disproves the engineers.
- stubybubs 4y ago
  That seems a little too obvious to be fake. My guess is that views =! impressions, so while he's got millions of views, he's looking at something more accurate. People are posting on locked accounts with zero followers and they have 59 "views" as soon as they post, whatever that means. https://twitter.com/TaylorLorenz/status/1623788092124704768 https://twitter.com/TaylorLorenz/status/1623788092124704768
spoils19 4y ago
This just seems like the free market at work? Not sure why so many of my fellow HNers have a problem with this. As a fellow user, kamaal, once said to me, I'd love to be there working for Musk and experiencing all he has to offer.

99 points by minimaxir 4y ago

As much as I hate Musk and want this story to be true, it smells awfully fishy to me. It's all based on a story told by a single unverifiable source to Platformer, not exactly the pinnacle of journalistic integrity. It could easily be a yarn spun by somebody who read Musk's tweets and invented a emperor's new clothes story around it. Or even somebody who does work at Twitter and exaggerated the situation.

gadnuk 4y ago

There's a reason the turnover rate at all of his companies is very high. Not exactly the easiest or nicest guy to work for. His companies have succeeded despite him, because they have the right people at the helm leading operations (example: Shotwell at SpaceX). Musk at Twitter gives you a glimpse as to why he was fired from PayPal 2 decades ago.

mgiannopoulos 4y ago
Are there any other examples of successful companies with explosive growth like Tesla and SpaceX despite the founder/CEO being a complete megalomaniac idiot?
- papito 4y ago
  Most companies in the US stay afloat even despite the incompetent, self-sabotaging geniuses at the top. Only because the employees are hard-working little bees saving the companies from themselves. We can't get fired - need health insurance and all that.
  - mgiannopoulos 4y ago
    Tesla and SpaceX are not simply staying afloat though. They are dominating their respective fields.
    - brazzledazzle 4y ago
      Tesla is substantially reliant on the promise that full self-driving is just around the corner when it's likely not. Between lawsuits about it, rumors that they're abandoning a vision-only strategy in newer models and the threat of regulatory action due to growing safety concerns. That haphazardness that seems to be characteristic of Musk is coming home to roost for tesla. SpaceX is a different beast entirely and one might consider the contributions of Gwynne Shotwell and Thomas Mueller.
      - mgiannopoulos 4y ago
        The grand majority of Tesla buyers don’t purchase the FSD package. At the same time, Tesla grows revenues by 50% every year. Yet somehow Tesla’s death is just around the corner?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - dbsmith83 4y ago
      There is a difference between dominating a field and being a pioneer in a field. Competition is coming for Tesla. We'll see what happens soon enough
- ProAm 4y ago
  WeWork?
  - mgiannopoulos 4y ago
    It’s not doing so well as it used to and billions of dollars of investment were lost while the founders were kicked off the company. Doesn’t seem a good comparison imho.
- Dudelander 4y ago
  Ironically Genius is in this category.

strangeloops85 4y ago

Telling the emperor he has no clothes only works if he has any self awareness..

labrador 4y ago
I'm old enough to remember the insanity of the brilliant engineer Howard Hughes, who (to myself) I often compare with Musk. So far Musk's mental decline and erratic behavior seems to be right on track. If this continues, a decade from now he'll be living in a darkened luxury hotel growing out his finger nails not seeing anyone because germs.
- hindsightbias 4y ago
  In space
- TechBro8615 4y ago
  Is it really erratic if it's predictable? Seems like he has a regularly reoccurring manic episode every few months. Those are probably also when he's done his best work throughout his career, so you gotta take the good with the bad. But I hope he's introspective enough to recognize this pattern in himself, because otherwise he'll go crazy.
  - labrador 4y ago
    As someone with bipolar, I've learned that it's possible to have several problems at the same time: Bipolar, autism, schizophrenia, etc... He should probably turns his duties over to others and take a long sabbatical to figure out his personal life.
    - ModernMech 4y ago
      > several problems at the same time: Bipolar, autism, schizophrenia, etc... Curious if you could expand on this. I think a BP/schizophrenia diagnosis would be very hard to make, as most of the schizophrenia symptoms could be attributed to BP1. If you don’t mind sharing, is this how you’ve been diagnosed? Only reason I ask is because I know someone with BP1 and I’ve wondered if they could be schizophrenic, but my research caused me to conclude the BP1 diagnosis explained the symptoms.

kenjackson 4y ago

< When Musk or the goons ask questions, employees are torn between giving the right answer and the safe answer. Musk has created a culture of fear. And he's not as charismatic as Jobs was. I don't see how this can possibly end well unless he changes himself quickly.

standardUser 4y ago
I've noticed that "ability to change" does not seem to be a core competency of most egomaniac billionaires.
papito 4y ago
This is not new. It has been well-known that the surefire way to get shitcanned with Musk is to utter any remote synonym of "no" or "not possible". The best thing is to just completely avoid meetings where he is present.
bambax 4y ago
> he's not as charismatic as Jobs was No, but he's obviously a very-stable-genius™.

labrador 4y ago

“As the adage goes, ‘you ship your org chart,’” said one current employee. “It’s chaos here right now, so we’re shipping chaos.”

thefourthchime 4y ago
Conway’s Law

adharmad 4y ago

It is surprising that a for someone who portrays himself as hyper-logical, Musk cannot see simple cause and effect.

justapassenger 4y ago
Musk portrays himself as many things. Free speech absolutist who's removing content about himself. Centrist who's hanging out mostly with far-right nuts. Pro environmental guy flying private jet around the world just to see the world cup. Workaholic, working every waking hour, who's constantly shitposting and often talks about games he plays. And many, many more. If Musk says something, it's very likely that it's not true.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

cbtacy 4y ago

"One of the company’s two remaining principal engineers..." Says it all.

TechBro8615 4y ago

What happened to replacing himself as CEO? The best move Musk could make right now, for Twitter and his own mental health, would be to put some distance between Twitter and himself. It's a mistake to make his hobby his career. He needs to appoint an engineer-friendly CEO (read: someone who will open the API) and focus on his rockets and cars.

hindsightbias 4y ago
The venn of qualified, acceptable to Elon and stupid enough to take the job is apparently not that large.
BizarroLand 4y ago
The best move Elon could have made was not making a credible threat to purchase Twitter with his own money. That's going to go down as either one of the biggest blunders of the early 21st century, and if not, it will be a near miss. He's never getting his money back. He's never getting his credibility back. He's never getting his supporters back. He has passed the zenith of his life and all that is left is the long slow march to obscurity.
- TechBro8615 4y ago
  He will get his money back when he takes it public for $50+ billion. The market is full of idiots. Remember when TSLA did a 5x stock split and then hit the exact price from before the split, effectively increasing value by 5x for no discernible reason? That was about as rational as the value added by the hard fork to BCH (when anyone holding BTC instantly got the same value of BCH, which shortly became tradeable on Coinbase, during a time when IIRC some Coinbase employees were later charged with insider trading). Anyway, the market will go up again, and it will probably go irrationally high. After all, that's what's always happened... ;) ... So, Twitter will benefit from this, pretty much regardless of their actual revenue - if anything, the $40bn Musk paid for it will serve as an anchor for the IPO, meaning it will be almost definitionally unlikely to go public for less than Musk paid for it, assuming Twitter can survive long enough to credibly go public.

cratermoon 4y ago

"‘this one person says they can’t do this one thing on the platform,’ and then we have to run around chasing some outlier use case for one person" I've been in a similar situation. The whole company jumps every time this one Special customer says so. The whole company folds when the Special customer stops using the product after all the other customers have left because none of their concerns were ever addressed.

rsynnott 4y ago
There are probably cases where, for better or for worse, one Very Special Customer _can_ dictate to a company. However, and this is important, unless you are actually in the kitty litter industry, that customer should not have the words "cat" and "turd" in their name.
johntb86 4y ago
This might be more similar to a Bezos "question-mark" email: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-bezos/with-bezos-out-as-amazon-ceo-is-this-the-end-of-his-ominous-question-mark-emails-idUSKBN2A32Z8 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-bezos/with-bez...
- ryandrake 4y ago
  It's probably an urban legend, but I read somewhere that at Amazon, they had a secret, special frontend just for Bezos's account. Whenever he went into a fit of product micromanagement, they'd add his requested feature to the "Bezos frontend" to mollify him, but without polluting the working (public) product. Like I said, probably an urban legend, but I've seen the pressure at other companies that would incentivize this kind of activity.

ddmma 4y ago

Problem is that due to ego level will never accept defeat and hopefully made a positive checkup on the startups portfolio. Dealing with humans it’s bit more complicated than predictive machinery. Hardy this comes with cold hearted decisions for the profit gains. It’s a great momentum to get more specialised support on dealerships with social/ human interaction, this will help.

anigbrowl 4y ago

Life imitates art yet again https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/boardroom-suggestion https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/boardroom-suggestion

mgiannopoulos 4y ago

The impressions on Musk’s tweets are still in the millions. So either the article is based on a story that never happened or the issue is fixed.

corbulo 4y ago
It was an issue that he spotted and replied to multiple accounts about it, then tested it on his own account. It's really unfortunate to see so many people here in lockstep with the Musk is Tech Hitler media corps. I thought this place was different. I think I saw someone say Musk isn't as charismatic as Jobs was. Hilariously revealing. They're both difficult bosses in the extremis, but neither are Tech Hitler.
- cactusplant7374 4y ago
  How did he fix Google Trends?
  - mgiannopoulos 4y ago
    This never had anything to do with Google Trends, this was a really silly suggestion if someone made it. Telling your boss that you and hundreds other users are simply imagining a bug is a bad idea.
    - cactusplant7374 4y ago
      It's in the article. Employees should tell their employer if they are wrong. I don't see anything that disproves the engineers.
stubybubs 4y ago
That seems a little too obvious to be fake. My guess is that views =! impressions, so while he's got millions of views, he's looking at something more accurate. People are posting on locked accounts with zero followers and they have 59 "views" as soon as they post, whatever that means. https://twitter.com/TaylorLorenz/status/1623788092124704768 https://twitter.com/TaylorLorenz/status/1623788092124704768

spoils19 4y ago

This just seems like the free market at work? Not sure why so many of my fellow HNers have a problem with this. As a fellow user, kamaal, once said to me, I'd love to be there working for Musk and experiencing all he has to offer.