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Unpopular opinion: Elon did the right thing wrt the reorganization of Twitter/X. The valley became (and still is) an echo chamber of fringe and often anti-west

Unpopular opinion: Elon did the right thing wrt the reorganization of Twitter/X. The valley became (and still is) an echo chamber of fringe and often anti-western ideals. NYC had a little of this too, but the valley was especially egregious. When employees started needing safe spaces and HR department size was disproportionate to engineering staff size in every other domain the valley jumped the shark. It became less about building things and more about coddling employees. They invited all that corporate overhead in. Then there's the forever present techno-elitism that came from SV. So, they can cry me a river.

exabrial 3y ago
Precisely.
ugjka 3y ago
Elon is only interested to be in the news cycle 24/7 so that his meme stocks do good
- brodouevencode 3y ago
  There are plenty of reasons to be critical of Elon, but the reorg at Twitter - removing all the cruft - is what every bigger-than-100-employees-company in the valley needs.
- bdcravens 3y ago
  I dislike Elon's politics like many do, but this kind of dismissive dehumanizing is ridiculous. Most of Elon wealth is in TSLA, hardly a meme stock. Twitter cost $44B, much of which is debt-financed, and required serious action and revenue building to make good on.
bdcravens 3y ago
Unpopular, but correct. I can't imagine that if anyone else had purchased the company that there would have been a different result. At times I see X struggle and perhaps they cut a bit too deep on the technical side of things. However, so many companies have some much fluff on the payroll. A lot of evangelists, developer pursuing passion open source projects, conference swag product purchasing experts, assistant to the director of SQL editor tooling, etc.
uih458r9p43f 3y ago
"western ideals" are always in flux. So if whatever you're noticing is becoming the norm in western countries, it's not useful to call it anti-western. SV hasn't been about building things since the 2000s. Since then, what we've gotten is: adtech, uber-for-x, platform monopolies, cryptocurrency scams, and now chatGPT for x. And to be sure, there were also a small amount of people working on important innovations, just like today. The culture of work has changed (as always), but the amount of wasted effort and pointlessness in SV hasn't changed for a while. But I'll concede that high interest rates have probably changed the form that it takes.
- w0z_ 3y ago
  It's anti-western.
  - uih458r9p43f 3y ago
    [flagged]
hylaride 3y ago
You'd do a better job convincing me if twitter/X/whatever was actually doing better than before Elon took it over. Also, everything you explained in your second paragraph I've rarely seen first hand, except maybe the techno-elitism. That I saw more with hubris, especially around "changing the world" with solutions looking for problems like blockchain. As for the rest? If anything I usually saw the opposite, outside of larger companies where people formed varying clubs/support groups, etc. Every time I saw something in the news about it, it was usually a small group within the company agitating via the media and the fringe ideas were just as often top down from people link Musk, Thiel, etc. One thing I think we'll mostly agree on is that things have changed, but more so via the standard corporate suffocating pressure to "fall in line". How we perceive that pressure is going to depend on where individuals are slapped down (which can hit people across the political and social spectrum). If anything, it's probably more a sign of how the industry has matured. A great example is Google, which has become a product manager driven company. No longer will some (group) of engineers create gmail/maps/whatever on their 20% time; products are top-down driven with revenue targets that if they're not met are canned.
Draiken 3y ago
I can agree with the reorganization part, but can't agree with the "what Elon did" part. You can treat people well without hiring tons of managers. You can restructure a company without forcing everyone to work weekends, holding visa holders hostage and all the other crazy publicity stunts that were performed. I agree that the pendulum probably swung too much one way, but what Elon did swung it too much the opposite way while screwing people over for the sake of his memes.
jhp123 3y ago
I guess if you measure outcomes in terms of sticking it to the libs then he did the right thing, if you measure in dollars then he made one of the worst business errors in history
- brodouevencode 3y ago
  It had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with meeting vanity metrics https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-laid-off-twitter-workers-value-tech-jobs-work-2023-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-laid-off-twitter-w...

exabrial 3y ago

Precisely.

ugjka 3y ago

Elon is only interested to be in the news cycle 24/7 so that his meme stocks do good

brodouevencode 3y ago
There are plenty of reasons to be critical of Elon, but the reorg at Twitter - removing all the cruft - is what every bigger-than-100-employees-company in the valley needs.
bdcravens 3y ago
I dislike Elon's politics like many do, but this kind of dismissive dehumanizing is ridiculous. Most of Elon wealth is in TSLA, hardly a meme stock. Twitter cost $44B, much of which is debt-financed, and required serious action and revenue building to make good on.

bdcravens 3y ago

Unpopular, but correct. I can't imagine that if anyone else had purchased the company that there would have been a different result. At times I see X struggle and perhaps they cut a bit too deep on the technical side of things. However, so many companies have some much fluff on the payroll. A lot of evangelists, developer pursuing passion open source projects, conference swag product purchasing experts, assistant to the director of SQL editor tooling, etc.

uih458r9p43f 3y ago

"western ideals" are always in flux. So if whatever you're noticing is becoming the norm in western countries, it's not useful to call it anti-western. SV hasn't been about building things since the 2000s. Since then, what we've gotten is: adtech, uber-for-x, platform monopolies, cryptocurrency scams, and now chatGPT for x. And to be sure, there were also a small amount of people working on important innovations, just like today. The culture of work has changed (as always), but the amount of wasted effort and pointlessness in SV hasn't changed for a while. But I'll concede that high interest rates have probably changed the form that it takes.

w0z_ 3y ago
It's anti-western.
- uih458r9p43f 3y ago
  [flagged]

hylaride 3y ago

You'd do a better job convincing me if twitter/X/whatever was actually doing better than before Elon took it over. Also, everything you explained in your second paragraph I've rarely seen first hand, except maybe the techno-elitism. That I saw more with hubris, especially around "changing the world" with solutions looking for problems like blockchain. As for the rest? If anything I usually saw the opposite, outside of larger companies where people formed varying clubs/support groups, etc. Every time I saw something in the news about it, it was usually a small group within the company agitating via the media and the fringe ideas were just as often top down from people link Musk, Thiel, etc. One thing I think we'll mostly agree on is that things have changed, but more so via the standard corporate suffocating pressure to "fall in line". How we perceive that pressure is going to depend on where individuals are slapped down (which can hit people across the political and social spectrum). If anything, it's probably more a sign of how the industry has matured. A great example is Google, which has become a product manager driven company. No longer will some (group) of engineers create gmail/maps/whatever on their 20% time; products are top-down driven with revenue targets that if they're not met are canned.

Draiken 3y ago

I can agree with the reorganization part, but can't agree with the "what Elon did" part. You can treat people well without hiring tons of managers. You can restructure a company without forcing everyone to work weekends, holding visa holders hostage and all the other crazy publicity stunts that were performed. I agree that the pendulum probably swung too much one way, but what Elon did swung it too much the opposite way while screwing people over for the sake of his memes.

jhp123 3y ago

I guess if you measure outcomes in terms of sticking it to the libs then he did the right thing, if you measure in dollars then he made one of the worst business errors in history

brodouevencode 3y ago
It had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with meeting vanity metrics https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-laid-off-twitter-workers-value-tech-jobs-work-2023-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-laid-off-twitter-w...