The ongoing X and Elon Musk Transgressions Thread

[Azure]

At this point if you're in the tech industry you gotta love all the attention that Twitter is getting, as it allows you to fire anyone you want without the media giving it a second glance.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

Why would any talented individual aspire to work in one of Elon's companies? The man is a tyrant.

Twitter was a hostile takeover and these are open hostilities between his staff and Musk who is desperate to cut costs to recoup his investment. I think he's burned all his bridges. No worthwhile talent is going to want to work for Twitter going forward and he's only going to get the bottom of the barrel.

With Tesla and SpaceX, many of the employees joined up fully drinking the Musk-aid already and to be fair, it's a chance to work with bleeding edge EV tech and space exploration which attracts a lot of blind idealists. He also seems to have competent management in those companies insulating them a little. Tesla at least being public has to maintain stability to shareholders.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Twitter was a hostile takeover and these are open hostilities between his staff and Musk who is desperate to cut costs to recoup his investment. I think he's burned all his bridges. No worthwhile talent is going to want to work for Twitter going forward and he's only going to get the bottom of the barrel.

With Tesla and SpaceX, many of the employees joined up fully drinking the Musk-aid already and to be fair, it's a chance to work with bleeding edge EV tech and space exploration which attracts a lot of blind idealists. He also seems to have competent management in those companies insulating them a little. Tesla at least being public has to maintain stability to shareholders.

Tesla has 110k employees, SpaceX has 11k.

Most of those people probably don't see or talk to Musk, ever.
Like working anywhere else, it has pros / cons. Amazon has a massive employee count despite constant criticism of their working conditions. Walmart employees millions of people, despite the same criticism. Are all those people drinking the Bezos and Walton family koolaid?

I gotta say it is amusing watching people try to manufacture stuff about Musk when he does a very good job himself at giving stuff to criticize.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Azure

At this point if you're in the tech industry you gotta love all the attention that Twitter is getting, as it allows you to fire anyone you want without the media giving it a second glance.

I think if you’re in the tech industry and you’re looking for talent, it will never be a better time to poach software devs.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

I wouldn't ever think of trying to defend Musk but in this case, it's a 100% private company and while the behavior is reckless and lacking in empathy, he has every right to fire anybody who he doesn't want on his payroll.

I'm not debating his right. Musk himself has been critical of companies who fire their employees or pull advertising because they don't like someone's opinion. How is this any different?

[Azure]

I think two things can be true at the same time.

Musk is handling things the wrong way.
There are a lot of people at Twitter who were low performers and got used to their cushy high salary jobs.

There is a reason the tech industry is SO quick to literally lay out thousands and thousands of people. The only way they can be doing this without seriously compromising their operations is if they have a large amount of people on staff who don't actually do much.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Azure

I gotta say it is amusing watching people try to manufacture stuff about Musk when he does a very good job himself at giving stuff to criticize.

What stuff is being manufactured exactly? Through twitter and his actions Elon is basically narrating the story all by himself.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Azure

I think two things can be true at the same time.

Musk is handling things the wrong way.
There are a lot of people at Twitter who were low performers and got used to their cushy high salary jobs.

There is a reason the tech industry is SO quick to literally lay out thousands and thousands of people. The only way they can be doing this without seriously compromising their operations is if they have a large amount of people on staff who don't actually do much.

Well, there is evidence of one of those things. Whether people are performing poorly is not known.

[ZedMan]

Originally Posted by Azure

There is a reason the tech industry is SO quick to literally lay out thousands and thousands of people. The only way they can be doing this without seriously compromising their operations is if they have a large amount of people on staff who don't actually do much.

It's more about the fact that over the last 2 years tech companies have been hiring like crazy for growth, and now that the economy has slowed that growth is no longer their priority. Facebook, Amazon et al even after their layoffs have significantly more employees than pre-pandemic.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by ZedMan

It's more about the fact that over the last 2 years tech companies have been hiring like crazy for growth, and now that the economy has slowed that growth is no longer their priority. Facebook, Amazon et al even after their layoffs have significantly more employees than pre-pandemic.

Except we are yet to see economic growth really slow down.

Both the US & Canada are proving to be more resilient when it comes to economic growth, job growth, wage growth, etc.

I know they have more employees overall, but again, you're not cutting 10k jobs overnight without knowing that most of those 10k employees are basically useless, or working on useless projects.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

What stuff is being manufactured exactly? Through twitter and his actions Elon is basically narrating the story all by himself.

People like you calling him a tyrant is manufactured outrage.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Azure

There are a lot of people at Twitter who were low performers and got used to their cushy high salary jobs.

If the last few weeks have shown us anything, it's that Elon isn't the best person to distinguish who those employees are or the metrics on which to base the decisions.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by rubecube

If the last few weeks have shown us anything, it's that Elon isn't the best person to distinguish who those employees are or the metrics on which to base the decisions.

I think you're looking at it wrong.

He is notorious for running his companies with the expectation of working in the office, and long hours.

He comes into Twitter and immediately knows he has to cut costs. The tech industry is in a down turn, so Twitter would be firing people regardless of who owns the company. But everyone knows Musk is taking the hammer out whether he should or not.

In order to fire more people, he creates an environment where he's asking people to long hours to accomplish a goal (Twitter Blue subscription), and fires anyone that isn't willing, or people willingly quit. He further creates more stupidity and turmoil by turning features off / on, and obviously a lot of more behind the scenes stuff, which results in more people quitting, including some of those that actually were sticking around to make things work.

Now you can say he doesn't know what he's doing, or that he's making terrible decisions with Twitter, but this is straight out of his playbook, and is basically just repeated strategy from Tesla.

Given that his companies tend to be successful, and that he seemingly doesn't have an issue with recruitment, I'll go ahead and say that Rubecube the internet warrior understands less about running a company than the richest man on the planet, as despite all his stupidity he somehow 'managed' to be a part of two massively successful companies.

Now as to whether or not he'll actually turn Twitter into something successful that makes money or is worth the $44b he paid for it, my guess is he won't, and I'll be very surprised if he doesn't either completely change it into something else, or tries to sell it off. IMO he thinks he can run a social media company like he runs the IT department at Tesla, which he can't, and given how much social media companies are literally incapable of making money, I just can't see how it'll work. He's also creating a bit too much turmoil, which will worry advertisers, plus advertising will likely be down for the next few years.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by Azure

People like you calling him a tyrant is manufactured outrage.

"Tyrant" is out, "So thin-skinned he's translucent" is in

https://twitter.com/user/status/1592658014095704064

[photon]

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

I'd probably work for him at SpaceX because f'ing rockets, but making cars? Pushing strings? Nope.

[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by Azure

People like you calling him a tyrant is manufactured outrage.

Looks like people are observing the situation and coming to a conclusion, IMO.

Do we call that manufacturing outrage now?

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by Azure

I think you're looking at it wrong.

He is notorious for running his companies with the expectation of working in the office, and long hours.

He comes into Twitter and immediately knows he has to cut costs. The tech industry is in a down turn, so Twitter would be firing people regardless of who owns the company. But everyone knows Musk is taking the hammer out whether he should or not.

In order to fire more people, he creates an environment where he's asking people to long hours to accomplish a goal (Twitter Blue subscription), and fires anyone that isn't willing, or people willingly quit. He further creates more stupidity and turmoil by turning features off / on, and obviously a lot of more behind the scenes stuff, which results in more people quitting, including some of those that actually were sticking around to make things work.

Now you can say he doesn't know what he's doing, or that he's making terrible decisions with Twitter, but this is straight out of his playbook, and is basically just repeated strategy from Tesla.

Given that his companies tend to be successful, and that he seemingly doesn't have an issue with recruitment, I'll go ahead and say that Rubecube the internet warrior understands less about running a company than the richest man on the planet, as despite all his stupidity he somehow 'managed' to be a part of two massively successful companies.

Now as to whether or not he'll actually turn Twitter into something successful that makes money or is worth the $44b he paid for it, my guess is he won't, and I'll be very surprised if he doesn't either completely change it into something else, or tries to sell it off. IMO he thinks he can run a social media company like he runs the IT department at Tesla, which he can't, and given how much social media companies are literally incapable of making money, I just can't see how it'll work. He's also creating a bit too much turmoil, which will worry advertisers, plus advertising will likely be down for the next few years.

He paid 7 million for Tesla when his net worth was around 150 million, he never had to pay back loans or worry about whether it was a success at all, nothing he did with Tesla has any application to Twitter and if that's what he's doing he's a bigger fool than he looks

[Sainters7]

Yeah the "Official" thing underneath looks awkward, it's kinda ridiculous. Man what is he even doing lol...this whole thing is a mess.

[PepsiFree]

It’s interesting that some people hold the idea that being rich, and specifically just how rich you are, indicates how well you run companies.

Elon has some very weird defenders who don’t seem to understand a lot about the world. His fanboys on Twitter that follow around defending his every tweet and action are frankly insane.

[afc wimbledon]

Watching the debacle of him apologizing for why twitter is slow on Android, then firing the lead engineer for the Android development team it occurred to me Musk's real problem is he hates Twitter, he loathes it, he doesnt like the App' he doesnt like the staff, any of them, he doesn't want it to be good or successful on a visceral subconcious level he really wants to be able to just say to the world

'see, I told you it was ####'

I mean why would you highlight your products shortcomings to the world, even if it is god awful on android you dont admit that, what would be the point? unless you just hate Twitter