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Comment by SilverBirch | Hacker News Reader

I think to a certain extent there's an overwhelming culture in the SV VC world of being completely credulous. That exchange just seems like a uniquely weird situation of two people talking absolute bollocks and neither being willing to mention the elephant in the room. It's no wonder the second their plan hit the real world it exploded on impact. You would have thought the guy who ran twitter would actually understand the challenges that faced twitter, but I guess he really was so unengaged he's just unaware. They sound like 13 year olds.

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> two people talking absolute bollocks and neither being willing to mention the elephant in the room

It just reads to me like two friends having a casual chat about an idea.

It also reads to me like the context is well known and shared. You don't usually actively restate context in real life; it's not a movie where you need to let the audience in. That's not avoiding an elephant, that's just real world conversation.

> It's no wonder the second their plan hit the real world it exploded on impact

What? Musk backed out. That’s nothing to do with "hitting the real world". It's not like regulators stopped it or something.

Maybe I’m missing some inside baseball, but what exactly is wrong here? Dorsey created Frankenstein and has regrets. I don’t see what’s childish about that.

It's about the context, Dorsey has basically been an absent CEO for the last 5 years. All the reporting is basically that he wasn't engaged, didn't make decisions, and in the end he didn't really step down from Twitter, he was forced out by activist investor buying up shares and pushing him out. It's not like he didn't have an opportunity to address the issues at Twitter, it's that he went off and worked at a different company whilst still being CEO of Twitter and as a result completely squandered the opportunity.

There's also the fact that he's on the board of directors of Twitter while he's sending these text messages conspiring against the shareholders he represents!

Wonder if he could be sued.

That’s going to be a battle of cash poured into PR teams. While competitive, I am layman and do not see that it rises to the level of conspiracy. You can’t exactly call a non-monetizing protocol the competitive beast that a publicly traded, global behemoth like Twitter is.

I don't see anything here that seems at all like "conspiring against the shareholders".

He wanted to change the company in ways that he thought were better, but he couldn't get the support of the other stakeholders so he's leaving the board. He's discussing with a friend a combination of A) lessons learned and what he'd do differently if he could go back with his current knowledge and B) an abstract hypothetical that after he leaves the board maybe he'll work on a new project that does things better.

There is a huge difference between "I'm going to use my position at company X to harm company X" and "After I leave company X, I'd like to do a new project using the lessons I've learned".

Not all (or even most) CEOs have the same amount of power as, say, Mark Zuckerberg at Meta. Most CEOs cannot take the company in the direction of an entirely different business model without the Board of Directors agreeing. Dorsey was booted out as Twitter CEO once before, in 2008, and then brought back in an attempt to fix things, after he had already started Square.

It appears, not only from this text but many other comments he's made, that he found the board to be just as difficult to work with. I think he's spot on here, identifying the root cause of the problem, and a realistic appraisal of the chances of changing the existing company.

Consider they're at least somewhat aware this conversation would be subpoenaed during a lawsuit should the acquisition go sour. Musk's "can we talk on the phone?" means "tell me more, but without the evidence trail"

It can mean that or more likely means "We have gone past the usefulness of async short texts as a means of conversations."

Text/tweets are useful but are sub optimal for actually discussing stuff like this. Voice is so much better in this case.

What? I've literally never felt this way.

Every time someone wanted to have a call with me, it was so they could push me into something with their whining, or so they could misinterpret what was said without me being able to point at a timestamped sentence. For these reasons I always refuse calls about anything important - and never had any problems solving various business issues over text.

How specifically is text less/not useful?

It would appear by implication that you would see meetings as always less useful than documents. This is clearly not true. Calls and meetings are almost always better for working through nuanced issues.

Yes I'd never let any serious business issue be solved on a meeting. Tech talk etc, sure. Money is involved? Never. Or rather, sure, let's discuss - but then we send a written record of exactly what was agreed.

Yes, there are some narrow cases where audit trails are important, but that doesn't apply to most situations, certainly not those where you're both thinking out loud and trying to come to some common understanding or whatever. It seems you allowed some personal grievance get the better of you because in this particular context, your characterization does not apply.

They are faster for when there’s only a few participants which both deeply engaged.

Bandwidth and emotional valence.

Above signal flags, text is almost the lowest possible bandwidth form of human-human conversion. It will take you an hour to write something that you could explain to someone in 5 minutes via voice.

Even if you do manage to find the time to write all down, you quickly hit problem 2.

Text is shit for communicating any form of sentiment or emotional valence, which is a pretty critical part of communication, especially when you’re getting into the nuanced ends of any particular topic.

"Emotional valence" is a sublime way of putting it.

Text is an excellent way of transmitting information. Do this, go there, this is the answer, etc. But unless you have a deep, long-lasting connection with the other person, text will lose a lot.

So much of what's on YouTube is so irritating to me because it's 10 minutes of mostly filler to transmit a few facts that could be read in a minute or less. But I'll listen to a 3 hour conversation between two people who are passionate about history or Lego or whatever and not think anything of it. The emotional valence makes it worthwhile.

Nice comment!

That you’ve never felt this way does not preclude that others may.

Texts do not convey emotion. Allow verification of nuanced points with simple interjections and interrogatives. The limitation of threads of conversation to simplify discourse through a more direct dialog and rebuttals.

I have had relationships due specifically because texts are really incomplete and poor means of conversation and the other side fails to pick up and acknowledge the severity of the situations I was trying to describe.

Sounds like you’re surrounded by toxic people, likely as a result of this attitude.

I'm not choosing the people, there's no overflow of opportunities where I live. Almost always it seems like the ones who handle money/hold political power are toxic, and I need to protect myself from them. Never had any such issue with my friends, so I doubt it's really just about me.

You have my sympathy. I once worked in an organizational culture that produced toxic behavior. I was privileged with enough experience, savings, and alternative options to get out quickly.

If I was forced to work in places where I could not trust that my coworkers and I have each other's backs I feel like I would be very bitter.

You might be in the minority, I much prefer a 2 minute phone call over 15 minutes and aching thumbs.

All investors are credulous and act on hopes. The cynical ones never invest a penny.

I think it's unlikely I'll read a wiser comment on the internet today.

I'm very blissfully unengaged in Twitter as well, could you kindly spell out what it is you are referring to as the "elephant in the room"?

The Elephant in the room is that Musk is pretty much the perfect example of what makes Twitter terrible, and Dorsey had more than enough opportunity to fix it because he was literally in charge of the company for years and did nothing. All the shit Musk is throwing at Twitter now is stuff Dorsey was responsible for.

Aptly put. Dorsey was goofing off for years as Twitter’s CEO and now suddenly he is the guy who cares about Twitter. I remember people compared him to Steve Jobs when Dorsey returned to Twitter because Jobs at one point managed Pixar and Apple. What misplaced faith!

Did the timing coincide with Dorsey changing his look into that of a Buddhist boheme?

That's just your uninformed opinion.

Alternative explanation is that the board brought Dorsey back because they were toxic and wanted someone they could contain/control.

Dorsey comes back out of love and is trapped by his attachment to the possibility, but has unconsciously accepted he can never achieve it.

The “CEO is/isn’t a job” argument above is reflected in this. Dorsey wasn’t ever Jobs, or Michael Dell. They wouldn’t have brought him back if he was.

Dorsey was never the controllable option, his net worth is tied into his other weird crypto scam, not twitter. He might have come back out of love, but he never showed twitter the attention it deserved- at a minimum, working 9-5 on twitter not block.

please could you explain?

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