Passively destroying Twitter from within by not trying, and trying to make a billionare lose 44 billion dollars is a significantly more fun and interesting challenge than making Twitter a better product.
If I were a engineer at Twitter, I'd do my absolute best up to the minute I have to leave the premises. Because I would care about the company, my colleagues and most importantly for the >200m people who use Twitter for fun, educational, business and those who depend on it.
But it's probably because I'm an old beard, who value being honest and ethical, to be the better person even if I'm in a room of degenerates.
I'm an old beard too and this seems (sorry) borderline delusional to me. Even in normal circumstances that kind of devotion to an employer never pays off - financially or emotionally. Companies the size of Twitter do not "care" and the product certainly doesn't. Caring back just sets you up for an inevitable, brusing collision with reality.
In twitter's present situation, and given the well-known personality traits of its new owner, I'd argue that exit planning is the only sane thing for an employee to be doing with their time right now.
> Passively destroying Twitter from within by not trying
Musk certainly didn’t act with much honesty or ethics in this deal, do you think he’s done an abrupt about face to suddenly be upstanding? And knowing that, being willingly taken advantage of only enables this poor behavior.
I can see your point if it was some kind of critical infrastructure like a hospital, but for Twitter I personally really couldn't care less.
You don’t swap honor like a pair of gloves depending on who you’re dealing with or what they think of you.
You’re either honorable or not.
If one stops being honorable because of minor changes in external circumstances, I don’t believe they were honorable to begin with.
“I’m honest, fair, and worthy of respect only when it’s comfortable or suits me” is not honorable.
When winds start blowing the other way, that’s when one’s true character is tested.
Twitter employees are rightfully questioning their career choices right now, and if their continued help will give Twitter a chance of making the world a better place under current leadership objectives.
If they thing they ever made the world a better place, they're delusional. This seems common in silicon valley though.
If you're being paid to do a job, do it. If you no longer want to do it, quit. It's pretty simple.
But that depends on who you feel you are working for. If King Charming is replaced by Gorr the Butcher, you may need to decide whether you are truly loyal to the king or the people. Butchering the people that the previous king saved would not strike me as honorable, even if you sworn loyalty to "the crown".
I'm not saying Musk will be bad, I truly have no idea. But if he decided (say) that fake news are good for engagement, it would be indeed wise to question whether loyalty to Twitter Inc. is a good idea. Recognizing when things have changed for the worse is a sign of maturity and not a failure of character.
This change is not "minor". Twitter employees have just had massive risk and uncertainty added to their short term career. There was some risk and uncertainty prior, because the company would probably have been doing layoffs, but a clearly impulsive, mercurial, uncaring and overstretched person is now in charge of decisions that affect all employees income, health insurance, etc.)
You also have to consider your political values and alignment with the company's goals. I think a lot of people at Twitter also believe in the value of the "public square" which Musk purports to care about. But if you look at Musk's always hyper deferential statements in China, or one of his large investors now being the Saudi government, or his "solution" to the war in Ukraine, it seems that he has a much more favorable outlook on authoritarianism than the previous leadership. Twitter's not about to be a voice for the powerless but a megaphone for the rich and powerful. That has to weigh in on one's thinking about work.
If I strongly disagree with the new CEO's opinion or company values, I can move on.
None of these things you mention would suddenly make me:
- receive joy from other people's misfortunes
- make others lose money on purpose
- sabotage and attempt to destroy a company
For me, someone who does these things (that OP originally mentioned), is someone very far away from being ethical.
Hence my original point, if you think it's ok to go behind behind people's back because suddenly there's a new CEO at some company, you were never honorable.
What you really have done is just made yourself an excuse to act who you truly are. Someone who'd say everything's ok and fake a smile in front of your colleagues while lurking behind the backs destroy people’s work.
I very much dislike this loud, ego-centric, self-righteous "I know better" political individualism, where a person thinks it's suddenly OK to "have fun and destroy".
People forgot about dialogue and compromise.
So why would you work really super-duper hard for Mr. Musk while he waits to finish the code review to fire you??
At this moment the onus is on Musk to win the loyalty of his new workers.
[1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
That's, IMO, an absurd contradiction. If you value honesty and ethics, you don't work at twitter. It's detrimental to mental health and society, possibly more so than facebook, just for the money.
And now Musk might try to use it for his own political and financial agenda. If that risk is serious, running twitter into the ground might be the most ethical thing an employee could do.
I try not to flame here, but that viewpoint may actually be insane.
It's a job. You're not changing the world. If you don't like the politics of the CEO, leave.
You're not a freedom fighter. Real people in the world are actually fighting for their lives, their freedoms and the right to eat and live in dignity. Literally hundreds of millions. None of those people are based in Silicon Valley.
Is this what you said during your hypothetical interview with Twitter? If yes, be my guest. If not, you should abide by the promises you made to your employers.
It's got nothing to do with "self-imposed honor code" or whatever terms people come up with to belittle people with integrity. You made a promise when you accepted that offer. You either stand by that or quit.
It's not the navy. You're not under orders. They can fire you if they want. But if that's not enough for you: promises and loyalty works boths ways. Suppose you're a veteran at twitter. The company (you thought) joined is not what it is today. You're not bound to any original promises.
Furthermore, you didn't make any promises. You signed a contract, which is only partly binding (check your jurisdiction for details; e.g., where I live, a non-compete clause is frequently overruled by a judge). You didn't promise to increase shareholder value on your mother's life.
Finally, when the interests are substantial enough, ethics trump loyalty and honor. I don't think I have to substantiate that.
Of course, this doesn't hold when you adhere to some kind of "corporatism", where the state and/or corporations decide what's good for you.
None of this justifies willfully harming your employer.
Edit: One of the things that is an exception I believe is whistle blowing. You may expose stuff you deem unacceptable or harmful to the general public. But I guess that's about it. Of course this all depends on your jurisdiction.
And by most measures, twitter employees did that successfully.
Got a source for that? Sounds like you expanded that personal anecdote a bit too much.
There will be a lot of snap judgements made by Musks engineers on who is to be spared and there are two major terms. One is how engaged and interested your current boss is at staying, and the other is what Musk’s technical staff think. Their judgements will be quick and driven by outcomes like broad attrition targets and what is absolutely necessary.
If your on an unnecessary team, but are a rockstar, you might not survive if nobody communicates your value. And it is very likely that entire divisions are on the chopping block. Without an ally on a surviving division that says “I need this guy moved to my team yesterday” it’s unlikely to happen.
Not saying you shouldn’t do the right thing, but try to understand the interests of and see what makes sense for you.
I am the first to poop on corporates and their power games but i agree with you on this. Honesty and ethics are not something you simply throw out the window just because.
> If I were a engineer at Twitter, I'd do my absolute best up to the minute I have to leave the premises. Because I would care about the company, my colleagues and most importantly for the >200m people who use Twitter for fun, educational, business and those who depend on it.
> But it's probably because I'm an old beard, who value being honest and ethical, to be the better person even if I'm in a room of degenerates.
To be blunt: you're making yourself sound like a sucker who will let people exploit you.
Spend as much energy doing right by your employer as they will spend doing right by you.
That's not really what it sounds like at all to me. A more apt analogy might be OP wanting to help all the passengers off the sinking ship before jumping off themselves. While you could just abandon the ship and assume everyone else knows how to get off without assistance, reality shows that many people still need that helping hand.
I don't think OP is letting anyone exploit them. OP just wants to help people, which I think is quite admirable.
That's not an apt analogy. No one's going to die or even be harmed if Twitter crashes and burns tomorrow. Twitter is a frivolous discretionary product that exists only for its owners' profit, nothing more.
> OP just wants to help people, which I think is quite admirable.
Yes, but it's also not a good thing to be tricked into thinking you're helping people, when you're really being exploited.
If you're going to keep working on a sinking ship, you better have a pretty good reason to think you're actually helping people that doesn't amount to a regurgitation of a corporate mission statement or a foolish one-sided loyalty to an unloyal organization.
To be entirely honest, I have no idea what Elon Musk's management will bring to Twitter--whether it'll get better or worse, and what might happen as a result. I don't personally think anything will crash and burn, but that's not to say that the transition won't be rocky and influence _some_ people at least.
Elon Musk wants to make verified statuses purchasable. Would fake news outlets abuse this to further spread misinformation? I don't know, but I do hope that there is someone in the company who will consider these issues more deeply than I have the time for.
So no, I don't think anyone is a sucker for acting in the best interest of their customers and colleagues. Yes, the new executives might not value their employees the same way anymore, but I don't believe it's right to abandon those you care about in the face of a new enemy. OP sounds to me more like they're loyal to the users, rather than to the organization.
Why can't it be both? For you, you probably think that "avoiding being exploited by your employer" is more important than helping people (eg. your users). Which is probably fine if people just left it at that.
In a sense it becomes an ethical problem with the general sentiment that hurting Elon Musk as much as possible is more important than not harming your users, to the extent that some people call out on people who don't subscribe to those views.
Personally, IMHO, if one doesn't like a company they can quit. I don't see how people can claim moral high ground by advocating staying onboard for the purpose of sabotaging the company.
Individuals within a group want to understand the terms under which a group operates, and in particular, how to extract their share of value from the group and how to maintain or enhance their extractable share of value.
The more the rules of a group are perceived to be fair, reciprocal and consistently applied, the more members can trust the group and each other. This relieves the participants of significant cognitive and emotional burden, allows longer-term collective action, and reduces transaction costs dramatically.
But I can intellectually understand the value of opportunistic defection strategies that "cheat" the group, extracting both an unfair share of value (as well as some of the "embodied trust value" resulting in an incremental loss of trust across the group).
I have a personal commitment to honest behavior and I actively avoid low-trust friends, groups and choices. Possibly because I find low-trust situations too stressful and too much work, as well as morally horrifying (whatever that means!) I'd like to believe that I'm fundamentally a "good person" but I acknowledge that it might just be that I'm unwilling to leave the local maximum high-trust situation I've self-selected for throughout my life, or I'm afraid of the risks of defector strategies (or I'm just cognitively and emotionally unsuited to them).
Here's where it gets complicated, because organizations change, trust levels change, the signifiers of trustability change, organizations lie, sometimes organizations are specifically operated to trap and exploit high-honor people, and people have very different ideas about what constitutes "fairness" or "exploitation". I find it hard to criticize someone who chooses to use low-trust tactics against a low-trust or deceptive group.
It seems, looking around different cultures and organizations in the world that there is a huge variation in the principles under which groups function. Apparently "low-trust" is a viable option, although I'm supportive of the idea that high-trust brings a competitive advantage both for groups and individuals, and is worth building and sustaining.
I'm horrified that we seem to have reached some kind of tipping point in the west where a critical mass of elites (who already extract enormous value!) have decided they can extract even more value through high-order defection than by building modern and durable foundations of trust.
The company doesn’t care about you. I don’t understand this loyalty to companies and billionaires.
The ethical thing for Twitter engineers to do is sit back and watch Twitter burn and potentially think about how to help someone like Jack build the open source decentralized alternative he has been musing about.
wew lad
I’m with the guy you responded too, making a billionaire lose money is way funnier and interesting.
But even in a normal company, I never really understood this loyalty/ethics thing.
To me, it makes sense to do the very, very bear minimum and “steal” as much time as possible. So you can use it for your self.
A job is you selling time to someone else. It’s simply incomprehensible to me someone would willingly give extra of their time. Equally not attempted to claw back as much as their time as possible.
I suppose there’s an element of game theory, there are points in time where it’s worth to go that extra mile to achieve something that will put you in a better position, but those are the exceptions not the rule.
Not judging you, I’m glad people like you are out there. My life is better due to people like you and I am thankful for that. But, yeah, I guess I’m just fascinated at the differences in outlook.
When you go to the dentist and need a broken tooth fixed you hope the dentist will take an extra 15 minutes if it means your fixed tooth will look as straight and nice as possible, even if they could have fixed the core issue in a much faster way and leave you with an aesthetically unpleasant looking tooth.
When you send your children to school you hope that teachers would sacrifice time from their own lunch break if your kid has one more question just before the break so they don't fail the next exam.
If you live in America you probably hope that the person who guards the gate to your child's school would wait an extra 20 minutes if the new guard is slightly late so no crazy gunman could just walk in unchallenged and gun down your child.
When your parents end up frail and end up requiring social care you'd hope that the people looking after them would not just do the "bare minimum and steal as much time as possible for their own benefit" and rather take pride and care when looking after them.
All those people also hope that if you work on a product that serves a public interest that you will do your utmost best to return the favour so everyone can live in a nice society.
Try telling your elderly parents' social worker you want to gauge their performance, because you're shopping around for someone new, and only A-players are acceptable. Then watch how much care and kindness your parents receive out of honor alone.
Going above the call of duty for "honor" is not a virtue. It's being a doormat.
A mentality of doing as little as possible makes life harder for the people around you as well. Twitter is low-stakes; no one will die due to some developer slacking off, but if you don't want to participate, then the least you can do is leave.
There's so many "What we should do" moments that are too expensive or deviate too far from the core business that don't get developed in most enterprises that could be pursued when starting from a blank slate.
Anyway, just a thought experiment.
* I'd say TikTok is the exception, because delivering (a) instantaneous video and (b) useful algorithmic recommendations is a technically difficult proposition. But at the same time, I'd argue their success was driven largely by the music licensing deals they initially cut (and their insane marketing spend), which is what caused their early growth.
Why would someone switch from Twitter? If anything, you might expect more freedom of speech and less bots on Twitter. On the parallel Twitter the maximum you can expect is the old Twitter minus some functionality, plus some offline time and some bugs.
It seems to me that the last decade or so provides ample evidence that allowing everyone to say everything they want is almost certainly anti-correlated with substantial and meaningful debate.
I have a fairly plausible mechanism behind my observation: Getting your thoughts published and disseminated used to require buy in from a wide range of people, the publishers essentially.
Publishers edited and moderated what they published so they could gain a reputation as trustworthy or sensationalist. Maintaining that reputation was essential for the business. Who would buy a newspaper with a reputation for false reporting?
Removing the publishers at replacing them with algorithms designed to maximize engagement removed this intermediate layer of reputation checks. Further as the infrastructure is paid for exclusively by ads and those can be targeted fairly well, engagement is far more important than platform reputation. This has reduced the level of public discourse markedly and wrong and discredited opinions can gain substantial audiences and establish strong societal narratives with no "human editor in the loop".
This we are seeing an influence of conspiracy theoretical thinking on advanced democracies that would have been unthinkable even in the 90s.
This is the key problem for sure, but it applies to all content providers from the largest publishers to tiny “publishers” like you and I when we post a comment on a site that is ad-supported. To take away people’s freedom of expression due to the revenue model is arbitrary and inconsistent with a free, advanced society.
You suggest that there should be gatekeepers to verify the reputation and veracity of content and the individual posting the content, but these gatekeepers are themselves biased and unable to know the “truth” in most situations as there is a debate about what is the truth. Stifling debate through this filter is detrimental to discourse and results in group-think and a general lack of creative thought. It is generally unscientific and authoritarian, which history (very recent history at that) has proven quite clearly.
This is the rhetorical slight of hand due to which any meaningful discussion of this topic is impossible on Hacker News. I talk about a lack of moderation and editorial work and you reply about "taking away peoples freedom of expression".
Put another way, 30 years ago it was not considered a limit on your freedom of expression if you couldn't get your conspiracy theory published in any news paper. Today you argue/feel like it is a limit on your freedom of expression if you can't publish it on social media.
> these gatekeepers are themselves biased and unable to know the “truth” in most situations as there is a debate about what is the truth.
First, it is not always true that there is a debate about what is the truth. Secondly, if there is only one gatekeeper (e.g. the state) this is obviously detrimental to discourse. But if there is a multitude of gatekeepers, and if there is a strong culture of accepting high quality divergent opinions, it is not.
> Stifling debate through this filter is detrimental to discourse
Non sequitur! You assume that the gatekeepers will control by alignment with their own opinion, rather than by quality. That's a danger, but there are mechanisms against it. If there is a healthy landscape of publishers this is something that can be demonstrated and will become known because competing publishers have an interest in exposing this.
(If all your media is owned by Murdoch you have a problem anyway).
> It is generally unscientific and authoritarian, which history (very recent history at that) has proven quite clearly.
What historical precedence are you thinking about with this?
I think science is an excellent example, and as a scientist I am well familiar with scientific discourse, and how it functions. It does absolutely _not_ function as a free for all. First of all, if you can't get your stuff published in a reputable journal nobody will take you serious. Generally to be part of the scientific discourse you are expected to demonstrate solid understanding of the underlying material. You will not get to speak at a conference unless you have demonstrated this to a number of reputable scientists who will vouch for you in the program committee.
What this comes down to is simply this: A healthy discourse in which the best ideas win and new ideas can be tried out requires structure. In a free for all, there is no guarantee that the best idea wins, in fact you would expect the most easily amplified and persuasive idea to win. Ease of amplification will depend on the medium and humans can be persuaded of any number of things that are blatantly untrue rather easily.
We require so much structure in the scientific enterprise to guard against our own individual vanity and fallibility.
---
As an aside, something I have been meaning to read into more deeply but haven't looked at yet very much:
[Jürgen Habermas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas) has written extensively about the prerequisites for a discourse to work well, long before social media blew things wide open. I am sure there are plenty of thinkers that have tried to develop these ideas further into the contemporary setting.
> His most known work to date, the Theory of Communicative Action (1981), is based on an adaptation of Talcott Parsons AGIL Paradigm. In this work, Habermas voiced criticism of the process of modernization, which he saw as inflexible direction forced through by economic and administrative rationalization.[24] Habermas outlined how our everyday lives are penetrated by formal systems as parallel to development of the welfare state, corporate capitalism and mass consumption.[24] These reinforcing trends rationalize public life.[24] Disfranchisement of citizens occurs as political parties and interest groups become rationalized and representative democracy replaces participatory one.[24] In consequence, boundaries between public and private, the individual and society, the system and the lifeworld are deteriorating.[24] Democratic public life cannot develop where matters of public importance are not discussed by citizens.[25] An "ideal speech situation"[26] requires participants to have the same capacities of discourse, social equality and their words are not confused by ideology or other errors.[25] In this version of the consensus theory of truth Habermas maintains that truth is what would be agreed upon in an ideal speech situation.
“This is the rhetorical slight of hand due to which any meaningful discussion of this topic is impossible on Hacker News. I talk about a lack of moderation and editorial work and you reply about "taking away peoples freedom of expression".”
You fail to see that we are saying the same exact thing and your attempt to equivocate by avoiding stating the obvious that moderation and editorializing is restricting expression doesn’t pass muster with me. We will have to disagree on this.
“We require so much structure in the scientific enterprise to guard against our own individual vanity and fallibility.”
Yet vanity and fallibility still reign amongst scientists, especially given the way science is funded. I refuse to accept such a naive notion and blindly apply that principal to discourse amongst people.
I also claim that discussion of this function is made difficult by a blanket appeal to freedom of expression.
I don't claim that we already know how to replicate the function that the publishers played in the new world. But moderation is not censorship and freedom of expression is not entitlement to access to a platformn either.
Your last paragraph almost wilfully seems to miss my point. Scientific consensus works in the presence of fallibility and vanity. If it only would work in their absence it wouldn't work because it is a consensus among humans and humans are prone to both.
High quality discourse requires norms, moderation and rules. I challenge you to show any counter example. Most obviously, we are on a website that is actively moderated and has a long section of guidelines that are somewhat between norms and rules. Do you think the discourse here would be improved without these "limits on expression"?
Isn’t this a self-contradiction?
Maybe I'm just talking for myself but if I used Twitter, and a decent modern alternative existed, I'd at least make an account and hope other came along so I didn't have to be part of his "town square" or his "everything app" (which sounds like a nightmare).
I think Musk has done some good things in the past, but honestly, he seems like an asshole and increasingly willing to do questionable things for money and to protect his interests.
I don't use any of his products and I'd been more than happy if it stays that way.
Many considered Steve Jobs to be an asshole. Do you use an apple product? How about Bill Gates and Microsoft? Or Linus and Linux? Or Amazon and Jeff Bezos? Or Oracle and Larry Ellison? Or Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg? Or …
So I actually think I have a point.
I don't use FB because I don't like MZ, I try use Amazon as little as possible although sometimes, it's hard to avoid in some cases. I use an iPhone because I think Androids are less secure. I think Windows is a pathetic product and I've never liked it, I've never been a fan of Bill Gates and his ethos anyway. I'd actually avoid buying a Tesla because of false claims around self-driving and I'm also starting to feel like Tesla is synonymous with poor quality and issues.
So with all due respect, I'm not sure you have a great argument.
Life is (thankfully for me) about choices, and I'm making them.
Just because someone has an abrasive personality or differing political views doesn’t mean they are a worse person than someone who has a nice personality or similar political beliefs.
Asshole or not asshole, the role of a CEO of a public company is to sign off quality of life for the public.
Musk is not signing off anything. At best you could say that he's aspirationally signing off quality of life for people who are not even alive yet and would benefit from a less warm Earth. But that is contentious given that solving transportation alone won't solve climate change and Tesla for sure won't be the sole player in transportation. As a matter of fact it will be a small player and the electrification will be provided by the legacy OEM.
Character flaws pale compared to the big question: "What is this guy doing for me?" . There were no such questions with the other people you mentioned.
For me, the big advantage is that electric cars can be charged from many root sources including solar, wind, and nuclear. These sources can be sourced locally to one’s home or at least within the country, which reduces the perpetual excuse for wars to secure access to fossil fuels. That’s a significant contribution and Elon Musk is largely credited with moving the auto industry in that direction.
Also, I like his Don Quixotic nature. Charging forth into areas despite the naysayers and avoiding analysis paralysis by taking action and accomplishing some amazing feats with a team of people of course. We have enough tepid “leaders” who just want to copy other money-making ideas with easy fed money distributed by simple-minded venture capitalists.
He’s doing some things right. I am personally getting a big bucket of popcorn to watch what he does with Twitter and how he’s going to deal with all of the attacks from the government and individuals that are frightened of human beings expressing themselves more freely on Twitter.
Which is a direction which doesn't benefit the quality of life of contemporaries in any way and it's contentious that it will benefit people living in the future.
When something benefits you, well you know because you use that stuff. Today is Sunday and I used dozens of different flavors of Microsoft. Same with Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, Exxon, BP, Fidelity, Wells Fargo, JPM...you get the gist. I don't suspect, I KNOW that Jobs was an asshole and so is Gates, not to mention Zuck and Dimon...but quality of life provided by company they direct, trumps assholery.
I can't say the same for any of Musk companies, and he's supposedly the GOAT and he's 51. Mind I am not a sub-saharan farmer , I am a well traveled person, but I never used one of his products or services, the closest I was when an Uber was supposed to come pick me up in a Tesla but canceled.
The only value Twitter has is network effects, the old leadership clearly didn't show much capacity of adding value and as much as people hate Elon it's not like Twitter didn't come under critics before.
Starting a new social network with "it's not run by those dicks" has not been a particularly successful move, anecdotically.
I'm hesitating to say through the global lens, since I just don't know. But my inkling would be that the majority of the western world has a similar political outlook. America has perverted it's political compass I feel.
That is the perfect time to judge people. If somebody is willing to abandon their principles when it is a challenging situation then you can't trust them. Anybody can stick to their principles when everything is going well.
I agree that might be when you judge a politician, hence why I brought up voting, but that isn't even what we are talking about.
Generally yes, the leftists like to control individuals and consider the state more important than individuals and their freedom.
Making a viable business out of it is hard.
Even Twitter wasn’t able to figure that part out
It's an excellent platform for dissiminating information to interested parties, and it doesn't have to be ads. We have a company's account and we'd paying if they's allow us.
Plus they are bloated as hell, which is also contributing to their business apathy.
That twitter is already profitable either means a) the current team are on the same giga-genius level as Elon or b) people are talking absolute nonsense.
Twitter might be better able to survive the pinch - or would have before being lumped with a massive pile of debt. They have 2 costs; servers and staff and one revenue stream; advertising. Simple model and easy to balance the two sides of the equation.
Before the Musk buyout they paid $51mil to service the small amount of debt they had, post the takeover they will be paying ~$1bil to service the debts he has added to their balance sheet.
If you take some pub sub like Kafka, Nats or RabbitMQ and bolt some code into it, it really is trivial. You scale by using Kubernetes for services and by sharding and replicating the DBs. It's really easy these days.
Maybe it was more complicated in 20 years ago.
However there's orders of magnitude more effort that goes into:
* Usability
* Performance
* Stability
* Security
* Localisation/internationalisation and accounting for cultural differences
* Monetisation - ads, payment platform integration, fighting fraud
* Fighting abuse, both automated and not
* ... and thousands of little things that will come up when building something big.
Think of this another way... Twitter would not employ literally thousands of employees if there was nothing for them to do. It is not a charity. I don't buy that building anything that can handle hundred of millions of users is simple.
I’ll put it another way. Which job would you rather have? Build a scalable Twitter clone? Or operate the business and make money?
How do you make sure it’s not an epic cesspool? It’s not an engineering problem.
That would probably amount in $0. Twitter wasn't profitable and part of it was its CEO. Why would investors be willing to lose money, especially in the current economic situation?
I would rather wait for Elon to stabilize Twitter and go public again.
A whole bunch of genius investors just bought a company worth $11 billion for $44 billion...
I think their loss was around $200m/year and staff costs around $300m/year. Something like that. SV salaries are easily double or triple European salaries.
Is Parag a startup entrepreneur, or more of a going-concern executive? Startup seems more Dorsey’s thing—who made more money on the deal and took his new social media effort out of stealth as soon as the Twitter sale was finalized.
Would they be fun to hang out on the Internet with?
None, and no. I appreciate the chuckle though.
I think he got some from stock in the sale, but Musk is characterizing his firing as “for cause” to deny (or at least stall pending legal action) Parag’s golden parachute (same with the other Twitter execs.)
This is Yahoo's core competency though: not understanding what their product actually is.
A code review? TL;DR; LGTM, straight to prod!