(TBH I'm not even sure who the previous owners were...)
Source: https://metro.co.uk/2022/10/28/who-owned-twitter-before-elon...
From what I've observed over the years, his real goal is to receive attention from as many people as possible. I doubt his sincerity on his stated goals, this is most likely just self-marketing bullshittery.
People still believe in that ?
With something like Twitter the tech is more or less invisible. Users care about trust and relationships, and so do many of the engineers.
Musk isn't just utterly clueless about those, he's hostile to the culture that values them.
This is not going to end well. Odds are excellent it's going to turn into another of those legendary loss-making acquisitions like AOL and MySpace.
He is not running SpaceX, Gwynne Shotwell is. He’s just the part-time CEO, very adept at self-promoting.
These people and quite a few other experts in this field disagree with you.
> When I met Elon it was apparent to me that although he had a scientific mind and he understood scientific principles, he did not know anything about rockets. Nothing. That was in 2001. By 2007 he knew everything about rockets - he really knew everything, in detail. You have to put some serious study in to know as much about rockets as he knows now. This doesn't come just from hanging out with people.
Robert Zubrin - aerospace engineer
> Elon is brilliant. He’s involved in just about everything. He understands everything. If he asks you a question, you learn very quickly not to go give him a gut reaction.
He wants answers that get down to the fundamental laws of physics. One thing he understands really well is the physics of the rockets. He understands that like nobody else. The stuff I have seen him do in his head is crazy.
He can get in discussions about flying a satellite and whether we can make the right orbit and deliver Dragon at the same time and solve all these equations in real time. It’s amazing to watch the amount of knowledge he has accumulated over the years.
Kevin Watson - Head of Avionics, Launcher
Elon is definitely an engineer. He is deeply involved with technical decisions at spacex and Tesla. He doesn’t write code or do CAD today, but he is perfectly capable of doing so.
- John Carmack
https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
If you have evidence to support your insinuation, I'll be glad to see it.
Zubrin? One now very badly decaying hab at MDRS? Oh, and I think he might have chipped in for the observatory via the 'Musk foundation.'
My point of contention is that how can you expect to be taken serious as the 'Chief Engineer' at SpaceX, and be abreast of all of the mintua of Starship/Starlink/Falcon etc... when you're also the CEO of all those other corps and still on Twitter shitposting all day and then getting into countlesss legal battles and that result on buying Twitter and showing up with a sink.
None of this makes any sense in a practical level, and it seems like we're being trolled by the channer who broke the matrix and actually made it big for his own enjoyment; what it has done is allow him to cultivate the very typical Silicon Valley slight of hand of making himself to be able to walk on water and turn everything he touches turn to gold which makes for good marketing. Which is what I think he does well, despite being perhaps the worst public speaker and CEO of so many unicorns.
Which leads me to believe that most of it is an act, and he is perfectly well aware of what and how he is doing: and it's worked thus far, but whether it's pumping and dumping in the crypto markets or buying useless social media companies I think it's clear that most are seeing the writing on the wall about him, these latest escapades with Twitter are just making what was likely kept in secret now public--lets not forget the accusations from the flight masseuse and his distorted perception of reality where he is seemingly trying to re-populate the Earth with as many women as possible just like the most deranged cult leaders.
> how can you expect to be taken serious as the 'Chief Engineer' at SpaceX, (...)when you're also the CEO (...) and still on Twitter shitposting all day (...)
And that somewhat explains the rest of the personality: skip enough hours of sleep and you’ll finally end up as an over-sensitive, selfish bro.
Not exactly saying the above is a sane way of living and doing things that should be praised, but I personally respect him for the passion/time he puts in the process, which at the end of the day is the reason why some like-minded engineers are working for/with him on his bold visions, even if they don’t have as much skin in the game as him, financially speaking.
I mean, he’s not faking it, and that goes a long way when selling a narrative and embarking your next partner, whether a banker or an engineer.
I've said it before but I think he is PT Barnen 2.0: that doesn't mean he hasn't taken immense financial risk, it's just that he is marketer cosplaying as 'aerospace engineer' and will pick and chose what he is a savant depending on what meds he decided to take that day--no one asked him to make a submarine to save children in Thailand.
Which is what was necessary to get the masses interested, sure, but has ultimately back-fired at this point.
Ignoring everything else, if a manager at your company has coined a term like "Elon’s rage firings", I don't need to know anything else about the work environment.
I'd say Tesla/SpaceX achieve cool things not because of him, but despite of him.
I'll rest my case.
Gwynne Shotwell is COO, and in my view is the best in the business, and she handles the day to day SpaceX not Elon.
You don't make a formal offer as a troll
He's always been an awful person; the cult that has developed around him just inflated his ego. Here's the result.
You and almost the whole world. There are still some people left believing him to play some kind of genius 4D chess. Same thing happens for Trump and Ye.
Its also a visible background pattern in almost all larger tech investment - build technology that can not be used for exponential damage in the wrong hands and make humanity resilient to catastrophic change.
Example: Youtube videos containg tutorials that survive all of humanity dieing of that knew a certain technology.
That’s not true-processing speed is just one component of IQ. Some people can have below average processing speed but be in the gifted range in other IQ components. (e.g. on WISC-V, high GAI but low PSI). It is actually reasonably common among people who are gifted but also have ADHD/ASD/OCD/etc
Robert Zubrin - aerospace engineer
> Elon is brilliant. He’s involved in just about everything. He understands everything. If he asks you a question, you learn very quickly not to go give him a gut reaction.
He wants answers that get down to the fundamental laws of physics. One thing he understands really well is the physics of the rockets. He understands that like nobody else. The stuff I have seen him do in his head is crazy.
He can get in discussions about flying a satellite and whether we can make the right orbit and deliver Dragon at the same time and solve all these equations in real time. It’s amazing to watch the amount of knowledge he has accumulated over the years.
Kevin Watson - Head of Avionics, Launcher
https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
For now, however, I would prefer a video of the many interviews he takes instead of quotes of people that have a lot to gain from praising Elon (and a lot to lose if they criticized him). Is there any quote from any of the people in that thread that paint Elon in a bad light? I know for sure there are many things bad Elon, from his direct actions. Do they ever comment on that or would they lose their livelihood within a day if they did?
The two people I quoted don't work for Elon so it doesn't seem like they have much to gain or lose either way. Same with John Carmack, Liam Sarsfield and Eric Berger.
> any quote from any of the people in that thread that paint Elon in a bad light
I haven't read the biography or anything like that on Musk, so I'm not sure. I imagine though their opinions of him aren't all positive. The thread I posted selects for the positive ones to prove that Musk is indeed chief engineer at SpaceX.
I think it’s important not to piss off your existing and upcoming workforce. He doesn’t.
Is he obviously wrong? Time will tell.
What will advertising revenue look like going forward?
How many employees have been asked to return, how needed are they, and was it mismanagement or just an expected outcome of necessary, decisive decision making?
First of all, the vast majority aren’t just going to move. The celebrities won’t because their followers are still on it. Everyone else won’t because by all accounts Mastodon isn’t as easy to signup with as twitter (I’ve not tried, and don’t care enough to to). And they rest of us just kinda read twitter and frankly don’t care if it crashes and burns.
All the big accounts I follow, simply started cross posting. So I expect nothing much to happen.
However given how much attention Twitter gets, even appearing in the news, and possibly swaying public opinion, I might be eating my words if it maintains popularity but turns into a dumpster fire.