>>>>> and generally acted like they owned the place
this is the $44B problem to your CO analogy.
Skin in the game. The world runs far better on it.
this is the $44B problem to your CO analogy.
Skin in the game. The world runs far better on it.
I see you edited your comment from the original:
> this seems to be a significant problem to your CO analogy.
So let me ask you… how does a ship’s commanding officer not have more skin in the game? A rich person loses their second home or yacht when things go south… a person on a ship can hit the brig or lose their life.
They’ll stop being CO and will never be promoted, but will finish out their Navy career in a job where they can’t hurt anyone, and will have almost no impact once they retire and go into civilian life.
They’re not going to do time in the brig unless there’s willful misconduct.
I looked it up and found this at https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading...:
> Commander A. L. Wilderman, CO of USS Plunger (SSN-595), lost overboard in a storm just off San Francisco. 2 December 1973.
Who is the last software CEO that died in the course of their duty specifically due to the nature of their work?
Lookup James Po Ho Cheung or Sid Agrawal if you want examples of CEOs straight up murdered for their roles.
Every human with a heart has some risk of heart attack. It’s silly to compare that risk to a soldier’s risk of death.
And any CEO that fires someone has a risk of being attacked by that disgruntled former employee.
This is exactly why I said
> software CEO that died in the course of their duty specifically due to the nature of their work
So that example fails the test.
The example of James Po Ho Cheung is more interesting. Now that I think about it, since software can operate in so many different domains, it’s valid that some of those can be dangerous, such as gambling in his case.
Absolutely not as the CO of a ship. You are orders of magnitude safer on one of those ships than working as a roofer or a farmer.
> don’t understand what you mean by “a CO doesn’t have to go overboard”, I provided an example of just that happening.
You provided an example of someone going overboard on a ship, but nothing a CO does makes them more susceptible to going over than any other person on the ship. Being a CO is not higher risk than taking a fucking Carnival cruise.
> Every human with a heart has some risk of heart attack. It’s silly to compare that risk to a soldier’s risk of death.
Given that “heart attack” is probably the most likely way a high level officer in the US military would die, I think not.
> Elon Musk has 0 risk of being swept into the sea from his desk.
Not quite. San Francisco has some pretty gnarly long tail risks from earthquakes. He’s also now in charge of one of the biggest propaganda tools in the history of humanity. The Saudi’s have wacked reporters for far less.
In fact a CO might be in better position in that regard. Soldiers don’t quit as fast as devs.
Bottomline, the last time tech truly saw a recession and slow-down was in 2001. So, the entire dev cohort has never seen economic conditions that they are about to face.
Even high performers at Meta, Coinbase, Netflix will have to navigate this.
There are two choices in front of them
a) work at Twitter and other startups which requires 60+ hours of work. High workload / High Reward
or
b) Join services firm like IBM, TCS and have work-life balance but do menial tasks with steady but medium pay.
Elon Musk will have no trouble hiring them.
Most devs are completely out of touch about the economic reality. Now they have to work hard like the rest of other industries.
Twitter is not a startup, and my understanding is startups are only "high reward" if your bet pays off (e.g. you got in early enough AND the startup was successful enough).
> Most devs are completely out of touch about the economic reality. Now they have to work hard like the rest of other industries.
Your a/b binary choice is out of touch in its own way.
Twitter is absolutely a startup. They are trying to a) find product market fit with a new vision b) Have negative cash-flow, so everyone has to workhard to reduce burn rate. c) Will have new fresh equity issued them with high upside rewards. d) Will have a liquidity event in a couple of years (IPO)
For all practical purpose, Twitter is a startup.
Musk will issue new equity
That sounds like a very idiosyncratic definition of a "startup" that would match all kinds of poorly performing companies no one would label a "startup." I think being new, small, and chasing orders-of-magnitude upside from that small start are pretty key to the conventional definition, neither of which apply to Twitter anymore.
Musk also fired Engineers who weren't productive in the past two months. Musk has enough software expertise to see through people who bullshit and people who know their shit.
That's why the best Car Designer, the best rocket engineer, the best AI expert were all working for Tesla/SpaceX.
Is Musk clueless about Social Media? absolutely.
Do you think he isn't spending every waking second to figure out the nuances and deliver something amazing in 2-3 years?
This is where HN/Reddit/Blind/Media are clueless about Musk. They look at current state of Musk and mock him (they mocked him for his rocket dream, his electric car dream, they mocked his tents)
True to form and cluelessness, they are currently mocking his lack of expertise in creator economy and other social aspects of social media.
Let's try 2 years from now. Musk is a fast learner and has always pivoted when data shows him where he is wrong.
He will make plenty of mistakes and clueless media will be there to highlight that because there is an audience of clueless people who are thirsty for Elon Musk thrashing articles to feel good about themselves.
At the end of the day, Twitter will be successful, Elon will be a Trillionaire (from all his ventures) and there will be salty HN/Redditers who will still be mocking him in 2030 because he probably would be doing some stupid thing in some new industry
Most people in 2001 had to find work quickly to keep surviving. Mid-career high performers from Meta, Twitter, Netflix, etc have millions in savings and assets.
Those people could sit out a few years if they wanted, or even just retire early if they were happy with the $60-100k/year income from interest/capital gains at a consevative withdrawl rate.
Most of these people still choose to work today because they have well paying jobs which they enjoy. High performers gonna perform, etc. But, if the only option was toxic jobs combined with low pay many would simply opt-out.
Many in this dev cohort have been extremely lucky and have the privilege to take a stand. 2022 isn't really a great time to be an asshole captialist banking on qualified employees having no other options.
Fresh graduates and early career individuals are a possibility. But, you still need experienced devs to mentor them and maintain the large complex systems/infrastructure that fresh hires can't yet handle without more experience. Attracting and retaining this senior talent is the hard part.
Every industry works like this. It's only out-of-touch techies who enjoyed unprecedented rewards/hard-work ratio that need to adjust their lifestyle and expectations
From everyone I’m in contact with it’s a terrible time to be in sales, marketing, or hr, and the engineers are mostly bitching about no raises this year
It's not only about layoffs, but not enough absorbing capacity for freshly printed Tech graduates the universities are churning out at the rate expecting previous level of hiring.
Most HN guys demanding work-life balance have seen nothing yet.
This is a great time for Startups and Startup-like firms like Twitter to hire and require 60+ hours workload. There will be fresh graduates from Stanford, MIT, Berkeley who have no choice but to put pressure on existing coasters on various companies
He just held an all hands where he said he doesn't know how long a run rate Twitter has, Twitter may lose billions next year, and bankruptcy isn't out of the question, so it sounds like it's possible he may have trouble hiring anyone.
That's how he motivates people
Not everyone in this world is a coaster
That’s where all your startup analogies (which I find interesting!) break: Twitter is a “turn around” case. Musk had never to deal with such. He always build up companies from the ground. That’s very very different to acquiring a large company with an existing culture.
Now I’m not saying it cannot work. Maybe it does. But you can’t argue he’s done it before.
Still a lot of skin.