Watching Elon gaslight current and former Twitter employees in the public square, I couldn’t help but wonder if any engineers would actually work for this guy going forward and why?
It's crazy to me that our profession fights unionization despite repeated, predictable and consistent anti-worker, antisocial, narcissistic, ego driven companies that grind us up and spit us out
Giving someone unvested RSUs with no voting rights, in third class stock isn't meaningful.
Being employee 10 of $tartup doesn't matter anymore, because the company raised their D round in a down round which wiped out every Angel Investor and any common stock holders. Luckily the new Saudi backed VC fund that did the round is going to make sure that the CEO is doing their "most important job" of serving the Board and protecting investors over the expendable employees
The capital class couldn't care less about you the person writing code or managing a team or building pipelines or maintaining dbs.
Am I the only one that remembers Office Space?
Unionization is no different from giving someone else control over your paycheck. Just as there are narcissistic bosses there are mafia-like unions and, in both cases, you're not going to know until it's too late. The benefit of the tech industry is that there's always a market for it and there are low barriers to entry. Programmers can vote with their feet. This isn't the 1950s. There are millions of choices for tech workers today that aren't street-sweeping or working for Big Blue.
> Giving someone unvested RSUs with no voting rights, in third class stock isn't meaningful.
Vested RSUs turn people into millionaires overnight. If that isn't meaningful to you, there are plenty of actors in Los Angeles that would trade their union cards for your stock.
> The capital class couldn't care less about you the person writing code or managing a team or building pipelines or maintaining dbs. Am I the only one that remembers Office Space?
The lesson I got from Office Space was that working as a spreadsheet-filling accountant was boring and soul crushing. Little to do with tech per se. In fact, what liberated the protagonists from their drudgery was one of the character's knowledge of finance and programming. Tech, in addition to managerial incompetence and a building fire, saved them.
>Vested RSUs turn people into millionaires overnight.
So do lottery tickets - your odds are about the same too
>The benefit of the tech industry is that there's always a market for it and there are low barriers to entry. Programmers can vote with their feet. This isn't the 1950s. There are millions of choices for tech workers today that aren't street-sweeping or working for Big Blue.
"I have enough options so I do not feel any sense of responsibility to support my coworkers against a structurally imbalanced system"
Not to put too fine of a point on it, but your response is almost precisely the point people make with the misquoted phrase:
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires"
More nuance to that quote here: https://hellyesjohnsteinbeck.tumblr.com/post/23486952183/com...
Being a millionaire is only “powerful” if there are people in poverty. If poverty didn’t exist, then being a millionaire wasn’t actually going to be that big of an increase in life quality.
We should seek to cancel out rent seeking behavior. The thing I hate about our economy is the amount of momentum money gives others while actively holding others back. If our economy was truly based around your abilities it wouldn’t be so annoying.
However, we should also remember that not everyone can work, but everyone deserves a high quality life in line with our powerful economy.
Everyone wants to decouple labor and life, when the actual way to do that is to merge capital and labor such that there are no people who aren't part owner.
The existence of billionaires means that at some point there was an unethical decision made to hold onto power and wealth instead of distributing it to employees
I guess you have never been to a socialist country?
State capitalism != socialism.
All you need for "Capitalism" is a legal system that will support organizational ownership without requiring employment or labor inputs to the organization
Isn't that whole point of being rich? You are better than the others?
There is an always a stack rank, whether we like to agree with this or not. Any attempts to flatten the hierarchy only leads to the mess we saw in the last century.
People like to get rewarded for being better than the rest.
This article has a quote from a California Lottery spokesman saying 138 people won a million+ in 2021: https://patch.com/california/orange-county/californias-top-1....
This article also from 2021 estimates 7000+ millionaires from 35 bay area IPOs that year: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/technology/silicon-valley...
When you factor in the number of lottery tickets sold each year vs the number of people working for startups, and the fact that at a startup you do have at least some degree of control over the outcome (that's part of the reason you would take the job), it seems like the lottery comparison is pretty far from correct in reality.
I'm doing the opposite of advocating for a crab bucket. What I'd like is for every capable individual to pursue their own self-interest to their highest ability, while still being able to preserve their individual liberty of contract.
Unions are built on seniority systems and care little for quality or merit. Many go so far as deny non-unionized coworkers the right to individually represent themselves (see Janus v. AFSCME). The union does not value individual skill. In general, it values the will of the collective, and, in particular, it's most vocal and demanding representatives.
I would have no issue with people choosing to be part of a union as an organization of like-minded compatriots willing to subject themselves and only themselves to said union's terms. After all, whether to one's advantage of detriment, every person has freedom of association. Such an arrangement is similar to a startup.
However, unions in the US rely on the imposition of the government's police power. They're essentially state-backed special interest groups. That they are political institutions in their own right should have anyone who values his liberties concerned at the very least.
> So do lottery tickets - your odds are about the same too
The chances of winning 1 million dollars in a semi-weekly game of Powerball are 1 in 11,688,054. All things being equal, that's roughly 14 people for every employed person in the US. Meaning that in a given year ~5,824 Powerball winners (not including the Jackpot) can be expected to be millionaires before taxes. Compare that with the millions of tech workers with six figure salaries + RSUs.
> "I have enough options so I do not feel any sense of responsibility to support my coworkers against a structurally imbalanced system"
Firstly, I never made any personal claims about my own life. Whether I do or don't have options has no bearing on the fact the others do. This can be observed from the record low unemployment rate. And even where there are layoffs, the 3-month severance packages pay more than most American's annual incomes.
Secondly, I don't know of any system that isn't structurally at some level. Economics is the science of satisfying unlimited wants with limited resources. Employment, in the same vein, are subject to supply and demand, not balance or equilibrium. The only way to achieve the latter is to limit individual rights and deny them from wanting more than is supplied.
Thirdly, tech is where that Steinbeck quote breaks. Unlike the farmers and fruit-pickers in Grapes of Wrath, tech employees actually have a very good chance of becoming millionaires so long as they aren't spendthrifts. At a starting pay of ~3x the median income of the country, even before RSUs, I'd hesitate to call anyone in that position "poor" or "temporarily embarrassed" in a financial sense.
Most people would do anything to have the privilege to work at a company like Twitter. Even with insane productivity standards that Musk demands. People grind their bodies for way less and non-meaningful labor work. Here you get an opportunity to gain skills and competence which you can immediately use as your career progresses.
There is a reason why unionising hasn't caught up in Tech. Firstly most employees don't stay long enough for any meaningful thing to happen. But beyond that, unions just transfer your responsibility to career managers, who have no stake in seeing you do good in real way. Sure they might negotiate a little better pay and benefits. But they have 0 interest in making you truly better, like better skilled, educated and trained on the longer run. Which has more potential to unlock better opportunities.
In fact competent employees run contrary to the goals of a union. This is for several reasons. They threaten the existing leadership structure of the union, and if that isn't the case, they are likely to move jobs and that means one less paying employee for the union structure.
But it does not make sense to push your own agenda about unionization, which is the worst thing happened in US private/public sector. Unionization basically kills the key reason why a corporate can make money: free labor market.
If all the legends about him were true (superhuman BS detector, genius level IQ, laser sharp focus) I'd be happy to be part of the team.
Unfortunately, I think his main talent is the uncanny ability to overhype himself.
He is lucky that a side effect of this ability helped him hire and motivate really good engineers.
Thay might not be sufficient in the long run, the vaporware bubble will pop at some point.
Now that he’s showing his true colors, it’s clear that they are not.
The guy think he is Tony Stark.
The sad news is that nobody is going to Mars yet.
Maybe he’s playing 4D chess, but I don’t know if there’s a lot of superhuman chess behind signing a binding agreement waiving due diligence at a meme price. The man is a walking unforced error.
Given the downturn of access to free money I wonder what happens next for him (and other “innovators” in general , see SoftBank funds)
This is extremely naive. Most people likely use their inner "PR team" when posting.
But with Twitter, there are less checks going on, and... well... some people are good at filtering, some people are less good at it (they might be totally great at other parts of their jobs!).
Elon legend is not 100% BS like SBF.
But what about all the undelivered promises?
Just because it looks cool doesn't mean they provide quality of life. Saturn V rockets were way cooler and way bigger and sane people had to pull the plug because they were a money sinkhole.
As the global population becomes increasingly urbanised the whole demand for sat-internet will drop even more, as they'll all be using fiber or 5g. Then what? Sat-TV is already dead, what's left? How many GPS satellites are really needed?
The whole space race is something that caused a huge hole in US and USSR budgets without any ROI to show for, and will bankrupt Musk for sure. Maybe Bezos and Branson will avoid the same destiny, ironically thanks to their vices and passion for trophy assets such as private islands, yachts and football teams which at least hold their value, matter of fact they appreciate and produce revenues.
Of course he didn’t single-handedly do this. Of course other engineers were invaluable in the process. But he forced Tesla and SpaceX into existence when everyone thought it was guaranteed to fail.
We saw people trying with electric cars and new kinds of rockets before him. From General Motors to Burt Rutan, none succeeded. Elon had a viable vision and pushed it like a maniac and now it’s real, and mainstream. It’s incredible.
If I can do this with a single project, I’d consider my life a smashing success.
Rockets are real.
Cars are real, but aren't particularly good given the reports, so he'll likely run into trouble with the competition soon.
Solar panels seem to be doing very so-so, the reports I've heard is that their solar roof stuff is very troublesome.
The tunnels suck. He dug extremely narrow deathtraps that for some reason are driven through in a car, and that will kill people as soon as there's an accident.
Musk’s introduction to Tesla was being amazed by a working prototype with awesome acceleration. He took over Tesla when it already had a viable product and business strategy. The company started July 1 2003 and Musk’s early contribution was an early funding round and a board seat. He get’s to call himself a founder based on a lawsuit in 2009 and kicking the actual founders out.
Even if Tesla fails, which seems unlikely given their pile of cash and very popular cars, he has already succeeded in his stated goal of getting the switch to electric cars started.
A big chunk of Tesla’s early revenue was selling drivetrains to over EV companies. The transition was real and Tesla successfully road the wave, props to a successfully executed business strategy but technology wise it really didn’t change much.
People talk about the EV1, but the Toyota RAV4 EV was produced from 1997–2003, and then 2012–2014 the second version was even a collaboration with Tesla. Where it failed was not targeting the sports car market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV
Just as an aside, it's not possible to make more than zero cars without developing a hell of a lot of technology; especially if you mass produce them. Even if every aspect of the car is completely old hat, which Teslas aren't.
The initial Roadster was the first production EV to have a range of 200 miles which then sold 2,450 cars. That’s a milestone, but Musk wasn’t even the CEO when it was released. I give him credit for being part of the funding round A though not a seed investor, an actual founder, or really all that critical to the process while acknowledging he very much was part of the process.
He had a larger role when it comes to the Model S, but by that point they had all the elements of a car and it really came down to execution. He helped turn a 100 million dollar company into a 100 billion dollar company, that is impressive. You don’t need to try and exaggerate his importance.
-Tunnels are BS
-Hyperloop is dumb BS
-TeslaBot demos are embarassingly bad
-Neuralink seems to be BS
-Solar Tiles are BS
-The PowerWall is semi-legit but overpriced
-The roadster/semi/cybertruck are suspiciously late
-A lot of the Mars plans are weak/delusional
EDIT: The guy is sending rockets to freaking space and has a fleet of satellites that provide intenet, are you not entertained??
Everything he has done successfully relied on old/proven technology. I am not saying that this is bullshit or not impressive.
But that does not prove anything about his claims on AI, transportation or Mars colonization.
I would love to see him succeed, but at this stage I am pretty much convinced that he won't, too many red flags.
The Spruce Goose is marvelous and innovative too, the Apollo rockets, the ISS, you name it.
All those things had their plug pulled or are about to be because they are giant money sinkholes which failed to pay for themselves or provide any ROI in terms of money or quality of life.
Electric Cars and rockets have not yet graduated to a point where it's safe to say that they won't be just a fad.
If people stop caring about climate then EVs have no reason to exist. Similarly as the population becomes more and more urbanised they will rely on fiber as opposed to Sat-Internet so Starlink has no reason to exist.
All those things you are enthusiastic about are mostly overhyped fads which Musk himself is pumping and self-promoting while the real innovation which is life changing for all of us will come from some small and quiet biotech company, away from all the media fanfare. Oh wait, it already happened with Moderna and people can't even comprehend it because they are busy following the last PR stunt of this fraud.
So valuation comes from speculation of course, but what are people speculating will happen? If Toyota, the biggest car manufacturer in the world, is valued less than Tesla is now, then the end goal of Tesla matching or besting Toyota's operations should see it's real value be... much less than it currently is.
Now incumbent manufacturers are delivering EVs and in brands, form-factors and levels of quality more people can care about, I just don't see how Tesla is differentiated in a way that even remotely justifies it's valuation.
Why?
Because Elon himself is seen as a super-genius and a savior of humanity by a lot of people, including smart dudes like Geohot or Lex Fridman.
Also, Telsa valuation is tied to L5 (full autonomy), and the TelsaBot and the impressive giga factories and the AI hype, and the Solar panels etc.
But most of that will flop...
Lex Friedman is Lex Friedman.
So no, those guys are smart dudes.
Von Braun was a very smart dude but he was making the Nazi salute and fawning over Hitler all the times.
When he moved to the US he was fawning over Eisenhower all the times.
Similarly this Friedman guy has 4 years worth of videos in which he fawns over Putin.
Technical abilities and critical thinking in the social realm are 2 very different sets of competences. It's very rare to find somebody who is extremely technically gifted and is also able to realize that the leader of a big organization is not a god but a regular guy like anybody else who happened to be positioned in the right spot to ride the wave of social consensus.
If the greatest story ever told and 2000+ years of compounding marketing and outreach had no chance of getting god in my brain and heart, I'll let you figure what are the odds for Musk self-promoting himself via bullying and cheap outreach.
> let people's accomplishments speak for themselves
Musk and all the other 2500 billionaires in the world have as much agency over their so called accomplishments as lottery winners.
When I am in SV/SF I have lots of fun acting and pretending that I am a believer brainwashed too. Musk fans especially throw the most bizzarre parties, only second to crypto-guys. Maybe they hope that the cult leader would show up. I got a private jet ride in a G3 because I "believe in Elon" whatever the fuck that means lol.
That still doesn't give them any right to crap over people. At least treat people with basic human decency or in the long run they won't give a crap about you.
If his behaviour continues like this, sooner or later, Musk will find out that history is not kind to him ... or maybe not.
All vaporware, all the time.
If you trust Karpathy as a source, it seems like working for Elon would be the opposite of working for a bureaucracy.
Honestly, I can’t even imagine running that company worse than what he does right now.
Imo, if you're running a social media business, a key metric to optimize for is traffic and engagement. Elon seems to be doing that well enough at least.
I find a lot of joy in working on challenging problems without having to deal with bureaucracy bullshit. I have a feeling that Elon likes to foster this kind of environment in his places of employment.
On the other hand, I don't know if I'm good enough for such standards. But if Elon wanted to hire me, I'd definitely say yes.
I'm curious what this means to you, because when I see people from inside Twitter correct him on Twitter, with specific technical statements describing what's going on—and then he fires them—that seems like formalities way outranking ability and skill.
I don't, but then given Elon has been CEO for all of 2 weeks—neither does he.
> You are being manipulated.
As are you.
Well, it certainly hasn't been going great. I have no idea if it's organic, but the tech press reporting bad news about an ongoing tire fire is expected. Why would you even need to manipulate the news, when the company itself is generating bad news at such a rapid clip?
You think all of this is just some narrative being pushed, or are you just sensing a shift in public opinion and since it’s a deviation from the norm you are assigning it to some unknown “force?”
On a related note, I heard in a podcast recently that Walter Isaacson has been following Musk around for a bio.
In short, it means that doing things better (e.g. making a piece of software faster) for the sake of things being done better is praised, not tolerated, as is the case in the many "let's just ship it, we'll fix it later" software companies.
> when I see people from inside Twitter correct him on Twitter, with specific technical statements describing what's going on—and then he fires them
As far as I remember, the guy just said something along the lines "as the person who actually works on this, it's not 1000 RPCs.", to which Elon asked for a specific number, the guy replied with vague answers like "it only does like 50 RPCs all of which are async, but the software is full of bloat and various features slowing them down" which sounded nothing like "specific technical statements" to me. But I can't find the Tweet thread right now, so I won't stand by this opinion completely.
Regardless - even assuming the guy is 100% in the right - I don't think that publicly going against your boss in such a passive-aggressive way, at the same time portraying him as "the guy that doesn't know what he's talking about", is a right way of handling false information. Maybe another engineer told him 1000s of RPCs are being made, or he just made a hyperbole for the sake of explanation. Benefit of doubt, and all that.
Being rude will get you fired, no matter how right you are, that's kind of a given.
It's very possible that it's just smoke and mirrors, but if I were given an offer, I'd at least try it for a while. If it's true, I gain a lot - if it's false, I gain a useful reference in my CV.
working somewhere a while and thriving in that environment? But I get it, ethics can easily fly out the window when you choose, especially when there's alot of money in play to bribe your feelings.
With regard to how recruitment works, I've never been on a team where a recruiter got final say over whether someone is hired. As an engineer, I've had a lot of say in that decision many times. As for whether those feelings are projected, well… just look at which way the sentiment is going in this thread. Would you really want to take that gamble?
Ridiculous IMO.
He is on a power trip.
I second everything you said about fostering a competitive no bs environment. Reminds me of Jeff Bezos. But Musk's behavior is toxic. Treating people outside the firm (like customers getting into accidents with self drive and losing their life, or journalists critiquing his cars) with disrespect and annihilation is one thing. But treating your own people who you rely on to get stuff done, is entirely another. If the head is garbage, the body is too.
Musk is garbage, and when unbridled, we can see it in its full ugliness.
But Elon has this "my way or highway" blinded racehorse mentality. He overruns people if he doesn't get his way.
So you're saying you can be passive-aggressive all you want and your bosses can't fire you?
Well, good for you. You've reached Dr. House status. Enjoy it while it lasts.
I'm curious... do you not understand why this person was fired?
If I publicly corrected my CEO, I would expect to be fired. I do not work for Elon, and I make this statement independent of whoever I happen to be working for right now. Being a bit arrogant about it didn't help, but it wouldn't have helped to publicly and humbly correct the CEO.
Moreover, it would not just be because the CEO had his precious fee fees hurt and he was lashing out in anger. There are perfectly sensible business reasons why it is an unacceptable risk to have someone running around publicly "correcting" the CEO while having a position within the organization. There are even legal reasons, with regard to what public statements made by an employee can legally commit the company too, and the kinds of ammunition it can hand to any future lawsuits. (Making public statements like this is not exactly like taking the stand in your own trial without a lawyer, but it's not entirely dissimilar from it either!) There is no way my value to the company, no matter how good I am, could overcome the business risks associated with such a loose cannon. It is way easier to destroy than to create. Even the best creator can't help but be able to destroy more than they can create. Businesses can't afford some random guy to anoint himself the face of the company just because he write code goodly.
Like Elon, hate him, I don't care. My feelings are decidedly mixed and probably trend negative overall, though not to the extent the HN gestalt would necessarily like, and for different reasons. But if you look at this interaction in befuddlement, you need to understand what's really going on and remove your hatred from Elon from the equation, because you need to know that you, too can get fired from your job for doing the exact same thing, even if you work for a company that isn't run by Elon. In fact most people who understand this sort of thing would see the CEO not firing you as being a show of extreme weakness from the CEO.
I mean, if that's how you want to go out, by all means, be my guest. There's a time and a place for it. Maybe you would personally judge this as one of them. I don't, "nuh-uh we don't make that many RPC calls for that" is not the hill I would choose to die on, but there are hills worth dying on; "whistleblowing" looks a lot like this and can be very valuable to society. I'm not saying this is never a valid move; I want the reader who is befuddled by Elon firing this person to understand the why, and that it is not even remotely Elon-specific, so that if you ever choose to do this sort of thing, at least your model of what is likely to happen in the world is accurate. This post is not a defense of Elon, this post is a public service announcement. I have no problem with people making bold choices, heck, I think our society is too risk averse to bold choices, but I think people ought to have accurate understandings of the cost/benefits of such choices.
especially when the CEO is spouting a ton of bullshit and doesn't want his aura of perfection impigned in any way.
But doing it in public, sharing internal data, and with the tone the guy used on a brand new owner? I don't know what he expected. Getting fired is the expected outcome.
Elon basically can't not fire the guy. It wasn't even an option, so criticizing him for failing to take the non-option is missing the point. It wouldn't have been an option for Jack, it wouldn't have been an option for any other CEO. You don't get license to speak publicly for the company just because you don't like the CEO.
If anything, sorry to the HN gestalt, this is a prime example of just how out-of-touch with reality Silicon Valley liberals have become, that they are so secure that they will be protected because they have the "right opinions" or hate the "right people" that they be surprised that they are fired for mouthing off in public at the company CEO. So disconnect from reality that they have a 180 degree wrong read of the situation. And this is not special. It is completely and utterly a mundane fact of life. This person isn't being specially persecuted by the horribleevilElon. This person is just living a normal life the rest of us live, and as I said, there are indeed good and sensible reasons people live this way. Anyone who is just shocked, shocked by this firing is very out of touch with the entire rest of the world, and I'm trying to help at least a fraction of such people reconnect with reality before this bites them personally.
It might make sense for the company to fire employees for public corrections, but it also makes sense for the employees to correct these lies for their long term career prospects. This entire scenario was created by Elon Musk. Your context-free take implies that the employees damaged the company unnecessarily when it was a reasonable reaction to targeted slander. Avoiding the liability of this public correction was easy, none of these employees were new, what was new was Elon's unprovoked slander. Maybe if you don't want the legal liability of an employee saying things that might be ammunition, don't do it to them first.
If you want to know what happens when this kind of slander goes unchecked, look up Mick Gordon. On top of his professional reputation being muddied, he received harassment and death threats over a company's false allegation that he was responsible for the incompetent failure of the Doom Eternal soundtrack.
> My twitter account was protected at the time, so I can only assume this was for not showing 100% loyalty in slack. I’ve heard the same thing has happened to many others now.
No public corrections, only internal Slack messages.
There is, of course, another possibility, which is that Elon does in fact put a lot of focus on ability and skill over formalities, but not in literally every single situation.
Which one do you think is more likely?
There's a difference between being in a focused envcironment and being in a shitshow. Essentially this message is saying "Hey, I want to be taken advantage of, work me as hard as you want, I want more!!!!"
If I'm being challenged enough to have fun, I don't see why not. I like building software, it's my passion, and if I can get paid good money for doing interesting things while working for Elon, then good for him. Especially if the alternative is "do mind-dulling tasks 8 hours a day" for the world's richest men in some other megacorp.
> There's a difference between being in a focused envcironment and being in a shitshow
Yes, I don't want to be in a shitshow, I want to be in a focused environment. I don't see where the disagreement is.
Perhaps you're implying I'm wrong about Musk's places of employment being as I see them - you might as well be right, but you might as well be wrong. Unless I start working for them, I guess I'll never know for sure.
The disagreement here is Twitter is a shitshow under his leadership, and your words come across as you finding that interesting and place where you would like to be.
One of the first things he did when he acquired Twitter is point out there are much more managers than engineers. He got rid of many of them. In my opinion, that's a sign of progress towards the more engineering-first environment, not regression.
Interesting that you and many others see this behavior as an admirable trait and not a regression.
If you have any concrete examples, with reliable sources (not random Tweets from literal whos or yellow press), I'd love to know about these "horrible things" he's done. Sincere request - I'd love to hate on the guy, I hate billionaires in general, but in his case I just didn't have any real reason so far.
This happened last night:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/16/musk-tw...
At this point he’s just actively looking to surround himself with fawning fans and yes men exclusively.
People leave jobs (or don’t take them) all the time because they don’t like how the boss uses their power. It’s a personal choice and doesn’t have anything to do with activism.
12 hours a day 7 days per week
You're welcome to do it. Sane persons don't.
But if he did I would have no problem. I see employment as a transactional situation and don’t make it my life or a political crusade. I’ve also heard Elon overpays high performers which keeps them loyal.
I also agree with firing people who are posting messages about hating their job / boss / strategy. Why do you want toxic people around your org? If they don’t quit voluntarily then you have to get rid of them.
Guess he should fire himself, because based on the last few weeks Elon Musk is one of the most toxic persons you could have in your organization.
Long answer: fuck, no.
Longer answer: Even if he wasn't the big douche he is, I don't like his work philosophy and the kind of workplace that he seems to build, and I don't share his beliefs that they are necessary to build great things.
Isn’t it pretty clear that he’s super unstable and spiraling quickly? He was forced to buy Twitter because his history of stock market manipulation blew a 420 joke out of proportion, and now he’s worrying about bankruptcy and rolling out features that crash and burn within 24h. Not to mention the many, many reports of the toxic culture at Twitter rn. I mean… as a software engineer one of the things I value most is working for a company that isn’t going to implode and make my stock compensation worthless
He did set the share price for his Twitter offer to 54.20 as a reference to that, but it wasn't the cause for his offer for the company. I think quite a lot of people are conflating the two events.
And while he finds criticism from his employees unacceptable [1], he has no reservations against casually disparaging his entire team in public: "Starlink is rebuilding the Internet in space, so maybe I know slightly more than some guy who wrote code for a website" [2] Remember, he's referring to his own website here, and suggesting that he understands Twitter's infrastructure better than its own engineers because he owns Starlink. The narcissism on display is astounding.
There is nothing I would learn under Musk that I wouldn't be able to learn elsewhere without the toxic environment and the burden of having to walk on eggshells around a fragile CEO.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/11/musk-fires-twitt...
[2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592564281698299904
[3] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/11/musk-ignored-twi...
He's fired half the team, he's making radical changes very quickly, he's requiring long hours, and likely any new employee needs to figure out how to do their job on their own because it seems he fired people without much thought and so it's very possible that the people who know how stuff works are gone or too busy to help.
Meanwhile, revenue seems to be going down, and the perception is that it may all go down the drain.
That seems a very un-fun situation to be in, with very little to gain or learn from it.
Now, if he somehow left or sold the company to somebody else, then trying to pick up the pieces afterwards might be an interesting challenge, assuming the new management is supportive.
I’m finding Elon’s style to lack any unique quality aside from being horribly extractive, relying on a toxic relationship with his workers that primarily benefits him.
Also he has a value system that seems horribly dated and more the result of his upbringing as a child of a massively wealthy family who never had to struggled with basic needs.
Overall, I don’t buy into why anyone would look to work for Elon unless they buy into the propaganda about how his latest personal investment will “save the planet.”
Hard pass
My priorities shifted to creating a more stable environment at home while my kids are growing up though. Consistent hours, not missing their activities and events, etc.
I don't have any issues with working long hours towards a big challenge, I just value my time with my kids more.
Ethics, self-respect, integrity.
Back in the 90's, it was exhilarating, and he made you feel like you were an important person working on important things for an important company.
To give you an idea of what this company was like, the employee sexual harassment manual came in a huge white three-ring binder. The binder contained a single page, with a single sentence: "Use your common sense." Each employee had to sign the bottom of the page and return it to HR.
The CEO's personal stationery had a monogram of a butt on it.
Looking back, that feeling of invincibility and righteousness was probably just the CEO exploiting the youthful optimism of employees like me.
I wouldn't do it again. It's exhausting, and hollow. I'm a better person today than I was then.
However tf I was critically motivated by a subject (think some device that would save my life or a relative) and I was ready to put in the hours, and he was CEO of a compagny contributing to this project, yes of course. He has a track record of building companies who succeed in crazy projects. (SpaceX would be a sufficient example of it).
And no, I would not mind working for a super authoritarian guy considering, precisely, that he's unapologetic of it. At least it's the "devil you know". It's better that compagnies that pretend to care for you but will fire you without a second thought if they feel they need it.
All that said, yes, I would if the pay was right XD
Elon Musk's trajectory is a lot like Alexander the Great's. He started off as the somewhat scrappy upstart and has become the somewhat corrupted corporate despot.
His enormous success, which has been truly amazing and largely good for humanity, has led him astray. He's bought into the image of himself as a genius that can do no wrong. He's become arrogant, temperamental, and prone to impulsive behavior.
Alexander became quick to kill his managers that pissed him off. Elon Musk just fires people, thankfully.
Probably a lot of his problems are due to the same kind of "men [that] have always corrupted the character of kings and will never cease to ruin the interests of those who happen to be reigning" as Arrian wrote of Alexander's yes-men courtiers.
My impression is that Musk is going through a severe case of burn out and this is how he's responding. And since he's got so much pressure on him there's no practical way for him to take the break he needs without risking everything.
Project a future where his operational style is normalized, and if you can't see the dystopian hellscape that results, then most likely you think you'd be one of the elites in that world so you're ignoring it, or you don't care so are part of that particular problem.
Uh, "No".
As for the hardcore long-hour expectations, who’s supposed to be raising the employees’ children? A nanny plus occasional weekend facetime?
If my manager started shit-talking my colleagues in a public forum, I would resign in solidarity. That behaviour isn't acceptable and as the labor force that enables it, we shouldn't encourage it by not participating.
Sure, it's a free market. He's gonna get the people who want to work in that environment. I'd rather stick pins in my eyes.
Everybody draws their lines in different places, but he's far on the other side of mine.
Here's a identical Poll : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33623212
For ethers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231804
Not due to any political or moral stance, or even because I don't particularly like the turn his personality seems to have taken over the last few years. But just because the man seems to expect tireless 80 hour a week workers, and I'm not interested.
I'll take my 36-40 hour weeks for half the pay and smile all the way to the bank.
As for the public firings of Twitter employees - I think it's a bad look for both sides. Elon comes off as an insecure and vindictive douche, and the employees who seem surprised when their public dissing of the company they work for results in firing come off as naive and vaguely stupid.
No win situation really. It should not be a surprise to people that public criticism of your employer can and does get you fired. I won't take a stance on whether that's right or wrong, but it's the game we're all playing.
As an employee you are not a samouraï ready to die for your daimyo.
If you don't have a life beyond your job, you are basically ready for your next burn out.
These Billionaires might commit 100% of their time to their company, but it is for their personal gain. On the other hand, as an employee, you will never really earn more than what was contractually signed on your contract, when they will tremendously benefit from your work, your creativity and your intelligence.
You state that he is gaslighting as if it is a fact. I'm no Elon Stan. What I see is someone walking into an incredibly disorganized organization and creating the necessary chaos needed to shake out the entrenched grifters and groupthink. He may very well fail, but it's a breath of fresh air to see someone shaking up the status quo in a very public manner.
I think it remains to be seen if his other companies can be successful in the long term. Some may claim Tesla is but they haven't had to go through a car re-design yet [0] or face any serious competition. Once they navigate those for a few years it will be easier to understand if they are successful long term.
[0] tangent: all major car companies have to re-design their products every few years because in the US cars are status/part of identity and people get tired of seeing old designs and want new shiny things. Its irrational but it happens. There are compelling new designs of EV from other manufacturers, how Tesla responds once people are tired of the singular Tesla design and have other EV choices will be interesting.
You literally have no evidence anything was actually wrong at Twitter.
1. You're typically working on small teams with some wickedly smart people around you. Very, very few dummies or under performers at his companies. Definitely a community feel where you know everyone in the spheres around you. Also, everyone wants to help you, and so you tend to respond in the same way back to others.
2. You get to question everything, and the first answer is often not the right answer but you have to actually use your brain to get to the right answer. No inactive listening, even when you're getting feedback or asks from execs.
3. You know what the North Star is, and you're laser focused on it. If what you're working on doesn't build toward that mission, you're encouraged to speak up and question it, no matter where you are in the company. There are generally no rules for who you can and can't talk to.
4. He pays the most attention when things aren't going so well. If you and your team keep a tight ship, keep up with the (fun) timelines, communicate out well, and grow and learn appropriately, things will tend to go smoothly. Not always true, but it tends to be.
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The Twitter situation totally sucks, and I empathize with everyone impacted, but I think Elon is working to bring the style that is proven to work for SpaceX and Tesla over to Twitter. There are definitely growing pains to switch to this model.
If you believe in the stated missions of each company, and think your work will do a net good for yourself and others, then it's a no brainer to want to work there.
That was already the case at Twitter without Elon. He has destroyed many of those teams.
> You get to question everything
That was already the case at Twitter without Elon. His petulant firings have destroyed that.
One of the most important parts of being an engineer of any kind is being able to discuss the pros and cons of solutions. Working for a man that seems like he'd get angry and fire you if you challenged whatever idea comes off the top of his head sounds miserable.
I know from experience that working long hours solves problems in short term only and it only creates more problems at all levels in the long term.
If I was a fresh graduate with a chance to work for him, then perhaps ’Yes’ but then again I will convince my younger self to work for myself instead; start a youtube channel or company just like he did.
But get back to his Tesla days when he was small and meaningless. The guy hustled and had everyone else hustle like they were still in college trying to make a big name for themselves.
I think back then he actually listened to his employees and they listened to him. That is not so much the case now. He fires first and asks questions later.
7 contribs in the last year.
16 in 2021
9 in 2020
6 in 2019.
I am awestruck indeed.
Do private projects not exist in your version of the world?
If Elon is getting rid of those people, more power to him.
Kind of like Milton from Office Space (but not a complete deadbeat) doing something barely useful like "I make sure all printers have paper and help organize the yearly company getaway".
Oh boy, imagine actually retiring from a job like this, :).
But yeah they’d need to pay at least twice as much as the company across the street.
And I end my work day at 5pm sharp every day, and work from home.
I also understand why someone might not want to work for Elon. Work isn't everything and if you want to prioritize family/hobbies over work, there's nothing wrong with it.
If you are compensated in shares, then the strategic direction of the company is a valid thing to look at. I'm not sure this applies to Twitter anymore as I don't think employees are still paid with shares.
You also have to factor in the corporate culture - it should be fun. It seems pretty unhealthy at Twitter at the moment. The current drama will blow over, of course, but I think you can get a good idea of toxicity in the specific group you'll work in if you ask the right questions during the interview.
...but bottom line is, if you're obsessed with either loving or hating Elon Musk personally, then no, don't go work for Twitter. If you cannot keep your emotions out of your work, then don't put yourself in a workplace that will constantly trigger you.
On the other hand, if the role is a good opportunity (salary/career), the group you're going to work for is also full of adults, and you can separate your emotional twelve-year-old self from company drama, then go for it.
As I am right now with more responsibilities on my the shoulders and need for stability in my life absolutely not.
edit: oh, and if you have stock appreciation that Elon deems to be too much he fires you
- Most companies are deceptive.
- Musk is truly a visionary.
- When the dust settles, Musk's companies will probably be professional environments and highly profitable.
If I were to work for Elon, twitter would be his company that I’m least interested in.
I actually looked up to him before he started going downhill in the last few years. I thought, “Maybe I would work for SpaceX for a few year as long as I had a plan to get out.” I knew it would be hard but possibly rewarding enough. But after it seems like he sort of crystallized (at least publicly) on work culture (no WFH, people must be hardcore), frankly toxic personality (lashing out on Twitter, etc), and seemingly not knowing what the hell he is doing (incredibly naive views on running a social media platform and moderation, managing Twitter via fear and his own paranoia — firing people who disagree), I would not touch a job with him anywhere in chain or close to it.
I have to wonder if something happened to the guy or if he was always like this. Like, we’ve seen a few famous people go from themselves to essentially an evil caricature of themselves recently. Not that they weren’t somewhat objectionable (to me) before, but the objectionable bits got cranked up 100x. Trump, Kanye come to mind. Kanye obviously has some health issues. Is it mental health? Just getting older? Some sort of conservative/paranoia-fueled “mind virus”? That sounds silly, but there’s such a pattern and resemblance to “having your parents get stuck on conservative news” which is so common.
Both Spacex and Tesla consistently rank as most desired workplaces for real engineers (as opposed to combucha drinking twitter employees w/e), fact is most of the readers here wouldn't even make it (me included)
Honestly speaking lots of bosses you would meet, are far worse than Elon Musk can even be. I've worked under all sorts. The kind of bosses who keep office pets(and give all the rewards/money to them), the kind of ones that run political cartels, the kind of ones that are bigoted and discriminate, the kind of one's that harass employees for all sorts of reasons, the kind of one's that are narcissistic, that kind one's that bully you, the kind of one's that resent your success, the kind of one's that hire-to-fire etc etc.
Working for somebody like Musk, who have a public face of zealousness towards their life's work, but can also be a little eccentric is really least of my worries and would be a best case scenario given the garden variety boss I could randomly work for.
That is, you should have something to gain from being seen and used as a tool and not care about the consequences of enabling the success of such leaders or businesses, respectively.
Working in small teams with talented people focused on a goal while always having the ear of someone in charge is not unique to Elon. He himself has just had the means both in talent and financially to recognize the needs of a market where the established supply was unwilling to give up its control.
The job better come with a premium for the foreseeable job instability though.
Musk also seems to demand his employee to devote their entire waking hour to the job and be constantly switching contexts to handle different tasks. Some people excel at that but not me, so I probably won't meet the bar.
I would love to work for him for a coupe years, had I trusted my mental fortitude more.
Consider the difference between...
"Would you actually support an addled-brained radical leftist like Joe Biden if he ran for President in 2024?"
"Would you support Joe Biden if he ran for President in 2024?"
The latter would elicit more honest answers than the former.
Elon Musk actually makes people excited for the future. He hasn't delivered on everything but he has delivered some pretty massive things that I don't think anyone else alive today could have. Or even would have.
He's an extreme optimist and working for a better future.
I think this is what is going on at Twitter right now. He wants to rebuild the organization into his vision which is very different than the way Twitter was built when he acquired it. I'm guessing now that he's been there a few weeks he has a decent understanding of who the performers are and who really wants to be there and who doesn't. And I respect him for letting those that don't want to be there know that things are going to change, and it might not be for you, so here is 3 months severance - good luck.
This sends 2 messages. Firstly to those that do want to be there, they can trust that their teammates are equally driven and culturally compatible. Secondly, the culture is changing from one that was management heavy, fluffy, and focused on mission-uncritical tasks to one that is focused on building a great product and company.
To be fair, if they do get it right and the company IPOs again in a couple years, then everyone there will be paid handsomly.
> Like Donald Trump, But For Nerds
A big part of being a business owner is that you fall on the spectrum of being an asshole. A little bit or a lot.
It takes being an asshole to do large things. And people end up hating you for it.
The bigger things you do, the bigger of an asshole you end up being.
Quick, name me the leader of a large company who is not an asshole…
And if they are not publicly one, privately they are.
The traits of a leader requires that at least half of the people you are leading will disagree with you.
So yes, why not? I would be an employee hired to do whatever would be needed.
Shift levers. Pound sand. Write code.
And since it is a free country, I would negotiate or accept a wage that I think is good for me and my family.
Or find another job.
While the corporate landscape is conducive to sociopaths, it certainly doesn't require them.
So, yes, go find another job is the right answer - because we all deserve to be treated with respect.
Leaders who require themselves to be “assholes” find themselves surrounded by enemies and poison their company culture.
Leaders can sometimes be required to be forceful as they overcome forces of entropy, but only the weak ones need to rely on the style Elon does.
There are _far_ worse people to work for. These people normally don't get any publicity, but there really are some absolutely terrible places to work. The worst people don't fire you, they make it impossible for you to leave and punish you every day.
People are looking at the Twitter employees and judging him by this, but it's not a secret that Twitter employees (old and current) are actively trying to sabotage him. Imagine shit-talking your own CEO on the platform you develop. I would fire these people on the spot too, and I wouldn't hire those people elsewhere. The proper way to correct your boss is through internal channels, politely, through management.
The people I would like to speak to is the Tesla or SpaceX engineers. He clearly has built out the teams he wants to see there that he trusts, and I would be interested to hear how they rate their work culture.
Twitter will continue to be an awful place to work for a while anyway, Musk is quickly trying to spin it to stop the extreme bleeding of cash. Twitter employees scaring advertisers signed their own firing. He is not lying that Twitter will die unless they can at least break even ASAP.
Twitter is unprofitable. People working there come off as lazy and entitled. They openly attack Elon, not contributing anything tangible except "rich man evil, worker good". Previous management wasted investor's money. Culture born in Twitter is awful, it's as if no one is proud of their work and low performers are loud and toxic.
I have no problem with Elon's stance, I don't even view him as narcissist like some have labelled him. I'd fire every single unproductive, toxic person I see and I'd want to work with people who are objective, who are there to be proud of their work and who genuinely like what they're doing.
I'm fed up with impostors posing as engineers, using the platform to blatantly attack and bear no responsibility of their own.
Elon's not someone who'll fire a person who is good at what they do.
Openly attacking the owner and boss, knowing it can only be net negative for both of you is downright STUPID and trusting people who were bad at their job (because money trail proves it) just to have a reason to hate on Elon is not even stupid, it's evil.
Insulting 3500 people at once, nice.
3500 people employed in a company that has no oversight of what they do, which is capable of getting huge investment and which wastes that money without any care in the world.
It sounds like an awesome place for people who aren't really good at what they do. Recent letting go spree is a result of unproductive employees. You can call it insulting, but I didn't create this situation and if you're deliberately oblivious to what's in front of you - that's your choice.
I did not create this situation, I'm an observer and it's trivial to observe and assert that IT is full of terrible employees, many of whom are really, really bad at what they do.
And if he measures that by "number of lines of code written", do believe that is an accurate measure of how good a programmer is at what they do?
If you genuinely believe he did that to measure performance then I've nothing to tell you.
I understood that as an exercise to prove that Twitter employs engineers who don't write a line of code for months and it turned out to be true. It was an easy way to weed out lazy, entitled or otherwise useless employees who are just a waste of money. Which is how Twitter managed to get into such a bad financial position - wasting money for unnecessary expenses.
I've seen a lot of people making that claim, but no actual evidence that he did that.
You do understand that "evaluating someone's competence by reading their code" is not necessarily the same as "evaluating someone's competence by counting the number of lines", right?
Same here—I've seen it reported, but I don't know if it's true. However, upstream of me also claimed:
> Elon's not someone who'll fire a person who is good at what they do.
Which as far as I can see is just as much a claim made without evidence—all the evidence that I have seen about this has at least indicated the opposite, even if it's not crystal clear.
The evidence you're after is called being the richest man on the planet. He didn't achieve that by creating everything he sells by himself and by mistreating his employees. Some really, really brilliant people work for him and they thrive.
You, of course, are free to choose to believe what you want or to be objective for a second. It's trivial to hate someone, especially when you're fed negative news about them, but just give yourself the freedom to think about Musk objectively.
Disclaimer: I'm not his fan, but I'm honestly tired of self-proclaimed moral verticals judging the guy and every step he makes, not giving him a possibility of just being human and making errors along the way, as if they'd be able to do anything better if the places were swapped. It's disgusting.
If you were in his shoes and if an engineer who can't make an Android app to work in this day and age belittles you publicly, you'd fire him too.