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Elon Musk Today

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47 pointsel_sinchi45 comments

I just read the mail he sent to employees last night. In which he asks them to agree to a hardcore work culture or get fired.

I guess to get people to work for you under such a leadership, you have to pay above normal salaries? Twice of what is normal? Or what other reason would people have to continue work at Twitter?

Maybe the challenge.

Believing in the mission.

The challenge of the race to the bottom can be fun if you’re a sadomasochist

Challenges aren't hard to find if someone wants them. Go found a startup or something.

Is this an interesting challenge, or just the slog of trying to maintain a service shorthanded?

It probably helps to get slackers and non-believers and "activists" to self-select off. People who had oversized compensation relative to contribution to the bottom line. It will also provoke some good ICs to quit out of frustration too.

The ones who stay behind probably have various reasons to stay behind. They believe in the product, like the challenge, want to have impact, working with lower org entropy, less activism, etc., despite liking or not liking their boss.

I see people disagreeing with me, fine. But I still think this will rid the organization of most slackers and non-contributors.

I can only assume the ones who stay believe they have no other options. Honestly, I can't see how someone with self respect could accept a mercurial tyrant for a leader. There doesn't seem to be a vision to get behind here beside "whatever Elon feels like today".

Often people who work for startups work for dysfunctional organizations. Mature F500 Orgs also have lots of internal dysfunction. Most places are not "SGI"-type organizations. Also what we see in public is different from what people see on the inside.

Much of what see in public is the agitators being angry. Also, some regular staff will get caught up in the maelstrom, that's understood. But, if you are part of the org that emerges out of this difficult time, you may find it rewarding.

I think much of the difficulty is attributable to people having been used to the previous management style not being able to adapt to the new one and conservatively wanting to retain the familiar, their cozy fireplace in the winter. Elon, is like, arouse, we have work to do!

> Much of what see in public is the agitators being angry.

In this case it would appear that is also the CEO, which is flabbergasting to me.

What I've seen is where he is replying to these insubordinate tweets. I don't see him instigating it --still I admit, it's better not to engage instigators at the same base level.

Plenty of people wanted to work for Steve Jobs.

//edit// And I'm speaking more to the tyrant and just generally not being a good person rather than the mercurial aspect.

I admittedly don't know much about Jobs, but I believe he was known to be temperamental. Was he so quick to change his vision and goals? I find this Job's quote pretty stark in contrast to how Elon has been dealing with Twitter:

"It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do."

Though I don't know if he lived up to those words or not.

> They believe in the product

lol what does this even mean?

Have corporations gradually became a sort of cult and you have to "believe" in what they sell? Guess what, I go to work in order to work and pay my bills, it has nothing to do with personal beliefs.

While I agree with your point, you must also be aware that in technological circles Kool-Aid is a thing and is leveraged by HR and marketing to further company goals.

I think staff SWE is in the 500k+ range at twitter. I know truckers, delivery drivers and others working harder far from home for less. And he’s gotten lucky in the sense the job market has cooled in the Bay Area a bit - so yes people resigning but it might not be a slam dunk always

At an early stage startup there’s at least the chance you will make some of the spoils. At SpaceX you can be motivated by working in the space industry. At twitter the motivation is you are helping pay off a multi billion dollar loan to hedge funds?

Never thought we would see the day someone trying to institute 996 in the US is celebrated.

I don't understand this web. At first I thought it was about things he said he will do but he didn't. But there are some things he already did, like Teslaquila. So maybe it's just a site to share all the braggadocios that he has said in the last years?

"Like Donald Trump, But For Nerds"

Lol! Accurate description. A.k.a. narcissistic personality disorder

> Like Donald Trump, But For Nerds

True, though not in the way the author intended.

and yet this man makes waay more money than me.

Maybe it's a sign that I should quit the weed for a bit and go play capitalism with the rest of the nerds.

Given that Elon famously smoked weed with Joe Rogan I don't think that's it.

It's amazing all the new hate for Elon coming out just because he outed himself as not a Democrat and in favour of free speech.

Go back two years and all the left loved him due to Tesla and nerds loved him due to Starlink, SpaceX etc.

My "love" for him has decreased proportionally to the amount that I've heard him talk over the last decade, yes. The more apparent narcissistic personality disorder is, the harder it is to like them. For me personally, their politics are irrelevant. Especially when personality cults start developing around them...

It all started for me when he called that diver a pedophile because the diver said Elon's dumb idea was dumb. There's no politics there, that's strictly just an ugly person being ugly.

Yeah, that was pretty shitty. I'll give you that one.

"The left" has hated Musk for far, far longer than two years. He's been anti-union forever.

Possibly, but not at the volume since he said he wanted to make Twitter apolitical.

Yes they have. This is confirmation bias.

I think it's more like cognitive dissonance.

Let's solve this like geeks though - someone cleverer than me run some sentiment analysis on all Hacker News comments featuring Elon Musk for the last 5 years or so.

I actually went back through my own comments to check, my first post mentioning Musk [0] was incredulity at someone claiming the shambolic launch of the Cybertruck might have been deliberately dreadful as some kind of marketing exercise. The Musk worshippers have always been here, but so have the people who can see that not only is the emperor not wearing any clothes, he's also a blithering idiot.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21604570

I may disagree with a lot of billionaires politically, but I tend to assume they're usually smarter than me as they're billionaires and I'm not (absent inherited wealth).

There have been an unending stream of Musk worshippers, or general billionaire-worshippers such as yourself, but there have been many people highlighting Musk's many, many, many, many failings for several years.

Are you surprised that the more he speaks, the more people shift from one side to the other? Over time, I would assume sentiment would be more and more and more negative, but the negativity has always been there alongside the adulation.

I'm not a billionaire worshipper. There are plenty of billionaires that I think are appalling people - Zuckerberg, Soros, Gates.

There are an overflow of reasons to dislike him that have nothing to do with his politics.

Virtually nobody said any of them until he identified as non-Left. Weird coincidence, eh?

I love this take — as though the public is responsible for his narcissism and abrasiveness. He is purposefully attracting attention to himself like a mantoddler.

Your continued defense of him speaks volumes about your values as an individual. Your “politics” angle is naked projection.

>> Your continued defense of him speaks volumes about your values as an individual. Your “politics” angle is naked projection.

Possibly - although the replies to my point are self-selecting. i.e. only the people that can confidently say they have always hated Elon Musk would reply.

A coincidence in your imagination, perhaps, but public dislike of Musk has been widespread for a very long time, and his newfound disdain for the political party that would like to raise his taxes is hardly surprising.

That you have only noticed the anti-Musk sentiment very recently says more about you than his critics.

The Democrats are unlikely to raise his taxes as it would affect all their donors as well.

That is factually false, given the public calls of several prominent Democrats for higher taxes on the very-wealthy, all of which Democrats Musk has argued with publicly.

It is also irrelevant. What Democrats actually do in the future has little to do with your misperception of how many people have disliked Musk for years.

Are they calling for wealth taxes raises or income tax raises? Only one of those affects the mega-donor class.

No. What's happened is you didn't notice or retain any of it until he came out as right wing.

As the hate for him has grown over the years, he loudly jumped to the right to latch on to the fervent cult worship rich people have over the right wing masses. That's why elites cry cancel culture every time they face minor consequences for their actions. It always gets some positive press and boot licking.

One of my absolute favourite things is coming to HN to watch Musk fans do mental gymnastics in order to further lick the boot. This post though, this is an all time high. The judges are all holding up 10s for you.

1,020 days since Elon Musk said Coronavirus would be similar to the flu. (1/31/2020)

Turns out he was right. How many of the other quotes are based on the same misleading narrative?

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