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Comment by wskish | Hacker News Reader

I am amazed by how polarizing this seems to be. Some of my best memories are from previous startups with this exact 1am energy. This is how shared mental models are built, shit gets done, and shared suffering cements lifelong bonds.

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Twitter isn't a startup. The folks in this picture don't have the same risk/reward as their counterparts at a startup would.

They are going "hardcore" with EM at a critical time. You could be looking at the "twitter mafia" of 2030 something.

The PayPal mafia had equity / ownership that paid off when they sold the company. Those people in the photo are employees with essentially 0 upside in terms of real ownership.

For there to be a “Twitter mafia” Elon would need to, out of the kindness of his heart, give them real ownership in Twitter. And then Twitter needs to be a success, much more than it already was.

I’d play the lottery instead and leave fantasy land.

i guess we all have to judge the value of such human connections

Elon, nodding along to your explanation of how authentication works, sees how intelligent, capable, and full of potential you are. He stops you: Wait Bob, do you have a startup idea you’re working on that I can invest in? Can I at least get your personal phone number for late night idea sessions?

Again, it’s time to leave fantasy land.

people who share intense experiences and endure hardship together will tend to be very open to communicating again in the future. This is based on my past experience, not fantasy.

It's a fantasy for you to think this will include Elon Musk. There are legions of SpaceX and Tesla engineers -- did they form this deep human connection with Elon that you're expecting? But you think it'll happen here? Again: Time to leave the fantasy. Senpai won't notice you.

can you share the datapoints you are referencing that lead you to this conclusion? My experience over 30 years spent in many startups as well as other domains such as mountaineering where shared suffering cements strong bonds leads me to a different conclusion. Perhaps we just differ on our assessment of EM's motivations.

Their risk reward is show up or get kicked out of their homes and country. Real shitty.

Elon has alluded to several times that he thinks software teams should have startup energy and intentionally keeps them small. Both at Tesla and SpaceX the software teams are small and likely assumes he can do the same at Twitter.

> shared suffering cements lifelong bonds.

I'm sorry, is this a cult or a workplace? Why is this a good thing?

> This is how shared mental models are built, shit gets done

I get why Elon wants people to work until 1am, but what's in it for the employees? Why work 2x as hard and 2x as long and get 2x shit done if you're not getting paid 2x as much?

>> shared suffering cements lifelong bonds. > I'm sorry, is this a cult or a workplace? Why is this a good thing?

There are many contexts where some amount of suffering is a prerequisite for achieving great things. For example, from personal experience, both startups and mountaineering require some amount of suffering to achieve great things. The bonds formed from shared suffering are like top 25th percentile.

I believe that those memories are of times that share some factual similarities to the pictured scene, but it seems pretty presumptuous to assert that the energy is the same.

I am curious about what you think could be the most relevant differences.

I'm kind of amazed there isn't an immediate union drive right now.

Why would you stick around to form a union when you could take 3 months of severance? What would you get out of a union hostile to leadership by staying at Twitter versus the 3 months pay and going somewhere else?

Try doing it during the middle of the day, it ends up working out much better thaw way.

Yes wskish exactly!

Shared mental models are built in tough times in the trenches,

The engineers chosen to be there! It’s not a slavery,

It’s like you said People just dont grasp Elon’s vision. I’m glad there’s someone who understands innately

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