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Comment by elischleifer | Hacker News Reader

This story is gross and not entirely surprising. It is unclear to me why anyone would stick around inside the other Musk co. @twitter that wasn't bound by H1B handcuffs.

The upside in that company is really not there...at least at SpaceX you get to build the future.

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It's the US, there are no worker rights but there is this dumb ubiquitous storytelling about billionaires who became rich only because they are smarter and more virtuous than everyone else.

Unfortunately some people will need to suffer a depression or something before they realize they need to focus on their own needs and their own life rather than work 10-12 hours a day seven days a week (my god!) to satisfy someone else's ego.

Could be the changing job market, Musk knows it. If this was the job market like a year or six months ago, Musk would had kept his mouth shut. Elon comes across extremely opportunistic, which is not surprising but he comes across opportunistic in a cruel way. Something that wider group of people should realize and take appropriate steps

Could you please elaborate a little more? Are you saying because of the flood of workers into the market Musk is able to act this way?

I am saying job market is not as robust as it was a year or two ago. Feds tightening has beginning to affect well run companies and workers. There's talk about recession. If it was 2021, anyone from Twitter could have walked into Facebook and get a job

Ah that makes complete sense. I never thought of it that way before but your logic follows. Musk sees what is going on and knows he can take advantage of it. Thank you for explaining.

The problem they're going to run into is the best engineers have prospects elsewhere, regardless of the economy.

How many of the best engineers could Twitter possibly be employing? Other companies with sufficient cash might already have their share of the best. If you are really good, you will certainly find takers but unlikely at the same high compensation levels. The state of the economy might be more crucial to anybody’s prospects than you might think.

A year ago getting workers was very nearly impossible because easy credit was flowing like water and capital was abundant. In addition, historical level of retirement was bringing available, knowledgeable workers out of the market. Anyone who drove workers away was shooting themselves in the foot since those workers were very difficult to get back.

Today, the labor market is rougher for employees and easier for employers - credit is drying up and many projects that were employing workers are dying. More workers are competing for fewer positions and even some workers that thought they would retire are coming back after losing money in the markets has made retirement less viable.

I think parent post is saying that musk is a (somewhat) rational actor - when labor was scarce he would have been more careful not to offend. While labor is plentiful he doesn't care how badly he treats his employees because they don't have a better option.

Not sure I agree with that point - musk seems like an even mix of carnival barker and bipolar to me, but I think that's the idea.

SpaceX needs a competitor. It is the only actually interesting company in Elmo's stable.

That work is too important to leave in one set of hands, in case their CEO dies or loses his marbles.

Blue Origin receives 1B+ in funding every year. I don't see the need for government intervention to create more competition.

I wouldn't use Blue Origin as a counter example, Bezos is doing about as well with that as Musk is with The Boring Company.

There are several other new space companies I think are interesting, including SpinLaunch, Relativity Space, and Rocket Lab.

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