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Comment by DeepYogurt | Hacker News Reader

That or he kills the company

The company was already bleeding money. He might fail to save it, but can he really kill a company that was already dying?

Twitter had many profitable quarters before Musk bought it, and lots of cash on hand with a lot of runway. It was not dying in any meaningful sense. His changes have only destroyed profitability by substantially reducing advertising revenue.

Yes, yes he can.

The company had some profitable years pre-covid, and Elon's first action was to nearly double their debt _and_ slash their income.

He may have done far worse things as well but that depends on your opinion of his product/feature changes. But the additional debt he has saddled them with and the revenue he deprived Twitter of aren't really arguable, and his attempts to cut costs by short term slash and burns don't make anywhere near the dent needed to offset them.

At worst, it was treading water.

Huh. New perspective.

I don't like Musk but is this a mercy killing?

Absolutely right, that is a possible outcome.

Personally, I'd rather try something and have it not work out and learn the lessons than sit around saying "what if" for the rest of my life.

With 40 billion dollars on the line? I think it’d make more sense to think through things and evolve it over time rather than shooting from the hip constantly. Morale at Twitter must be even lower than Amazon at this point.

> Morale at Twitter must be even lower than Amazon at this point.

Why would you say that though? The people who've hung on this long probably want to be there.

https://twitter.com/leahculver/status/1625961159894663169

Then it's very strange that they created the #oneteam with blue hearts if they are so happy ?

There's probably some pyschopaths that enjoy the chaos and power vacuums.

There are a lot that don't want to be there. A lot returned out of necessity. Mostly from h1b visa stuff and avoiding being deported. Or getting a new job isn't as easy right now as some think it is. Teams are tiny so people are over worked and elon is making demands that require people to over work and do things immediately.

To my understanding most people there are moreso hanging on because either they have nothing else lined up or because their H1B visa is going to be automatically revoked if they quit Twitter, which would force them out of the country with no grace period.

Reports from inside the company suggest a rather grim attitude. Musk has fired several engineers, even those directly aligned with his vision for the site, often over fairly minor errors and mistakes. There's no sense of loyalty to either the company, the product, the boss or even the vision, Musk has basically eroded all of that.

Musk has been treating the employees as completely expendable. He fired one of his last two principal engineers for daring to suggest that the reason he had less views was just because people weren't into his antics anymore. Then he forced 80 employees off of their current tasks just after the Superbowl to artificially boost his own priority in the algorithm over the weekend because Joe Biden got more views on his Superbowl tweet than Musk did.

I gave an example of someone who doesn't need an H1B visa and who has been involved in the tech scene for a long time. Someone who could likely get another job relatively easy.

People want to find doom and gloom, but the reality is that if Musk wants priorities changed, he is the boss and should be able to do so. 'Forced' is a pretty strong word given that he's paying their salaries and people should be able to switch tasks if the boss wants it.

> With 40 billion dollars on the line?

Well sure. Musk risked a lot more than that and almost lost Tesla on the Model3 ramp. He risked a lot more than that on reusable rockets, he's risking a lot more than that on Starlink & Starship.

If you want to do something extremely impactful, you've gotta take big risks.

Playing the safe game is pretty mundane and boring, and to be honest it's not a very exciting way to live, and not a very fast way to improve something.

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