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Comment by acedTrex | Hacker News Reader

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You think the engineers at Tesla and SpaceX, who have created jaw dropping technical marvels, don’t respect themselves? I’m not saying Musk isn’t an asshole, I don’t know him. And I’m willing to guess you don’t either. But it’s real hard to argue that his companies haven’t done amazing engineering results.

Two companies where they make sure Elon just plays with the unplugged controls and keep the adults in charge (well, I guess they let him have the Cybertruck - with predictable results)

Not the case at Twitter

Still I probably wouldn't do the amount of overtime they require of workers at SpaceX and Tesla

Do you have any first hand (or even secondhand) knowledge of Elon's involvement in engineering at Tesla and SpaceX, or are we speaking strictly in terms of your imagination or projection what you think happens? Having watched a few long form interviews with Elon regarding the engineering and construction of Starship, I'm fairly confident he is involved in the engineering. But I haven't talked to actual SpaceX engineers, so discount that as you will.

With respect to Twitter, perhaps the engineers drawn to work there are interested in the future vision for the company and the engineering that such a vision will entail. Not to mention, even in its current state, it is a global social media company with 100s of millions of users that I'm certain presents interesting engineering challenges. What cutting edge, successful tech are you working on that makes you so willing to disparage the work of Twitter engineers as "not self respecting"?

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Honestly, given everything I have heard about working conditions there, yes they dont have much self respect. Regardless of what Musk personality is.

It's nice to unpack the assumptions behind this (and gp) comments. You know, honestly, why I won't work for twitter in 2024? Or Tesla, or SpaceX. Because I don't respect myself enough as an engineer. Even if we assume I had the skill (which, for Twitter, I probably do; for the other two, unlikely), I don't care enough about developing technology to devote my life to it, I want to check out after a regular work day and go hang out with my wife or climb or play board games. Better - more engaged, at least - engineers can go work for Twitter.

Meh. Being unable to check out does not make one superior engineer. Persistent long hours are predictor of a lot of bugs and correlated with chaotic management. They are not actually correlated with some kind of greatness.

That sounds like a cope. I have worked with many engineers who delivered as high, or higher, quality and impact features at higher volume by working longer, because they cared more about technology and/or the product. And I've also seen the same person (myself included!) with drastically different output based mostly on time put in. The simplest case is people who have kids and now want to spend more time with them; for some people, like me, it's an interplay of hobbies and how interesting the project itself is. The productivity decreases, based mostly on time spent. Can they respect themselves more as engineers after that?

It even goes beyond the job, e.g. does one read research papers or code at home? That would usually make one a better engineer, but it's not great for work life balance.

Not a cope, genuine opinion. I have seen people who spent a lot of time in work long term and generally they were not all that productive. Meetings took longer, because their socialization needs were not met.

And when whole teams work long because management demands it, what you usually see is tired people wasting a lot of time.

I don't believe you got the memo, did you? Musk is evil and we were all told to hate him. Nothing he is associated with is ok anymore.

Agree but it appears a sizeable amount of young men see themselves in him somehow and therefore idolize him. As long as he has that cult of personality, people will gladly accept the abuse for a chance to be near him.

Well, even if I subscribe to "every company under Elon's management is a shit show" (and I do), and I don't idolize him (I really don't), if I lived anywhere close and were in my 20s, I would consider joining for a year or two just for the lulz. Twitter is still insanely influential, so it would be fun to be behind the scenes. I also suspect that software engineers can still learn a lot there.

You appear to be describing a cult of personality. Cults exist. They're still cults. It takes perspective, common sense, and internal self-worth to not fall for such.

That can't be a very useful employee.

Temporarily embarassed billionaires who think he will save their embarassment ...

What a waste of talent ...

Maybe, but it's all relative. Isn't it not self respecting to be working for anyone making over say $2m a year? You're just contributing further to inequality to "get yours".

There are plenty of horrible people who are CEOs out there (and plenty of companies that do actual evil), I think you're grandising Musk a bit due to him being a public figure.

I can even see people going to SpaceX or xAI attracted by the kind of work they do, but Twitter? The company needs no unique skills. If you are good enough to work there, you can work at a hundred other well paying companies in very similar frontend/backend/infrastructure engineering roles.

Your personal opinion, if I'd be interested in what his companies does I'd go work there asap.

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