Elon Musk goes Off the Rails

[Mark_Asher]

Does Musk get some kind of a massive tax break if Twitter goes under? It’s like he’s actively trying to kill it.

[Thrag]

I too have been wondering if this is a strange remake of “The Producers”. I’m just waiting for him to hire a Nazi playwright as chief content moderator.

[KevinC]

@Telefrog

Did Musk repost a DM? Because to me it looks like the employee publicly posted the the unsolicited tweet response.

Sorry, it was late and I was posting on my phone so my wording could have been more precise. When I say it was only public because Musk made it so, I meant that Musk was the one who chose the public venue to disparage his team (or more specifically, the work of this team). If Musk had posted “Android performance is bad and it’s because of X” on an internal Slack channel, the correction would have happened there.

In any case, it’s clear we’re talking about the same event, we just seem to be seeing it differently. And that’s totally cool, thanks for the convo and sharing your perspective on it!

[CraigM]

@wavey

It started with:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1591853644944932865

Why make a public statement like that?

It’s clear he wants to establish a narrative - “Twitter was bloated and badly engineered before I came along, I’ll soon whip it into shape with my godlike powers etc etc”.

If that narrative takes hold, that’s going to negatively affect the future employment prospects of the engineering staff currently there. (How would you weight the application of an engineer fired from a company notorious for laughably bad engineering…?)

So fair play to those who spoke up countering this, and defending their colleagues in the process.

[Scotten]

@grahamiam

I mean, it’s mid November. Would you rather spend the next 3 months and your holidays going “hardcore” for this guy, or get a paid 3 months vacation? Hard choice

Perhaps this is a prelude to outsourcing. Although anyone who’s ever worked in a similar situation knows that outsourced personnel are pretty damn far from ‘hardcore’ people who will work their asses off.

[Telefrog]

I want to know how much you have to hate yourself to agree to be part of Musk’s “hardcore” vision.

[CraigM]

@TheWombat

@Tortilla

We will have to disagree then. Even if Musk is doing something criminal, I expect a good employee to quit (after reporting criminal activities to relevant authorities) as opposed to having some public fight with an exec in order to get fired. That’s just not professional. Corporate mismanagement is not unique to Musk, it’s just that Musk is doing it so very publicly. I don’t condemn anyone who leaves, or anyone who stays for that matter since people have families to feed. But people who want to throw public tantrums and get fired are unprofessional in my book. I’d be skeptical about ever hiring such a person for a future role, because who knows what they might decide to throw another public tantrum about down the road?

I get what you are saying, for sure. And yeah, it’s not a smart thing to do, slam you boss in public, and I don’t actually fault Twitter for firing them (that’s the least of the evils the company’s new management is committing).

It’s that I disagree with elevating obedience and public fealty to a boss or company to the level many do. Making that a key part of being a “good employee” perpetuates the idea that owners/bosses are superior to mere proles, who need to know their place. In practical terms, no, this doesn’t really matter; I’ve worked in corporate environments and yes you have to toe the line, it’s part of the deal. What I object to is elevating that necessary evil to become a sine qua non. That, and the idea that someone who reacts poorly to what may be one of the worst examples of executive malfeasance in modern history somehow becomes a potential loose cannon in a new situation seems, well, extreme.

Also all this too.

This guy fell on his sword, and in doing so may have been the best thing he could have done to protect the future of his team, because it publicly challenges a narrative that paints them as incompetent. I have no doubt that he reasonably thought this outcome was possible (and indeed in the situation may have seen as a way to go out on his terms).

But I fundamentally find such absolute deference to ownership extremely distasteful that people would mark this guy as an unhirable trouble maker, without considering the specific situation as an extremely abnormal one which can justify the action.

[antlers]

@Scotten

Perhaps this is a prelude to outsourcing. Although anyone who’s ever worked in a similar situation knows that outsourced personnel are pretty damn far from ‘hardcore’ people who will work their asses off.

It amounts to a sort of outsourcing, since the only folks who’ll be staying are H1B’s that can’t switch jobs without putting their residency at risk.

I mean, you could make the argument that many existing companies their code base has negative net value, since the technical debt far exceeds the cost of rebuilding the system from scratch with similar functionality (not identical functionality; you never get identical functionality when rebuilding the system).

If you take that view, that Twitter’s code is worthless and should be replaced wholesale by a small focused team-- you only need to keep enough of the existing engineers to understand how to migrate the data, which is what you really paid for, to the new system.

[JD]

@Mark_Asher

It’s like he’s actively trying to kill it.

I think Musk loves Twitter the platform as it allows him to be the edgy memelord and have people fawn on him in realtime. He detests Twitter the company because it targets something he likes (i.e., the part of the political spectrum that pushes and relies more misinformation than others), bows to the ‘woke PC mob’, and is ‘underrun by liberals’. And he detests it even more now that its former leadership more or less forced him to follow through on a stupid deal in which he proposed to buy it for a premium without doing any due diligence, hurting his petty ego in the process. (A deal which, of course, he was the architect of and signed.)

So, I think he’s fine with driving out anyone and anything that represents his old view of the company. If you’re not with me, you’re against me. I’m not saying that it’s the sensible thing to do nor that it’s 4D chess. There’s plenty of recent evidence that he’s not great at 4D chess. In a sense, he wants to kill the old Twitter and aims for purity in the ranks to start a new one.

[Thrag]

I’m just waiting for the idiot manchild who owns the majority of my company to start telling the engineering team it needs to be more hardcore. He’s a bad idea magnet who wants to be a Musk or an Ellison so badly. I kind of have to root for twitter to collapse under Musk’s rule now because if it achieves even a modicum of success it will be seen as the right way to run things by not just the idiot at my company, but idiots looking for easy answers in trite slogans everywhere.

[Scott123]

This is a great debate @quartertothree.

For my part, a lot of it would have been addressed the same way we all in this forum deal with this in large meetings. The engineer should have publicly said “I disagree with this but let’s discuss it offline”.

Just that with Musk a large meeting is his millions of followers.

[DaveLong]

I really think Musk intends to put the company in bankruptcy to avoid paying the loans he took out to buy the company.

[strategy]

@dionisus1122

Good engineers are like good sales reps - worth putting up with whatever because they deliver.

Eh… no. I’ve met a fair amount of good engineers who were absolutely toxic people. One of the biggest myths about the Rockstar Developer is that they’re worth hiring even if their personality is toxic. But toxic personalities are never worth it.

That being said, the only toxiciiy on evidence in this instance is the one Elon Musk is spreading.

And I agree with the comments above - we’re now entering territory where continuing to work at Twitter is an indicator that you lack other employment options.

[Mark_Asher]

@strategy

we’re now entering territory where continuing to work at Twitter is an indicator that you lack other employment options.

It’s been three weeks since Musk took over. That’s a little quick for people to find a new job. I’d put up with Musk to keep a few extra paychecks coming in while I looked. The bank holding our mortage doesn’t care if Musk is an asshole. They just want that mortgage payment.

[vyshka]

Yeah, a really toxic person can mess up a whole team.

@Thrag

Ellison

Luckily that wasn’t an issue when I was at Oracle, but I was only there for 2 years before moving to Red Hat.

[KevinC]

@Mark_Asher

It’s been three weeks since Musk took over. That’s a little quick for people to find a new job

Especially with the Holidays right around the corner and massive layoffs in the tech sector.

[strategy]

I didn’t mean that people need to quit on Thursday - thats just playing into EM’s hands (though TBH - is is better to have Christmas ruined by the whims of a madman)? But I’d be very surprised if there are very many good engineers at Twitter by the time summer rolls around 2023.

[KevinC]

I sure wouldn’t want to stick around, that’s for sure. I’ve worked in that kind of toxic environment before and swore I would never do it again.

[strategy]

Gergely Orosz

I’m kind of speechless.

[Timex]

@strategy

Eh… no. I’ve met a fair amount of good engineers who were absolutely toxic people. One of the biggest myths about the Rockstar Developer is that they’re worth hiring even if their personality is toxic. But toxic personalities are never worth it.

Agreed with this.

Here’s the thing… There are plenty of great engineers who AREN’T assholes. Hell, I’d actually say that most engineers tend to be kind of introverted, thoughtful people.