KevinC
2996
If Twitter is somehow able to turn things around, in five years we’ll be hearing from people about how Musk invented social media and how we’d never have something like Twitter without his unique genius.
Menzo
2997
Honestly, if Twitter turns things around Musk would deserve it.
KevinC
2998
Why would he deserve it? He’s the one running it into the ground and saddling it with massive amounts of debt. :)
I’m told he has a stable.
Also unclear on this. He took a stable platform, saddled it with $1,000,000,000 a year in debt payments, fired over half the workforce, and told the remaining employees to work twice as many hours for the same pay. The best case for skum is that he manages to have hundreds of people ruin their lives in order to clean up the disaster that he created.
He’s just setting his handicap.
Yep - precisely. Any marginal feature that is implemented now can be touted as some massive improvement
Set your house on fire, let it burn down, and then take credit for putting the fire out.
It also may be that history has a different judgment on the degree of the house fire. While Elon was getting raked over the coals for departures at Twitter, both Meta and Amazon cut about 26,000 jobs between them in what looks like a wider tech-sector scale-back.
Now FOR SURE, Amazon and Meta likely did so in an organized, fairly smart way that poses minimal impact to their core products and competencies, and Elon sure didn’t do that. But it’s also at least somewhat possible that he was somewhat right about Twitter’s bloated employee rolls, too.
But people will work for him and for Twitter. They’ve clearly lost some super-important personnel. They’re clearly needing to replace them with folks who may struggle to get things running with any semblance of smoothness. And the task of regaining advertiser trust could be even more arduous. But it could happen.
KevinC
3006
Sure, maybe, but you’re describing something similar to Twitter just going about it’s business without Elon’s involvement. It’s not like he bought a bankrupt company in dire straits and is trying to salvage it or something.
And he sure as shit didn’t invent Twitter or social media, which is the Great Man dig I was making. But I rest my case! ;)
It reminds me of Trump’s MO: take an action that creates chaos, and then take credit when you reverse the action.
Like celebrating when you release a hostage that you took.
wavey
3008
More details in the thread. One report was that in a team of 50, 40 are taking the severance. Apparently a lot of the people who are staying are on visas and can’t quit as easily.
I’m pretty sure Elon is so smart and amazing he could keep Twitter running all by himself. If his entire staff resigns he’d probably save a ton of money!
In the real world, that sounds like the tipping point where you lose a ton of institutional knowledge (AKA: how the fuck do I turn this thing on?) That’s pretty scary - some of the services are probably not as well documented as people are going to wish they were in 6 months.
Lurb
3010
Come join my hardcore neofeudal sweatshop!
JoshL
3011
The tech industry in general abuses the H1B program pretty badly, but if nobody is left at Twitter but H1Bs, I have to imagine the federal government is going to take an interest.
Conspiracy theory that I heard, which I really like, is Elon is weeding the woke out of Twitter. Those that remain will be his loyal simps and will not oppose the return of Trump and Co. Then the left leaning Twitter userbase is disempowered, as Twitter will no longer protect them from harassment and doxxing.
Less accountability for the oligarchs and villains of society. Elon, of course, being near the top of that list.
I mean, he seems to be weeding everyone out of Twitter.
That sounds like way too much planning for Musk
