Alstein
1791
this will also screw over folks who go by a non-legal name (or one they’re in the process of legalizing), but the current system also does that.
Also screws over folks in oppressive regimes/
It’s strong because it’s so appealing. Everyone wants to believe it.
I’m around a lot of high net worth individuals professionally, and while some are pretty smart, some are very much…uhh… not.
Ditto, and I’ve made the same observation. It’s especially infuriating when I have to deal with “peers” who have their job on the qualification of “daddy is an owner/big-deal for this company” and the person in question is obviously un-qualified for the job otherwise.
DoubleG
1796
I recently read the book Bad Blood about Theranos, and I was struck by how they kept that scam going for a decade just by hacking the “wealth = success” delusion.
There’s interview after interview with investors saying “I thought my money was safe, she had six bodyguards and owned three buildings!” But she could afford those because the last round of investors were impressed by three bodyguards and two buildings.
That’s a great encapsulation.
And there’s also the trap of extrapolating intelligence in one specific, narrow area across a broader spectrum. It’s something I’ve found extremely common among doctors and (especially!) engineers.
Just because you’re good at one thing doesn’t mean your good at another.
It still seems like real identity verification is a thing that benefits Twitter (in terms of reduced lawsuits and increased non-verified user trust) far more than verified folks, and is an odd thing to monetize. The bundled, but distinct service of only interacting with blessed (or paid) users seems reasonable.
Amen. I just made this mistake myself. As someone with a technical IT background I’m a pretty sharp cookie in my (narrow) technical niche. I’ve even got a touch of international name recognition in my little niche field. Recently I branched out into local politics as a sideline and I got a quick reality check that I was the dumb new guy and I’d better shut up and listen because I had nothing to contribute. Thankfully the parties correcting me were gracious about it, but I still had it coming.
ShivaX
1803
It does and it also makes it more attractive for users. You’re talking to the actual Danny DeVito!
The real Arnold Schwarzenegger called you an idiot!
That’s the appeal of Twitter for a lot of people. For no cost you’re letting people interact with famous people.
You can tell your Senator to go fuck himself! Awesome!
But let’s monetize it and open the doors to everyone. While all the famous people tell you to go fuck yourself and all the sewer CHUDs scramble to replace them. Surely someone is very interested in the Real Mark Davidson, racist plumber from Scranton! He’s far more interesting to talk to than George Martin or Taylor Swift.
DoubleG
1804
They’re probably taking inspiration from platforms like Google which are successfully using their monopoly to extort companies.
Home Depot doesn’t want to buy Google ads? That’s fine, Google will happily sell the first search result for homedepot.com to Lowe’s. Somebody impersonating you on Twitter? Well, you should just invest in our suite of verification services.
This will backfire for them, but I can see why some tech-brained MBAs might think it’s a good idea.
“I’m Mark Asher, and so is my wife!”
crosses fingers that the Monty Python Curse isn’t stil in effect (or was that for Octopus Overlords?)
From engineers I know, Tesla is definitely NOT a good place to work. At all. Anecdata, but in response to your anecdata!
Timex
1807
But, from engineers I know, Tesla and space X are paying folks MOUNTAINS of money.
I don’t know anyone who works at either, but I’d bet a lot of that huge-seeming compensation package is in options or restricted stock units. So when the market crashes those engineers take a big comp hit.
Timex
1809
Oh, that is definitely the case.
From what I’ve seen, Tesla and SpaceX both pay fine by silicon valley standards, but not out of line compared to the FAANG folks. And yes, especially at higher seniority levels, RSUs are a non-trivial portion of total comp. That’s typical.
I’ve linked it before a few times, I think, but for those curious, I’ve found levels.fyi to be a decent openly available data source for this sort of thing.
edit: we’ve had a similar discussion to this before, I think? Was it about Tesla? My memory sucks and my search-fu is worse.
