Simple question with not so simple answers…
Polls are not supportedWatching Elon gaslight current and former Twitter employees in the public square, I couldn’t help but wonder if any engineers would actually work for this guy going forward and why?
Convert Ask HN to Poll
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33622364
Life's too short to be a dictator's puppet.
Working for his companies doesn't seem like some tradeoff between top compensation and a healthy work environment - his employees are getting neither of these things.
Even then it would not be a good idea to work for any of Musk's companies. The engineers that work there are notoriously paid little compared to industry standards.
But after what I've seen in the three weeks, and especially in the last two days, no forking way.
First, that he so obviously missed the issue with ID verification of important accounts, AFTER having worked in payments where you MUST find and block scammers & criminals, showed that he's just happy to waste everyone's time and make a mess based only on his own blustering ignorance.
Second, seeing his blatantly ignorant tweets about "1000 RPCs" slowing down rendering a Twitter home page, and how the actual number turns out to be "Zero", the emperor's cloths are truly gone. The now-fired employee was absolutely correct that Musk should have asked about it in the internal Slack or email channels, not in public.
Rather than the astute technologist, it looks like the curtain has dropped and he's just another blustering, manipulative, and abusive fool that got lucky at the beginning and had a large pile of funds to play with. I will grant that he is 1) exceptionally determined, 2) willing to take risks, and 3) does have some clarity on removing traditional bureaucratic obstacles. But I'd not want to be associated with him; we can learn that stuff from afar without the angst & abuse.
Two decades ago I was a young, “fight the system”, James Dean want-to-be.
Now I have a family, mortgage, and the kids need braces.
And my water heater is making weird sounds.
Why do I care? Everyone who is willing to abase themselves and suffer abuse makes the world suck more for everyone else who would demand a little basic dignity.
For software engineers this is often simple to achieve.
When Elon decided that this type of person needed to go, I flipped on him. He might succeed, but I really don't like him any more. To him it's the cost of doing business, but in my opinion that single event will put more of a chill on his future hiring than any of his prior bullshit.
I don't know any CEO that would be cool with that. If Elon named him, sure, rip him apart. But Elon simply referenced the android app, and this guy took it personally in the worst way.
My interpretation of why he fired the guy was that Elon thought the app sucked and this guy had worked on it for 6 years. After a cursory grilling, he thought the guy's answers didn't hold water so he must be part of the problem. This is really bad form and doesn't account for the many externalities that the guy had faced. Most importantly, having the balls to call out the richest man in the world, who is also your boss, in a public form and STILL keep it on topic and professional shows that he has a good head on his shoulders. I really didn't think he was trying to score points or make it personal.
Except Damore never did it publicly but it was leaked to the press anyway.
And anyone taking public adversarial stances against their bosses rarely last.
Corporations on general are ran like dictatorships, with few exceptions.
People are using "gaslight" in contexts where it doesn't apply way too much these days.
> People keep using that word. I don’t think it means what they think it means.
And I agree.
Elon structured the deal (or at least signed the deal) such that Twitter is $13 Billion in debt upon signing, and therefore losing an estimated 4-million a day because of it.
Elon did not have to structure the deal like this. Elon did not have to push for the unsustainable $44 Billion buyout price like this. Heck, I'm pretty sure that Elon has enough money to buy out the $13 Billion debt (which is only worth $9 or maybe $8 Billion now on the open market) and solve this problem right now.
------
But instead, Elon _chooses_ to fire half the staff at Twitter. Elon _CHOOSES_ to get into public arguments with his engineers (and fires them afterwards). Etc. etc.
This calamity is a series of unforced errors. If the debt is too much of a burden, buy out the debt (or don't get into the debt to begin with). Its really not that hard of a problem.
--------
I've posted elsewhere on this. But the gist is, Elon took Twitter, a company losing $200 million/year, and instantly turned it into a company that was losing $1500 million/year. (And that's not counting the advertising exodus, which has been estimated at another $600 million of revenue lost due to Elon's poor decisions). Of course he's in panic mode right now, that's a lot of losses.
But Elon _caused_ all of this, with his crappy leadership.
Also, I cannot think of many bosses who you could publicly disagree with on Twitter where being fired isn’t a likely outcome.
You act as if this makes him some untouchable gods. Recent events should have made it very clear that “smart” people can act like bigger idiots than your average idiot.
If my work was criticised by my boss in public with objectively (very) wrong statements, I would criticize him publicly as well (depending on the circumstances oc).
Deleted Comment
Tesla/SpaceX pays peanuts despite Tesla’s outsized stock returns.
If you believe in the mission, that’d be the only reason to join.
When I knew people at Tesla they were real fanboys of the car, which isn’t a bad thing, but if you’re trying to hire, like, ISO26262 certification experts I’d focus on paying a few experts well. The 24 year old fanboys can do the grunt work, but some well paid experts need to lead that process, and I doubt they’ll be that motivated by wanting to work for fast car guy.
Elon today seems to be focusing most of his energy on political concerns that are frankly beneath him and very very stupid. Someone with his means and skills should not care about anything with a <50 year time horizon.
My only hope for him now is that he doesn't destroy SpaceX or cannibalize it financially for some vastly less important reason.
Related tangent: a lot of people are reading way too much into what Elon is doing now. I see a lot of Qanon quality speculations from his detractors. I think it's pretty simple. Elon went and got himself "pilled" by the same BS that "pilled" probably 1/3 of the Hacker News audience over the past 10 years. I wonder if he's been on the 'chans. Ockham's razor says no more complex explanation is necessary.
It honestly seems like he hasn't thought about the problem deeply enough to have a coherent vision here. We'll see, I guess.
Deleted Comment