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It is fascinating though, watching him apparently driving his new $44billion toy into the ground. I always thought he was a flawed genius, like a bond villain type character. I am now coming to the the conclusion that he is really not thinking straight.
Twitter is almost a distraction though. If he has the ability and willingness to destroy it in a matter of weeks, what about the solar farms, batteries, cars, satellites, internet services that he also has complete control over? What is stopping him just shutting these down?
I manage a building that has a Tesla battery. We were contacted by them a while ago saying they had detected a fault and remotely fixed it, before we were even aware of the issue. Great stuff, however I have no doubt that they could also shut it down remotely. Why would they do that? I don't know. But then why would he work hard to destroy a £44billion investment...
raleighimpact
Full Member
Leaving aside the loud mouth at the top, is this what normally happens when a company takes over another?
No - It's not. But this isn't a takeover of one company by another. This is an outright purchase and delisting of a company by an individual/consortium. They only thing they have to do is obey local laws. They can do whatever they like to the company its staff and its business model.
Twitter is almost a distraction though. If he has the ability and willingness to destroy it in a matter of weeks, what about the solar farms, batteries, cars, satellites, internet services that he also has complete control over?
Good point. Presumably there's more robust oversight, or just more sensible people, involved on his other business interests.
I think it just comes down to him being naive and hubristic, thinking because he uses Twitter loads that he understands the social media business. Same as how many of us think we could run bike companies better?
is this what normally happens when a company takes over another? Large scale redundancies, enforced change of work culture, removal of the old board and senior managers, shutting of offices.
Arguably perhaps but... not all of them!
This is a very American way of doing business. Come in, demolish and rebuild with absolutely no care for those currently working there nor the culture that's establish. "It's all wrong and I've got a better idea" mentality even with little to no knowledge of the complexity of the (actual) situation.
I'm amazed Twitter is still running, the way he's gone about it means there's been no technical handovers, loads of embedded knowledge is going to have disappeared, software groups decimated. I have to maintain a few small projects written by others and it's slow going, I'm imagining that across the whole company for the remaining developers.
An ex exec of twitter was reporting that upto 88% of staff have now either been sacked or are leaving - how can a company can continue on 10% of it's workforce without a serious decline in its product or service I don't know....
clearing the decks of the disloyal
I love the way these Hypercapitalists are all about money talking in a total free market until the millisecond their worker bees start acting with that very same rational self-interest they've espoused.
I mean, carping on about things like weak sentimentalist nonsense like 'loyalty,' call yourself a capitalist ubermensch?!
I’m amazed Twitter is still running
So long as the devs arent trying to push new code thinking about where I work I suspect the systems could keep chugging along for a while. Then at some point one or more critical systems should be a temporary hiccup and not have anyone available with the skills to restore it.
Of course Musk is wanting them to push code though so that brings forward the fail point.
how can a company can continue on 10% of it’s workforce without a serious decline in its product or service I don’t know….
Maybe he was right and they were all a waste of space and disposable?
A bit of background about his education: https://twitter.com/capitolhunters/status/1593307541932474368
Not sure that this has been done in such detail yet
Maybe he was right and they were all a waste of space and disposable?
Ah, I've seen this management style before.
I used to work in a bowling alley. On a given shift, there would be (say) five staff. The next time that shift rolled around there would be four. If they worked like Eastern European fruit pickers and just about kept things afloat by their fingernails, the next time there would be three. Then it all went to shit and the staff got a kicking for it.
Not sure that this has been done in such detail yet
Read that earlier on Twitter, he’s not the messiah, he’s just an over privileged rich kid with sociopathic tendencies.
I still day this is Musk's Putin/ Ukraine moment.
Not a 5D chess player after all, just a ruthless bod that's been mega lucky so far.
"I think he is nostalgic for the good old days of his youth"
Where he grew up in (and benefited from) an apartheid system. He left SA in 1989, the year SA became a democracy.
^^ He also left with "just a rucksack" apparently...
Totally self made man. 😐
Maybe he was right and they were all a waste of space and disposable?
Many haven't left yet, 3months pay and all that. It'll be Jan/Feb/march next year for the 💩➡️fan
A bit of background about his education: https://twitter.com/capitolhunters/status/1593307541932474368
Not sure that this has been done in such detail yet
I read that whole thread yesterday, never mind bonfire of the vanities, we're looking at binfire of the vainglorious
(And don't you mean *lack* of education?)
And i know a good number of people who have, or still do work with or for him (both at space X and Tesla) and none of them have a single good word to say about anything he does. Even those who still work for him... They just like the money.
Covering your back is fairly high priority for anyone in those sorts of industries, Musks companies must be the only ones where it's a close second to getting paid.
I’m amazed Twitter is still running
Why would it suddenly stop working? I think the infrastructure and code for a massively scalable app like twitter is going to fairly stable. Unless of course a pissed off engineer with access to production systems does something to make it stop working. Where it will break down is future updates to support operation system updates etc or any unforeseen issues which require human intervention. The vast majority of the engineering team will be working on future stuff rather than maintenance.
Why would it suddenly stop working? I think the infrastructure and code for a massively scalable app like twitter is going to fairly stable.
As mentioned above, OS updates for devices using the app might require tweaks to the app to maintain that stability.
Some of us are old enough to remember me telling you all a couple of weeks ago that Twitter was finished.
(when not being extremely hardcore).
He's learning from the best substitute teacher ever!
In the end of time
There was a man who knew the road
And the writing was written on the stone
In the ancient times
An artist led the way
But no one seemed to understand
In his heart he knew
The artist must be true
But the legend of the rent was way past due
Well, you think you'll be just fine
Without me, but you're mine
You think you can kick me out the band
But there are just one problem there, the band is mine
How can you kick me out of what is mine
You're not hardcore (No, you're not hardcore)
Unless you live hardcore (Unless you live hardcore)
But the legend of the rent was way hardcore
This is a very American way of doing business. Come in, demolish and rebuild with absolutely no care for those currently working there nor the culture that’s establish. “It’s all wrong and I’ve got a better idea” mentality even with little to no knowledge of the complexity of the (actual) situation
I’ve actually been in a company that was bought out by the ‘Mericans and they did exactly this. The same happened. Everyone left virtually overnight. One morning, due to some outstanding piece of new management ****-wittery, an entire department quit, en Masse, and walked out, never to return. And we’re talking highly skilled professionals with decades of experience here.
If you buy a company and all the staff leave, what are you actually left with?
Sink to sank in less than two weeks.
Many haven’t left yet, 3months pay and all that. It’ll be Jan/Feb/march next year for the 💩➡️fan
I thought that was 3 months pay if you leave now?
I keep checking to see if twitter is still there...if it goes, I'll miss it for the science and tech discovery aspects.
it almost looks so badly managed as to be deliberate.
I think this is what the hypercapitalist world interprets value to be. I am seeing it in some companies I am connected to who are looking to list. You can also see this in companies like WeWork, Peloton or FTX.
Value seems to be based on the idea you have, or the unique selling point of your vision. It is the concept that the idea is the value, the implementation or staff doing it are completely irrelevant to value.
I have seen companies talk up the most insane things to make their valuation price higher, which in my eyes has little to no real value.
Yet that is the way this whole systems works, as the venture capitalists depend on that to boost prices so that the listing makes them as much profit as possible, and they can either get out before it all collapses, or in the perfect world it turns into the next Amazon.
Tesla is interesting as it holds a lot of patents which could make the company valuable even if the car manufacturing does not work out in the long run.
Facebook and the metaverse is to me a similar concept, come up with ideas, build something that is patentable, so that in the future you have cornered the market or other have to license from you.
^^ He also left with “just a rucksack” apparently…
Totally self made man. 😐
you can get a fair few Emeralds in a rucksack 😉
The thing to note is that despite him trying to edit various others out of history none of the things "Elon has achieved" have ever just been him alone, there have always been other people, intelligent, capable, with domain knowledge, similarly invested in whatever business/project it is, right up to the point they leave or he cuts them out. The difference with Twitter is that he cleared out any capable allies he might have had in the business within the first week. So This is what you get with the unfiltered, unassisted "Musk management technique"; a stable company that wasn't in crisis, driven close to failure by one dickhead Space Billionaire and his monstrous, narcissistic ego inside of a fortnight.
Most of his contemporaries in the "Paypal Mafia" seem to have recognised the value of not hogging limelight and having the good sense to concentrate on doing one thing well at a time, rather than burning themselves and their employees out in a whim-driven, un-strategized "change for the sake of change" chaotic working environment.
He's not a safe pair of hands, those invested in his other businesses should be seriously worried.
Tesla's share value is back to late 2020 levels. If I were an investor I'd want him booted from the CEO post ASAP before he trys to do another Solarcity.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/musks-all-nighters-twitter-raise-concern-tesla-investors-2022-11-15/
it almost looks so badly managed as to be deliberate.
The best theory I have seen is he brought twitter to try and silence that kid which posts his private jet travels.
After being told it would be a bit to petulant to ban him he decided to wreck the site instead.
Value seems to be based on the idea you have, or the unique selling point of your vision. It is the concept that the idea is the value, the implementation or staff doing it are completely irrelevant to value.
I have seen companies talk up the most insane things to make their valuation price higher, which in my eyes has little to no real value.
I think the idea is that value is just what the market is willing to pay for something. It works ok when you have commodities with millions of suppliers and buyers. Falls apart when you have something fairly unique like Twitter or Facebook that are priced based on expected future earnings, but could easily vanish if some new social media site steals their customers. The value of Twitter is that hundreds of millions of users are somewhat locked into it, but Musk seems to be doing everything he can to drive them away. Without them, it has zero value.
The value of Twitter is that hundreds of millions of users are somewhat locked into it
Same could have been said of myspace, or friends reunited
It's like they need a critical mass to get started, pass that point where a couple of people in every friendship circle are onboard and you've got your exponential growth. But at the other end of the process there's a point where you stagnate for a moment and then lose that 1% of your userbase and the whole thing implodes.
Friends reunited is a classic example - it was growing and had reached a critical mass. it could have been a facebook rival. Instead they decided to charge for it and it collapsed very quickly
Bloody hell I'd completely forgotten about Friends Reunited. The problem with that is that they had no future revenue model. They connected everyone who wanted to be connected - and then what? Nothing.
I'm pretty sure it was the other way around, they started off charging and went to banner ads for revenue. I think they were sued by a couple of teachers who'd been defamed by former pupils, so they had to moderate it pretty hard? which killed the vibe for lots of folks. Sold to ITV I think and was crushed (like a lot of other sites like this) by the emergence of Facebook, which was the same but without the divorce rate and court action.
Original owners walked away with millions I seem to remember?
For the sake of us working in IT I hope he fails miserably. If not, we will suffering from new management fads based on his leadership style.
We survived the Jobs-the-Messiah-era, now big bosses have pretended caring about employees for a couple of years now and are probably looking for something new.
As a friend of mine keep remarking, in 30 years time, folks will look back at the age of unregulated social media in the same way we look back in wonder at things like lead in paint, cars without seat belts, or ads for cigarettes on the telly.
Friends reunited is a classic example – it was growing and had reached a critical mass. it could have been a facebook rival. Instead they decided to charge for it and it collapsed very quickly
Wasn't that mostly horny 40yr olds hooking up with old school flames?
I’d completely forgotten about Friends Reunited. The problem with that is that they had no future revenue model.
I did some work for them when they were relaunched years later, I'm not sure if they had a revenue model then either but it didn't last long.
As I probably said earlier on this thread, it's so interesting that FB and Twitter have both lost their way now. If there were another text-based platform suitable for narcissists I'd think Twitter might be doomed, but I reckon it'll be sold on at a huge loss in the end, and continue to trundle on never really making any money.
That's basically how it all went down...
Wasn’t that mostly horny 40yr olds hooking up with old school flames?
And MySpace, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter... Basically all social media. I'm quietly stalking at least three old flames on here now (you know who you are) 😉
One day humanity will look back on the "social media age" and wistfully wonder how it all would have played out if the Reptiloids hadn't attacked from space forcing us to unite as a species and defeat them by turning the moon into a nuclear space grenade (propelled by all those raptor engines of course).
Such a shame Elon died commanding all those Mexicans (mostly to their own deaths) in the great battle of El Paso... Or did he?
Imagine if we were still busy being snarky ****s on the interweb, letting baddy billionaires mine our data and destroying social cohesion and mental wellbeing for likes and the joy of not having to interact with other filthy humans in real life...
I was working for ITV when they bought Friends Reunited. Even I could see that was an insane piece of business, and I don’t know nuttin about nuttin.
Friends reunited was free at first.
it almost looks so badly managed as to be deliberate.
It sounds a little conspiratorial, but given how many of the world's protests and uprisings against oppressive regimes have been coordinated via Twitter, and given Musk's current cosying up with representatives from some of the worst offending countries, you might not be too far off the mark.