On: If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to the HQ now

[helen___keller]

He's trying to build a culture of engineer abuse.

I'm sure he'll succeed in building it. The game industry manages it, for example. You can abuse and burn out engineers if that's what you really want.

That said, I wouldn't say abused engineers are particularly more productive. He can work them 9/9/6 while he's at it, I don't think that'll help Twitter succeed.

[JansjoFromIkea → helen___keller]

The game industry manages it because a lot of people dream of making games, in the same way as I'm sure Tesla and SpaceX have a lot of extremely dedicated employees because the work they're doing is literally a life long dream.

There's some very interesting things to solve and achieve at a platform like Twitter but I doubt very many people have had them as life long targets for themselves to achieve.

[WrtCdEvrydy → JansjoFromIkea]

That's the thing... Tesla and SpaceX were revolutionizing electric cars, batteries and launching humanity into the stars.

Twitter allows hot takes and racism, not exactly comparable.

[bumby → WrtCdEvrydy]

Also: SpaceX and Tesla were heavily subsidized with taxpayer money. To date, something like 98% of SpaceX contracts are govt. I’m not sure about the Boring company but I suspect its business model is heavily dependent on taxpayer funds too.

Although he's often held up as a paragon of free market capitalism, it looks like a lot of his business ventures are actually the result of crony capitalism.

[cyanydeez → bumby]

Also, neither were built by musk.

[galdosdi → WrtCdEvrydy]

Even the challenges in scaling a platform like Twitter to a global scale are gone. They were novel and exciting 10 years ago; today, using cloud services, it's a comp sci 301 assignment.

[crooked-v → helen___keller]

The problem for him here is that instead of boiling the frog, he's gone straight to chasing the frog around with a blowtorch.

[danesparza → crooked-v]

Unless he didn't want frogs. Then he's right on schedule.

But damn that's a lot of money to burn just to chase frogs away.

[CoastalCoder → crooked-v]

Apologies for this un-HN-like response, but that image is making me laugh out loud in the privacy of my home office. I'm glad nobody can hear me.

[mike_d → helen___keller]

He is trying to destroy the company, literally.

Twitter's now second largest investor and likely cash backer of Elon's shares is Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz. Twitter was a huge enabler of the Arab Spring and leaders of oppressive regimes around the world would love to see it shuttered.

[cyanydeez → mike_d]

They don't burn money like that.

If your conspiracy theory has motive truth, it's more likely Saudis want what china has in TikTok or others: the ability to monitor it.

Unfortunately, just like the other far right clones, this plan only works if it's popular.

[someNameIG → mike_d]

> He is trying to destroy the company, literally.

I don't buy this as he's doing it in a way that makes him look like an incompetent fool.

[pas → someNameIG]

quite possibly he is a bit on the manic side of behavior (which makes him almost impervious to what others think of him; also he seems to be popular enough with a certain crowd, so he might not care much)