Big changes for Twitter

[wmw999 2,116]

1 hour ago, SethInMI said:

 if he can stay out of his own way

I think that's the key. He was interested in the others, but he seems to be more passionate about this one. Passion doesn't always translate well into business.

Wendy P.

[SethInMI 145]

22 minutes ago, wmw999 said:

Passion doesn't always translate well into business.

True, but Musk seems to have a Midas touch there. SpaceX was built on a dream of colonizing Mars. If that isn't a passion project I am not sure what would be, but I agree with what I think is the thrust of your argument that space exploration is more about "things" and less about "people" vs a social media company, and working with people passion can make things go sideways in a hurry. It may not matter how good a product twitter turns out to be if too many users / potential users are turned off by his behavior / poor decisions.

[ryoder 1,381]

14 hours ago, SethInMI said:

True, but Musk seems to have a Midas touch there. SpaceX was built on a dream of colonizing Mars. If that isn't a passion project I am not sure what would be, but I agree with what I think is the thrust of your argument that space exploration is more about "things" and less about "people" vs a social media company, and working with people passion can make things go sideways in a hurry. It may not matter how good a product twitter turns out to be if too many users / potential users are turned off by his behavior / poor decisions.

Musk has no idea WTF he is doing with Twitter. At this point he is just throwing shit against the wall, hoping something will stick.

[ryoder 1,381]

So now man-baby Musk has decided to pick a fight with a senator:

Senator Threatens Elon Musk Over Twitter Chaos: 'Fix Your Companies. Or Congress Will.'

The threat came after Musk decided to troll Sen. Ed Markey instead of answering his questions about the verification chaos on the platform.

[billvon 2,384]

1 hour ago, ryoder said:

Musk has no idea WTF he is doing with Twitter. At this point he is just throwing shit against the wall, hoping something will stick.

Agreed - but he has a way of finding things that stick.  It may look absolutely nothing like Twitter does now, of course.

[JoeWeber 2,294]

56 minutes ago, billvon said:

Agreed - but he has a way of finding things that stick.  It may look absolutely nothing like Twitter does now, of course.

Of course politicians love twitter and business people in highly regulated businesses love deregulating politicians. 

[wolfriverjoe 1,340]

4 hours ago, ryoder said:

So now man-baby Musk has decided to pick a fight with a senator:

Senator Threatens Elon Musk Over Twitter Chaos: 'Fix Your Companies. Or Congress Will.'

The threat came after Musk decided to troll Sen. Ed Markey instead of answering his questions about the verification chaos on the platform.

As noted in the story, Twitter is under a consent decree with the FTC. Tesla is facing a NHTSA investigation. Space X is looking for fat government contracts.

But yeah, start a 'troll war' with a Senator sitting on some of the committees that oversee the organizations that hold those companies future in their hands.

As I noted earlier.
You don't have to be the smartest man in the world to be the richest man in the world.
Just the greediest.

[ryoder 1,381]

More damage thanks to Twitter's Blithering Idiot-in Chief.

Note the error message at the bottom.

 

[wolfriverjoe 1,340]

So did Musk hate Twitter so much he bought it for the specific purpose of destroying it?

Or is he just that dumb?

[ryoder 1,381]

2 minutes ago, wolfriverjoe said:

So did Musk hate Twitter so much he bought it for the specific purpose of destroying it?

Or is he just that dumb?

Hanlon's razor says he is that dumb.

[wolfriverjoe 1,340]

4 minutes ago, ryoder said:

Hanlon's razor says he is that dumb.

I know that.

The thing is that he didn't destroy Tesla after he acquired it.
He didn't destroy Space X.

What's different about Twitter?

Either he got lucky, he knew what he was doing or he listened to the experts with the previous ones.
Or his ego has grown so much in the past few years that he simply can't help himself.

[ryoder 1,381]

5 minutes ago, wolfriverjoe said:

I know that.

The thing is that he didn't destroy Tesla after he acquired it.
He didn't destroy Space X.

What's different about Twitter?

Either he got lucky, he knew what he was doing or he listened to the experts with the previous ones.
Or his ego has grown so much in the past few years that he simply can't help himself.

I think his ego has grown to the point that Dunning–Kruger effect is taking over.

[billvon 2,384]

26 minutes ago, wolfriverjoe said:

So did Musk hate Twitter so much he bought it for the specific purpose of destroying it?

Again, he may have a plan for it that involves changing it radically (and destroying much of what it has now.)  It might work, it might not - but that's different than just wanting to destroy it.

[ryoder 1,381]

2 minutes ago, billvon said:

Again, he may have a plan for it that involves changing it radically (and destroying much of what it has now.)  It might work, it might not - but that's different than just wanting to destroy it.

When he makes a change, then reverses it hours later, that is evidence of lack of a plan.

[wmw999 2,116]

41 minutes ago, wolfriverjoe said:

I know that.

The thing is that he didn't destroy Tesla after he acquired it.
He didn't destroy Space X.

What's different about Twitter?

Either he got lucky, he knew what he was doing or he listened to the experts with the previous ones.
Or his ego has grown so much in the past few years that he simply can't help himself.

Those two aren’t mutually exclusive. And he might revolutionize it in some way, and make it work. But it does kind of look like he’s feeling his way

Wendy P. 

[billvon 2,384]

2 hours ago, ryoder said:

When he makes a change, then reverses it hours later, that is evidence of lack of a plan.

Well, no, that's evidence of a mistake.  He (like most people) makes a lot of them.  He just makes them very publicly.

[yoink 321]

Buying a company, firing half the staff then hiring a bunch of those staff back doesn’t look like a plan.

And yes, Twitter might survive, but I think it’ll be because Musk gets lucky in one of his impromptu ideas working, not because he’s a particular genius.

Infinite monkeys, and all that.

[yoink 321]

And then there's the 'workers must commit to working long hours at high intensity' email that just went out....

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63648505

"Elon Musk has told Twitter staff that they must commit to working "long hours at high intensity" or else leave the company, according to reports."

and "

"This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade," he said.

Workers were told that they needed to click on a link by 17:00 EST on Thursday, if they want to be "part of the new Twitter"."

 

 

I used to work for a guy like this - an absolute workaholic. He thought because he had no life and was working 16 hour days then it was normal for everyone else to as well, and would get pissed if I wasn't answering phone calls at 4am. Musk is going to have people leaving Twitter in droves.

[Stumpy 256]

23 hours ago, yoink said:

And then there's the 'workers must commit to working long hours at high intensity' email that just went out....

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63648505

"Elon Musk has told Twitter staff that they must commit to working "long hours at high intensity" or else leave the company, according to reports."

and "

"This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade," he said.

Workers were told that they needed to click on a link by 17:00 EST on Thursday, if they want to be "part of the new Twitter"."

 

 

I used to work for a guy like this - an absolute workaholic. He thought because he had no life and was working 16 hour days then it was normal for everyone else to as well, and would get pissed if I wasn't answering phone calls at 4am. Musk is going to have people leaving Twitter in droves.

I'm surprised there is anyone still there tbh

He's fired most of the top engineers as well as anyone who disagreed with him. It's an object lesson on how NOT to manage people or run a company

[wolfriverjoe 1,340]

23 hours ago, yoink said:

And then there's the 'workers must commit to working long hours at high intensity' email that just went out....

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63648505

"Elon Musk has told Twitter staff that they must commit to working "long hours at high intensity" or else leave the company, according to reports."

and "

"This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade," he said.

Workers were told that they needed to click on a link by 17:00 EST on Thursday, if they want to be "part of the new Twitter"."

 

 

I used to work for a guy like this - an absolute workaholic. He thought because he had no life and was working 16 hour days then it was normal for everyone else to as well, and would get pissed if I wasn't answering phone calls at 4am. Musk is going to have people leaving Twitter in droves.

Funny how he completely ignored the laws & rules on layoff notification, and now seems to be ignoring the rules on overtime pay.

Salaried employees have different rules, and many are exempt, but to think people should or would work that much extra for no extra pay is pretty stupid.

[Phil1111 908]

Perhaps its his outsized pay package at Tesla thats at fault? He has about $56 billion in bonuses at issue. Which exceeds the total profit of Tesla for this entire year.By a factor of five times

"Several shareholder advisory groups advised voting against the plan, saying it was overly generous. The package is six times bigger than the salaries of America's top 200 chief executives combined in 2021,"

Could it be that Elon has a bigger ego. Is a bigger narcissist than even ...trump?

[billvon 2,384]

6 hours ago, Stumpy said:

I'm surprised there is anyone still there tbh

There's always new grads out there who don't care if they work 80 hour weeks as long as they are in the "next big thing" (at least in their minds.)

[SethInMI 145]

5 hours ago, Phil1111 said:

Perhaps its his outsized pay package at Tesla thats at fault? He has about $56 billion in bonuses at issue. Which exceeds the total profit of Tesla for this entire year.By a factor of five times

I remember when this package was announced, and despite what the lawsuit says, I don't think many people thought it was likely that Tesla would hit the stock price targets that kicked off the giant windfall for Elon.

In 2018 Tesla was trading at $21 a share and many (like brent) thought it was on the way to bankruptcy. Fast-forward to 2022 and the stock spent much of the year between 300 and 400 a share. As I read it, Elon is basically getting an additional 10% of the company, and I think most shareholders back in 2018 would be happy to trade a 15-20x increase in stock price for sacrificing 10% of the shares.

[yoink 321]

8 hours ago, Stumpy said:

It's an object lesson on how NOT to manage people or run a company

https://www.npr.org/2022/11/17/1137265843/elon-musk-fires-employee-by-tweet

 

"We are looking at one of the worst financial transactions in history, and possibly one of the worst executives in history."

 

The fuller quote:

"Musk's new belief that employees should take a "hardcore" approach to work is likely going to make things worse, Zitron said.

"There's so much research out there that says if you overwork people, it literally kills them," he said. "And now he's turning to the remaining people, many of whom I'm sure have terrible survivor's guilt, who have to sit there and work these obscene hours to build products that they know will probably not generate the money that Elon Musk needs to keep employing them. We are looking at one of the worst financial transactions in history, and possibly one of the worst executives in history.""

 

Worth a read.

[Phil1111 908]

2 hours ago, SethInMI said:

.... I think most shareholders back in 2018 would be happy to trade a 15-20x increase in stock price for sacrificing 10% of the shares.

Possibly. But the board should not have struck such an arrangement. This reminds me of the compensation deals that were made with Jack Welch ex. CEO of GE. Jack engineered a massive expansion of GE into every area of business. The growth and profits seemed endless. His compensation rising with it. He was the first to advocate firing 10% of the worst workers every year. To increase efficiency.

Then his mega-conglomerate came undone. Because of poor oversight, debt and operations in areas where they had little experience. GE credit lost billions. By the time those money losing operations were undone. Tens of billions in shareholder equity was gone. Widows and orphans who owned GE were destitute.

The Man Who Broke Capitalism — did Jack Welch destroy corporate America?

Jack Welch had the nickname "Neutron Jack" he invented the management style that Elon is using now. Here is a short read on that style.  I see remarkable similarities between Jack and Elon. Even with similar bull market evaluations.