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Regardless of the culture that was there prior, even if one video could tell the whole story (In my experience large companies vary widely in culture from department to department), it does not excuse poor management.
Look, I made a nice living doing consulting in a "project rescue" capacity, putting multimillion dollar implementations back on track.
You don't do that by issuing ultimatums and crazy deadlines and generally creating a toxic work environment. All Elon has done is chased out anyone that may have had the skills he needs right now. And people don't work well at gunpoint.
All he's doing is taking a situation he already didn't like the look of, and throwing gasoline and matches at it.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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I don't base my opinion about Twitter culture from one video. I've been watching the cultures (from afar) at Twitter, FB, Google, Apple, etc... for many years. Even back when Musk was a mere millionaire... 
Poor management has been alive and well at Twitter from its start. Dorsey is a clown. Always has been. His pitiful management created the mess that Musk is trying to clean-up. I have no idea if Musk's fire and brimstone methods will work or not but "more of the same" never fixes the problem. Ever.
I predict we're going to see similar (albeit less public) issues at FB and Google in the coming months and years. Hell, we're already seeing them if you look closely. Spoiled employees who think they can work from home forever, whine constantly on company message boards, be less productive and still demand top tier money.
As for working well "at gunpoint"... some people can and do in small-ish doses. Most of us who've been in the game for more than a few years have "pulled a rabbit from the hat" on occasion when the pressure is on. Maybe Musk is merely trying to find his magicians?
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I can already tell you they won't work, because it's the first thing bad managers try when things aren't going their way.
Elon's approach has been done to death. It's an anti-pattern.
He'd save himself a ton of financial pain if he just read the book "Fish". It's brief.
It might save him billions. Seeing as how his personal wealth has been hemorrhaging since he took over twitter, he could probably stand to save a few bucks.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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What will be your litmus test on whether his current approach at Twitter works or fails?
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I think if Twitter maintains its dominance as a social media platform, and Elon remains in charge of that, then I'd be fine with conceding he pulled a rabbit out of a hat, given his approach. But it's still not an approach I'd ever adopt, because the odds are against it paying off.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
modified 2-Nov-22 20:07pm.
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I expect it to crash and burn at Twitter too, recovery might happen but not without a hell year and massive staff turnover first. And even then I'm doubtful due to the likely loss of institutional memory of how the codebase works.
Elon's managed to make it work at Telsa and SpaceX because they were open about expectations when hiring and there is a small subset of the population idealistic enough to work themselves to death for an opportunity to change the world. Most people won't put up with being ![Elephant | [mastadon]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/elephant.gif) ed that way; especially when the new slave driver is promising massive layoffs anyway. And when a company is hemoraging staff at all levels, finding ex/coworkers to give you references isn't a problem.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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fgs1963 wrote: Spoiled employees who think they can work from home forever, whine constantly on company message boards, be less productive and still demand top tier money.
The pool is going down and the demand is going up.
And Twitter HQ is in San Francisco. So even higher demand and very high cost of living. But with plenty of other employment alternatives.
So unless Musk has some extraterrestrials in his back pocket he is going to find it hard to replace them.
fgs1963 wrote: Most of us who've been in the game for more than a few years have "pulled a rabbit from the hat" on occasion when the pressure is on. Maybe Musk is merely trying to find his magicians?
Yes. Because management did not know what they were doing and they decided that development need to fix a problem that management made.
Myself I don't play that game anymore.
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I don’t think Musk intends to replace them. I suspect he will cut even more as time goes by.
Also Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon are all imposing hiring freezes and may well start making cuts too. I’m thinking Silicon Valley and Seattle are in line for a massive shift in employment. We’ll see…
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fgs1963 wrote: Also Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon
There are something like 3,000 tech companies in the SF area.
So if the vast majority of those start folding I think you can expect something significant going on everywhere.
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My brother worked for Microsoft for several years. He told me that the expectation* there is everyone works a minimum 60 hours, but 80 is encouraged*.
*Read: unvoiced demands enforced by subtle work environment carrots and sticks.
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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That's one of the reasons I haven't worked for them since Whistler was in development.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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A few days ago,I made this image / meme[^] for questions just like yours.
Why do people think twitter is _suddenly_ so terrible? Have you liked it all along?
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Oh I agree it has always been garbage.
But prior, I didn't hear Dorsey spewing things to his teams like "deliver this project on my timeline or you're all fired"
Now I'm hearing trash like that.
So maybe before, had I been in a position where I'd have considered employment at Twitter (enough to find more about their workplace environment) now I have enough evidence (for me) that it's someplace I wouldn't want to work, and similarly, if I had worked there in the past, I certainly wouldn't put up with what I'm seeing of the current direction. And basing this on public twits made by Elon himself.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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I got a good laugh out of AOC's tweet about 'free speech' being $8/month to twit-head. Hopefully the excess debt he incurred to buy it takes it under. Sorry to any good talent he has, but like you say, hopefully they have found better options. And I hope even the not-so-good talent easily finds other work.
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I honestly want to see the big social media platforms fail, and keep failing until we as a global community pull our heads out of our collective elephant to the degree that we can handle.
"A lie travels halfway around the world before the truth gets its shoes on" - the old saw has only been shown terribly true with the addition of the Internet.
And it's not about a failure of critical thinking. The problem is larger than that. Modern propaganda isn't singularly about misinforming anymore. It's about flooding the zone, and exhausting your ability to reason with too much information. Kind of like tobacco companies used to produce damning evidence against them buried under virtual mountains of other discovery, so that no human beings could sift through it in any reasonable time.
We are not ready for mass many to many communication.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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While I suspect that you and I are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, I couldn't agree more. Well said.
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On the bright side, I believe the world has continually improved throughout the years, even if it doesn't feel like it some times. Our problems are far more in our faces than they ever were before, because they are no longer hiding. Some people want to take us back to the good old days. Which ones? Where we interned people of Japanese descent, because that country was at war with us? Where we sterilized Indians without their consent? Where colored people were relegated to serfdom? Hopefully those days are finally behind us, in spite of this last 'huzzah' from those old torch bearers.
When we realize we are all in this together, then things will be a little less depressing, and more interesting!
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We're flirting with the political here, but I will say it looks like at least my country is headed for a dramatic and ugly social reset. I'm not sure what it will look like, or the precise timeline, but I think we're past the point of avoiding it. Societies of millions of people steer like the Titanic, and the proverbial iceberg is already upon us. Society largely responds by attempting to rearrange the deck chairs, and another empire (one of the last) comes tumbling down. Or perhaps not, but every generation recently has had it worse than the last. It's been in fairly steady decline since the 80s and 90s in the US depending on which rubber ruler you use.
I'm not saying things won't get better - but all of my money is on them getting worse first. Such as it is, given my circumstances in their totality, I'm looking for greener pastures among our northern neighbors.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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Good luck with your search!
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One of the wisest things I've read in a long time. 
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I'd've been headed for the door the day Elon started the purchase process. Hellish nothing but work from the time you crawl out of bed until you collapse back into it conditions have been a hallmark of engineering culture at every company he runs.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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I would not have been working at Twitter to begin with.
The addition of Elon just makes a quick exit even more of a priority. I will not touch anything he produces or otherwise gets his hands on.
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Yup. If they would hire me.
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