A Harbinger of the Return of 'Fair' Speech to Twitter?
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"Nov 10 (Reuters) - Twitter owner Elon Musk told employees on Thursday that he is not sure how much run rate the company has and that bankruptcy is not out of the question, the Managing Editor of tech newsletter Platformer tweeted.
Musk is participating in an all-hands meeting with Twitter employees, a source told Reuters.
Some people wished they could have been alive at the time of Jesus. Not me. I'm exstatic to be alive during the time of the greatest human that was ever born, Elon Musk.
"Nov 10 (Reuters) - Twitter owner Elon Musk told employees on Thursday that he is not sure how much run rate the company has and that bankruptcy is not out of the question, the Managing Editor of tech newsletter Platformer tweeted.
This has been the case for basically as long as the company has existed, with profitability swinging wildly from year to year. Yet angel investors have kept pouring money into the company. They must have considered Twitter as having some intrinsic value that wasn't directly related to profitability.
It's also interesting that the advertisers that are now threatening to pull out kept buying ads in the past despite Twitter's obvious and persistent issues with indecent images of minors, to put it mildly. Either Twitter users are an insanely profitable market segment for non-targeted advertisement (because believe it or not, Twitter doesn't currently have a targeting algorithm for ads), or something else entirely was going on.
Some people wished they could have been alive at the time of Jesus. Not me. I'm exstatic to be alive during the time of the greatest human that was ever born, Elon Musk.
While I'm quite confidant Elon Musk is an exceptionally important man that will go down in History as a key individual to the advancement, if not the very survival, of Mankind, he is hardly "the greatest that was ever born". Certainly he ranks up there with Galileo, Copernicus, Voltaire, Einstein and more but he, like all of us stands on the shoulders of similar giants.
IMHO his greatest achievement is early on, that he managed to keep a cool head and not lose his sense of Humanity under the struggles he lived through as a child. He actually lives his principles. It's no wonder some Christian groups want to claim him ("I think we got him") and completely ignore that he is far more like a Deist who sees religious icons as mere philosophers, some good, some not so good. Similarly it's not a stretch to see why he somewhat prefers the Right since they/we are responsible for his lower tax rates and big business friendly legislation. and by contrast, the Left (as well as the far Right) needs to migrate back to a more Centrist philosophy and policies. Both have too many whackos in 2022.
For reference as to why that likely is, anyone interested might want to read any of Alvin Tofler's ("Future Shock") books, especially "Third Wave" which follows previous paradigm shifts such as Hunter-Gatherer to Agricultural, Agricultural to Industrial, and the existing Industrial to Information shifts and what they all have in common so what we can expect in such times. Another should be "Capital in the Twenty First Century" by Thomas Piketty.
At times he looks like a visionary and a genius. At times he looks like an <expletive> and a twit. You guys in the Excited States have a better way with strong language than me, so fill in the blank.
Right now, he seems to have thrown away at least half of Twitter's value, if not more. If he's around by the year's end, they could be looking at chapter 11.
BTW, The Borowitz Report on NYT is hilarious right now sabout Musk.
As an IT professional with DECADES of experience, if Musk gave me the options he gave his employees (notify me by return email that you will be working 60-80 hours per week for the same pay or I will take it as a notification of your exit with 90 days exit package) that I would send back a letter, and publish it, that if he valued my life and talents so little I would happily seek projects elsewhere. Then I would take my three months happily looking for better places to have fun.
He has basically communicated "your lives do not matter, your families do not matter, you do not matter to me so give me everything you have and are or leave" and they will leave. If he is a genius, he is an EVIL genius.
Point: I wonder if he had someone do research to ensure that his action was even legal and would be allowed by the states where Twitter has employees! He may have just put his foot in it in a major way. Again.
Even if legal, this is likely to cripple what was left of twitter beyond recovery.
I wonder if ending Twitter was his plan all along?
As an IT professional with DECADES of experience, if Musk gave me the options he gave his employees (notify me by return email that you will be working 60-80 hours per week for the same pay or I will take it as a notification of your exit with 90 days exit package) that I would send back a letter, and publish it, that if he valued my life and talents so little I would happily seek projects elsewhere. Then I would take my three months happily looking for better places to have fun.
My sentiments exactly, except I'm not an IT Professional.
The world, however, is full of workaholics, and IT is particularly so. So some will moan once and get on with it. What's certain is that beyond SpaceX & Tesla, nobody will back his present or future ventures with the same willingness.
EDIT: It's probably the case that the guys who trust their experience & abilities to get them another job in short order will leave. OTOH, those who should be writing manuals will stay writing bad software. So that posture may well have cost him the cream of his software talent. That's a very stupid move and a very poor outlook for Twitter.
Last edited by business_kid; 11-18-2022 at 01:32 PM.
OTOH, those who should be writing manuals will stay writing bad software. So that posture may well have cost him the cream of his software talent. That's a very stupid move and a very poor outlook for Twitter.
Don't diss the work of writing manuals. One reason why software manuals are often so awful is that the job is always given to the guy who isn't good for anything else. Someone who really knows how to write for newbies is gold dust! But I agree with you that Musk seems to have a death wish. What is the point of taking over a company -- any company, especially one that costs billions -- and then wrecking it?
Mind you, I shall be glad to see the last of Twtter. It's a cesspit.
If you R E A L L Y want an insight into manuals, try fixing stuff!
My hardware business involved walking into factories, hospitals, garages, sheds, etc, seeing a bit of equipment & being told to fix it. Usually I managed. Nearly always I diagnosed the issue. Manuals, where they existed, were one of two types
"How to shine."
6 volumes of about 1000 pages each with a copy of every document ever raised in it's development. But the schematic couold only be read with a microscope.
Don't diss the work of writing manuals. One reason why software manuals are often so awful is that the job is always given to the guy who isn't good for anything else. Someone who really knows how to write for newbies is gold dust! But I agree with you that Musk seems to have a death wish. What is the point of taking over a company -- any company, especially one that costs billions -- and then wrecking it?
Mind you, I shall be glad to see the last of Twtter. It's a cesspit.
Twitter and other 'social media' are just tools - they are what you make of them. You can be selective in who you follow and bend the algorithm into showing you 'tweets' of interest to you. Below are just a few of the tech and computing 'mini-bloggers' I follow including our own Jeremy@linuxquestions:
Kean Walmsley @keanw
Works at Autodesk Research. Loves old and quirky technology.
Enrico M. Crisostomo @emcrisostomo
Cloud and distributed systems architect, consultant, entrepreneur, musician and amateur photographer, software architect at Twilio
What is the point of taking over a company -- any company, especially one that costs billions -- and then wrecking it?
Yes, that would make absolutely no sense. It would also be really weird that he got a bunch of investors on board without having a detailed business plan. So that's probably not what happened.
He's just reduced the workforce significantly, and the service is still very much operational. That in itself is pretty remarkable.
If you saw the tweets and videos published by Twitter employees prior to the takeover, they were boasting about working from home, putting in less than 8 hours of actual work per week, and spending time at the office drinking wine and meditating in "focus rooms." It really seemed like there was significant bloat due to poor management and a "slacker" culture (which might explain why they were unable to implement the long-promised edit button).
As for profitability, a quick back-of-an-envelope calculation says Musk just reduced payroll costs with something like $100M, which is bound to help.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hazel
Mind you, I shall be glad to see the last of Twtter. It's a cesspit.
It is, or at least it has been up until now, and it is/was all due to the extremely toxic user base. If these users are now jumping ship, and if they're replaced by slightly saner people (which is pretty much inevitable, as I don't know where you'd find anybody worse), perhaps Twitter could become useful. But I'm not holding my breath on that one.
Yes, that would make absolutely no sense. It would also be really weird that he got a bunch of investors on board without having a detailed business plan. So that's probably not what happened.
He's just reduced the workforce significantly, and the service is still very much operational. That in itself is pretty remarkable.
If you saw the tweets and videos published by Twitter employees prior to the takeover, they were boasting about working from home, putting in less than 8 hours of actual work per week, and spending time at the office drinking wine and meditating in "focus rooms." It really seemed like there was significant bloat due to poor management and a "slacker" culture (which might explain why they were unable to implement the long-promised edit button).
As for profitability, a quick back-of-an-envelope calculation says Musk just reduced payroll costs with something like $100M, which is bound to help.It is, or at least it has been up until now, and it is/was all due to the extremely toxic user base. If these users are now jumping ship, and if they're replaced by slightly saner people (which is pretty much inevitable, as I don't know where you'd find anybody worse), perhaps Twitter could become useful. But I'm not holding my breath on that one.
That is all fine and dandy, until something complex breaks and the three only experts in the world are gone and will not return because the new boss was a jerk. It may be that it will hold for as long as matters, or it may blow up any day, only time will tell.
That is all fine and dandy, until something complex breaks and the three only experts in the world are gone and will not return because the new boss was a jerk. It may be that it will hold for as long as matters, or it may blow up any day, only time will tell.
You do know that he brought in a team of software engineers from Tesla?
It looks to me like the situation at Twitter is developing according to plan. I found this Twitter thread quite informative.
I'm curious as to the purpose in Musk purchasing Twitter, particularly at the price he paid. I don't know how these companies are valued but everything I read indicates he paid approximately double the company's estimated value. If that is actually the case, he is obviously starting out in a very negative way if he wants to make a profit. He's obviously not going to let people have free rein and be a free speech 'absolutist' as he has already denied people access who have criticized him.
I expect that in a company that size there are going to be a number of "slackers" but it seems he has gone overboard in that regard. Doing mass layoffs the way he did apparently violates state and federal laws due to insufficient notice, something he was certainly aware of.
Musk recently indicated his SpaceX company can no longer afford to supply satellites to Ukraine (link below) and he wants the US taxpayers to pay for it. Admittedly, his company spent tens of millions on this program but he has plenty more money to use, such as the $20+ billion he overpaid for Twitter.
I find Musk to be a more interesting person than most of the billionaires but this whole Twitter thing is hard to understand. It seems like a poor business decision by a man with a fragile ego, disappointing.
Link below is a bit critical of this methods, by former investor in SpaceX.
You do know that he brought in a team of software engineers from Tesla?
It looks to me like the situation at Twitter is developing according to plan. I found this Twitter thread quite informative.
Yes, that Twitter thread was interesting. Twitter have a significant presence in Ireland, and there was some level of redundancies, and more for the Thursday ultimatum. But they're not decimated, and apparently he backed off (perhaps selectively) on expectations (here, at any rate) in advance of his deadline. He also backed off on not working from home, it seems.
I did a search for <twitter ultimatum site:boards.ie> as boards.ie is a kind of gossip column here, but apparently his cleanout was too successful so he had to backpedal.
But what has he done to
Users?
Advertisers?
I think you have to give him a NG (no grade) when it comes to those two fronts. He should have brought in a jacks on day 1 instead of a sink, because he's flushing the (very expensive) company down one
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