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Elon & Twitter
- Thread starter Buckminster
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Knightshade
Well-Known Member
Except that literally did not happen.
There were some FUD stories suggesting he COULD do that-- but he didn't.
First round of layoffs happened a couple days AFTER that, and with 90 days severance where they would remain employees while still getting paid until their actual termination dates 60-90 days later just not required to do any work.
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There's plenty enough bad stuff Elon has actually done with twitter without repeating grossly false FUD stories, k?
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Sure he did, you just don't know what you're talking about
There was a launch industry when he entered, just because it's full of government contractors does not make it a non-industry. I mean SpaceX is a government contractor too from the start, given DARPA bought the first two Falcon 1 launches, and the 3rd Falcon 1 was bought by DoD and NASA.
Boeing is a government contractor, Airbus is also a government contractor, doesn't mean we don't have a large commercial airliner industry. Whether the players in the market or industry is "private/civilian" or not is entirely irrelevant.
Besides, Boeing and LM are private companies who provided launch services in early 2000s. In fact they invested significant amount of their own money into development of Atlas V and Delta IV (on the order of billions), no different from SpaceX investing their own money into developing Falcon 9. And like I said, DoD has been a customer for SpaceX from the very beginning, "civilian" it is not.
Not sure what you mean by "Also the first privately developed spacecraft to put a commercial satellite in orbit", this sentence makes no sense.
Falcon 1 is the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit, but you had to add the "liquid-fueled" qualifier since Orbital Sciences' Pegasus is the first privately funded rocket (solid fueled) to reach orbit. From an industry/market point of view, the fuel is entirely irrelevant, SpaceX is not the first to develop privately funded launch vehicle.
And You'll notice Falcon 1 didn't fare too well from the start, failed 3 times which put SpaceX near bankruptcy, they'd be a goner without NASA awarding them $1.6B CRS contract. And they abandoned Falcon 1 soon after since there's little market for it. Fortunately they already pivoted to Falcon 9 and Dragon with NASA's help and funding, so again, they very much are a government contractor.
So yeah, SpaceX's entrance to the launch market is not at all smooth or without failures, the fact that they overcame the failures and was able to pivot to success is precisely why many of us is not at all worried about twitter.
Think it's safe to say the world is more worried about Twitter than Elon, who is chilling with some pixelated sunglasses on.
Willingness to work through adversity is a good trait. Willingness to put up with a toxic work environment is not.
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
The problem is those are all subjective. Given how pampered the Twitter staff were, by all objective accounts (free lunches, yoga, etc. etc.) their definition of "toxic work environment" might be something as simple as a legit 8h day of actual . . . WORK.
Normal people call those "benefits".
While that's logically true, it's an unfair representation of what's happened there. He didn't suggest a mere 8 hour day, and he has mocked the staff repeatedly. Losing half of your colleagues due to layoffs is hard enough, necessary or not. Most employers are pretty sensitive to that, but he seemed to have doubled down by mocking some who left, making a joke tweet (which I have to admit was hilarious) where he brought "back" two pranksters while the laid off colleagues were still at home, etc. It is Elon, same guy who asked Ashlee Vance how much time he's supposed to spend with his partner/wife. I'm not surprised by it, but I think it's fair enough to say that this turmoil makes for a pretty toxic environment.
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
Let's call a spade a spade here - Elon is a KNOWN quantity. Everyone at Twitter should have expected his "hardcore" announcement. He also is BRUTAL when it comes to anyone, employees or not, that don't agree with him. My friend who was a former VP at Telsa said Elon threatened to fire him multiple times, his words were "you develop a thick skin, or you leave".
This is not anything we didn't expect Elon to do once he showed up, he gave STRONG hints of his intentions before the deal was closed. There were the comments about the 50-75% downsizing, etc.
Would it be how I do things? No. But I'm also not the the most successful businessman . . . in history. Elon is.
You still described something totally different from Twitter. He started SpaceX and the people then joined him. Twitter is not at all the same.
I wouldn't consider doing actual work as a toxic work environment, but an environment where you're afraid to bring legitimate problems to management for fear of being fired is toxic. And that's what's going on at Twitter right now. And there's no reason why people should put up with it if they can get 3 months of severance pay and find work elsewhere. Wouldn't be surprised if the people remaining at Twitter this week were only there because they were disappointed that they didn't get their severance in the first round and were sticking around hoping for a package. What typically happens during layoffs is that the company gets rid of low performers, but then the high performers all start looking for a way out. And this week, Twitter offered a "get out of jail free" card to all of its high performers by offering severance. Who wouldn't take that? The only people left are going to be people on H1B visas who need to have employment lined up first before jumping ship.
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
Spot on. Like it or not, this is exactly what Elon is doing.
It's brutal to those involved, but it's spot on his approach.
Agreed on Elon being known, which is why I threw out that Ashlee Vance example. But knowing what's coming doesn't mean it's not a toxic environment. Elon's other businesses have a self-selecting population that Twitter currently doesn't. So it'll likely feel reasonably toxic for some time, and I don't think it's valuable to minimize that current internal effect and the impact it might have.
Those are things that some of the most successful software companies have done to get people to voluntarily stick around and work longer than 8 hour days. You may call it pampered, but other see it as a way to get people to work 10-12 hour days instead for the same pay. My son worked at LinkedIn and that is the sort of thing that they had. They had free food, coffee shop, exercise classes, ice cream station, you name it. He would work 7AM until 7PM or 8PM. Call it pampered if you wise. He would take time to work out while at the office, would eat lunch, dinner, etc. but he wouldnt leave work.
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
Yeah, recession - those days are long gone.
With META laying off 17,000, AWS in a hiring freeze (and rumored downsizing via buyouts), MS in a hiring freeze, etc. the business dynamics have completely changed.
Exaggerate much? I'd put John D. Rockefeller and Steve Jobs above Elon. You may have a point if you restricted it to living people though.
There were other recessions and companies doing that before. I used to head to Microsoft in Redmond all the time and through multiple recessions they still did those things. The campus had everything a young engineer could want. That hasnt changed. From my own personal experience it went through 2 Bush recessions and has never stopped.
Same way Pixar was able to create a place you didn't want to leave - great (free) bars on the campus, diners, etc. The idea wasn't about pampering, it's about keeping people on campus because the thing they are going to talk about more than anything else is the work they've got in common. It's about building an environment that encourages collaboration and idea sharing, which is something that has broken down during COVID.
I have, the Ford Lightning is great and I was able to get one for a December delivery. Not huge range but it is just a great work truck. Drove great, very smooth. More power than we need but nice. I wanted a CT but I would be a 2025 delivery I think so I got the best truck I could. The big difference is I could get one. 24 battery factories open in next 4 years. The competition is coming and that means that Tesla was successful in original mission.
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