Elon & Twitter

[MC3OZ]

Your idea that a software engineer works 5 hours and then chills the rest of the day is absurd.

I've seen just about every combination.

One experience was being in a small/excellent team which was by far the smartest and most interesting group of people I have ever worked with. What we did was whatever the job required, which sometimes required long hours, but also included long lunches and other leisure activity.

Another experience is 2 programmers working the same number of hours don't produce the same results, some people end up just creating more work for others and increase the chances of poor bug ridden software being written.

Management which makes poor platform decisions, makes bad business plans, changes their mind regularly, or demotivates staff can be a factor.

We don't know what was happening at Twitter, but we can say that in the last 3 years or so not a lot seemed to have been achieved.
it is also apparently true that when Twitter had 1,000 employees they had 2/3 of the current user base. The user base only seem to be growing slowly, while staff numbers have grown by a lot.

It seems on the surface that something was wrong.

Lot of factors going into determining what was achieved or wasn't achieved, when things are going wrong, one way or another, management is part of the problem.

 

[bkp_duke]

Elon might not care about his money. We TSLA shareholders care about ours.

If you are a smart investor, you’d too.

It doesn’t matter how much effort Elon puts in into Twitter. That by itself should be a red flag, since it WILL take his time away from Tesla. The point is there is no strategy that’s going to work for Twitter, in the way he has set out to achieve. Let me state why:

Free speech? Nope. It has to be regulated.
Screw advertisers. Nope, not enough subscribers.
Cut costs massively. Let’s see, it’s a massive dam. You don’t have enough people to maintain all the cracks and fissures, it will break. One day. No one knows when.

Where do you see the light at the end of this tunnel? Give me some credible reasons, if you can.

”he has been successful in the past”
”this is Elon, and I trust him”
”he never gives up”

Are general statements. Not substantial arguments. Past performance is not a guarantee of future success. Well understood corollary.

Finally, regarding TSLA volatility and the laughable advise people seem to give “if you don’t like volatility, don’t buy the stock”. Yeah, volatile because of bad decisions by a CEO who has become too erratic and delusional for his own good. That aspect can, and should be controlled. Then there need not be unnecessary volatility based on some stupid moves by Elon.

BS. Without Elon (what you advocate), TSLA would be a $20 stock (before any splits, which would have never happened). The company would have NEVER rallied to the position it is now without Elon.

As a longtime investor and shareholder, that is a known quantity. Elon's grit, genius, and quirks are the reason the company is where it is today. The volatility is something we all have learned to endure (this is now the THRID retracement by ~60% that the stock has endured over the years . . . guess what happened after the last two).

 

[Singuy]

You are the one who suggested “it is expensive because software engineers work only 5 hours a day”. Generalizing that all companies in Silicon Valley have engineers like that. That’s crazy ignorant and stupid.

And showing some YouTuber uploading a video proves that all of Silicon Valley is like that? Laughable.

The quality of debate here ain’t too high, for me. Goodbye, thread!

I thought I was on the twitter thread talking about twitter. The video I posted shows twitter, not another company I was using to generalize it onto twitter. All my posts are about twitter unless I say otherwise.

 

[Ogre]

I'd be curious how the board forced Dorsey to create a culture at Twitter that Musk clearly despises.

Dorsey clearly hasn’t been happy with Twitter for some time. I think it just got too corporate and ossified.

I don’t think Musk despises Twitters old org, he just saw it as massively wasteful. Compared to any of his other companies, it almost certainly was.

Simply: it needed fixed and he’s a rip the band aid off kind of person, not the sort who tries to do it slowly so it doesn’t hurt.

 

[ZenRockGarden]

This is just my hunch / opinion, but as I see things.....

The factors favouring success are:-

1. Elon's track record.
2. The fact that Elon will not give up easily.
3. The fact that Elon has deep pockets.
4. The belief that TSLA is fundamentally over sold and will bounce at some stage . See point 3.
5. My hunch that some combination of slashing overheads/advertising/subscriptions/banking will be profitable.
6. Elon will probably find enough people who want to work for him.
7. Some other drama will eventually emerge and the heat may go out of this issue.
8. Good things are in the pipeline for Tesla, 4680, Semi, Cybertruck, FSD, Robotaxi. Optimus.
9. What I think works best in IT - based on career experience in a wide variety of environments.
10. The fact that Twitter is a good candidate for improvements / extensions.
11. The existing Twitter user base and income stream are sufficiently large.
12. Banking has high overheads/poor customer service, and is ripe for disruption.
13. The software Elon wants to write isn't overly difficult, and is certainly possible,
14. Elon has some knowledge of the banking/payments regulatory hurdles

I admit that the "free speech" minefield is a difficult hurdle to clear and works against the chances of success while it isn't resolved.

On "free speech" my hunch is Elon may eventually stumble on a really great solution after 4-5 disasters. Probably the hardest part of the mission and the part that is most likely to fail.

Will "free speech" fail bad enough to drag all of Twitter down?

I think even if it does, that doesn't change the fundamentals of Tesla.

Tesla is fine, regardless of the distraction of Twitter free speech adventures.

The problem with Twitter and "free speech" is that no one, not even Elon believes in free speech absolutism. It's just that he wants his friends views and posts to be favored. This is why he's abandoned the independent council. He never wanted a pretty town hall of centrists nor uniform standards for honesty or decorum.

Certain people annoyed him personally and he's out for revenge to the tune of $44B. It was a crappy investment. He could have had Parlor for a fraction of that cost, but here we are.

 

[Daniel in SD]

CAFE standards I can agree with, but it was not a TESLA SPECIFIC targeting, like literally the words that came out of the mouth of Biden that "we need to investigate Elon's companies."

Solar Tax Credits were set to sunset at those times, Trump didn't put them in place to TARGET Elon.

Tesla has benefited a lot from what the administration has done in the past 2 years, but the OVERT hostility to Elon cannot be ignored.

I believe he would have answered the question the same way for anyone who had taken Twitter private with investment from foreign governments.
Him and his predecessor have both supported investigating TikTok (though that is entirely foreign owned).

Exact question and response:
“And should the US — and with the tools you have — investigate his joint acquisition of Twitter with foreign governments, which include the Saudis?”

“I think that Elon Musk’s cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at,” Biden answered. “Whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate, I’m not suggesting that. I’m suggesting that it’s worth being looked at.”

 

[MC3OZ]

Tesla is fine, regardless of the distraction of Twitter free speech adventures.

The problem with Twitter and "free speech" is that no one, not even Elon believes in free speech absolutism. It's just that he wants his friends views and posts to be favored. This is why he's abandoned the independent council. He never wanted a pretty town hall of centrists nor uniform standards for honesty or decorum.

Certain people annoyed him personally and he's out for revenge to the tune of $44B. It was a crappy investment. He could have had Parlor for a fraction of that cost, but here we are.

To be clear Tesla is my main focus, I don't really care much either way about Twitter,

I'm just providing my hunch about the chances of the business plan succeeding.

I view the business plan as separate to "free speech", the chances of success would be even higher without "free speech",.

 

[bkp_duke]

Perhaps without it (or even without regulatory credits) they still would have been profitable (I haven't looked at the exact numbers in the split), but it certainly played a big role in the profitability of Tesla. My point is it's not like Tesla was profitable while solely being in California as you seemed to have characterized it. Nor did Twitter do as bad as you are implying.

It's a poor argument. You are comparing the "startup phase" of Tesla to the "S-curve ramp phase" it is in now. Even without Giga Shanghai, Tesla would have been VERY profitable right now. They currently make 8X the profit per car that Toyota does, that doesn't happen if Fremont is losing money.

 

[bkp_duke]

I believe he would have answered the question the same way for anyone who had taken Twitter private with investment from foreign governments.
Him and his predecessor have both supported investigating TikTok (though that is entirely foreign owned).

Exact question and response:
“And should the US — and with the tools you have — investigate his joint acquisition of Twitter with foreign governments, which include the Saudis?”

“I think that Elon Musk’s cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at,” Biden answered. “Whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate, I’m not suggesting that. I’m suggesting that it’s worth being looked at.”

Which is ironic / hypocritical given the level of coordination over the past 20 years (including the Biden admin) with the Saudis. Heck, Biden was over there literally last month BEGGING them to pump more oil. Perhaps that should be investigated then.

 

[bkp_duke]

I've seen just about every combination.

One experience was being in a small/excellent team which was by far the smartest and most interesting group of people I have ever worked with. What we did was whatever the job required, which sometimes required long hours, but also included long lunches and other leisure activity.

Another experience is 2 programmers working the same number of hours don't produce the same results, some people end up just creating more work for others and increase the chances of poor bug ridden software being written.

Management which makes poor platform decisions, makes bad business plans, changes their mind regularly, or demotivates staff can be a factor.

We don't know what was happening at Twitter, but we can say that in the last 3 years or so not a lot seemed to have been achieved.
it is also apparently true that when Twitter had 1,000 employees they had 2/3 of the current user base. The user base only seem to be growing slowly, while staff numbers have grown by a lot.

It seems on the surface that something was wrong.

Lot of factors going into determining what was achieved or wasn't achieved, when things are going wrong, one way or another, management is part of the problem.

I would be VERY surprised if Twitter stays in the Bay area. I'm fully expecting Elon to relocate that company to Austin in the next 6 months or so. We know his disdain for California and with the staffing greatly reduced, it will be a lot easier to move. Twitter has satellite offices in several locations, so the Cali location may stay open, the HQ will likely get re-established in the Austin area.

Pure speculation on my part, but it would fit to a T with everything Musk has done to date with most of his companies.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Which is ironic / hypocritical given the level of coordination over the past 20 years (including the Biden admin) with the Saudis. Heck, Biden was over there literally last month BEGGING them to pump more oil. Perhaps that should be investigated then.

I'm American and I don't want the Saudis to have any control over social media here. I'm also not happy about them cutting oil production in order to influence US elections (note that production is back up now!). It's not hypocritical to care about your own country's interests.
I swear the US has the most worthless client states, we should have nothing to do with Saudi Arabia.

 

[ElectricIAC]

I'm also not happy about them cutting oil production in order to influence US elections (note that production is back up now!)

Yes, leave out the part where 46 asked for “Just one more month, C’mon man!”

But yeah, Not depending on OPEC for our energy needs would make a fine change..

 

[Bladerskb]

And he quickly deleted it..

 

[Buckminster]

Twitter will be the de facto standard comms platform for the entire planet of......Mars. It may take a while but $44Bn will look a bargain eventually.

 

[ElectricIAC]

And he quickly deleted it..

View attachment 877466

Well, at least he cited an “official” source this time.

 

[aubreymcfato]

If it’s okay for you to criticize Elon’s behavior, it sure should definitely be okay for me to criticize your behavior. That seems fair, huh?

It's not fair to compare the actions of a the richest man in the world, with immense power and resources and reach, to a random guy on the Internet.
Him deleting the tweet doesn't delete the mistake, because the consequences are already there.
Elon childish use of Twitter (this is a fact: the memes, the easy linking to dubious sources or tweet, etc.) has consequences.
If the consequences last and span and ripple, as they're doing, our critic can last and span and ripple. Especially if his behavior doesn't improve.
This seems fair to me.

 

[wdolson]

CAFE standards I can agree with, but it was not a TESLA SPECIFIC targeting, like literally the words that came out of the mouth of Biden that "we need to investigate Elon's companies."

Solar Tax Credits were set to sunset at those times, Trump didn't put them in place to TARGET Elon.

Tesla has benefited a lot from what the administration has done in the past 2 years, but the OVERT hostility to Elon cannot be ignored.

I do agree with you there that Biden seems to have an issue at least with Tesla. He has stressed over an over again that he wants electric cars made in the US with union labor and since Tesla is not a union shop, he tends to ignore them when he talks up electric cars like they don't exist.

Whatever screwy things the CEO is doing now, Tesla is an American success story. I believe Tesla has exported more cars per year outside North America than the Big 3 for several years. It may have dropped off the last few years as the Model 3 and Y have overtaken the S and X everywhere and most 3s and Ys sold outside North America are made in China at this time.

I've seen just about every combination.

One experience was being in a small/excellent team which was by far the smartest and most interesting group of people I have ever worked with. What we did was whatever the job required, which sometimes required long hours, but also included long lunches and other leisure activity.

Another experience is 2 programmers working the same number of hours don't produce the same results, some people end up just creating more work for others and increase the chances of poor bug ridden software being written.

Management which makes poor platform decisions, makes bad business plans, changes their mind regularly, or demotivates staff can be a factor.

We don't know what was happening at Twitter, but we can say that in the last 3 years or so not a lot seemed to have been achieved.
it is also apparently true that when Twitter had 1,000 employees they had 2/3 of the current user base. The user base only seem to be growing slowly, while staff numbers have grown by a lot.

It seems on the surface that something was wrong.

Lot of factors going into determining what was achieved or wasn't achieved, when things are going wrong, one way or another, management is part of the problem.

Another thing is sometimes someone who looks like they aren't working really are chewing over a problem in their head. When I was at Boeing the last building I worked in was massive. It was 1/4 mile round trip to my desk from the lab and I did most of my work in the lab. When I got stuck on something, I would use it as an excuse to make the walk to my desk to check and see if anyone left anything there that needed attention. By the time I got back, the solution would usually hit me within seconds of digging back into the problem. Taking the break allowed my subconscious to process the problem and helped me get a solution.

I work from home now so nothing is very far from my work computer, but I still do similar things when stuck on a problem. I loaded the dishwasher earlier today when troubleshooting a problem and the solution came to me once I dug back into the problem.

I've known other people who have different work processes. One of the best troubleshooters I've ever known needed to live a problem to solve it. We had a lot of cutting edge tech on a project at Boeing and we ran into problems all over the place. We were one of the first users of a new processor from Motorola and this guy found a bunch of bugs in their processor. Apple started using the same processor a year later and I often thought the Mac users never knew what role this guy played in improving their experience.

When they guy was on the hunt for a bug, he would basically chain himself to the work bench and rarely leave for days until he figured out the problem. He found some very obscure bugs.

On top of that different people perform differently in different environments. Some people seem fine with cube farms, I find them very counter-productive. When I had to work in them I would deliberately come in very early (despite being a night person) and would always be most productive when few people were around. Now that I work from home I'm far more productive. Some people don't do well when on their own and need an office environment.

It also doesn't hurt that the time I used to spend commuting I now spend sleeping, so I'm getting better sleep than when I was working in an office.

 

[Dave EV]

And he quickly deleted it..

View attachment 877466

I don't have anything nice to say about this at all, so I'm not going to say anything specifically about this post.

I will say that Elon has jumped ALL the way into the deep, deep right and has fully surrounded himself with far-right wing conspiracy theorists. You can see this on Twitter with the accounts he regularly interacts with, you can see this by the memes he posts, you can see this by the very poor in taste jokes he makes. You can also see this in the people he has surrounded himself with with the Twitter takeover.

Sad.

I do agree with you there that Biden seems to have an issue at least with Tesla.

There's no surprise here. Elon = Tesla and Elon is hugely unpopular with Biden's voters as shown by the YouGov poll earlier.

 

[Dave EV]

OK, I’m new to the thread. It looks like I won’t stay around for long.

You want to last, you'll need to use the Ignore function liberally. And fight the urge to show hidden posts so you don't end up in endless bickering matches.

 

[trayloader]

The problem with Twitter and "free speech" is that no one, not even Elon believes in free speech absolutism. It's just that he wants his friends views and posts to be favored. This is why he's abandoned the independent council. He never wanted a pretty town hall of centrists nor uniform standards for honesty or decorum.

This!