What other tech stock to consider?

[Cosmacelf]

But the next question is will Twitter be around in six months? There are some serious problems with the company since Elon took over. They are hemorrhaging staff to a point that some of the people who left said the people who do basic maintenance on the hardware are gone.

Uh, hardware maintenance isn't rocket science. You can parachute people in for that. A lot of Twitter runs on AWS, BTW.

The people who know the software are mostly gone, replaced by Tesla programmers who know nothing about Twitters software and only know the software for a different business.

A lot of Twitter's code is going to be rebuilt anyways. That happens from time to time with code bases. Not an existential threat.

Advertisers are holding off signing contracts for next year.

I suspect they'll be back within a few weeks. Advertisers who stick around will find their ads played a lot and/or enjoy a nice discount.

Many regular users of Twitter are looking at other platforms. Jack Dorsey has a new social media app that is in beta.

And many new users are coming to Twitter. And Jack isn't all that. He had Twitter and messed it up.

Elon is probably going to bankrupt Twitter and will probably have to sell a bunch of Tesla stock to cover the loan guarantees. I think the Tesla board needs to jettison Elon ASAP. The company doesn't need his type of leadership anymore, they need a steady, non-controversial leader who can just get stuff done with no sturm and drang.

Good God! I take it you've sold your TSLA stock? THAT would torpedo TSLA stock.

Twitter will be around in 6 months. There is an ongoing disorganized campaign to create an aura that Twitter is in the shi...

The campaign consists of well intentioned progressives who disagree with Elon's political statements combined with spiteful ex-Twitter employees. The former will get over it and the latter will disappear into the woodwork, like all ex-employees do.

Yes, see above for example A. I've seen that those with a liberal bent are all group thinking into the sky is falling on Twitter and Tesla. It started with Elon destroying Twitter as a safe space for liberal ideology shorn of opposing viewpoints. They now hate Elon and think he is suddenly some idiot who can't add 2+2 and get the right answer instead of being the smartest businessman in modern US history.

 

[wdolson]

Among those saying Twitter could go bankrupt is the current CEO
As Musk warns of Twitter's potential collapse and a pivotal content moderation exec departs, the FTC voices 'deep concern'

And yes, Musk could drag down Tesla stock for a while if Twitter implodes.

I the entire software department for a small company. I've been working for them since 2010 and I've been developing software since the late 1980s. I also have a degree in Electronic Engineering.

Give any programmer a new code base and it's going to take them time to get up to speed. On several occasions I have had to figure out software where the original writers were gone. I've also learned the code in situations where the original programmers were still around. It takes a lot longer to figure out the code yourself.

The new programmers have a mountain to climb to get their arms around the code. Having to do it under the kind of threats Elon is making makes the job much harder. I worked for a company with a dictatorial CEO and it was a hell hole of a work place. Very little was getting done because so many people were leaving. Twitter is becoming that.

 

[mars_or_bust]

Among those saying Twitter could go bankrupt is the current CEO
As Musk warns of Twitter's potential collapse and a pivotal content moderation exec departs, the FTC voices 'deep concern'

And yes, Musk could drag down Tesla stock for a while if Twitter implodes.

I the entire software department for a small company. I've been working for them since 2010 and I've been developing software since the late 1980s. I also have a degree in Electronic Engineering.

Give any programmer a new code base and it's going to take them time to get up to speed. On several occasions I have had to figure out software where the original writers were gone. I've also learned the code in situations where the original programmers were still around. It takes a lot longer to figure out the code yourself.

The new programmers have a mountain to climb to get their arms around the code. Having to do it under the kind of threats Elon is making makes the job much harder. I worked for a company with a dictatorial CEO and it was a hell hole of a work place. Very little was getting done because so many people were leaving. Twitter is becoming that.

The thing is, the twitter code base did not seem to have changed significantly for the past 5-10 years, so there is likely little high-tech, one-person-masters-it-only know-how. Twitter thus probably has crapy and/or lazy programmers. Hell, it took them years attempting to add a simple edit button.... So a lot of dead wood, which created a very unproductive atmosphere for actually good programmers. The more this kind gets fired, the better for the company.

 

[bkp_duke]

The thing is, the twitter code base did not seem to have changed significantly for the past 5-10 years, so there is likely little high-tech, one-person-masters-it-only know-how. Twitter thus probably has crapy and/or lazy programmers. Hell, it took them years attempting to add a simple edit button.... So a lot of dead wood, which created a very unproductive atmosphere for actually good programmers. The more this kind gets fired, the better for the company.

This^^^^

I've seen at least one verified report that the codebase was so poorly put together that things like BASIC compression were sometimes lacking. One twitter engineer reported that he had enabled gzip compression for basic HTTP calls a few years ago and everyone was amazed that it reduced Twitter's bandwidth utilization by 40%. 40 F-ing % with something that has been around since the 1990s.



No, Elon's Tesla team is going to come in and find so much low-hanging fruit to pick that the hosting costs alone are going to plummet (or stay the same but with a gigantic feature-expansion with things like Youtube-length videos).

 

[JRP3]

It started with Elon destroying Twitter as a safe space for liberal ideology shorn of opposing viewpoints.

This is a bizarre take I see repeated and not even close to the truth. There were plenty of opposing viewpoints, even from the very far right. Just because a few of the more well known accounts were saying crazy things and getting banned doesn't mean there are no opposing viewpoints or even close to it. People on the left get banned as well for spreading nonsense. If you can't make a point without posting insane ideas you don't really have a point, no matter what "side" you're on.

 

[wdolson]

The thing is, the twitter code base did not seem to have changed significantly for the past 5-10 years, so there is likely little high-tech, one-person-masters-it-only know-how. Twitter thus probably has crapy and/or lazy programmers. Hell, it took them years attempting to add a simple edit button.... So a lot of dead wood, which created a very unproductive atmosphere for actually good programmers. The more this kind gets fired, the better for the company.

First off Tesla doesn't have a lot of programmers with much experience running a website. Their programmers have been doing other things and if Elon tapped the programmers who have been working on the UI for the cars, they aren't very good IMO. The UI has been going downhill for the last 6 years.

Secondly before you can change code you need to understand how it works. Just making large scale changes without grokking what the old code was doing is a recipe for problems. Believe me, I've been bitten by that one before.

Badly written code takes more time and effort to decipher than well written code. Another thing I know from experience.

Most dynamic tech companies have a lot of young workers. Older workers have lives and don't want to live in the office so they find lower pressure gigs that don't require that work is the sole focus of their lives. As a result a lot of younger companies have spaghetti code in their code bases. Microsoft was famous for it back in the day. They have been cleaning up the code and streamlining it the last 10-15 years. Their workforce has also become more mature with a lot more older programmers who know good coding practices.

I'm not surprised Twitter's code base is a mess. It's going to take time to disentangle and fix. Even if the programmers from Tesla are the best and the brightest, it's going to take them time.

There is a saying in engineering, getting a baby takes one woman 9 months. Throwing 9 women at the job might get you 9 babies, but you're not going to get a baby in a month. There are some tasks that take time to work through and it doesn't matter if management is screaming to work faster or how many people you put on the job, it's going to take time to get through.

Management pushing to go faster will probably result in things going slower. When I was working on the 777 at Boeing. One team fell behind in getting their part of the project completed. Management became very concerned and starting dragging the lead into frequent progress meetings. As a result the team spent more time preparing for meetings than getting their work done.

This is a bizarre take I see repeated and not even close to the truth. There were plenty of opposing viewpoints, even from the very far right. Just because a few of the more well known accounts were saying crazy things and getting banned doesn't mean there are no opposing viewpoints or even close to it. People on the left get banned as well for spreading nonsense. If you can't make a point without posting insane ideas you don't really have a point, no matter what "side" you're on.

I've seen a very broad spectrum of opinions there too. A very large percentage of the high quality journalism and analysis of the Ukraine War is happening on Twitter. The main news outlets are mostly garbage.

 

[willow_hiller]

First off Tesla doesn't have a lot of programmers with much experience running a website. Their programmers have been doing other things and if Elon tapped the programmers who have been working on the UI for the cars, they aren't very good IMO. The UI has been going downhill for the last 6 years.

Are you aware that the Tesla mobile app is React Native? It's the exact same framework developed and used by Facebook. That, and the Twitter backend is a combination of C++, Java, Scala, and Ruby.

The Tesla autonomy team has a lot of their code written in C++: Software Engineer (C/C++), Autonomy | Tesla Careers

I don't know why you don't think Tesla's software engineers would have transferable skills.

 

[bkp_duke]

First off Tesla doesn't have a lot of programmers with much experience running a website. Their programmers have been doing other things and if Elon tapped the programmers who have been working on the UI for the cars, they aren't very good IMO. The UI has been going downhill for the last 6 years.

... snip

Love you man, but you REALLY need to not comment on things you are not experienced with.

Website coding . . . is like basic stuff compared to what Tesla has done (and Tesla has PLENTY of experience with web coding - their app, their website, and much of their GUI for the car is based upon it). The complexity of this code is no where near what neural nets or anything like that would be. It's pretty simple stuff.


I'm in this space, DEEP into it (literally working on a private cloud upgrade for a client as I type this).

Much of what needs to be done isn't even code-level work, it's more sys admin or DB admin stuff to improve performance and efficiency. There is code, of course, to improve, and Elon will get to that, but there is a TON of low-hanging fruit to go after.


EDIT - ninja'd by @willow_hiller

 

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1591164378489159680

 

[wdolson]

Love you man, but you REALLY need to not comment on things you are not experienced with.

Website coding . . . is like basic stuff compared to what Tesla has done (and Tesla has PLENTY of experience with web coding - their app, their website, and much of their GUI for the car is based upon it). The complexity of this code is no where near what neural nets or anything like that would be. It's pretty simple stuff.


I'm in this space, DEEP into it (literally working on a private cloud upgrade for a client as I type this).

Much of what needs to be done isn't even code-level work, it's more sys admin or DB admin stuff to improve performance and efficiency. There is code, of course, to improve, and Elon will get to that, but there is a TON of low-hanging fruit to go after.


EDIT - ninja'd by @willow_hiller

I've been programming since 1987 and have done large projects for 10 different companies. How is it that I don't have any experience with this?

I'm a jack of all trades, I've mostly done device drivers, embedded programming, and desktop applications, but I have done some website programming and databases. Websites and databases are easier than embedded programming, but I move more slowly when doing those things because I'm not as familiar with those areas. I know what to do, but I have to look up the syntax for a lot of tasks.

I have also picked up a lot of other programmer's projects. Even if the code and the area is something I'm very familiar with, it takes time to figure out what the previous programmer was doing. If the code is well written, it takes less time than if the code is a mess.

On my current project, the bulk of the old code is written in C and the new code I've written is in C++. There is also some code written in Visual Basic 6. Figuring out what was going on there took me much more time both because I have less experience with VB and the code was poorly written. VB is a simpler language than C or C++, but I have less experience with it.

The guy who was maintaining it for many years was a self taught programmer and it was a rat's nest when I inherited it. For a while we had an experienced VB programmer straitening things out. He's moved on now and I'm back to maintaining that code. The rewritten parts are easier to figure out than the remaining rats nest.

From my experience taking over existing projects, it doesn't matter how experienced the programmer is, it takes time to figure out the existing code. If the existing code is badly written, it takes longer. If management is breathing down everyone's neck to produce it's also going to slow people down.

Another way of looking at this, Elon has in the past always gotten into new markets with new technology. With Zip2 he was pioneering internet maps when nobody else was doing it. With Paypal/x.com he got into the online payment business. Paypal was a different company doing the same thing as x.com (Elon's company) and they merged. They were the only two in the space at the time. He joined Tesla early on and it was the only serious choice for BEVs for a decade. SpaceX was bringing new tech to the space business, his only competitors at the time were governments using 1960s technology. Neurolink and the Boring company also are plowing new ground.

Elon succeeds when he goes back to basic principles and builds from there. He carefully plans and builds from solid foundations. Everything I can see from this Twitter venture, it was done on impulse without going back to basic principles. He's also getting into a well established market for the first time that is already crowded with competitors.

He's obviously very worried. Advertisers are backing away, his first attempt at an alternative income stream failed spectacularly in ways quite a few people were predicting when he announced it. Elon knows Physics and he knows tech, but he is not good with people. Social media is a people business. He fundamentally does not understand the business he got into and it shows.

Elon is very smart, but as I've said before, nobody is great at everything. I've known some brilliant people who were great in at least one area, but very often they are idiots in other areas.

I could be wrong, but everything I see about this Twitter buyout tells me Elon is in over his head. This time looks different from all the things he's done before.

 

[bkp_duke]

I've been programming since 1987 and have done large projects for 10 different companies. How is it that I don't have any experience with this?

I'm a jack of all trades, I've mostly done device drivers, embedded programming, and desktop applications, but I have done some website programming and databases. Websites and databases are easier than embedded programming, but I move more slowly when doing those things because I'm not as familiar with those areas. I know what to do, but I have to look up the syntax for a lot of tasks.

I have also picked up a lot of other programmer's projects. Even if the code and the area is something I'm very familiar with, it takes time to figure out what the previous programmer was doing. If the code is well written, it takes less time than if the code is a mess.

On my current project, the bulk of the old code is written in C and the new code I've written is in C++. There is also some code written in Visual Basic 6. Figuring out what was going on there took me much more time both because I have less experience with VB and the code was poorly written. VB is a simpler language than C or C++, but I have less experience with it.

The guy who was maintaining it for many years was a self taught programmer and it was a rat's nest when I inherited it. For a while we had an experienced VB programmer straitening things out. He's moved on now and I'm back to maintaining that code. The rewritten parts are easier to figure out than the remaining rats nest.

From my experience taking over existing projects, it doesn't matter how experienced the programmer is, it takes time to figure out the existing code. If the existing code is badly written, it takes longer. If management is breathing down everyone's neck to produce it's also going to slow people down.

Another way of looking at this, Elon has in the past always gotten into new markets with new technology. With Zip2 he was pioneering internet maps when nobody else was doing it. With Paypal/x.com he got into the online payment business. Paypal was a different company doing the same thing as x.com (Elon's company) and they merged. They were the only two in the space at the time. He joined Tesla early on and it was the only serious choice for BEVs for a decade. SpaceX was bringing new tech to the space business, his only competitors at the time were governments using 1960s technology. Neurolink and the Boring company also are plowing new ground.

Elon succeeds when he goes back to basic principles and builds from there. He carefully plans and builds from solid foundations. Everything I can see from this Twitter venture, it was done on impulse without going back to basic principles. He's also getting into a well established market for the first time that is already crowded with competitors.

He's obviously very worried. Advertisers are backing away, his first attempt at an alternative income stream failed spectacularly in ways quite a few people were predicting when he announced it. Elon knows Physics and he knows tech, but he is not good with people. Social media is a people business. He fundamentally does not understand the business he got into and it shows.

Elon is very smart, but as I've said before, nobody is great at everything. I've known some brilliant people who were great in at least one area, but very often they are idiots in other areas.

I could be wrong, but everything I see about this Twitter buyout tells me Elon is in over his head. This time looks different from all the things he's done before.

You are wrong about the code.

Literally, I've opened up the Twitter code, I've seen the protocols they are using on the servers (ALL of this can be seen from a browser). There is a TON of low-hanging fruit.

This is my "day job". I run a cloud services company that builds, maintains, and hosts websites, some for top 100 traffic sites. We also build out the core networking for some datacenter partners (core routers, etc.). I stare at this stuff all the time.

Twitter code . . . . not so good. Elon was no joking when he said they had room to trim infrastructure costs. I bet their AWS bill is eye-watering and could be cut in half in 6 months or less.

 

[wdolson]

Whether the code can be fixed easily or not, the company isn't going to survive long enough. Elon bought the company in a leveraged buy out and the interest alone on the loans is killing the company. A thread discussing their money problems is here

https://twitter.com/x/status/1591969802733916160

Twitter just took on more than $100 mil a month in interest alone. Elon has said the total infrastructure cost for Twitter is $1 billion a year. If he manages to cut the cost to $0 (impossible without shutting down the site) he's still in the hole $200 mil a year in interest. He can't make it work without raising a fair bit more revenue, and he's so far flamed out at that.

 

[scubastevo80]

Does anyone have any other tech stocks they like? On Friday, it seemed like there was a huge rotation from safety to growth, so I'd be more curious to hear about what others still think are undervalued tech stocks as opposed to arguing over who knows more about coding or what Elon is doing with TWTR, which is no longer investable.

 

[juanmedina]

Why is this up so much?

 

[wdolson]

Does anyone have any other tech stocks they like? On Friday, it seemed like there was a huge rotation from safety to growth, so I'd be more curious to hear about what others still think are undervalued tech stocks as opposed to arguing over who knows more about coding or what Elon is doing with TWTR, which is no longer investable.

@Cosmacelf a page or two back had a basket of mining stocks they like. It looks like there is going to be a big demand for things like steel in the next few years. Biden's first infrastructure plan that will be repairing and replacing physical infrastructure like bridges and roads, but other things like expansion of alternative energy, batteries, and EV charging will also draw on the world's metal supply. On top of that when the fighting stops in Ukraine billions will be pouring into the country to help the Ukrainians rebuild and that will use large ship loads of things like rebar.

The companies in the charging space like EVGo and Chargepoint might be good buys right now. EVGo just signed a huge contract with somebody a few months ago, I forget who. My neighbor is a manager for a large commercial electrical contractor and he said about 80% of their business now is installing EV chargers, mostly in condos and apartment buildings. He heard about the EVGo contract through industry news.

New tech companies that could pay off well down the line are ESS (GWH ticker) and The Metals Company (TMC). ESS has a new chemistry battery for stationary storage that is lower density than Li-Ion, but is dirt cheap to make and can take lots of charge cycles. They are scaling up production now. TMC has a new technology for mining the sea floor as well as a contract to mine an area of the Pacific about 1000 miles west of Mexico that has modules of almost pure metal sitting on the sea floor. These nodules form in several areas around the world, but this area they are very rich in nickel. Once the nodules are mined, the processing of the ore is much simpler than traditional mining. They are in the testing phase for their new harvesting method.

I wouldn't bet the farm on the last two, but they are both down right now and could turn out to be very profitable in a could of years.

 

[wdolson]

Are you aware that the Tesla mobile app is React Native? It's the exact same framework developed and used by Facebook. That, and the Twitter backend is a combination of C++, Java, Scala, and Ruby.

The Tesla autonomy team has a lot of their code written in C++: Software Engineer (C/C++), Autonomy | Tesla Careers

I don't know why you don't think Tesla's software engineers would have transferable skills.

The programming language is less important than the skill area. I'm pretty well versed in C++, but there are a lot of C++ projects that would slow me down significantly because of other things about the project I'm not familiar with.

Even if the Tesla programmers have the relevant skills, which they might, they are trying to perform their job on a ship that is sinking for many other reasons with a CEO who is making constant threats at them. And they still need to take the time and energy to understand what the existing code base is. Even if they have done the exact same thing before that takes time and effort.

Back in my early days I was maintaining some code that was originally written back in the late 70s and early 80s. This was an embedded system and we were at the memory limit for the processor. I was looking through the code trying to find areas that could be streamlined to free up memory for new features. I found one section that went on for many pages in the printout and looked like it could be shortened to a couple of lines of code. I tracked down the original programmer who was still around and he had no clue.

I tried the fix of replacing the big section of code with a few lines and it worked. It was just a horribly written section of code, but it threw me for over a day because it looked deliberate.

This has been somewhat of a tangent, both for this thread and for the overall discussion about Twitter. Twitter is in deep financial trouble and I don't think Elon is going to be able to save it. It looks to me like he bought the company on impulse rather than his usual deep dive into fundamentals and it's going to bite him.

This discussion started over the speculation that Twitter might buy Shift4. IMO they won't have the money to buy anybody. Somebody might buy them when they are at or close to bankruptcy.

 

[DFibRL8R]

Why is this up so much?

View attachment 874542

Well, if you zoom out it doesn’t look so great. I made a small investment since I believe the future for EV busses is good and the company seems to be generally well run and expanding.

 

[juanmedina]

Well, if you zoom out it doesn’t look so great. I made a small investment since I believe the future for EV busses is good and the company seems to be generally well run and expanding.View attachment 874847

That was when it was a Spac.

 

[Buckminster]

Making Twitter as it is today a success is just the first 10% of Elon's challenge with this company. He won't fail at the first hurdle. He can afford to bail it out and he will if necessary.

 

[DFibRL8R]

That was when it was a Spac.

PTRA went public June 15, 2021, down about 63% since then.