And second, he seems to really hate this idea that founders are criticized by the plebes (https://nitter.net/paulg/status/1591098388317179908) . I get his overall thesis, that we should be constructive and optimistic for a better future and stop tearing people down, but is it so crazy to humanize the employees of companies, and not just their founders? Is it so crazy to want a better world where founders treat their employees with autonomy and respect, and criticize those who don't?
Also criticism can be a form of education, is it so wrong to think that Musk has something to learn here? I can’t imagine he wouldn’t think so, watching his interactions on Twitter, I think he’s even benefiting from the criticism!
Having been on the side of trying to do something unpopular, the worst kind of feedback you can get is no feedback at all.
Indeed: many people have been killed by Teslas running the half-baked Autopilot, and Teslas have a far worse safety profile than other new cars in their category.
I think it's fair to assume that Paul Graham, who runs a startup incubator, already knows that it takes more than that to run a company successfully. So what's the point of broadcasting this simplistic, condescending viewpoint to his followers?
If I was one, I would feel that he's looking down on me. "We smart, you dumb. We do thing good, so we also do other thing good. Shut up and clap for creator."
Twitter as it is ("public square") may be one of the hardest companies in the world to run. Not because of the technical problems, but because of the people problems. There are just no concrete solutions to most problems, and everything is constantly backsliding. You're basically trying to play mediator to all the political divide in America, without cutting the baby in half, and that's just the American audience! I recall Yishan pointing out that Jack meditated like 4 hours a day to handle it. But I also Suspect Elon cares a lot less about maintaining the public square component in the face of his debt, so that may make it a lot easier.
None of his other companies have the scale and variability that an always online global social media company brings. In software they are likely an entirely unique set of problems that only a few companies have built solutions around (which many software people like to think they need those solutions but I digress.) Those solutions are widely talked about in software circles which is why quite a few people are commenting about how Elon's comments are flat out wrong. Software folks that may not work on these systems at least understand how these things should work, what micro-services are, why they are used, why they might be a bad choice, what GraphQL is, etc. There are far, far fewer people that understand the internals of EV tech and far fewer for rocketry. What he is facing is a huge number of people that can read one of his tweets and know that the tweet doesn't pass the smell test for BS.
The opportunity was there to do this, but Elon is just a chaos ninja and is very big into unforced errors that negatively affect his own success.
Users normally like to log into services they use, but I may be wrong.
Both of these facts present very different challenges to manufacturing and developing software used in very different circumstances. There are some obvious cases in point here: the pricing for Twitter Blue net of App Store/Play Store fees doesn't make sense as a replacement for lost revenue from advertising. Having a comprehensive understand of, for example, supply chain management for manufacturing cars doesn't necessarily provide any direct benefits here.
Regardless of how one might feel about Musks's decisions at Twitter it strikes me overly reductive to say that Tesla and SpaceX are both tech companies therefore his decisions are good, even if they seem questionable to us poor imbeciles who haven't been CEO of a tech company before.
If anything I take this is a grand illustration of the dangers inherent in playing at being a CEO when you don't have to actually do it. It is very easy to sit at my desk and propose some strategic changes for Twitter that I think might legitimately be for the best in the long term, but it is another matter entirely to be in the position of putting those into practice and living with the consequences.
The question here is, can Elon find enough shortcuts and ideas that work and recover sufficiently from failures for the ones that don’t?
I think it’s still up in the air, but it does seem like a challenge with the current financial obligation. Elon understands the product a lot better than a lot of ‘classic’ CEOs might, but the kind of close calls Elon admits Tesla had won’t eternally be in his favor.
https://thedriven.io/2020/11/04/elon-musk-tesla-almost-went-...
pg should really ask himself whether he wants to defend a person who is as morally bankrupt as Elon Musk.
I don't feel like Elon is gonna be successful with his approach. But I worry even more about a world in which he is successful and this kind of asshole behaviour is normalised.
Somehow, a subset of tech culture has embraced the idea that as long as you're technically brilliant (and/or filthy rich), you get to play entirely by your own rules without any consideration for other people.
What even is the goal of a platform like twitter? Profitability? Something else?
Also, twitter was cash flow positive. It would feel like a money-making business to you if you owned it. It was only the stock-based compensation that caused it to lose money. But of course, that is just diluting shareholders and not actually losing money on operations.
1) Getting rid of employees who are not a fit for a high-pressure, performance focused, environment, either by firing them directly or them voluntarily resigning due to stricter working conditions.
2) Iterating on the product to increase revenues.
1) results in massive cost savings and 2) increased revenues (with time).
This very much needed since twitter has been a commercial disaster for many years and is heading towards bankruptcy without drastic changes.
A strict command and control environment like he seems to be building has a proven track record of succeeding at some things for some stretches of time. I mean, it's how most governments operate during war times right? Is it going to help him make back his 44 billion here and now? We'll see. It's a grand experiment.
The only thing I can say for sure is that if his experiment succeeds the lives of normal employees at tech firms will suffer regardless of their personal beliefs or allegiances. The permissiveness and abundance we've all enjoyed due to the emphasis on teamwork and harmony by tech companies for the past few decades has been really pleasant compared to what will come if the harsher Elon model takes off in the context of an ad driven software first tech company as opposed to a hardware focused firm.
note **: I've read everything Yarvin has written from Unqualified Reservations to his interviews in dissident right outlets to his current substack. I remain convinced that he says monarchy when he means fascism because he's socially aware enough to avoid the baggage of that word and, from my perspective, his ultimate project is trying to build an ideological pipeline from wealthy libertarian to strong-man loving fascist. Interesting guy! I feel like everyone should read him so that they can understand the moves of people like Peter Thiel [a long time patron of Yarvin].
update: oh here we go, I Googled him to see what he's been up to lately and found this nice article. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23373795/curtis-yarv...
I realize Vox will put off the conservatives here, but, y'know, you all are gonna like Yarvin anyway lmao. Just go read his stuff. He'll give you tons of smart sounding quips, hypothetical scenarios and anecdotes that will dazzle and impress right wing audiences.
