Watching Elon gaslight current and former Twitter employees in the public square, I couldn’t help but wonder if any engineers would actually work for this guy going forward and why?
Convert Ask HN to Poll
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33622364
Life's too short to be a dictator's puppet.
Working for his companies doesn't seem like some tradeoff between top compensation and a healthy work environment - his employees are getting neither of these things.
Even then it would not be a good idea to work for any of Musk's companies. The engineers that work there are notoriously paid little compared to industry standards.
But after what I've seen in the three weeks, and especially in the last two days, no forking way.
First, that he so obviously missed the issue with ID verification of important accounts, AFTER having worked in payments where you MUST find and block scammers & criminals, showed that he's just happy to waste everyone's time and make a mess based only on his own blustering ignorance.
Second, seeing his blatantly ignorant tweets about "1000 RPCs" slowing down rendering a Twitter home page, and how the actual number turns out to be "Zero", the emperor's cloths are truly gone. The now-fired employee was absolutely correct that Musk should have asked about it in the internal Slack or email channels, not in public.
Rather than the astute technologist, it looks like the curtain has dropped and he's just another blustering, manipulative, and abusive fool that got lucky at the beginning and had a large pile of funds to play with. I will grant that he is 1) exceptionally determined, 2) willing to take risks, and 3) does have some clarity on removing traditional bureaucratic obstacles. But I'd not want to be associated with him; we can learn that stuff from afar without the angst & abuse.
Two decades ago I was a young, “fight the system”, James Dean want-to-be.
Now I have a family, mortgage, and the kids need braces.
And my water heater is making weird sounds.
Why do I care? Everyone who is willing to abase themselves and suffer abuse makes the world suck more for everyone else who would demand a little basic dignity.
For example, if I found myself being pushed into “voluntary” meditation sessions where I chant “I am not me but, We™” I’d be out of there fast.
Or if my boss wanted me to do something horribly unethical like provide fine grained tracking data for users.
But AFAIK Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Company, etc. are pretty typical in regards to work life balance, pay, etc.
For software engineers this is often simple to achieve.
When Elon decided that this type of person needed to go, I flipped on him. He might succeed, but I really don't like him any more. To him it's the cost of doing business, but in my opinion that single event will put more of a chill on his future hiring than any of his prior bullshit.
I don't know any CEO that would be cool with that. If Elon named him, sure, rip him apart. But Elon simply referenced the android app, and this guy took it personally in the worst way.
It bothered me quite a bit that he didn't give the engineer points for trying and keeping it on topic in the hellstorm of a thousand people shouting insults at Elon.
My interpretation of why he fired the guy was that Elon thought the app sucked and this guy had worked on it for 6 years. After a cursory grilling, he thought the guy's answers didn't hold water so he must be part of the problem. This is really bad form and doesn't account for the many externalities that the guy had faced. Most importantly, having the balls to call out the richest man in the world, who is also your boss, in a public form and STILL keep it on topic and professional shows that he has a good head on his shoulders. I really didn't think he was trying to score points or make it personal.
Except Damore never did it publicly but it was leaked to the press anyway.
And anyone taking public adversarial stances against their bosses rarely last.
Corporations on general are ran like dictatorships, with few exceptions.
People are using "gaslight" in contexts where it doesn't apply way too much these days.
> People keep using that word. I don’t think it means what they think it means.
And I agree.
I’m not saying problems didn’t exist before Elon, but Musk has been a net negative for the company who thus far has only managed to make a bad situation worse.
Elon structured the deal (or at least signed the deal) such that Twitter is $13 Billion in debt upon signing, and therefore losing an estimated 4-million a day because of it.
Elon did not have to structure the deal like this. Elon did not have to push for the unsustainable $44 Billion buyout price like this. Heck, I'm pretty sure that Elon has enough money to buy out the $13 Billion debt (which is only worth $9 or maybe $8 Billion now on the open market) and solve this problem right now.
------
But instead, Elon _chooses_ to fire half the staff at Twitter. Elon _CHOOSES_ to get into public arguments with his engineers (and fires them afterwards). Etc. etc.
This calamity is a series of unforced errors. If the debt is too much of a burden, buy out the debt (or don't get into the debt to begin with). Its really not that hard of a problem.
--------
I've posted elsewhere on this. But the gist is, Elon took Twitter, a company losing $200 million/year, and instantly turned it into a company that was losing $1500 million/year. (And that's not counting the advertising exodus, which has been estimated at another $600 million of revenue lost due to Elon's poor decisions). Of course he's in panic mode right now, that's a lot of losses.
But Elon _caused_ all of this, with his crappy leadership.
Also, I cannot think of many bosses who you could publicly disagree with on Twitter where being fired isn’t a likely outcome.
Things change, can't be a retirement home for millennials while losing money indefinitely. Twitter is in San Francisco, not Portland.
There is a good chance this company will simply run out of money and go bankrupt.
You could play the speculation game of whether it has a better fighting chance with or without Elon (people who don't like his politics and personality will no doubt take the opportunity to screech uninteresting things on this matter) but here we are.
If it doesn't energize people who work there and they want to throw in the towel that's alright. But people who stay need to be clear eyed that the road ahead is uncertain and difficult. Especially in this economy.
If you work for twitter the memelord posting things you find objectionable is the least of your problems. Not to mention highly ironic.
You act as if this makes him some untouchable gods. Recent events should have made it very clear that “smart” people can act like bigger idiots than your average idiot.
If my work was criticised by my boss in public with objectively (very) wrong statements, I would criticize him publicly as well (depending on the circumstances oc).
Tesla/SpaceX pays peanuts despite Tesla’s outsized stock returns.
If you believe in the mission, that’d be the only reason to join.
When I knew people at Tesla they were real fanboys of the car, which isn’t a bad thing, but if you’re trying to hire, like, ISO26262 certification experts I’d focus on paying a few experts well. The 24 year old fanboys can do the grunt work, but some well paid experts need to lead that process, and I doubt they’ll be that motivated by wanting to work for fast car guy.
Elon today seems to be focusing most of his energy on political concerns that are frankly beneath him and very very stupid. Someone with his means and skills should not care about anything with a <50 year time horizon.
My only hope for him now is that he doesn't destroy SpaceX or cannibalize it financially for some vastly less important reason.
Related tangent: a lot of people are reading way too much into what Elon is doing now. I see a lot of Qanon quality speculations from his detractors. I think it's pretty simple. Elon went and got himself "pilled" by the same BS that "pilled" probably 1/3 of the Hacker News audience over the past 10 years. I wonder if he's been on the 'chans. Ockham's razor says no more complex explanation is necessary.
It honestly seems like he hasn't thought about the problem deeply enough to have a coherent vision here. We'll see, I guess.
If Elon can solve that he truly is a genius. So far no Internet forum has managed to achieve anything but that trade-off.
Mental health is way more important.
The only thing I dislike is the yearly performance review (I really really hate boasting about my achievements), but I heard all the large tech companies are like this, so I probably will have to deal with them for the rest of my career.
I suspect that nearly 100% would vote "yes" under the right conditions. E.g., $1e7 USD/day, no strings attached.
And I never was a fanboy, I just worked myself at Meta for almost 4 years and this is literally what I would do if (god forbid lol) I’d be given a chance to take over as a CEO. Let go of 50-70% of slackers or just people doing random shit and shut down some ridiculous orgs. Make sure everybody understands the culture changed. And then proceed in a more normal fashion.
If you haven’t been at Meta/Goog, it’s really hard to believe how bad is it there. There’re even memes like “rest and vest”. In a normal starup, people like that would be goners very quickly. In these large bloated money-corrupted orgs with no critical oversight on many layers you can survive literally for years doing literally close to nothing if you built a good enough initial rep.
Not saying all the engineers/folks he fired are like that, of course. But I’m pretty sure a lot are. And having worked in the company for many years is actually a negative signal here from that perspective. Because old-timers may have a lot of internal cred not necessarily based on their most recent accomplishments.
Edit: typos
One of the craziest management approaches I've heard of. Wild stuff. Is he just trying to get people to quit so he's technically not "firing" them?
Hard to say what's really happening inside. But assuming nobody is being needlessly abrasive with him, if he's really firing people for questioning his asks or correcting wrong assumptions he's made then that feels risky. That plus a sudden transition to long hours. I'm willing to go to bat if the chips are down, but the idea of working 60, 70 hour or more weeks to entertain asks that haven't been thought through sounds really stressful. I've been in a situation like that where we were driving to add features that were removed the next week/month and it sucks.
If I were currently at Twitter, I don't know that I would take the severance. If I were job hunting, they probably wouldn't be high on the list.
I will work for him if he makes me a billionaire, just like him.
So, no.
would you have worked for Da Vinci? Or the original Tesla?
I would have worked for them for free.
I can sort of understand why people put up with it to work for companies like SpaceX, but I find it difficult to understand why anyone would not take the severance that Elon offered every Twitter employee this morning.
When I was in my thirties: possibly
When I was in my twenties: hard yes
(I've since read some other comments and money is not the issue; the chance to work on something possibly world changing [Musk's Application X] is the issue).
But working at Twitter isn’t a chance to change the world. It’s a chance to do the same stuff I’ve done I’ve done a million times before, but with worse pay, worse culture, and an asshole CEO.
If he were to buy my employer, and I couldn't line up a new job before it went through, I'd make him fire me for union agitation.
Now, SpaceX, sure, if I had maybe had a completely different life
If you can put up with it (I can't) you probably come out the other side feeling you accomplished something great.
Slight parallels with Jobs.
Why not? I like money. I don't care about his politics. Or yours. It is called work not daycare for adults.
My self esteem is also not wrapped up in the recognition of my peers or whomever I "report" to.
Edit: I like how people are downvoting because I answered the wrong way in an open poll. What a bunch of brats. Makes me want to work for Elon even more.
What is wrong with a bit of chaos from time to time? I thought this was hacker news, I thought you guys like startups..
Now it is because you don't like the cut of his jib. Just say what bothers you directly.
I get it, you really don't like Elon. Whereas I... truly sincerely don't care. Pay my rates you can call me every name in the book. Sticks and stones.
Twitter employees have called him all manner of things, doesn't seem like your apprehensions flow both ways. This is some kindergarten level behavior from all involved.
Don't see why any of it matters. Children are starving in India, I'm getting paid six figures to move some Jira tickets back and forth..
> Nah, I'll pass. There are so many better run companies out there
Than Twitter? No kidding! Well, pass. Just say that. I still don't get why you care what he (or anyone) tweets, but hey, horses for courses.
Personally I have accepted chaos into my heart. It seems to follow no matter where I go. So long as the cheques clear mine is not to reason why.
I am not interested in your inner world or opinions. We aren't friends. We are coworkers. I have a life outside the job for that.
Unless I report to him directly his management style is hardly my problem. Even if it is directly, well.. honestly don't find that stressful either. If he is being a stupid idiot I'd tell him just that, have in the past. Sometimes, folks like that are even appreciative of the candid feedback.
What is the worst that can happen, I get fired? Please. At worst it isn't a fit, I honestly don't get the big deal and people get so emotionally invested in this stuff.
I get hired to problem solve. If management is not living in reality part of the gig is to push back. Don't value my input we can part amicably, it is only a gig, not life and death.
That's exactly what is happening
And please, I beg you, don't give me a tirade about politics or offensive tweets. I am not interested.
If Elon has wrong notions about spambots, checkmarks, which datastore to use, project deadline estimations - great, sounds like every company ever. He probably does, so what. And if I put you in charge you probably will drift away from reality in short order.
All you can do is push back and say stuff like: 'actually it will take x7 your estimates because of these concrete reasons' or 'that spam algo won't fix it because you haven't considered x,y,z here is statistical proof'.
Otherwise nucleus will get behind schedule: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddTbNKWw7Zs
If nobody believes you or listens, well you are on the record. Who cares. Maybe you get fired maybe you get promoted.
Twitter has been languishing anyway there is really nothing to lose by giving it a proper go. Sounds like fun to me actually.
All the whiners seem to be able to talk about is everything except, you know, the actual work.
Honestly the whiners can just bail already, quit the company and the website. Go to Mastodon and stop caring. Life is short.
Your comment is equivalent to I’ll work for anyone and irrelevant to the discussion.
You don't know what the word gaslight means
His companies don't pay well.
Employees are cogs in a wheel to him, resources to exploited as much as possible.
He's a psychopath/sociopath.
He doesn't allow remote work.
I don't like his companies (well, SpaceX maybe).
I don't believe in his visions or his random outbursts.
Would you work for Elon Musk?
Or
On one hand, Elon Musk can be contentious to work with, but on the other, he has a track record of bringing incredible new products to market. Would you work for him or not, and why?
That's a loaded term, used at the outset to poison the well, so to speak, so one has to question whether the question was asked in good faith and therefore would answering be worth the trouble.
But it _is_ a careless misuse of a word that has a specific definition. Frankly, I can't remember the last time I saw it used properly.
It means "to manipulate someone by psychological means into questioning their own sanity". It's from a 1940s film where a husband convinces his wife she's going insane, by manipulating the lights in their house.