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Comment by sdwr | Hacker News Reader

Been reading a lot of hate on twitter, reddit, and here about how elon is handling twitter. Personally, I love the energy in this picture, want to work at twitter more now than before, and believe they have a good chance of doing great work.

What I see in the picture is organic connection. It's really easy in tech for everyone to get siloed, working on assigned tasks without communication. Greatness comes from the shared spark <and then> head down focus.

I bet elon is trying to recreate the environment that worked at paypal and tesla and spacex. Scrappy, energetic, get shit done, not 100 managers with 100 tiny fiefdoms.

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I was also thinking that now would be a fun time to work at Twitter.

It would seemingly be a huge gamble as to whether it is disorganized with constantly shifting priorities or increased operations overhead but if there is a vision and the plan is to go balls to the wall to get it done, that’s awesome.

Does your last name perchance rhyme with Tusk?

This is after he fired over half the company and threatened the rest with unemployment if they didn't come in. This is not organic. This is coercion.

Or…it’s separating the wheat from the chaff

^totally. I remember my startup incubator we all worked well into the night often as late as 6am. I remember falling asleep at my terminal often, and indeed slept at the office regularly, well until they told me to stop that. Look, people of a certain mindset need an Everest to conquer. If they don’t want to join in they can leave, everyone is there by choice.

> people of a certain mindset need an Everest to conquer.

Well said. There are a few of us out there with that Gimli from LOTR approach to life:

“Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?”

and what do I gain by giving my soul to the company?

Maybe a lot of you are willing to take a chance with some risk and some effort. Maybe you get nothing.

I know some really wealthy people who are only wealthy because they took a little risk. I know some people who could be wealthy too if they took the same leap, but didn’t and they aren’t. Perhaps they felt like you do…. It all comes down to choices. These people sticking at Twitter are making their choice. Others left, that was their choice. I’m not going to criticize either choice.

This is just gambling but with your time instead of your money. I think you're more likely to become rich by starting your own side gig than by working for Elon until 1am on a Friday.

I disagree. That requires a having money stashed enough to do it or being tough enough to be poor…then having good idea, talent, and luck. I have been in tech long enough to know that is a exceedingly rare combination.

The bulk of the wealthy in tech got there by working for some lucky person, with a modicum of talent, and a good idea that happened to offer them a piece of the company before some VC swooped in funded them.

Risk in return for what reward? There's no reason to believe there's any more upside to working at Twitter vs any other big tech company where you don't have a egonomaniac CEO making you do stupid hazing rituals. It's not like a startup where your equity can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars if there's a big IPO. Twitter is well past the 1000x growth stage.

Considering that a lot of the other big tech companies are also laying off and have hiring freezes and the market is saturated with 20000 recently unemployed other big tech SWEs also looking for work…I’d say the reward you get is not having to deal with that rat race.

Let’s face it as hazing rituals go, this is pretty mild.

What exactly is your proposed mechanism for success, by working an ordinary IT job? How is it any different than any other workplace, now that it is owned by Musk?

The best you can hope for is a decent bonus, but that is not life altering in any way and I don’t think it is worth the stress of working under an unstable idiot drama queen some insane hours that may or may not get paid, over at.. the million other IT jobs. Sure, taking risks may be beneficial, but you ain’t jumping down a hill just because it is risky, you have to hope for something.

I live quite a comfortable life despite three decades of “working an ordinary IT jobs”. I guess I don’t see the obvious downside here. These folks are choosing to stick around—maybe it’s an ordinary IT job and maybe working for Musk could be challenging, but maybe they turn around the company and Musk rewards the loyalty, and maybe he doesn’t’. At that point they can re-evaluate.

I don’t buy into the notion that Musk is the worst boss in the world. A former colleague and I were laughing recently at how mild Musk is compared to an old boss we had.

And keeping the chaff as staff?

That remains to be seen doesn’t it? It’s also a subjective measure.

Your opinion may be that the good folks left. Musks opinion may be the good folks stayed. The ultimate determining result is that Twitter stays alive and starts becoming something viable and finds away into the black.

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