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Comment by nigamanth | Hacker News Reader

We all get that Elon Musk has a vision for Twitter and he wants to do something with it. We get that he's on board and he lives and breathes for Twitter, but he has to understand that his employees may have other priorities in their lives.

Just because they work at Twitter doesn't mean they have the same passion as he does for Twitter, that's why he's the owner of the company and they're the ones doing work.

If this is seriously true, then I don't know what to say. He stopped work from home, he fired millions, he probably ruined so many people's lives. I wonder if it even matters to him that the families of the people he fired could be starving.

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"...has to understand that his employees may have other priorities in their lives."

That's why he made the voluntary offer: commit to working 16 hour days and create something awesome with him (Musk's words) or take your 3 months paid severance and leave now. I have a family so there's no way I could have opted for the first option but I am a bit envious of the people who can and want to do it as it's like a re-startup phase for a company with a massive user base: how often does a chance like this come around?

> re-startup phase for a company with a massive user base: how often does a chance like this come around?

A chance to experience all tbe downside of a death march startup with a firm with a massive burn rate due to acquisition costs foisted on it by its new owner, who also—already, before the offer was made, alienated the existing base of paying customers, further shortening the already short runway, was already openly trying to rehire key individuals who had apparently been erroneously terminated in both mass and individual terminations, and who had only vague plans to maybe re-incorporate equity into compensation of the large (even after massivd cuts) firm so that, while much diluted, employees would have some of the potential upside of working a startup?

Who wouldn't be envious of that? Even before considering all the regulatory drag Twitter’s size and past history bad gotten it, preventing it from being able, without existential legal risk, from maneuvering like a startup?

You're envious of the fools who choose to burn themselves out by working 16 hours days? Insanity.

Twitter is far less likely to result in a reward for workers than a death march at a startup funded by risk capital. Twitter employees' upside is in line behind Elon's investment, and Elon is in line behind the banks and their loans, which started under water and then got worse.

I imagine when they sent kids down into the mines for 16+ hours that there was some brainwashed enough to say the same thing.

Where is the "chance" part in that picture? Are you saying you envy a chance of burnout?

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