Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[Valmy]

But tech investor Sarah Kunst said the real reason Twitter is facing difficulties is because Mr Musk's takeover has saddled the company with debt.

Yeah. No shit. I just do not understand leveraged buy outs and why they are allowed. They are horrible for customers, shareholders, and employees and seem like a great mechanism for taking healthy profitable companies and bankrupting them for no reason at all.

Not that Twitter was a healthy and profitable company but still. By allowing this sale the company just became much more likely to fail for a reason that has nothing to do with its profitability or the quality of its services.

[HVC]

I think it makes sense for smaller companies. Gives them ability to expand relatively pain free. I worked for one that made some leveraged acquisitions, but that leaves a million or two on the books. A far cry from the massive debt of larger buy outs.

[grumbler]

Sugar causes far more health problems than marijuana.

*tweet*  Strawman.  10 yard penalty.

Viper said marijuana effects the decision making process.  He didn't say anything about health problems.

* Tweet *  Failure to follow the thread, illegal procedure.  Ten yard penalty and loss of down.

Viper was claiming that " It seems to be a well known scientific fact on this board that marijuana is a harmless drug that does not cause any side effects" an the post immediately before mine was OvB observing that "I think it's fair to say marijuana is significantly less harmful than two very legal drugs..."  So, by that time, the discussion had shifted to general harm.

[viper37]

I think it's fair to say marijuana is significantly less harmful than two very legal drugs--alcohol and tobacco. Probably more harmful than caffeine (one of the other legal drugs.)

There's the question of quantity, of course.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I don't see any firm reasons most of the remaining Twitter engineers would stay with the company. It sounds like Musk is offering "more work, same pay" or take an option to get 3 months of severance and go into the job market--which for software engineers is still quite robust. There have been layoffs in some of the big Silicon Valley firms but the overall hiring for SWEs seems to still be really robust--and a lot of them have likely made literally a couple million dollars in the past 4-5 years from RSU payouts--when you factor in RSU payouts a lot of these more "prestige" tech firms have been paying some engineers $300-400k/yr.

[The Brain]

But if they stay they get to be associated with a total shitshow of a company.

[PDH]

*tweet*  Strawman.  10 yard penalty.

* Tweet *  Failure to follow the thread, illegal procedure.  Ten yard penalty and loss of down.

Wait, refs can't throw flags on refs...

[garbon]

But if they stay they get to be associated with a total shitshow of a company.

[garbon]

Maybe, a la Trump, he is using Twitter as a tax write off?

[The Larch]

Being a Twitter employee at the moment must be one of the more demoralizing experiences in the workplace. One day you're working normally and the next a new guy comes, fires a bunch of people and starts putting a fire under your ass telling you that it's critical that you become a slave to the job for the foreseeable future with no apparent additional compensation whatsoever. It's as if Musk is actively trying to push people away from the company.

Also, what's with all this "we have to be hardcore" discourse lately? This will be studied in business management schools as an example of what not to do for many years to come.

[Sheilbh]

Also, what's with all this "we have to be hardcore" discourse lately? This will be studied in business management schools as an example of what not to do for many years to come.

It seems to be a thing with tech companies at the minute - I think Zuckerberg talked about Meta needing to go on a war footing or something similar. Back to the early, scrappy, "hardcore" lean days etc.

Edit: I mean frankly it reminds me of imperial discourse - when they panic about decadence and need to revert to the more butch, martial virtues of the founders.

[celedhring]

There's no commodity in the business world that's more in demand than software engineers. Even my girlfriend's company - that makes MINING EQUIPMENT - needs them (and struggles to hire them). So if they are asked to go full XIXth century, they will just go get paid a fortune at another company.

[Iormlund]

I worked for people like that once.
When I arrived there was a team of very experienced, competent engineers. When I left only the (former) interns and a couple desperate guys were still there. Everyone else was new. Since there was no know -how retention the company missed deadlines, almost went bankrupt.

The only guy remaining there to this day is the one I brought to the team. He's a workaholic and I knew he'd fit right in. He's a manager now.


Every IT guy I know experiences LinkedIn like hot girls do Tinder. And none of them has even been at a FAANG.
Any half-way decent Twitter dev is going to grab that severance and run.

[viper37]

Yeah. No shit. I just do not understand leveraged buy outs and why they are allowed. They are horrible for customers, shareholders, and employees and seem like a great mechanism for taking healthy profitable companies and bankrupting them for no reason at all.

Interests are tax deductible, so if the rates asked are equivalent, debt is cheaper than a stock emission to finance an acquisition.  They obviously are riskier.

[Sheilbh]

Feels like something's sinking in:

Elon Musk
@elonmusk
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