Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[Berkut]

Feels like something's sinking in:

Elon Musk
@elonmusk
How do you make a small fortune in social media?
Start out with a large one.

LOL. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/elon-musk-silicon-valley-twitter-fires-staff/672148/?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share



Good summary of pretty much how I feel about Musk these days.

Having studied Musk's back catalog of undoubted successes, I am reluctant to dance on Twitter's grave, but he has taken on a project completely different from anything he has faced before, and he does not appear to know it. This reflects a structural problem with the mythology of genius that has enveloped him: Regarding yourself as special is useful, right up until the point when it's not.

[Grey Fox]

He should not have agreed to buy a company without due diligence. Such a dumb big dick energy move.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Probably would have helped of he had spent the last two weeks learning about the company instead of poorly considered changes and then purging all of the employees: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/17/23465274/hundreds-of-twitter-employees-resign-from-elon-musk-hardcore-deadline

[FunkMonk]

Everyone is saying goodbye to each other on Twitter like it's the end of days 

The one (and only) truly great thing about Twitter is that millions of people can experience a single event together in real time, so this seems appropriate.

[Admiral Yi]

The one (and only) truly great thing about Twitter is that millions of people can experience a single event together in real time, so this seems appropriate.

I think that's a very insightful comment.

[FunkMonk]

The Saudis are probably pissed 

[Jacob]

Probably would have helped of he had spent the last two weeks learning about the company instead of poorly considered changes and then purging all of the employees: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/17/23465274/hundreds-of-twitter-employees-resign-from-elon-musk-hardcore-deadline

From the article:

For example, the team that maintains Twitter's core system libraries that every engineer at the company uses is gone after Thursday. "You cannot run Twitter without this team," the employee said.

It ends with:

Twitter no longer has a communications department to contact for comment.

... which I've seen elsewhere as well. It's kind of poetic :

[OttoVonBismarck]

He should not have agreed to buy a company without due diligence. Such a dumb big dick energy move.

Right--and almost entirely because he got mad that ex-CEO Agrawal wouldn't rub his dick, so he wanted to show he was just going to buy the company. Meanwhile Agrawal made millions off of the buyout (as a shareholder), and while there are conflicting reports about his golden parachute all the real business reporting indicated those were part of the acquisition agreement so very likely executed as well, the guy he was looking to "own" no longer has to run Twitter and made tens of millions of dollars in days.

[FunkMonk]

All Elon had to do was sit there and not do anything. Maybe wait a couple years and convince some idiots to buy Twitter off him. He'd walked off into the sunset with people saying he "saved" Twitter and he'd be an even richer man.

What a dumbass 

[Jacob]

The thing about working at a place that's "extremely hardcore" (and I've done it a few times) is that you need a few things to make it work. The single most important thing you need, IMO, is some sort of animating idea, a reason, a mission.

So far it seems Elon has offered the following:

1) "I'm Elon Musk. I'm a fucking genius. You're not. Fuck you."

2) "Twitter sucks. The people who work at Twitter are shit."

3) A bunch of half-baked ideas sourced off the internet, implemented without any apparent understanding of software development or social media beyond the superficial.

None of them are particularly compelling IMO.

[The Minsky Moment]

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.

Basically shareholder sovereignty. 
LBOs are great for shareholders, they get big premiums for selling.  That's why they sell.

Debt holders are presumed to be able to protect themselves through contractual covenants, but they usually don't because for structural reasons debt is usually dumb. Also, written contract covenants can often be evaded.

But Musk-Twitter is not a classic LBO.  It's an LBO in the sense that it's a take private deal, with leverage.  But the point an LBO is that the cash equity piece of the deal is negligible.  You gut the company and run it for cash; if you make over interest cost it is pure cream; if not you fold up and lose little.

But Musk put in 27B personal cash as compared to 13B debt.  The debt is still crushing the company but Musk has a huge amount to lose.  It's a terrible risk-reward tradeoff.

[Berkut]

The thing about working at a place that's "extremely hardcore" (and I've done it a few times) is that you need a few things to make it work. The single most important thing you need, IMO, is some sort of animating idea, a reason, a mission.

So far it seems Elon has offered the following:

1) "I'm Elon Musk. I'm a fucking genius. You're not. Fuck you."

2) "Twitter sucks. The people who work at Twitter are shit."

3) A bunch of half-baked ideas sourced off the internet, implemented without any apparent understanding of software development or social media beyond the superficial.

None of them are particularly compelling IMO.

With SpaceX and Tesla, at least the mission itself was pretty compelling, at least for a lot of people.

Twitter I guess might be kind of compelling, but it's not rockets.

I do expect that at least at SpaceX, Musk probably got away with a lot of bullshit because people would put up with a lot to work there because its, you know....a rocket company.

[DGuller]

Would it really be a bad thing if Musk burned Twitter to the ground using Saudi dollars as accelerant?  I hope he's done with Twitter soon and decides that fixing Fox News would be his next challenge.

[viper37]

Would it really be a bad thing if Musk burned Twitter to the ground using Saudi dollars as accelerant?

I was just getting on board Twitter to follow international news, so yes, it is a bad thing.  Now, I will have to find something else.  I do not adapt to change very well at my age.


Some other social network is going to take over the journalistic business over time, I guess.

[viper37]

Somebody with a grudge had money to waste