The Firestarter
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A more apt analogy would be that the plane was leaking fuel when it took off.Not when the plane was already one fire before he took over
A more apt analogy would be that the plane was leaking fuel when it took off.Not when the plane was already one fire before he took over
I disagree. Look at the numbersA more apt analogy would be that the plane was leaking fuel when it took off.
Define better.I reckon Twitter will turn out to be better and profitable within 24 months.
Narrator voice: it wasn't.Not when the plane was already one fire before he took over
It had a bad business model where it was struggling to capitalise on its user base and generate adequate revenue going forward. It's a struggle of a lot of fast growing internet companies, same was the case for Facebook and YouTube. The business model sure needed change. Hence the analogy of a plane leaking fuel is apt.I disagree. Look at the numbers
Nowhere near 2000. It seems like basically 50% of the company was let go in the first round and around 75% accepted his "work yourself to death or take 3 months severence offering". If that's true you're looking at less than a thousand left.How many do we think will be left on Monday? They had 7500 when Musk took over.
I am thinking somewhere between one and two thousand.
Well, he gave himself the title of "chief engineer" at a rocket company. The implication is clear.He is not a physicist, he is not a rocket scientist (does anyone claim it), and he is not an engineer. He is also not an AI scientist, and every time he talks about AI, it is clear that he knows feck all about it. At the same time, he was pivotal in building 3 multi-billion dollar companies (one of which is valued at over 100B, and another at its peak was valued over 1 trillion). I guess you can be lucky once by chance, but three times is a bit too much. Of course, that doesn't mean that he knows what he is doing for many things (as clearly we can see from Twitter), and he definitely seems to have a massive Dunning-Kruger effect, which wouldn't surprise me if it becomes his downfall.
non existent.Define better.
The work force was bloated clearly (not just Twitter the entire industry). They will make mistakes and iterate quickly rather than suffer from paralysis and ship nothing (what has Twitter shipped in the last few years)Narrator voice: it wasn't.
It had a bad business model where it was struggling to capitalise on its user base and generate adequate revenue going forward. It's a struggle of a lot of fast growing internet companies, same was the case for Facebook and YouTube. The business model sure needed change. Hence the analogy of a plane leaking fuel is apt.
I don't see how releasing features with 0 forethought, getting an advertiser backlash and firing ~90% of your worker base changes the business model for the better. If anything it hugely jeopardises your operations. It sounds more like he lit the fuel on fire.
There are literally threads this week of the people who've left Twitter recently explaining the features they've launched recently that they're most proud of. Alt text for images was a recent one that made Twitter more accessible to a huge proportion of internet users. They have made constant improvements.The work force was bloated clearly (not just Twitter the entire industry). They will make mistakes and iterate quickly rather than suffer from paralysis and ship nothing (what has Twitter shipped in the last few years)
Small iterative improvements yes. Thats not what Twitter needs (I’m talking from a business perspective here)There are literally thread this week of the people who've left Twitter recently explaining the features they've launched recently that they're most proud of. Alt text for images was a recent one that made Twitter more accessible to a huge proportion of internet users. They have made constant improvements.
A lot of companies suffer bloat, across different sectors. I'd love to see any precedent where 90% of the work force is deemed bloat though.The work force was bloated clearly (not just Twitter the entire industry). They will make mistakes and iterate quickly rather than suffer from paralysis and ship nothing (what has Twitter shipped in the last few years)
Fail fast and iterate is a good agile process especially around the product discovery and prototyping of something new. It's the mantra for start-ups with a reason. But an established $44bn business is not a start-up. Twitter is a company with 50,000+ in-house servers. Firing 90% of their infra puts them at risk of catastrophic failure. There's a good reason large companies are not that agile.Fail fast and iterate with a smaller more engaged team. I think what comes out at the end of that will be interesting.
We'll see I guess. It will either be a wake up call to the industry, or to Musk.I think the industry is going to get a shake up top once PE sees what happens at Twitter.
You asked what they've shipped in the last few years. "Nothing" is clearly totally wrong.Small iterative improvements yes. Thats not what Twitter needs (I’m talking from a business perspective here)
I don't think that's clear at all. Its incredibly easy to look and say "what can 7000 people possibly do" without realizing the complexity of some operations. They are likely releasing features a lot of stuff people don't know about including scale, performance and required security updates. I would suspect for a company like twitter a huge portion of engineering time is on the scale side, their feature set is small but their scale is enourmous.The work force was bloated clearly (not just Twitter the entire industry). They will make mistakes and iterate quickly rather than suffer from paralysis and ship nothing (what has Twitter shipped in the last few years)
From an investor perspective its not wrong at all.You asked what they've shipped in the last few years. "Nothing" is clearly totally wrong.
Its clear from all the job cuts in the last few weeksI don't think that's clear at all. Its incredibly easy to look and say "what can 7000 people possibly do" without realizing the complexity of some operations. They are likely releasing features a lot of stuff people don't know about including scale, performance and required security updates. I would suspect for a company like twitter a huge portion of engineering time is on the scale side, their feature set is small but their scale is enourmous.
Then you have line management, product managment, project management, finance, HR, legal, moderators, facilities, regional legal expertize and operations, sales and marketting and so on.
Its not at all clear, you can't tell the impact of job cuts after week. Its also worth noting 2FA stopped working in that time. So a critical feature that has always worked broke during the cuts. Let's see over the next few months if we get more outages, less moderation, more operational issues etc.Its clear from all the job cuts in the last few weeks
I was not talking about Twitter there read up.Its not at all clear, you can't tell the impact of job cuts after week. Its also worth noting 2FA stopped working in that time. So a critical feature that has always worked broke during the cuts. Let's see over the next few months if we get more outages, less moderation, more operational issues etc.
Great post. I really don't understand why some people are trying to take away Musk's accomplishments from him, or present him as some stupid person. Guy was a pivotal person in making three extremely successful businnesses. He obviously isn't stupid and is most likely more intelligent than average.He kind of did. Paypal was created when Elon Musk (X.com) and Peter Thiel (confinity) merged their companies in a 50-50 merge, with Musk being the initial CEO (he was ousted in favor of Thiel, I think 8 months later). The merge is described in length in Peter Thiel's book, but essentially, both him and Musk realized that if they continue competing against each other, both companies would be screwed.
He definitely did not found Tesla, but as far as I know, Tesla had built less than 100 cars when Musk invested there. While the idea of Tesla/electric cars has nothing to do with Musk, he essentially was in charge of transforming a small startup into a car company that last year was more valuable than the rest of car companies combined, and is still by far the most valuable car company.
He is not a physicist, he is not a rocket scientist (does anyone claim it), and he is not an engineer. He is also not an AI scientist, and every time he talks about AI, it is clear that he knows feck all about it. At the same time, he was pivotal in building 3 multi-billion dollar companies (one of which is valued at over 100B, and another at its peak was valued over 1 trillion). I guess you can be lucky once by chance, but three times is a bit too much. Of course, that doesn't mean that he knows what he is doing for many things (as clearly we can see from Twitter), and he definitely seems to have a massive Dunning-Kruger effect, which wouldn't surprise me if it becomes his downfall.
He should just stick to Tesla and XSpace, instead of thinking that he is saving the world, when in fact, he is just elevating his ego. Kind of the Kevin Durant of entrepreneurs.
Probably qualifiesnon existent.
I was not talking about Twitter there read up.
The tech sector became overvalued and bloated.
Here you are clearly saying Twitter was bloated along with the whole industry.The work force was bloated clearly (not just Twitter the entire industry)
It's clear he doesn't know how to handle twitter.Its clear from all the job cuts in the last few weeks
I don't know what that means? But if you are referring to business being overvalued, then it certainly doesn't make sense to buy a tech company at an overvalued price.I was not talking about Twitter there read up.
The tech sector became overvalued and bloated.
Yes the entire industry. Your response was specific to Twitter with the example of 2FA. I didn’t say Twitter was 90% bloated but it was bloated.Here you are clearly saying Twitter was bloated along with the whole industry.
Seriously?From an investor perspective its not wrong at all.
I think you need to give it a week or two to see how wrong that pov is when Twitter has its inevitable massive outage. There's no way it's not going to happen.Its clear from all the job cuts in the last few weeks
We’re talking about whether or not the business will be successful. My first statement was. I think they will have a better product and be profitable in 2 years.Seriously?
You asked what have Twitter shipped in recent years. That was the question. You have the answer from two people here. Are you that inflexible?
Again that statement wasn’t focused on Twitter alone. And no I was not saying 90% over staffed. Read first.I think you need to give it a week or two to see how wrong that pov is when Twitter has its inevitable massive outage. There's no way it's not going to happen.
I don't worry about outages. It's most likely they have a lot of that stuff automated and have the code designed and written to not be affected that much. Although devs have been mentioning technical debt, so who knows.I think you need to give it a week or two to see how wrong that pov is when Twitter has its inevitable massive outage. There's no way it's not going to happen.
If multiple people haven't gotten that from what you wrote, isn't it possible that what you wrote wasn't clear?Again that statement wasn’t focused on Twitter alone. And no I was not saying 90% over staffed. Read first.
The example of old bugs reappearing has already happened days after they fired half the people. I think larger-scale issues are inevitable and on the way soon.I don't worry about outages. It's most likely they have a lot of that stuff automated and have the code designed and written to not be affected that much. Although devs have been mentioning technical debt, so who knows.
But from my experience, most likely what will happen is bugs. Old bugs reappearing because nobody will check them as nobody will know who's responsibility it is. New bugs will slip in as QA won't have time to check everything and then those bugs will not be fixed for long time as nobody will know who's responsibility is to handle it.
With this kind of massive scaling down it's possible for catastrophic bugs. Such as microservices not booting up (circular dependence somewhere, query not compiling in production), faulty logic causing corruptions in databases, then attempted fixes causing even more issues.
I suspect there will be a lot of issues and outages will be the least of it.
I'll have you know that investors always agree with salary and workforce reduction. I work for a tech / consultancy company and one of the investment groups (Elliott) acquired a sizable portion of our shares and began demanding reducing and optimizing operations. We went through a lot of pain for a period of two years when we started giving in to their demands. In my personal view, there is always room for improvement in any company, but investor led workforce reduction rarely is based on bloat or merit. They basically bandy around industry standard figures and how some company is doing better than that and why we should match them blah de blah.Again that statement wasn’t focused on Twitter alone. And no I was not saying 90% over staffed. Read first.
How much time do you reckon before shit starts breaking?I don't worry about outages. It's most likely they have a lot of that stuff automated and have the code designed and written to not be affected that much. Although devs have been mentioning technical debt, so who knows.
But from my experience, most likely what will happen is bugs. Old bugs reappearing because nobody will check them as nobody will know who's responsibility it is. New bugs will slip in as QA won't have time to check everything and then those bugs will not be fixed for long time as nobody will know who's responsibility is to handle it.
With this kind of massive scaling down it's possible for catastrophic bugs. Such as microservices not booting up (circular dependence somewhere, query not compiling in production), faulty logic causing corruptions in databases, then attempted fixes causing even more issues.
I suspect there will be a lot of issues and outages will be the least of it.
When I heard that comm to the crew of demo 2 from the "chief engineer" I laughed like a rude Korean person.Well, he gave himself the title of "chief engineer" at a rocket company. The implication is clear.
Yes of course most likely trueIf multiple people haven't gotten that from what you wrote, isn't it possible that what you wrote wasn't clear?
This is true, I work in tech after all.I'll have you know that investors always agree with salary and workforce reduction. I work for a tech / consultancy company and one of the investment groups (Elliott) acquired a sizable portion of our shares and began demanding reducing and optimizing operations. We went through a lot of pain for a period of two years when we started giving in to their demands. In my personal view, there is always room for improvement in any company, but investor led workforce reduction rarely is based on bloat or merit. They basically bandy around industry standard figures and how some company is doing better than that and why we should match them blah de blah.
Sorry if it ended up as a rant.