Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?

[Humble Beast 258]

18 minutes ago, 'stache said:

So is Zuckerberg a big winner here? Social media competitor is melting down and he's no longer the most hated person in social media. Haven't even heard his name come up in weeks. What a world, lol.

No. His stock has cratered. He’s announced they intend to spend $250B over the next 10 years on metaverse/VR/AR with not much to show for it yet.  
 

9 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

On April 4th, when it was announced that Elon was joining Twitter's board, TSLA closed at $381.82 per share.

It's now under $200.

That’s due to Jerome Powell. 

[CooterBrown 18014]

What's hilarious is that Elon's Twitter obsession is gonna take down all of his companies at once.

It's quite glorious.

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

6 minutes ago, 'stache said:

So is Zuckerberg a big winner here? Social media competitor is melting down and he's no longer the most hated person in social media. Haven't even heard his name come up in weeks. What a world, lol.

Good question. One might also ask how much of all of this is driven by Peter Thiel, Elon, and Mark Zuckerberg trying to out-elbow each other for access to all the data, and the power and money that is the result of its capture and resale. The rest of the discussion regarding them would go political so I'll stop there.

[Bateshorn 9928]

20+ years ago everyone agreed  Jack Welch was the greatest CEO of the late 20th century.  Now there’s an entire industry in debunking the myth of Welch and GE and listing all the ways he set the company up for its eventual demise and break up. 

[mdmost 43004]

8 minutes ago, CooterBrown said:

What's hilarious is that Elon's Twitter obsession is gonna take down all of his companies at once.

It's quite glorious.

No, that's going to be Jerome Powell's fault. 

[Wally Fairway 5559]

Can the $8/month blue checkmark fee be paid in dogecoin?
Asking for a friend (because I don't ever want to be part of that club)

 

I mean Mr. Dogecoin should certainly accept that shitcoin for his shitmark, right?

[chainsaw 9870]

3 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Yep.  I have a cousin who has a very solid impeccable resume (including working closely with the guy in that GIF).  Several years ago, as we were drinking more than a few beers and talking about what we'd been up to the past year, he said "you know, I really think it's damned cool that you are an actual lawyer -- you are in the trenches, doing actual legal work.  I know a hundred guys who are 'lawyers' and have law degrees, but they live in my world and don't actually know or do anything in the real legal world."  That dichotomy honestly hadn't even occurred to me till he said something.

And yeah, I'm now much more aware of seeing "lawyers" (or shit, even politicos who just fancy themselves as "legal experts") mouthing off about the law and not knowing their ass from a hole in the ground -- such as the post referenced above.

And Elon amplifies them.  Because Elon is -- and I'm becoming pretty comfortable with this assessment -- not that smart.  He's been effective at some things, and in some narrow lanes, he is certainly intelligent.  But overall, especially when reading his communications/texts/tweets......take away his net worth, and EVERYONE worth a shit would accurately be calling him a mouthy idiot.

he won the "right place right time" lottery after being born on third with an assist from apartheid blood emeralds. he is definitely not smart. 

[chainsaw 9870]

13 minutes ago, Bateshorn said:

20+ years ago everyone agreed  Jack Welch was the greatest CEO of the late 20th century.  Now there’s an entire industry in debunking the myth of Welch and GE and listing all the ways he set the company up for its eventual demise and break up. 

yeah someone made a great thread about chainsaw jack welch

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

5 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

he won the "right place right time" lottery after being born on third with an assist from apartheid blood emeralds. he is definitely not smart. 

I don't dispute the circumstances of his birth, but he does have intelligence in specific arenas I believe. He was going to work on a PhD at Stanford but dropped out to work on the X.com stuff IIRC. Had he stayed at Stanford, perhaps he would've eventually become an academic, dabbling in business on the side (depending on the school) and had a captive audience of students to hold captive to enthrall with his words.

[Bateshorn 9928]

2 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

I don't dispute the circumstances of his birth, but he does have intelligence in specific arenas I believe. He was going to work on a PhD at Stanford but dropped out to work on the X.com stuff IIRC. Had he stayed at Stanford, perhaps he would've eventually become an academic, dabbling in business on the side (depending on the school) and had a captive audience of students to hold captive to enthrall with his words.

Well, the chances that if he had become an academic that he would have fucked a few students is 100%

Edited November 7, 2022 by Bateshorn

[chainsaw 9870]

1 minute ago, Bateshorn said:

Well, the chances that if he had become an academic that he would have fucked a few students is 100%

he would have tried but without money i doubt he would have gotten very far unless they really needed better grades from him

[atomheartbevo 89730]

4 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

In today's news, a "free speech absolutist," who insists that his platform will 100% "track the law on free speech".....demonstrates that he doesn't understand a single goddamn thing about free speech or the law governing same.  Hint: boycotts are an established form of protected "speech."  A

4 hours ago, Bateshorn said:

This feels like a good time to remind everyone that Elon Musk and his friends, are, well, kinda dumb.

Also: This

Wait, so if somebody comes into my house and starts saying stuff I don’t like, and I kick them out of my house, I’m not imposing on their free speech?

[atomheartbevo 89730]

4 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

I once had a boss who couldn’t really use the track changes feature and she’d hand write edits on the paper she got. In cursive, of course. Then she’d take a photo of it and send it in a text or as an email attachment.

Getting those kind of vibes here. 

 I still think the best comparison is the high school substitute teacher who has completely lost control of the class, who is now fucking with him hard.

[Chopper 17238]

 

[Francisco 2.0 32395]

 

 

[atomheartbevo 89730]

2 hours ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Good question. One might also ask how much of all of this is driven by Peter Thiel, Elon, and Mark Zuckerberg trying to out-elbow each other for access to all the data, and the power and money that is the result of its capture and resale. The rest of the discussion regarding them would go political so I'll stop there.

Thiel and Zuckerberg are after data.

Musk is after people who make fun of him.

[atomheartbevo 89730]

2 hours ago, Humble Beast said:

He’s announced they intend to spend $250B over the next 10 years on metaverse/VR/AR with not much to show for it yet.  

Like all new technologies, it’s probably going to be initially used for porn of some sort, maybe interactive.

Lets check in on that.

 

[wildcat09 29355]

 

 

Why am I not surprised to learn that Elon learned to do magic tricks? Dude almost certainly read The Game and thought it was actually a useful manual on how to pick up women.

[totallynotabuttpirate 5400]

2 hours ago, Bateshorn said:

My job involves me sitting down with strangers, and reading their body language, responses, and political office needs and necessities to convince them to do something in my employer's interest.

[elfenix 34310]

5 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

I once had a boss who couldn’t really use the track changes feature and she’d hand write edits on the paper she got. In cursive, of course. Then she’d take a photo of it and send it in a text or as an email attachment.

Getting those kind of vibes here. 

this hits way too close to home

[Pig Bellmont 8719]

3 minutes ago, elfenix said:

this hits way too close to home

At least you got an email or a text. I had a boss who would hand deliver her handwritten corrections and then stand over me while I implemented them

[elfenix 34310]

1 minute ago, Pig Bellmont said:

At least you got an email or a text. I had a boss who would hand deliver her handwritten corrections and then stand over me while I implemented them

either that or give me 1 minor change to make but go downstairs and burn a heater for 30 minutes.  on a saturday that i'd come in to get this done because i was going on vacation the next day.  and still needed to pack.

[atomheartbevo 89730]

Musk can’t even make up his fucking mind on how to handle verification, I’m sure advertisers are loving this stability.

 

[TexPx 2323]

89% of Twitter revenue is based on ads.
Ads are dependent upon eyeballs.
Therefore Elon should pay ME 8 buck too peruse his platform.

[chainsaw 9870]

35 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

 

 

Why am I not surprised to learn that Elon learned to do magic tricks? Dude almost certainly read The Game and thought it was actually a useful manual on how to pick up women.

[atomheartbevo 89730]

5 hours ago, Humble Beast said:

The world’s richest man is yet to be confirmed as a good businessman. Also, the CEO of two of the largest tech companies in the world is not that smart. How a poor businessman with average at best intelligence could accomplish so much is a miracle. 

He has publicly stated that he hates advertising, and he’s never had to run a business that relied on advertisers for 85-90% of the revenue stream, and it clearly shows.

[gyroprotagonist 2594]

so i 'm guessing there will be

- Celeb tier

- 8 buck chuck tier 

- complete pleeb/non-paid not tier

I mean, in the grand scheme of Twitter revenue, the 8 buck chuck subs will not be a ton of money, but the money is just sitting there for the taking.

Will be interesting if legit news reporters that Musk does not like get the celeb tier.  by forcing them into the $8 tier, he can effectively drown them out with the masses.  The non-paying tier will be relegated to read-only if Musk follows through and prioritizes celeb and paid in search results/trending.

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

38 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

 

 

Why am I not surprised to learn that Elon learned to do magic tricks? Dude almost certainly read The Game and thought it was actually a useful manual on how to pick up women.

I'm getting the 'bro reaching out to help his bro accused of being an abusive stalker' vibes here and while Chris *checks notes* has definitely more cachet than Alex-the -engineer-Tesla-investor-from-Germany upthread, Chris is not exactly a disinterested party in Twitter's success or failure as a billionaire investor (or did he divest?) so Chris, Imma going to have to see someone else speak up as a character witness. Bros help out other bros by talking to them straight but you know that doesn't work with Elon because, well, it doesn't work with him and you did this anyway. So, this whole situation makes your brand look weak too and that is really what this is about isn't it?

[Surly Bevo 25049]

 
 
Why am I not surprised to learn that Elon learned to do magic tricks? Dude almost certainly read The Game and thought it was actually a useful manual on how to pick up women.

[Bateshorn 9928]

52 minutes ago, totallynotabuttpirate said:

[F250 28781]

I think everyone already knew this about engineers.

 

 

[Brisketexan 105155]

5 minutes ago, F250 said:

I think everyone already knew this about engineers.

 

 

[Bama Chick 28596]

Musk can’t even make up his fucking mind on how to handle verification, I’m sure advertisers are loving this stability.
 

lol The guy who haunted our imaginations with Pennywise, Randall Flagg, and Cujo is now somehow responsible for saving the world.

Our lives are a fucking simulation.

[atomheartbevo 89730]

30 minutes ago, gyroprotagonist said:

I mean, in the grand scheme of Twitter revenue, the 8 buck chuck subs will not be a ton of money, but the money is just sitting there for the taking.

Counterpoint: There’s a bunch of fucking nutcases who would love to have those blue checks and will easily drop $96 a year so they can be “legitimate” when talking about Oprah Winfrey draining the fluids of children or how JFK Jr is still alive and running for office in 2024.

That’s going to push more advertisers away.

Bringing in the Qanon crowd and driving away the people who actually pay the bills does not work - just look at what TexAgs went through with their advertisers and the Qanon crowd.  And Tiger Droppings or SEC Rant.  Plenty are willing to tolerate the batshit crazy uncle who lives in the attic until he makes it hard to pay the bills.  

[Covri 6249]

1 hour ago, wildcat09 said:

 

 

Why am I not surprised to learn that Elon learned to do magic tricks? Dude almost certainly read The Game and thought it was actually a useful manual on how to pick up women.

[atomheartbevo 89730]

4 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

From Barron's:

  Hide contents

n the case of Tesla, falling below $200 a share would essentially complete the end of a head-and-shoulders pattern—a stock chart that, essentially, looks like a person shrugging their shoulders. At the start of the pattern, the stock is moving higher and declines—a shrug. The head is a new high and then the stock forms the other shrug. When the last shrug is finished, the stock has a ways to fall.

Fairlead Strategies founder Katie Stockton believes if the stock breaks $200, then the next key level is about $180 a share. After that, 22V Research technical strategist John Roque says that $100 if there is more fundamental bad news—about the economy or the company.

Traders watch for patterns that work—and that give insight into investor sentiment. Fundamentals don’t matter as much to them. They have lots of ways to make money in the stock market.

Fundamentally, the weakness in Tesla stock has to be blamed on Twitter. More specifically, the weakness has to be blamed on Elon Musk, who now runs both companies.

Confusion has reigned at the social media platform since the billionaire became owner and chief executive in late October. He has slashed the workforce and fought with high-profile users like bestselling author Stephen King. A big consequence of all the instability: Advertisers have pulled back on their spending.

Musk is vital to the Tesla brand—and his bad PR is Tesla’s bad PR.

A recession is possible, and that would hit consumer demand for Teslas. And who knows how Covid and price cuts will shake out in China.

But there is one variable that can stop, or at least slow, the Tesla stock slide: Elon Musk needs to get in a lane, in his management of Twitter—and stay there, driving the speed limit.

 

So if he used Tesla stock as collateral, and Tesla stock dropped a lot since then, that seems bad for him.

[Homercles 10206]

55 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Counterpoint: There’s a bunch of fucking nutcases who would love to have those blue checks and will easily drop $96 a year so they can be “legitimate” when talking about Oprah Winfrey draining the fluids of children or how JFK Jr is still alive and running for office in 2024.

That’s going to push more advertisers away.

Bringing in the Qanon crowd and driving away the people who actually pay the bills does not work - just look at what TexAgs went through with their advertisers and the Qanon crowd.  And Tiger Droppings or SEC Rant.  Plenty are willing to tolerate the batshit crazy uncle who lives in the attic until he makes it hard to pay the bills.  

I still feel like that’s the ultimate play here for Elon, not making money for himself but providing a forum where he’s king emperor to let the wing nuts / foreign governments / QAnon assholes / etc have free reign under the auspices of freedom of speech.  He never really wanted to buy it in the first place but now that he’s committed, gonna shape it into his fiefdom.  
 

Not sure what his investors will think of that and it’s already apparent big money advertisers are pressing pause.  

[CooterBrown 18014]

So if he used Tesla stock as collateral, and Tesla stock dropped a lot since then, that seems bad for him.

[Francisco 2.0 32395]

Column: Is Elon Musk a genius or an idiot? 

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-11-07/is-elon-musk-a-genius-or-an-idiot

 

Quote

At the heart of Elon Musk’s public persona is his image as an engineering and managerial genius. 

How else could he build Tesla into the world’s leading electric vehicle company, creating a profitable market for an entirely new technology? Or strip down the costs of space flight to turn SpaceX into the low-cost bid-winner for government rocket launching?

Musk’s image has won him a legion of adoring fans, many of whom see him as a savior of a globally warming Earth or, alternatively, the savior of humanity through his plan to transport civilization to an unpolluted Mars.

 

Quote

That image has taken a hit in recent months, thanks to Musk’s misadventure with Twitter. 

The doubts originated with his whimsical offer last April to buy the social media platform for $44 billion, his transparent wriggling to get out of the vastly overpriced deal, and his ultimate capitulation in the face of the near-certain prospect that a Delaware court would order him to complete the transaction at the original agreed price.

Musk’s actions since taking over Twitter on Oct. 27 have been so destructive to the platform’s functioning and reputation that the question is raised of whether, rather than being a genius, Musk is in fact an idiot.

 

Quote

Perhaps that’s extreme. But it’s proper to examine how and why someone so unquestionably successful in his business career thus far has gone off the rails now.

The doubts about whether Musk knows what he’s doing have intensified in the 11 days since he assumed ownership of Twitter. 

On his first day in charge, he fired the company’s top executives. Since then, he has taken a series of steps that have unnerved the platform’s community of more than 200 million users and prompted its most important advertisers to suspend their Twitter ad campaigns.

 

Spoiler

Among other things, Musk fired Twitter’s top management and a large cadre of the staff assigned to screening tweets for hateful and bigoted content and blocking offenders. 

He has replaced Twitter’s identity verification policy, which ensured that prominent account holders were who they said they were and endowed their profiles with a blue checkmark, with a system awarding the blue check to anyone willing to pay $7.99 a month for it.

Musk has also issued confusing and contradictory tweets about his approach to content moderation in the guise of upholding “free speech.” That has left users wondering whether Twitter is about to become a haven for hatemongers, racists and antisemites. 

In the first day after Musk took over, tweets using the “n-word” increased by 1,300%, according to the data analysis firm Dataminr, quoted by Bloomberg.

Uncertainty about the tone of content on Twitter has prompted at least temporary ad suspensions by General Motors, Audi, General Mills, Mondelez (the maker of Oreos), Pfizer and numerous other companies, according to their statements and other reports. 

Musk has responded to the suspensions truculently. In a Nov. 4 tweet he blamed the suspensions on “activist groups pressuring advertisers.” He added, “They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.” (It’s unclear whether he was referring to the advertisers or the purported “activist groups.”) 

In a subsequent tweet, he threatened to subject fleeing advertisers to “a thermonuclear name & shame.”

None of this, obviously, is likely to make Twitter look like a more alluring destination to advertisers. Whether they ultimately return, one would think that any brand managers at consumer companies who advise their bosses that now is the time to double down with their spending on Twitter will be placing their careers in jeopardy. No company led by even marginally intelligent executives wants to risk its reputation by associating with tweets celebrating racism, antisemitism or hatefulness in general.

What Musk doesn’t appear to recognize is that his own behavior is driving away users and advertisers. Since his takeover, he retweeted a crude, crass and fabricated conspiracy theory about the violent assault on Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco). 

He also retweeted, approvingly, a quote ostensibly defending free speech and commonly but erroneously attributed to Voltaire; it’s more reliably attributed to an American neo-Nazi named Kevin Strom.

How could someone so reputedly smart do such stupid things? To begin with, it’s not unusual for someone with a distinguished and accomplished career record to veer into crackpotism. Among the best known examples in science and engineering are Nobel laureates William Shockley and James D. Watson. 

Shockley received his Nobel in 1956 as a member of the team that invented the transistor at Bell Laboratories. His management skills were so atrocious that he single-handedly destroyed his own company, Shockley Semiconductor. 

He subsequently became known for advocating the overtly racist theory that welfare and relief programs prevented natural selection from killing off “the bottom of the population,” giving “inferior strains” such as (in his view) Black people, “increased chances for survival and reproduction.”

Watson, who won his Nobel with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for their discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA and later headed the Human Genome Project for the National Institutes of Health, veered into asserting that Black people are intellectually inferior to whites and attributing the difference to genetic factors. 

The claims turned him into a scientific “unperson,” in his words, and lost him sinecures at business and scientific institutions. 

Both men’s arguments are contradicted by science.

The phenomenon “extends way beyond science—it’s a human condition,” says John P. Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Cornell’s medical school who has written about the career of Peter Duesberg. 

A distinguished UC Berkeley molecular biologist who claimed that HIV was not the cause of AIDS and described the disease as “a fabricated epidemic,” Duesberg was consequently “dismissed by his peers and ridiculed by his colleagues,” as Richard Horton, editor of the British medical journal the Lancet, observed in 1996.

Moore attributes some of these renegade behaviors to midlife crises suffered by smart individuals whose careers or professional recognition hasn’t lived up to their expectations. Racked by professional jealousy, they seek validation from other communities.

“You become a hero to fringe people, and then they embrace you,” Moore told me. “If you have that psychological need for some kind of affirmation from people you’re interacting with, it must be very seductive.”

David Gorski, a veteran debunker of pseudoscience, identifies “hubris, arrogance, and ego gratification” as traits of trained physicians who turn into quacks and anti-vaxxers.

One might point to Joseph Ladapo, a graduate of Harvard Medical School and former faculty member at UCLA Medical School, who has spearheaded Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign against the COVID vaccines and presumably receives validation from the approval of DeSantis, who appointed him.

Those circumstances may not fully fit Musk, though his emergence as a champion of anti-liberal conspiracy theories certainly has made him a darling of the far right. More relevant may be the observations of Oxford psychologist Kevin Dutton in his 2012 book “The Wisdom of Psychopaths.” 

Dutton defines psychopaths as not necessarily violent or criminal but as those who are “fearless, confident, charismatic, ruthless, and focused” — qualities that can be beneficial for, say, surgeons or pro athletes, and would seem to suit Musk perfectly. 

They need to be kept under control. “If you push all of them to max,” Dutton argues, the product will be “no use to anyone.” But if they’re wielded by degree, “you may well have a surgeon who’s a cut above the rest.” 

Musk seems to have turned up his qualities of fearlessness, confidence and ruthlessness to the max. One consequence appears to be his resistance to learning anything from business history — or, indeed, from his own business career.

Musk has fallen into the trap of hubris by misreading the success of Tesla and SpaceX as testaments to his personal wisdom. Both companies, however, have relied on unusual, if not unique, advantages. 

Tesla has collected enormous government subsidies — $3.6 billion in federal and state grants, rebates and tax abatements dating to 2006, according to the subsidy tracker at the nonprofit Good Jobs First. That figure doesn’t include a $465-million loan issued by the Department of Energy in 2010 to help fund Tesla’s electric vehicle technology development, which has been repaid.

Nor does it include the federal rebate of up to $7,500 that Tesla buyers received through the end of 2019, a total of more than $1.5 billion spent to make Teslas more affordable. The credit expired after Tesla sold its 200,000th vehicle. It will resume next year, albeit applicable only to the company’s least expensive sedan, the Model 3. 

Tesla buyers have also received a total of $436 million in California state rebates; at least 18 other states have had some sort of incentive program in place.

Those subsidies saw Tesla through periods in which its financial weaknesses might otherwise have led to the company’s extinction.

Tesla also has benefited from being the only game in town for much of its existence, as the company hasn’t faced serious competition in the mass market for electric vehicles until very recently and rivals are still in the process of tooling up. 

Musk must realize that Tesla is facing lots of headwinds just now. The company’s stock has fallen by 50% since it peaked almost exactly one year ago.

As for SpaceX, it owes much of its success to its president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell, who runs the day-to-day activities at the firm. Musk deserves credit for hiring Shotwell away from Microcosm, an El Segundo rocket company, and staying out of her way while taking credit for the company’s achievements as a government contractor.

Twitter is different from both of those companies. Twitter isn’t in line for government handouts and even for its most devoted users it isn’t close to the only social media platform and nowhere near the largest. For advertisers, Twitter is a marketing option, and even before Musk’s takeover, not the most inviting one in the social media space. 

Musk also hasn’t internalized the lesson taught by such marketing fiascos as the introduction of new Coke in 1985, which the Coca-Cola Co. itself labels “one of the most memorable marketing blunders ever.” Its lesson was that you shouldn’t make abrupt changes to your product that alienate your old customers before you’ve attracted new ones.

Another lesson is not to make changes in a company until you understand it. Musk bulldozed Twitter with undiscerning changes in its management, policies and personnel, sowing chaos in ways he plainly didn’t anticipate. After firing half its staff, he discovered that he eviscerated some departments Twitter needs to function; the company has started to invite some fired workers back to work.

The problem may be that Musk saw Twitter through the lens of his own experience as a user. He had among the largest user bases on the platform, and one that both followed him slavishly and also attracted a surfeit of fake accounts and bots. Some of his friends and followers were getting suspended or banned from Twitter for abusive tweets, which affronted his personal definition of “free speech.”

He thought everyone felt the way he did, because he made no effort to determine how Twitter looked to the average user and its advertisers. 

It’s possible that Musk’s take-no-prisoners approach will make Twitter stronger in time. At the moment, however, its very future is in doubt, hobbled by an estimated $1-billion annual interest bill from Musk’s takeover debt while it hemorrhages users and advertisers. 

That’s all on him. He may have looked like a business genius before now, but at the moment the only thing he has accomplished with Twitter is to make himself look stupid.

 

[atomheartbevo 89730]

7 minutes ago, Homercles said:

I still feel like that’s the ultimate play here for Elon, not making money for himself but providing a forum where he’s king emperor to let the wing nuts / foreign governments / QAnon assholes / etc have free reign under the auspices of freedom of speech.  He never really wanted to buy it in the first place but now that he’s committed, gonna shape it into his fiefdom.  

Not sure what his investors will think of that and it’s already apparent big money advertisers are pressing pause.  

As long as he can make the loan payments…..but yeah, he won’t make enough money off of these people to keep the lights on in the long run.

If Bezos or Bill Gates or Ellison had decided to buy Twitter, they wouldn’t have fucked up the purchase so bad and/or gotten cold feet and tried to back out, wouldn’t have overspent by tens of billions, they wouldn’t have tanked their other investments, they wouldn’t personally be getting involved in moderation of a social media platform with hundreds of millions of accounts, and they they wouldn’t be soliciting advice from internet strangers.

They would have already had a team of people with plans ready to go months ago instead of just throwing shit together at the last minute as they get control of it, they would have been having lots of conversations over the past few months with advertisers and corporations, with policy changes finalized a few months ago and all relevant parties informed, instead of changing on a daily basis, reassuring investors and advertisers.  They would have kept everybody on board instead of just firing a shitload of people, especially people who had relationships with the advertisers, and then they would  work out any necessary layoffs once their team(s) saw how everything was operating.

They wouldn’t be sweating over millions in losses every day since they would have already accounted for that, and they would be more concerned with growing revenue to make up for the losses, instead of trying to cut infrastructure by a billion dollars in the next year (infrastructure they may need if they grow or bring back Vine like Musk wants to do).

But he’s a brilliant businessman according to some.

[chainsaw 9870]

17 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

As long as he can make the loan payments…..but yeah, he won’t make enough money off of these people to keep the lights on in the long run.

If Bezos or Bill Gates or Ellison had decided to buy Twitter, they wouldn’t have fucked up the purchase so bad and/or gotten cold feet and tried to back out, wouldn’t have overspent by tens of billions, they wouldn’t have tanked their other investments, they wouldn’t personally be getting involved in moderation of a social media platform with hundreds of millions of accounts, and they they wouldn’t be soliciting advice from internet strangers.

They would have already had a team of people with plans ready to go months ago instead of just throwing shit together at the last minute as they get control of it, they would have been having lots of conversations over the past few months with advertisers and corporations, with policy changes finalized a few months ago and all relevant parties informed, instead of changing on a daily basis, reassuring investors and advertisers.  They would have kept everybody on board instead of just firing a shitload of people, especially people who had relationships with the advertisers, and then they would  work out any necessary layoffs once their team(s) saw how everything was operating.

They wouldn’t be sweating over millions in losses every day since they would have already accounted for that, and they would be more concerned with growing revenue to make up for the losses, instead of trying to cut infrastructure by a billion dollars in the next year (infrastructure they may need if they grow or bring back Vine like Musk wants to do).

But he’s a brilliant businessman according to some.

this is also why i laugh whenever a politician claims he would run the government "like a business" as if businesspeople aren't capable of being bitchasses and losing billions in the process.

[Celery Man 20968]

17 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

As long as he can make the loan payments…..but yeah, he won’t make enough money off of these people to keep the lights on in the long run.

If Bezos or Bill Gates or Ellison had decided to buy Twitter, they wouldn’t have fucked up the purchase so bad and/or gotten cold feet and tried to back out, wouldn’t have overspent by tens of billions, they wouldn’t have tanked their other investments, they wouldn’t personally be getting involved in moderation of a social media platform with hundreds of millions of accounts, and they they wouldn’t be soliciting advice from internet strangers.

They would have already had a team of people with plans ready to go months ago instead of just throwing shit together at the last minute as they get control of it, they would have been having lots of conversations over the past few months with advertisers and corporations, with policy changes finalized a few months ago and all relevant parties informed, instead of changing on a daily basis, reassuring investors and advertisers.  They would have kept everybody on board instead of just firing a shitload of people, especially people who had relationships with the advertisers, and then they would  work out any necessary layoffs once their team(s) saw how everything was operating.

They wouldn’t be sweating over millions in losses every day since they would have already accounted for that, and they would be more concerned with growing revenue to make up for the losses, instead of trying to cut infrastructure by a billion dollars in the next year (infrastructure they may need if they grow or bring back Vine like Musk wants to do).

But he’s a brilliant businessman according to some.

Here is what it looks like when Bill Gates, an actual smart person, decides to help the world

Behind the scenes? Experts, analysis, boring and relentlessly effective goal setting and project management.

[cactusflinthead 27601]

[Cornpop 230]

[SmokeyTheBear 5562]

[atomheartbevo 89730]

[Homercles 10206]

38 minutes ago, Cornpop said:

Ahh yes the ole ‘let’s attack what she looks like’ trope.  

[atomheartbevo 89730]

16 minutes ago, Homercles said:

Ahh yes the ole ‘let’s attack what she looks like’ trope.  

They are all that skinny at 62, I’m sure.

[Francisco 2.0 32395]

Yeah, put all of Twitter behind a paywall.  I'm sure that will work.  Lots of details:

 

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/7/23446262/elon-musk-twitter-paywall-possible

 

Quote

If Friday brought massive layoffs to Twitter, Monday brought fresh evidence that the company will never be the same. Musk has discussed putting the entire site behind a paywall, Platformer has learned. Meanwhile, the company is scrambling to lure back employees who it laid off mere hours ago, and some workers say the economics behind its soon-to-relaunch Twitter Blue subscription could actually lose the company money.

 

Quote

All of this took place against the backdrop of a company that still has yet to hear anything official from Musk, via email or a companywide meeting. As Monday began, after losing thousands of their colleagues days earlier, many employees didn’t know who their managers are.

Meanwhile, Musk’s increasingly erratic leadership, coupled with his habit of tweeting in eye-watering bad taste, gave many current and former employees I spoke with a sinking feeling about the future of their company.

 

 

Quote

Today let’s talk a bit more about how the company botched its layoff process, what happened inside Twitter on Monday, and what that paywall might look like.

 

 

Spoiler

I. The botch

Friday’s layoffs had been brutal for all involved, including those involved in planning them — many of whom themselves lost their jobs. While the process varied by team, some managers were asked to submit to Musk’s team two sentences about all of their direct reports: one sentence explaining what the employee did, and one sentence justifying their continued employment at Twitter.

“You were like, this better be a fucking good sentence,” one person asked to write such a list told me.

Managers agonized over the decisions and jockeyed with their peers in an effort to preserve employment for the most vulnerable among them: pregnant women, employees who have cancer, and workers on visas among them, a former employee told me.

Some teams were cut more than others; several were wiped out entirely. As it turned out, though, the company went too far. As I was the first to report on Saturday, within hours of the layoffs, some managers were already being told to ask select laid-off employees if they wanted their old jobs back.

It began as a rumor on Blind, the app where employees of various companies can chat anonymously with their coworkers. But within a day it was being posted in public Slack channels.

“Sorry to @- everybody on the weekend but I wanted to pass along that we have the opportunity to ask folks that were left off if they will come back. I need to put together names and rationales by 4 PM PST on Sunday,” one such message from a manager to employees read. “I’ll do some research but if any of you have been in contact with folks who might come back and who we think will help us, please nominate before 4.”

“I think we might use some Android and iOS help,” the manager added. The company has been reaching out to both engineers and designers over the past day in an effort to get them back, Platformer is told.

Some employees are nervous that if Twitter can’t get them to return voluntarily, the company will formally rescind the notice they received Friday laying them off. Under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, businesses with more than 100 full-time employees are required to give 60 days notice if they lay off 33 percent or more of the staff. At Twitter, that notice included a promise to pay people for the next 60 days and give them a month of severance.

Now workers fear that if they refuse to return voluntarily, Twitter will fire them for abandoning their jobs, depriving them of what otherwise would have been three months’ pay. 

Some workers have begun to consult with lawyers over their options in the event that they are recalled. Others are in open revolt, tweeting public threads about various aspects of the organization that have been broken after the ready-fire-aim disaster of Musk’s layoffs process.

Meanwhile, remaining managers are bracing themselves for a much higher workload than they were previously used to. One person I spoke with was told that any technical manager should expect to manage at least 20 individual contributors, while also spending at least half their time writing code. Others have been given much higher numbers of direct reports.

II. The two Twitters

As today began at Twitter, there were essentially two groups at the company, one employee told me: those working on projects that Musk has been deeply involved in, such as the revamped Twitter Blue subscription, and everyone else.

“The couple of teams that are on his pet projects are doing 20-hour days,” one employee told me. “But the majority of the company is kind of just sitting around. No chain of command, no priorities, no organization chart, and in many cases, no idea who your manager or team is.”

To learn what they are supposed to do, employees looked to some unusual sources. After a number of celebrities and high-profile accounts began to impersonate him, Musk announced a new policy, via a tweet, that anyone found impersonating someone else would be permanently banned without warning. That was news to what remains of Twitter’s policy team, I’m told, and afterward some employees began discussing how to implement Musk’s edict.

Meanwhile, the health team was told to listen to Musk adviser David Sacks’ podcast for insights into why they had just lost half their colleagues, according to a former employee. Sacks, a venture capitalist who has been helping to manage the Musk transition, co-hosts the “All-In” podcast with fellow Twitter adviser Jason Calacanis and VC Chamath Palihapitiya.

“The most recent podcast covers the current layoffs happening across tech and provides some insight into why this is happening/necessary,” a vice president told employees. “I think it is worth listening to in order to understand the macro environment we are operating in.”

Most employees were more interested in their health benefits, which had suddenly become a question mark. The company’s open-enrollment period was supposed to begin today, according to its global calendar, but no information was available in the company’s human-resources system. Employees posted several questions about benefits inside Slack today, but all went unanswered by management.

III. The Blue disaster

By the day’s end, I’m told, at least some teams had begun to hold meetings in which employees were informed who their managers are, what their organization charts look like, and what their priorities will be.

But several employees I spoke with were still wrestling with one overarching question: do Musk and his team have any idea what they’re doing?

On one hand, the company is telling advertisers that it is thriving, The Verge’s Alex Heath reported, adding 15 million daily users since the end of the second quarter.

But the rollout of Musk’s first signature project, a new version of the Twitter Blue subscription that will allow anyone to get a verification badge, has been a disaster.

The company rolled out a new version of the app on Saturday with release notes that said the new Blue was now available. (The copy, written by Calacanis, was widely derided for sounding like a phishing email.) The problem is that Blue was not available, and so those who did subscribe found that they had merely gotten access to the current version of Blue.

Then, after a debate about the potential effects of unleashing thousands of new verified accounts onto the platforms in the middle of the US midterm elections, the company postponed the launch.

But the new Blue likely faces larger problems. The existing version only had a little more than 100,000 active subscribers, Platformer has learned. The new version will be 37.5 percent more expensive, and its value seems murky for most regular users of the platform. It’s unclear how the company will persuade enough people to subscribe to justify the effort.

Twitter employees tried to sell Musk and Sacks on the idea of asking business accounts to pay for extra features since many of them use Twitter to reach large audiences. But they were dismissed in favor of offering wide-scale verification first, I’m told.

Other employees have warned about a secondary feature of the new Blue that Musk added at the last minute: reducing ad load in the Twitter app by half. Estimates showed that Twitter will lose about $6 in ad revenue per user in the United States by making that change, sources said. Factoring in Apple and Google’s share of the $8 monthly subscription, Twitter would likely lose money on Blue if the ad-light plan is enacted.

“The business fundamentals are just not there,” said one former employee who worked on the plans.

Musk has been heavily involved in the chaotic launch of Blue, participating in standup meetings and exchanging regular emails with Esther Crawford, a director of product management at the company. “There is one decision-maker and that is me,” Musk told workers, according to meeting notes shared with employees in Slack.

“Any detail of Twitter Blue must be clear w/ him down to the last detail,” the message added.

But all of that could be a prelude to the biggest change of all: charging most or all users a subscription fee to use Twitter.

Both Musk and Sacks have discussed the idea in recent meetings, according to a person familiar with the matter. One such plan might allow everyone to use Twitter for a limited amount of time each month but require a subscription to continue browsing, the person said.

It could not be learned how serious Musk and Sacks are about the paywall; Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. It also does not appear imminent, as the Blue team is wholly occupied with the launch of expanded verification.

Still, given Twitter’s huge debt burden, the backward economics of Blue, and the recent pause in spending by major advertisers, it’s clear that Musk and his brain trust will have to do something to significantly increase revenue. And whatever they choose, it seems increasingly clear that Twitter will never be the same.

 

 

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Tying into @Francisco 2.0s post above, holy fucking shit Elon does not know how to read the room.