Paul Graham and some of the YC partners have been surprisingly defensive of Musk's actions.
It's been massively disappointing to watch since Musk's behaviour has been abhorrent and has resulted in a lot of unnecessary hurt and despair for innocent employees. The same employees who may end up running future startups.
At first I thought paulg must have posted that weeks ago, but no, it's from yesterday. I wouldn't expect such a vote of confidence on Musk after all the data points we've received since he took over the company.
I'm not even sure what paulg's point is. Are people actually claiming they'd do a better job than Musk, or are they simply commenting on the missteps and bizarre behavior. You don't need to have run a successful tech company to know that spending your time as a CEO antagonizing your employees on social media, and then threatening your remaining employees with an ultimatum is not a good idea.
Sheesh. First of all, we already know that because people have already died due to Tesla software not working right.
And second of all, he thinks Twitter can’t lead to deaths? Let’s say the Iranian government was given unfettered access to DMs and metadata for all Iranian citizens with an account. Not hard to imagine scenarios that end in death.
> It's remarkable how many people who've never run any kind of company think they know how to run a tech company better than someone who's run Tesla and SpaceX.
Then the next tweet says
> In both those companies, people die if the software doesn't work right. Do you really think he's not up to managing a social network?
Well we know that after an ultimatum, enough employees quit that Musk is now asking some of them to come back. The number of employees leaving is also so high, that they're shutting down access to offices. There's also been reports of features like 2FA not working anymore after the first round of layoffs.
Not exactly the results I'd expect from someone who really knows how to run a company.
If one of Musk's middle managers had messed up this badly, Musk would have fired them already. But Elon deserves the continued benefit of the doubt for some reason.
All that you've mentioned may or may not matter eventually but it's not any sort of evidence of how Twitter did. The only things that matter are revenue, expenses, and growth. This tweet was made two days ago and nothing has happened since to provide any sort of evidence of how these actually important factors will unfold. To say that this tweet has "aged badly" is just nonsense.
when you spend your whole life acting like a genius because you made a bunch of money, then a richer guy shows how incorrect that is, you are going to squirm.
Half this comment section is people going "Nonono elon couldn't be dumb, there must be some angle to this". It's the american way to call a rich person smart and a smart person a threat.
> Paul Graham and some of the YC partners have been surprisingly defensive of Musk's actions.
Thing is, I agree that Twitter needed to be shaken up. But, Musk has made the wrong choices every step of the way. It's like he's giving a masterclass on how to be a terrible leader. It's amazing the miscalculations Musk has made. First, his longest tenure, most experience employees likely just got a huge payday on their stock/options - so of course they will peace out. Second, his antics are driving up the price of hiring new employees. Third, Musk still had a lot of goodwill before taking ownership that he's now squandered. I could go on...
The only thing I can think is he looked hard at the financials and the debt load he saddled the company with and panicked.
It's been massively disappointing to watch since Musk's behaviour has been abhorrent and has resulted in a lot of unnecessary hurt and despair for innocent employees. The same employees who may end up running future startups.