Elon Musk Agrees to $44b Deal for Twitter

[Rob Battisti]

I was agreeing with you.

I disagree with your earlier statement that Twitter didn't need high level engineers to run its service. The stuff they've done with Go and Scala needs real deep understanding for scalability. Just like Microsoft pushing up against the edge of github repos; it's all easy and straightforward until you get to the scale that Twitter and Microsoft are hitting.

Oh sorry I was agreeing with you as well!

I was probably being too harsh to say they didn’t need high end engineers flat out. More so that their engineering problems are not necessarily as complex as some of their competitors in terms of scale and interoperability. Their engineering interview bar was certainly not as high as some of their competitors either.

 

[Dan O]

I love a good CT. This is great. I, for one, welcome our new technocrat overlords

 

[funcrusher2007]

That's not true. The earliest employees at M$ all agree that Gates was nit a big contributor to products. His dad was the most powerful lawyer in Seattle and that's how he bamboozled most of the productive people.

Gates wrote a basic interpreter for the Altair 8800 with Paul Allen. After that his next major contribution was writing a snotty letter about sharing software a piracy at the 1977 west coast computer show.

As for DOS that was a stroke of luck because he first sent IBM to Kildall. Unfortunately Kildall's wife was the world's worst IP lawyer and she told UBM to pound salt. Gates and all other early M$haft employees are lucky as shit that Paul Allen had lunch with Tim Patterson of SCP and that Patterson ripped off CP/M

That’s interesting, you obviously know more about this then I do.. my knowledge of gates isn’t that deep.
I concede.




But I was still right about Henry ford lol.

 

[HOLA]

I am no financial expert but some dude that posts on a karate forum.
I think Elon will sell Twitter for a loss. Somebody will buy it, but just not for what he paid. Elon is over leveraged right now, so he is not stupid enough to let it completely burn to the ground, and it would be in his best interest to sell at a loss if he cant turn it around in a couple years. He cut his costs which is smart to do with a company that is losing money, but if you cut costs and then lose revenue, the cuts are not as impactful to his bottom line.
Tesla is a different story. His CEO pay is ridiculous, and he is in court for it right now for his pay, because its way too high based on the current CEO pay market. He makes more than the 200 highest paid CEO's combined times 5. Shareholders did not give a shit about that when the stock was mooning, because they made money as well. Now that the stock has been steady dropping, shareholders are like what the fuck dude, how about some of that money go back into the company. His other Tesla problem is fires and wrecks with driver assist is engaged. The tricky part is if he just pays a lot of money for lawyers to make it go away than that is the best-case scenario. Worst case scenario is a recall or some class action suit, combined with the bad publicity of his cars being dangerous which will drive down the sales until that problem is fixed. He borrowed off his Tesla stock to buy Twitter. IF negative information comes out then he still has interest to pay on the money he borrowed, so that could force selling Twitter quicker at a loss.
He may be able to wiggle out it, but being cantankerous and engaging in public wars is not the way to wiggle out of it.
I will give Elon credit for being able to identify emerging tech, bet big on it and won big, but his current strategy with as much as he is leveraged is not a good idea. Now people(me being one of them) will revel in his failures.

For comparison, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger still take $100,000 in annual salary, same as they have for decades. Buffett pays the guy who leads his insurance division and the guy who leads his non-insurance companies (and is Buffett's successor) about $15 million a year, with annual bonuses of a few million more.

Even Tim Apple received less than $100 million in annual compensation last year.

Unless you found the Fountain of Youth, or perhaps the Lost Ark of the Covenant, there is no reason for a CEO to have a $51 billion compensation package, particularly when the company never even made money until 2020, and only then because of sucking the government tit, and receiving regulatory credits.

 

[HOLA]

not even in the same universe. she knows more about shooting a porn than i do. But sorry, i think i would trust the richest man in the world who made that money from being a business man over the word of a guy who makes $3250 k a year talking about it on tv.

Mike Lindell made $300 million as a businessman. Does he come across as bigly brained?

 

[COTUR1@43]

 

[Lead]

What’s that even mean? Fancy way of just saying nah dawg and making it seem deeper than it is. There isn’t danger if you post or don’t post a tweet.

 

[HereticBD]

Mike Lindell made $300 million as a businessman. Does he come across as bigly brained?

Considering it was...pillows, I'd say he's got some smarts in that area. You'd probably be the guy in room when he came up with the idea, going "Pillows? Seriously? That's your grand idea that I have to get in on? Fuckin' pillows? Yeah, okay. What's your next endeavor gonna be when that fails? Shoelaces? No, I'm not interested in getting in on the ground floor for the new pillow, you fucking idiot. Maybe ask your crack dealer for the money to get that shit off the ground. Pillows...pfft. You believe this fuckn' guy?"

 

[Sir Burton]

Im gonna guess that having the owner of twitter trolling on the app is probably not a good way to gain back companies

I honestly hope she’s not surprised. I see, time and again, Gen X and younger Millennials talk to their bosses/managers in a way that could never be described as respectful.

I understand standing up for yourself, which I do constantly with my bosses, but you must maintain at least a semblance of professionalism & respect,

 

[Lead]

I honestly hope she’s not surprised. I see, time and again, Gen X and younger Millennials talk to their bosses/managers in a way that could never be described as respectful.

I understand standing up for yourself, which I do constantly with my bosses, but you must maintain at least a semblance of professionalism & respect,

(The tweet isn't loading so I'm just speaking about your comment)
Hard to say the overall picture but I actually think the most unprofessional behavior I've seen in the workspace was from boomers. Maybe it's the bias of my own generation at play here but there's a difference in pushing your employees and just being out of line. I've had a boss who would scream and throw things like a child when anything went wrong, was embarrassing to watch. I think it's not okay either if direct reports aren't listening to their boss but there I tend to see the idea that if you are higher up in the org chart, you are allowed to treat other people like shit. Not even saying they should "respect their employees" but rather not disrespect them. That isn't professionalism at all. You can have high expectations from your reports to work longer, do more projects, etc but that's different from behavior some show as a result. If they aren't meeting your standards, communicate, assess again, and if still an issue, fire and get someone else. You can do those things without being awful.

 

[Sano]

For comparison, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger still take $100,000 in annual salary, same as they have for decades. Buffett pays the guy who leads his insurance division and the guy who leads his non-insurance companies (and is Buffett's successor) about $15 million a year, with annual bonuses of a few million more.

Even Tim Apple received less than $100 million in annual compensation last year.

Unless you found the Fountain of Youth, or perhaps the Lost Ark of the Covenant, there is no reason for a CEO to have a $51 billion compensation package, particularly when the company never even made money until 2020, and only then because of sucking the government tit, and receiving regulatory credits.

The insane thing is that people like Musk are using hype and/or government subsidies to inflate the stock while borrowing against it, resulting in billions of dollars of non taxable wealth despite many of these companies making ZERO profit. It's absurd. Talk about gaming the system, it should be illegal.

 

[Lead]

The insane thing is that people like Musk are using hype and/or government subsidies to inflate the stock while borrowing against it, resulting in billions of dollars of non taxable wealth despite many of these companies making ZERO profit. It's absurd. Talk about gaming the system, it should be illegal.

Buy, borrow, die still can work in the long term tax wise for the public if you don't allow loopholes when the inheritance is passed forward and keep it at a decent tax rate. The only thing I think might work in the form of taxing wealth would just be advanced tax payments on a capital gains in the amount which you borrow against it as collateral. That way the tax would be paid over the lifetime more so than in one big dump. Still unsure on that idea but it's better than a wealth tax imo.

 

[idrankyourbeer]

What’s that even mean? Fancy way of just saying nah dawg and making it seem deeper than it is. There isn’t danger if you post or don’t post a tweet.

sure there is. one day an orange loser lost an election like no other loser has ever lost an election before, and he fired off some tweets about how he believes that the election was stolen from him, and not long afterwards a bunch of his followers decided to go beat up some cops with back the blue flags while taking a shit all over democracy and smearing it all over the capitol walls.

 

[chardog]

This is likely not true and based on job postings. Job postings aren’t 1:1 correlated with actual job openings. Furthermore, it’s feast or famine. The top 10% of tech jobs are going to pay mountains more than the bottom 90%. So there may be engineering jobs at no name companies, but they aren’t necessarily well paying or sought after roles.



I won’t fault you for it, but this is a very ignorant take. Any schmo can develop an interface with JavaScript. To create a robust and reliable platform takes serious engineering and Twitter doesn’t have that. It never really needed it to run its services and to do what Musk wants to do is completely different than what Twitter currently does. He bought it for the user base which is abandoning the platform in droves.




Absolutely terrible take.

you are mistaken in thinking that twitter does not have enough talent to engineer the infrastructure, this is not a numbers game either 7000 workers, what does it mean? If elon kept just 100 of their top engineers, they can easily move on, you can run fat, you can run lean, facebook let go of 12000 workers, Amazon 10K, uber, microsoft, snapchat, guess what, they're all following the trend because a recession is coming/here. You can bet your butt that top talent will remain, because when push comes to shove, they run the show

 

[Rob Battisti]

you are mistaken in thinking that twitter does not have enough talent to engineer the infrastructure, this is not a numbers game either 7000 workers, what does it mean? If elon kept just 100 of their top engineers, they can easily move on, you can run fat, you can run lean, facebook let go of 12000 workers, Amazon 10K, uber, microsoft, snapchat, guess what, they're all following the trend because a recession is coming/here. You can bet your butt that top talent will remain, because when push comes to shove, they run the show

Like I said, my man, you can have that uninformed opinion. It’s certainly wrong, but you’re entitled to it. I say this as someone who’s worked at the top of the top engineering firms for nearly my entire career. It doesn’t work that way.

 

[aries]

Like I said, my man, you can have that uninformed opinion. It’s certainly wrong, but you’re entitled to it. I say this as someone who’s worked at the top of the top engineering firms for nearly my entire career. It doesn’t work that way.

Ah what do you know? You've only lived the life, you don't know shit compared to these armchair quarterbacks telling you how your industry works.

 

[Rob Battisti]

Ah what do you know? You've only lived the life, you don't know shit compared to these armchair quarterbacks telling you how your industry works.

The only way top talent stays is a quick pivot to an amazing total rewards program(which they can’t due do to the financial situation and lack of equity) or an amazing vision of which they can rally behind — which is currently an $8 verification plan where you can be Mario giving the middle finger.

 

[chardog]

Like I said, my man, you can have that uninformed opinion. It’s certainly wrong, but you’re entitled to it. I say this as someone who’s worked at the top of the top engineering firms for nearly my entire career. It doesn’t work that way.

I am the high level software engineer that you are referring to, I do work with overseas indians as well as H1B's, I have trained workers that get paid in the top 10% of twitter tech jobs, I'm not a recruiter, I am the talent.

 

[Rob Battisti]

I am the high level software engineer that you are referring to, I do work with overseas indians as well as H1B's, I have trained workers that get paid in the top 10% of twitter tech jobs, I'm not a recruiter, I am the talent.

And you, as an engineer, believe you can get rid of over 70% of the engineering department, cut benefits, pay and brand, gut every internal support team, have the remaining workforce(now with reduced incentives) work double the hours in a toxic environment actually bring forward an amazing product simply because it’s being led by Elon Musk?

 

[Rob Battisti]

I’m sure there is a WR bet somewhere in here. Not sure what it is, but it’s somewhere here.

I was a big Elon fan. Huge even. This is a failed experiment and there is little to no chance it works out.