Elon Musk Buys Twitter

[s_bushido]

Musk should have stayed in the realm of electric cars and rocket ships. Even if he pretends this was all planned, everyone will still think he's awful.

"It was my plan to light $44 billion on fire all along! Now the libruls are seething about it! Mwhahahahaha!!!"

[Draco-Onis]

Agreed. At every point of his success he's always been able to find, hire, and capitalize on other people's talent.

I totally agree re Twitter. He fucked up YUGELY with his bid and then found out he couldn't rescind it and now he's completely screwed, and seems hell bent on digging the hole even further.

The biggest mistake he made was borrow money from the Saudis and the Chinese, if he doesn't pay them back being the richest man won't save them from their wrath.

- - - Updated - - -

Kinda liked that show...

Looking back it was formulaic but I loved it so much I watched every episode.

[ringpriest]

At least an apparent partial fraud. But yeah, holy shit.

I have been down on him for the past couple of years, shortly after the Diving incident had me rethinking my perspective on him overall, not just he success at SpaceX. But this would definitely shed some new light.

Elon's single best move at SpaceX was hiring Gwynne Shotwell, and then letting her do her job. (Presumably, she's quite good at dealing with Elon, as well as doing her job.)

[Doctor Amadeus]

The biggest mistake he made was borrow money from the Saudis and the Chinese, if he doesn't pay them back being the richest man won't save them from their wrath.

- - - Updated - - -

Looking back it was formulaic but I loved it so much I watched every episode.

He has enough equity in Tesla to cover a total loss. But Twitter very well could end up costing him Tesla in the end.

[hellhamster]

I don't know if people have stated the obvious yet, but if a company starts demanding insane shit from you, they want you to quit because they don't have to pay for firing you.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

I don't know if people have stated the obvious yet, but if a company starts demanding insane shit from you, they want you to quit because they don't have to pay for firing you.

No, when a company start demanding insane shit from you...its because they figure that you don't have any better options. Elon certainly hasn't been shy about firing people up to this point.

[Cthulhu 2020]

So Musk is the epitome of "fake it til you make ti".

Also, grew up with a platinum spoon in his mouth.

But this dude basically blackmailed and bribed his way to the title of "Founder" of Tesla, as well as buying/blackmailing people who spoke poorly of him.

If he'd just stayed quiet and continued to pretend to run Tesla, people wouldn't have looked into his embarrassing background.

[diller]

I don't know if people have stated the obvious yet, but if a company starts demanding insane shit from you, they want you to quit because they don't have to pay for firing you.

That shit is not possible in most of the world, you can't just ask someone to work more (as in more hours) without compensation - but I guess there are no proper labor laws in the US

[Forogil]

That shit is not possible in most of the world, you can't just ask someone to work more (as in more hours) without compensation - but I guess there are no proper labor laws in the US

However, as far as I know technically Musk didn't say that they should work 45, 60, or even 100 hours a week, he only said that they should be in the office "at least 40 hours" a week and be "working long hours at high intensity".

So, even if the labor laws in the US are weak, he's still afraid of them.

[Cosmic Janitor]

He has enough equity in Tesla to cover a total loss. But Twitter very well could end up costing him Tesla in the end.

With all the cross financing, usualy to the detriment of Tesla, and Tesla only being valued as much because of Musk's image in the first place.. yeah, I wouldn't be so sure that losing Tesla is his biggest issue here. His whole billionaire status pretty much hinges on people saying Tesla is worth <fantasy> bucks, despite having less market relevance than most other well established car brands. (Edit: fixed that horrible sentence.. somewhat..)

Btw, I love that the mythos about the engineering genius Elon Musk may finally be dead now; unsurprisingly if I may add, from the perspective of an engineer.

- - - Updated - - -

If he'd just stayed quiet and continued to pretend to run Tesla, people wouldn't have looked into his embarrassing background.

People have beeing looking into his background from the moment he started to peddle snake oil like his full self driving claims or the hyperloop rubbish. Just no one wanted to hear it because he was the media's darling billionaire and savior of humanity. His false paypal claims as well as how he got into tesla have been out there for years now.

Edit: To further add to this. I do have to agree though that he barely had to do anything and let twitter operate like it did before and he would have been mostly fine. He could have made some small changes here and there and used the PR to boost twitter, but instead he decided he knows best and made sweeping nonsense changes that may very well have cost him everything.

[Forogil]

With all the cross financing and Tesla being pretty much only being valued as much as it is because of Musk's image, I wouldn't be so sure that just losing Tesla would be the worst he is facing here by a long shot.

As seen by Tesla's stock price also declining - in terms of market cap it has lost more than 50% since early January and was recently passed by Berkshire Hathaway.

Btw, I love that the mythos about the engineering genius Elon Musk may finally be dead now; unsurprisingly if I may add, from the perspective of an engineer.

Unfortunately, some engineers have also bought the myth.

[Paranoid Android]

Musk should have stayed in the realm of electric cars and rocket ships. Even if he pretends this was all planned, everyone will still think he's awful.

The oh btw on Tesla was only profitable from carbon credits.. While Tesla has not been profitable since 2020(?) it continues to cash in with up to 20% of money still coming from selling carbon credits.

The irony? Of course the alpha rich billionaire bitches about taxes and how the money is spent. As usual. Sucking at the teet of the government and profiting just so you save X amount of money when you are a billionaire. Add in the most suckers who vote against their interest, being brainwashed not to take government handouts, while billionaires take left and right. /rant

Edit. The video you posted tells of this and many of his bullshit.

[Cosmic Janitor]

As seen by Tesla's stock price also declining - in terms of market cap it has lost more than 50% since early January and was recently passed by Berkshire Hathaway.

I mean, Tesla has historically been overvalued by ludicrious amounts compared to other manufacturers. For some reason people decided electric cars are worth tech (more software/IT) money of untapped market segments with infinite growth potential (tm), when in reality their market is already very contested and their niche in that market is already declining as the other actors in that market release their own electric cars. Their biggest seller being emission certs pretty much confirms this.

[D Luniz]

Try this. Assume he has no fucking idea what he's talking about and has the cognitive abilities of a rotting corpse. It all starts making sense. This guy's so thick I feel like the Skyrim NPCs that have your arrow stuck in their heads saying 'must have been my imagination' might actually be a realistic representation of at least some people.

its simpler than that

he just likes being a contrarian
Gambling on the few times he's right to claim he knows more, but having to ignore the many more often times he's wrong

[Forogil]

I mean, Tesla has historically been overvalued by ludicrious amounts compared to other manufacturers. For some reason people decided electric cars are worth tech (more software/IT) money of untapped market segments with infinite growth potential (tm), when in reality their market is already very contested and their niche in that market is already declining as the other actors in that market release their own electric cars.

And despite the recent decline in Tesla share value one can still claim it is over-valued by about of factor 10.

[D Luniz]

I don't know if people have stated the obvious yet, but if a company starts demanding insane shit from you, they want you to quit because they don't have to pay for firing you.

that tends to be true if they are doing that to a person, or even a single dept
when it does it company wide after a leadership change
its cause the new leader is a fool

- - - Updated - - -

So Musk is the epitome of "fake it til you make ti".

Also, grew up with a platinum spoon in his mouth.

But this dude basically blackmailed and bribed his way to the title of "Founder" of Tesla, as well as buying/blackmailing people who spoke poorly of him.

If he'd just stayed quiet and continued to pretend to run Tesla, people wouldn't have looked into his embarrassing background.

reminds me of the last president
and the same type of people support him too.....

[cubby]

Elon's single best move at SpaceX was hiring Gwynne Shotwell, and then letting her do her job. (Presumably, she's quite good at dealing with Elon, as well as doing her job.)

Glad he did that. So far it does seem like she can keep him at arms length and SpaceX running smoothly. I would not be surprised if the U.S. government is ready to step in if any of "Space Karen"'s insanity starts to leak into SpaceX.

[Forogil]

Elon's single best move at SpaceX was hiring Gwynne Shotwell, and then letting her do her job. (Presumably, she's quite good at dealing with Elon, as well as doing her job.)

She also talks as crazy hyperbolic bullshit as Elon, unless you truly think that we will have space-ships flying from New York to Shanghai for a thousand dollars in 5.5 years.

[Draco-Onis]

Glad he did that. So far it does seem like she can keep him at arms length and SpaceX running smoothly. I would not be surprised if the U.S. government is ready to step in if any of "Space Karen"'s insanity starts to leak into SpaceX.

The second Musk bought Twitter using Saudi and Chinese money every three letter agency started watching his every move. But I will say it again Elon Musk is too big to fail, his only mistake would be the try to screw the Saudis and the Chinese by having Twitter declare bankruptcy without paying them back.

[Rasulis]

Can Musk turn Twitter profitable? The answer is likely no.

Almost 90% of Twitter engineers with 3 years or more experience left without passing on their institutional knowledge to their replacement (What replacement?) Institutional knowledge is critical to day-to-day company operation. There is a reason companies paid extra for former employees to train their replacement.

Twitter's head of ad sales, Robin Wheeler, resigned when Musk took over. Cancelled her resignation when Musk begged her to stay. Then left for good. Primarily because her add team was dismantled. Add is the life blood of Twitter. No add, no money to run Twitter.

Twitter R&D department is gone. Very bad. From the beginning, Musk realized that the only way for Twitter to become profitable is to expand its services. No R&D, no expansion. The fact is that no social media platforms at Twitter user base level are profitable. Mark Zuckerberg understood this a long time ago. Hence, he kept expanding Facebook platforms. Facebook Marketplace market share is over 50% globally. It generated revenue of $28.15b third quarter of 2022 ($26B in third quarter 2021). Tiktok understand this also, and just opened Tiktop Shop portal for US customers.