[marcinzm]

They led to a stagnant company with -$200m in profits. Elon instantly led to a company that is now $1-2 billion in the red a year, and needs to aggressively cut costs and increase revenue to make it up. I'd say the current situation is 99% on Elon.

edit: For those not aware, the buyout included $13 billion in debt to Twitter which they need to pay $1-2 billion a year for in terms of interest alone.

[mcrad]

Is it possible that Elon's intention here has little to do with his personal fortune, or that of his employees? Maybe he simply sees the current situation as Twitter as a cancer on society, and sees himself in a unique position (ie. rich enough) to actually do something about it. Forget about the numbers, the digital marketing/pseudo-journalism industry pretty much needs to be cut down a notch, (or stop calling itself tech!). I see your point that he has a good chance at failure, but pretending the company /was/ successful or on some great path up until last week is just sad.

[dnissley]

Yeah, I think a lot of people are missing that these layoffs are not necessarily about Twitter's financial situation. They are very much about it's cultural situation -- both the culture within the company (reputation for being unable to ship), and the relationship of the company with the wider culture (blue checks, narrative control, cathedrals, etc).

[dnissley]

Copy pasting my reply from a different thread on that topic:

You think that if he paid completely up front he wouldn't care about cutting costs? Why? The pressure would still be there -- it would just be in the form of pressure to recoup his investment

[marcinzm]

With debt interest he needs to squeeze money NOW versus in the future. In either case he overpaid severely for a company and now needs to squeeze money out of it at some point. Point stands that this is 99% Elon.

[fisherjeff]

I mean, some pressure would still be there. I don’t think it’s at all comparable to the minimal cashflow and $85MM interest payment due in a month kind of pressure.

[friedman23]

He didn't want to buy it.

[marcinzm]

Then he shouldn't have signed a binding contract. Only an idiot investor wouldn't take twice the market value for an asset when given the chance.

[friedman23]

Ok, so he signed the contract. Decided not to buy it because it was a massively overvalued money pit but they forced him anyway.

So now he is supposed to keep dumping money into the burning dumpster fire that is twitter?

[marcinzm]

He approached twitter and signed a binding contract to buy them. They simply made him follow what he himself agreed to do in writing. If it's a dumpster fire then what does that make Elon for willingly signing a contract to buy it for $45 billion?

Actions have consequences which is a basic thing that it seems some people have a really hard time understanding.

edit: If one can ignore contracts at will then much of modern society implodes.

[friedman23]

It's interesting how you all are bringing up the law and contracts but simultaneously moaning about how cruel he is for firing everyone.

He OWNS the company.

> Actions have consequences which is a basic thing that it seems some people have a really hard time understanding.

Yes, this is what happens when you choose to be an employee of a company someone else owns. You are at their mercy. That's the deal.

So you are Elon and have some shitty company that is burning $200m or more a year. Are you all saying he should keep paying these overpaid yuppies to do nothing but come into work 3 hours late and drink matcha lattes? Even if he was feeling generous, don't you think there are more deserving people of that charity?

[marcinzm]

>He OWNS the company.

So you agree that this is 99% on Elon past, present and future. Great that we're in alignment on my main point.

[grumpitron]

Correction - HE forced himself to buy it by signing a binding contract to buy it.

[friedman23]

No. Not even semantically correct. If he didn't want to do something and the other party in the negotiation used the legal system to make him do it he was forced by someone else to do it.

Anyway, it's beside the point. Elon OWNS twitter. Do you all understand what ownership means? Like how you own a phone? If he wants to smash his new toy into the ground and break it that's his prerogative. Employees need to stop deluding themselves that any part of a business belongs to them because they were part of the process in creating it. The salary you are paid is the price for control of everything you contribute to a company.

If you hate that idea, much like I do myself, you should start your own business.

[grumpitron]

He got himself into the situation where he was required to buy Twitter because he signed a binding contract - that's how binding contracts work, and not understanding that the contract was binding is why he now owns Twitter.

In the end, he bought Twitter without being forced to, because he probably saw he was going to lose in court if he kept up with trying to get out of his binding agreement.

This is why a person needs to understand the contracts they sign. If you don't have an out, you can't change your mind. If you can just change your mind to get out of a binding contract, then it's not a binding contract.

Separately, I'm not making any comments about Twitter employees and their claims against the business, that's a completely separate topic.

[chowchowchow]

This is a very tabula rasa approach to personal responsibility. He was compelled by enforcement of a prior binding agreement that he entered into freely. More than freely. That he proposed and originated!

[fzeroracer]

This isn't how it works. He wanted to buy Twitter and in a typically impulsive Musk fashion, he signed a contract and waived due diligence. Once you sign a contract you can't just back out of it and act like it's not your fault when they force you to abide by your word.

And he does own Twitter, yes. Everyone is just laughing at him spending billions of dollars to destroy something due to a problem he created. It just also sucks for the people involved being hurt by a billionaires tantrum.

[jemmyw]

I agree about the ownership side. If I was an employee I'd have started job hunting the moment he started making comments about buying.

The employees do have power, they could refuse to work en-masse and he can find out how hard or easy it is to hire a completely new crew. But I'm guessing there's too much internal strife and disagreement for that to happen.

Plus I have to agree with his assessment - there's not that much to twitter really, it's hardly a massively complicated and sprawling software product. They have too many people. Some of those complaining about being let go have... titles that don't make that much sense for the kind of businsess twitter is. I hate seeing people lose their job. Companies should be a bit more circumspect in their hiring.

[jeromegv]

> If he didn't want to do something and the other party in the negotiation used the legal system to make him do it he was forced by someone else to do it.

Who do you think signed the contract in the first place?

He was only "forced" by the courts once he tried to go back on his contract. Nobody forced him to buy twitter.

[microtherion]

> If he didn't want to do something and the other party in the negotiation used the legal system to make him do it he was forced by someone else to do it.

The complication here is that his offer was so outlandishly high that he essentially tied Twitter management's hands. If they had not sued him, they would almost certainly be subject to litigation from their own shareholders, because not doing everything to sell at this price would have amounted to corporate mismanagement (In practice, top management gets a lot of leeway from the courts when it comes to maximizing shareholder value, but I can't imagine leaving a 30%+ markup over the current stock price on the table would have passed muster).

[jemmyw]

They didn't force him. He could have backed out by paying the contract breaking fee. Once you sign you have to stick to it one way or the other. He could have written in a due diligence clause, but did not.

[thinkharderdev]

Not to defend Elon Musk since I generally agree that this whole thing is a dumpster fire of his own making but he couldn't have backed out by paying the contract breaking fee. Twitter was suing him for specific performance, meaning they were asking the courts to force him to close the deal. And everything I read during the saga seemed to be in agreement that Musk had ~0% chance of getting out of the deal.

[eropple]

Then why'd he offer $45bil for it?

[johannes1234321]

For the attention (and maybe for being stoned)

[AnimalMuppet]

Even Musk can buy attention cheaper than that.