[drchopchop]

That would make more sense if 1) he had a coherent plan 2) he could motivate the good 20% to stick around 3) he had some way to differentiate high vs low performers.

Instead, he now gets an effectively random layoff, with potentially whole/important teams vanishing, and biased so that the best people (who can easily find jobs) are most incentivized to leave.

[b112]

he had a coherent plan

So if he doesn't share his actual plan with you, the media, and his competitors, he doesn't have a plan?

[martin_a]

You read the news that he cancelled working from home and then locked everybody out of office? Does that look like a plan to you? Does anything that happend in the last weeks look like a plan to you? The blue checkmark disaster for example?

[nemo44x]

It looks like MBA-101, just accelerated a lot. Drop the bottom, identify the best of the best, ask everyone else to commit or get out. The solid core replaces them with the top performers in their network they want to work with.

I'm convinced Twitter Blue was a test to see who gets shit done there, to help identify the top performers.

Obviously the trick is keeping the top performers.

[PuppyTailWags]

But the cost of Twitter Blue was to actively drive away your major revenue stream, the advertisers. When you're saddled with a ton of debt actively driving away your revenue doesn't seem like MBA-101 to me.

[b112]

Unless those advertisers won't be coming along into the new, changed twitter anyhow.

[PuppyTailWags]

That still doesn't look good to your future revenue stream, because you've costed at least one client over a billion dollars. Why would your future revenue stream pay you?

[oneeyedpigeon]

It doesn't sound like he's gone about optimising for talent, though. More like he's optimised for enthusiasm — which isn't a bad thing, but doesn't necessarily correlate with talent — and desperation. The majority of the most talented people aren't going to stay around for the abuse, they'll leave for better jobs elsewhere. Surely MBA-101 isn't "treat people like shit and you'll get the best out of them"?

[HDThoreaun]

Hard to believe he actually identified the top 20%, and if he did hard to believe he convinced them to stay.

[freejazz]

Nice Kendall Roy impression

[some-guy]

He keeps changing Twitter Blue, he tried to back out of the deal but then came back, he randomly changes his mind based on questionable troll account replies. For every good idea he has (I'm not convinced the engineering of Tesla or SpaceX was mainly his ideas), he has many other terrible ones (Hyperloop, Tesla Boring tunnels as transport, etc).

I believe he's just an attention-seeker and is becoming far more unhinged in the public sphere, whether it's drugs, manic-depression, or some combination. Given his recent behavior, I don't think the success of SpaceX or Tesla had _anything_ to do with his actual CEO or engineering skills, but rather his public image attracting the right people under him willing to work for smaller pay.

[robocat]

Jim Keller talks about his impression of Elon after working with him - skip to 1:20:50 and watch the next 4 minutes of this interview: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA (the whole interview is full of effing amazing insight, IMHO).

Jim also talks about Elon’s engineering skills at the 50 minute mark for about 6 minutes in this interview: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1TmuJSbms9c

Elon seems like a complete tool to me. But here is Jim, a proven smart engineer-type, give a strongly positive opinion on Elon’s engineering ability. Many effective people have personality traits I abhor.

Unless you have worked with Elon yourself, and you are a good engineer yourself, you are just making shit up. I think it is normal to hate, but at least try to be honest.

[ModernMech]

I don't know, it's hard to trust anyone who has worked for a narcissist like Musk to tell the truth about said narcissist in public media. Powerful narcists love to surround themselves by people who are willing to use their credentials to launder the reputation of the narcissist. My favorite example comes from Dr. Deborah Birx regarding fmr. President Trump during the pandemic:

  "He's been so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data. I think his ability to analyze and integrate data that comes out of his long history in business has really been a real benefit during these discussions about medical issues.”

This is just about what Jim Keller says about Musk in the first video. You'll notice when he talks about what he learned from Musk he's very vague, and then he pivots directly to a story about how his friend invented a more efficient electric motor that was better than anything they had. That's a story about engineering prowess, but that story is pointedly not about Musk. Why does he need to pivot to another engineer when talking about engineering prowess? Because he doesn't have anything to say about Musk's engineering prowess, and can only speak to his technical philosophies. Of course those may be sound, and perhaps helps the engineering team, but having ideas about local maxima doesn't make one an engineer.

The second link isn't any better. Jim says Musk is the "real deal" and a great engineer, but instead of examples of that, just talks about how Musk prefers to receive presentations with solutions first, and got upset when they weren't frontloaded. Which is a fine point of view I guess, and maybe is related to managing an engineering process, but all the technical work was done by others.

And finally, as a robotics engineer myself, I have a very hard time listening to anyone from the Tesla autonomous group unless they want to explain why they are testing Tesla's beta quality AP (that is in fact lethal and has caused deaths) on the general public without their awareness or consent. Or explain why after the first decapitation caused by Musk's insistence on not using LIDAR in their cars, this group failed to step up and course correct. Instead they doubled down, and their decisions resulted predictably in nothing getting fixed, leading to a second decapitation. Who exactly made the call on those decisions? That's really all I need to hear from them.

[generj]

Yes?

The CEO’s role is to articulate a vision to workers (particularly to middle management). If it’s a secret plan, then functionally there is not a plan.

Good plans can be executed even if competitors know it because they rely upon competitive advantages the firm has. Even if this is only true in the short to medium term, by the medium term when competitors can pivot the company is executing on another plan.

[disgruntledphd2]

Unless his plan is to destroy the value of Twitter (such as it is) then his actions do not suggest a coherent plan.

[_ugfj]

Based on leaked texts and his answers to personalities like catturd, he is in a right wing filter bubble and truly believes there was a censorship problem with Twitter. In a leaked text he was outright asked whether he could buy Twitter after Babylon Bee was suspended. https://twitter.com/MattBinder/status/1591813699840495616 He made an offer for Twitter at a nonsensical price and only went through with the sale because of the looming court case. Chances are extremely low there is a plan hiding in this mess.

[sidibe]

When has Elon not shared a plan? He tends to announce everything before they've even started working on.