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[dupe] Twitter locks staff out of offices until next week (bbc.com)
60 points by dmarchand90 on Nov 18, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 48 comments



Buried inside this discussion is pointer to a very interesting comment on Elon Musk's (allegedly) real reason for buying Twitter..

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33510272#33510919


That conspiracy theory doesn't work - it fails to explain his current mismanagement and fumbling around which only endangers Twitter. Had the conspiracy any legs, his transition to ownership would be utterly boring.


Maybe it appears careless from the outside looking in but could there be a chance that these are his tactics to turn a large ship around in a short time?

(Not a fan of Musk, just playing devil's advocate because I enjoy exploring other perspectives)


Fyi, perhaps others find this useful also to keep up with the latest: https://twitterisgoinggreat.com/

They have RSS too: https://twitterisgoinggreat.com/feed.xml


Is he on drugs? Or having some sort of breakdown? Honestly asking; it’s hard to imagine messing up so badly.


Someone on Twitter said that Twitter has gone full Monty Python and I fully agree.

I feel sad for all that will be lost - the wit, the wisdom, the ability to reach out to pretty much anyone.


In other news, peoples desire to virtue signal is as strong as ever.

George Hotz is going to be doing a 12 week internship at Twitter to optimize their code. And if you know anything about Hotz, he doesn't involve himself with any bullshit, and most certainly knows what he is doing software wise. Twitter is far from lost.


I’m not being a dick - I genuinely can’t tell if this is parody or not and so I find it quite exciting.

The idea of geohot pulling a 12-week “internship” to “optimise Twitter” to spite the hordes of “virtue signallers” is so hilariously self-referential and Pythonesque it’s fantastic.


Indeed, I hope it's really witty sarcasm, rather than seriously thinking that there's actually a single 10x engineer out there that will come in and optimize the shit out of Twitter.

They could write an entire Silicon Valley season out of this prompt.



I think it would take 12 weeks just to find out where the tech debt is.


He isn't pulling an internship to spite the virtue signalers, he is doing it because he believes in the product and its purpose.

The point was that anyone who is calling Twitter dead is virtue signaling.


I must have seen 50 people claiming they were leaving and sharing their Mastodon.

Every single time they've continued tweeting with exactly the same frequency.

I also suspect they were a pretty bloated organisation and they needed to change things radically.

It will ruffle a lot of Elon hating feathers, but Twitter is going nowhere.


Can you honestly believe that an organization can continue working with 3/4 of its stuff gone?

Hell, there are projects with a bus factor of one beneath all of our infrastructure (insert relevant xkcd here), and those are much simpler than such a monstrosity like twitter.


I don't know what his true motivations are (do you?), but maybe he's just curious what the codebase of Twitter looks like; or maybe Musk is promising a big paycheck if he manages to... to do what? I don't think Musk even knows what his goal is.


No, Hotz said in public while arguing with some other person on Twitter that he is willing to do 12 weeks at twitter for just cost of living in sf. Then Musk dropped in and said "you're on".


This this satire?


I believe it referred to the level of absurdity of their leadership’s actions, all done in public - reaching the point of performance art.


Isn't everyone just going to move to Mastodon eventually?

Perhaps it will be a slow transition, just like Signal has gained more and more users in the past years.


I have over 500 contracts in my phone book.

I recently installed Signal and 8 people were on there.

I'm not sure how to count but I suspect 450+ are on WhatsApp.

The minorities can be very loud on this stuff. Most people don't care.


Probably not, unless there's some major changes. It's a fairly unintuitive platform to use, and it's not really scalable.


I wonder how all this, which looks like an ongoing chain of management missteps, is going to affect Musk's personal brand and, as a result, Tesla and SpaceX.


That's ok, just cancel thanksgiving so people can catch up. No big deal.


I thought he gave everyone who wanted Thanksgiving and Christmas and new years (and Hanukkah) off with pay.

They just had to not click on a button by 5pm yesterday.


Anyone know what Twitter's infrastructure deployment process was like?

I assume that if anything will go wrong, it'll start there; the software itself shouldn't need to be handheld so much.

If it's all Kubernetes and what-not, and it still too complex for mere-mortals to grok then all companies should be worried.


Was this planned sabotage by Elon?


If a lot of your employees leave, its probably wise to revoke access to prevent anyone from potentially sabotaging stuff.


Yes, Elon is playing 4D chess.


I'm just waiting for the Bane-posting to start.

"I'm taking down this company....... with no survivors"


"Have we started the fire yet?"

– Elon's supporters maybe.


… is he? This doesn’t seem to be under his control anymore.


Easy, he went through a couple of billion future outcmes of this 4D chess game and settled for the only one in which he wins. I onow, he seems to think of himself more like Tony Stark than Dr. Strange, but still.


4D chess on how to simultaneously burn down his whole career/companies?


don't you mean 4D Polytopia? Musk said that chess is way to easy.


On a Mankomania board.


As far as I'm noticing, he's planning on being a competitor for news subscriptions through crowdsourcing it at 8$ /month.

This will also include fake news, since those people/easy believers could also pay the 8$.


Alex Cohen:

"I was laid off from Twitter this afternoon. I was in charge of managing badge access to Twitter offices."

"Elon just called me and asked if I could come back to help them regain access to HQ as they shut off all badges and accidentally locked themselves out."

Elon Musk:

"Thanks for helping out. You’re a lifesaver!"

https://twitter.com/anothercohen/status/1593404311832338442?...


-- it's a satirical humor account --


It’s a verified account. Blue check mark FTW baby.


They paid for the badge


A troll doesn't need any stinking badges, but sometimes it might be worthwhile paying for it anyway.


Seems like sticking to Twitter's parody requirements is harder than I thought.

https://twitter.com/anothercohen/status/1593407201913278464


I’m really confused. The reply is from the real Elon account.


No need to be confused. Elon is a giant troll on Twitter, with a dash of actual Tesla or SpaceX news every now and then.


Always good, and not confusing at all, when the CEO of something is also a giant troll (on that same something).


More like he is a giant laughing stock.


He could be trolling?




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