Elon Musk has made a serious mistake

[Synthaholic]

 

[Synthaholic]

Users on the forums of the Cybertruck Owners Club are finding out that their shiny new trucks are losing their shine and starting to show signs of rust and corrosion.

A forum user under the username of Raxar started a thread on the forum on Feb. 1, where he complained to his fellow Cybertruck brethren that the metal on their new truck started forming small flecks of rust after two days of rain shortly after delivery . . . Additionally, another user under the username vertigi3pc reported similar spots on their Cybertruck both on the forum and on the Cybertruck subreddit. According to them, Tesla is aware of the issue, but the service center he went to was not able to fix it then and there . . .

. . . Owners are getting creative with their methods to remove spots. One user on the forum reported that Barkeepers Friend and Windex restored its luster after it showed similar rust spots before, while others are willing to adapt to the eventual "rat-rod" look said corrosion will give their Cybertrucks.

" know I’m a weirdo but I actually kinda like the corrosion and hopefully the associated patina that will come with it," a user named DumpsterFire replied.

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www.thestreet.com

 

[Skylar]

I don't understand a lot of the technical stuff, but it's becoming clear that firing all these engineers was a monumental mistake, which may sink Twitter, Tesla, and his wealth.

Gergely Orosz​

4h • 13 tweets • 3 min read
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What I'm hearing from inside Twitter:

Several people who were let go on Friday, then asked to come back were given less than an hour as a deadline.

Software engineers who got this call I know of all said "no" and the only ones who could eventually say "yes" are on visas.

Also:
Many people got a phone call with this "offer", and a short deadline. Lots of people stopped answering unknown numbers to avoid this.

Inside Twitter, managers I hear are getting desperate, trying to call back more people. People are saying "no" + more sr engineers are quitting.

None of this is surprising. As a rule of thumb, after you lay off X% of people, you get an additional half attrition. Lay off 10%: expect another 5% to quit. Lay off 50%... not unreasonable to expect another 25% to quit.

Calling back people you just fired rarely works.
Why it's a problem that senior people are quitting and people don't want to come back:

Twitter has a complex architecture for a reason. And it needs some level of institutional knowledge to maintain.

This institutional knowledge both got fired + is walking out the door.

In practical terms: software engineers who are with the company are now put on oncall rotations for systems they have no idea about. I mean, they can figure it out... easiest to talk with someone who knows these.

The problem is when there's no such person left.

Talking with engineers, some things people don't realize about Twitter:

• On prem data centers
• Lots of infra-level advanced stuff. Eg multi-level infra feature flags
• Advanced infra-level incremental rollouts to avoid outages that were caused by infra changes in the past

Unless the institutional knowledge is somehow retained, in days/weeks/months, we should, sadly, expect to see a lot more outages.

The straightforward option to reduce damage is:
1. Retain experienced folks, at least mid-term
2. Hire and onboard new people with these seniors

I know that on Twitter it's fashionable to mock how "slow" Twitter was to ship.

But the more I learn about the internal systems, and why it was built in a way, the more impressed I am. Eg Twitter onboarding to k8s was extremely challenging (+brilliant) thanks to legacy infra.

Twitter has no nuance to discuss Twitter tradeoffs. But as I understand, there were many: some workaround of legacy decisions, some deliberate.

This doesn't change that Twitter is a complex system, and it's complex for good reasons. I really hope enough people stay who know why.

Also, thank you to both people who built these systems Twitter runs on, and especially those staying and maintaining them.

Keeping Twitter running became far more challenging overnight for no fault of ppl doing all this difficult work.

Thanks for keeping the lights on and more!

One thing that continues to bug me:

Elon Musk is an experienced operator and no stranger to layoffs (and their impact). He has a team of advisors from the VC world.

Surely they expected all this to happen. So, why did they do it? Or is this the plan?

Unroll available on Thread Reader

A timely comic from a former Twitter software engineer - several people told me he was one of the most productive web engineers -, who was also Twitter's unofficial Chief Cartoonist.

So a bit more of an insider view:



Worth linking how the author of the above comic got fired at Twitter.

He was working on a high-priority project at 9pm on Tuesday (after Elon bought Twitter). Disconnected and fired mid-work-meeting. No justification as to why.

Now he's suing Twitter.

Its been a pretty spectacular destruction of wealthy. Down from 44 Billion to what? 17 Billion? In like a year and change?

I don't know what's going to happen to Twitter. But I do know that if the outcome is poor, it won't be Elon Musk's fault.....according to Elon Musk.

 

[Synthaholic]

 

[Synthaholic]

 

[surada]

dems cant tolerate freedom of speech on twitter ...

Really why was Trump thrown off Twitter?

 

[surada]

Sure they can. That’s why they are leaving and choosing new platforms instead sitting around whining about it.

I don’t feel sorry Musk. His monumental arrogance is to blame.

Trump was permanently banned in 2021.

Twitter bans President Trump permanently

Twitter has suspended President Donald Trump from its platform, the company said Friday evening.

www.cnn.com

 

[westwall]

Really why was Trump thrown off Twitter?

Leftist censorship.

Duh

 

[yidnar]

Really why was Trump thrown off Twitter?

because at the time far leftist Dorsey ran the company .

 

[Synthaholic]

Trump was permanently banned in 2021.

Twitter bans President Trump permanently

Twitter has suspended President Donald Trump from its platform, the company said Friday evening.

www.cnn.com

No, that ban was lifted by Elmo. But then Trump fucked him by not posting a single tweet.

 

[Synthaholic]

 

[Captain Caveman]

Is this a Synthaholic mental illness/therapeutic/triggered thread?

Musk is a pillock, but by heck, you have it really bad.

 

[Synthaholic]

Would-be Tesla buyers snub company as Musk's reputation dips​

SAN FRANCISCO/LONDON, April 1 (Reuters) - The ranks of would-be Tesla buyers in the United States are shrinking, according to a survey by market intelligence firm Caliber, which attributed the drop in part to CEO Elon Musk's polarizing persona.

While Tesla continued to post strong sales growth last year, helped by aggressive price cuts, the electric-vehicle maker is expected to report weak quarterly sales, opens new tab as early as Tuesday.

Caliber's "consideration score" for Tesla, opens new tab, provided exclusively to Reuters, fell to 31% in February, less than half its high of 70% in November 2021 when it started tracking consumer interest in the brand.

Tesla's consideration score fell 8 percentage points from January alone even as Caliber's scores for Mercedes (MBGn.DE), opens new tab, BMW (BMWG.DE), opens new tab and Audi, which produce gas as well as EV models, inched up during that same period, reaching 44-47%.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. Musk in the past has blamed high-interest rates for curbing consumer demand for big ticket items like cars.

Caliber cited strong associations between Tesla's reputation and that of Musk for the scores.

"It's very likely that Musk himself is contributing to the reputational downfall," Caliber CEO Shahar Silbershatz told Reuters, saying his company's survey shows 83% of Americans connect Musk with Tesla.

Reuters spoke to five marketing, polling and car experts who said controversies surrounding Musk's increasingly right-wing politics and public statements are weighing on Tesla's brand and demand.

"It is hard enough to win sales without getting into politics," said Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

Economic fears, the lack of affordable new models and rising competition from cheaper rivals like China's BYD have also been cited by Wall Street analysts as putting pressure on Tesla.

 

[Synthaholic]

Tesla suffered its first year-over-year sales drop since the early days of the Covid pandemic

 

[Synthaholic]

Elon Musk Has Entered the ‘Please Clap’ Stage of His Megalomania

The X boss is begging you still to care about the once-influential social media app he very quickly made worthless.

www.thedailybeast.com

 

[Synthaholic]

 

[CrusaderFrank]

This certainly validates my thread title.

Elon Musk’s X Is Worth 71% Less Than He Bought It For, Says Fidelity

The cost is irrelevant

The Damage done to Fascist Progressives is incalculable! There’s no way to explain away Biden’s Fascist interference in social media

In any event, Grok can aggregate all of X information and be spun off fir a multitude of what Musk spent on Twitter

 

[Synthaholic]

The cost is irrelevant

The Damage done to Fascist Progressives is incalculable! There’s no way to explain away Biden’s Fascist interference in social media

In any event, Grok can aggregate all of X information and be spun off fir a multitude of what Musk spent on Twitter

You're delusional. I no longer engage on Twitter. I do that at the other Social Media micro-blogging sites and Twitter knockoffs which gained popularity when Elmo shit the bed a year ago, and hosted Nazis, removed safeguards, degraded the user experience, let in millions of fake accounts, and promoted Fascist ideas.

I still go there a lot, for sports and news, but my engagement is what would help Musk and X - me tweeting and adding content. I don't do that any longer. I take, but do not give.

 

[Synthaholic]

Less than a minute ago.

 

[Synthaholic]

Gerber is one of the major Tesla stockholders, so I smell trouble for Elmo on the horizon.