HN Explorer

Elon Musk's letter to all Twitter employees

11 points by Maro ↗ HN
From: Elon Musk To: Team [at Twitter] Subject: A Fork in the Road Date: Nov. 16, 2022 [time stamp removed]

Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.

Twitter will also be much more engineering-driven. Design and product management will still be very important and report to me, but those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway.

At its heart, Twitter is a software and servers company, so l think this makes sense.

If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below:

[Link removed]

Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance.

Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful.

Elon

15 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 44.7 ms ] thread
kwertyoowiyop
“Aboard my ship, excellent performance is standard, standard performance is sub-standard, and sub-standard performance is not permitted to exist - that, I warn you.”

- Captain Queeg (The Caine Mutiny)

hirundo
It was Queeg's paranoia that was his downfall, not an insistence on excellence.
gvb
It was also Queeq's substandard performance.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Caine_Mutiny

hirundo
Yep, he ran his ship aground, and vigorously undermined his officers' authority. I love that book and everything else Wouk wrote.
kwertyoowiyop
I need to read Wouk’s other books. I’ve read Caine Mutiny three times, Winds of War once, and that’s it. Which should I read next?
hirundo
Easy choice given that list: War and Remembrance.
kwertyoowiyop
Winds of War was an entertaining read but wow -- depressing in a way that stuck with me for a long time. As intended, I'm sure. Wouk wrote some very dramatic scenes.
kwertyoowiyop
Yes! Statements like this showed Queeg's focus on appearances and compensating for his own insecurity, compared to the competence and quiet confidence of Captain DeVriess.
brookst
Can’t imagine many top notch product or design people staying after reading that.

So, mediocre product vision and engineers who have been told performance is measured by LoC? What could possibly go wrong?

The one thing Twitter has going for it is Musk’s avid use of the product. To the extent he is representative of the user base at large, maybe he can pull off a Jobs-style “product vision from the CEO suite” success. Then again, Jobs didn’t get bored and wander off the way Musk tends to.

gusestrella
How can someone at twitter reconcile his public tweets VS these expectations ? If i get ask to sacrifice my personal health & time with family for what ? So elon can say he owns the libs ?
f0e4c2f7
Some people like working round the clock as hard as they can. Some people like playing with their kids in the evening.

If you're a single 19 year old who can code pretty well, seeing what you accomplish at twitter might be appealing.

For other people it might sound quite unpleasant. Just different choices for different folks.

This style is pretty consistent across SpaceX, Tesla, and now Twitter.

kwertyoowiyop
This registers. "Saving the company" once can be a lot of fun.

Twice gets tiring.

Three times is just bad management combined with masochism.

DemocracyFTW2
From a recent [article by The Register]:

An industry source working in software development told us: "I have worked on high pressure projects and if there is one lesson to be taken away from all of them is that longer hours result in negative productivity when it comes to code because you have to undo more (initially undetected) errors and engage in more debugging than if you ensured that people took the breaks they need.

"I have personally hauled someone off their chair and dragged them into a pub to eat something and then go home because they had coded through the night. Although I appreciate the effort, in my opinion you also have a duty as manager to ensure your crew stays sane and healthy - evidently Musk doesn't see it that way.'

In my opinion this is very much true.

[article by The Register](https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/16/musk_twitter_ultimatu...)