NEW: Elon Musk sent Twitter employees an email about the state of Twitter 2.0. He acknowledged the company has been through a period of radical change but said the changes were necessary… 1/
— Zoë Schiffer (@ZoeSchiffer) March 25, 2023
Comp increases will be based on X Corp stock. Current grants are based on a $20b valuation. Musk says he sees a “clear but difficult path” to $250 billion valuation which would mean current grants could 10x. 3/
— Zoë Schiffer (@ZoeSchiffer) March 25, 2023
Musk says Twitter is on the path of an inverse startup. 5/5
— Zoë Schiffer (@ZoeSchiffer) March 25, 2023
you steal everything on the way out instead of on the way in? https://t.co/AQQLL0OHBx
— kilgore trout, death to putiner (@KT_So_It_Goes) March 26, 2023
imagine a guy on an H1B who's going to be stack-ranked out of the company if he doesn't figure out how to maintain uptime on 25% of the previous data center budget as elon gets to hour three about "freedom of speech ….. but within the law, not woke"
— Josh Fruhlinger (@jfruh) March 25, 2023
Looking into it.
— Centrism Fan Acct 🔹 (@Wilson__Valdez) March 26, 2023
assuming you're thinking of these two tweets, which i think about all the time pic.twitter.com/ZTGiQU6X8Z
— Josh Fruhlinger (@jfruh) March 25, 2023
Dangerman
WTF is an inverse startup? Is that the same as downward growth? Hey, using words randomly is kinda fun.
Fuck him.
John Revolta
@Dangerman: Sounds to me like when you take a successful company and turn it into two guys in a garage. So, yeah!
Splitting Image
A stopdown?
montanareddog
@Splitting Image: funded by misadventure capital
SectionH
I hang around the twitshit for the archaeologists I follow, mostly. Earlier today I blocked ads I’d never seen before. Have a boring account on Mastodon just in case. And Post.
Redshift
@Dangerman: If a startup is the phase where you burn money while building for future success, maybe an inverse startup is where you make some money while accelerating toward a crash?
Burnspbesq
Twitter, Tesla, SpaceX, Boring: four flavors of shitshow.
Leon Skum should thank his lucky stars that DOJ is preoccupied with Trump.
West of the Rockies
So much jargon and shit I did not understand above…
An inverse startup… is that like saying jump stop instead of jump start?
Add Musk to the list of people I wish would spontaneously combust.
Amir Khalid
Agent Scully seems to enjoying the new toys I just got her at the pet store.
Amir Khalid
Guys, Elon is just making shit up as he goes along. It may sound like it means something, but I suspect it doesn’t.
Tony Jay
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t remember that one, but I’m sure that Agent Mulder will track you down before the end of the episode.
Rose Weiss
@Amir Khalid: Agree. He’s high on his own supply. Also still thinks he.s the smartest guy in the room.
rikyrah
@Amir Khalid:
Awe🤗
Ruckus
He’s such a sharp cookie.
Pays twice the asking price and finds out that the business is worth less than what was being originally asked for it, is on his way to make it worth even less and seemingly thinks making it worse will make him some good money. He’s the worlds wealthiest man?
I believe that the way wealth is measured may not be a particularly good indicator of having a functional brain.
Jay
@Amir Khalid:
photo’s or it didn’t happen, talk to Watergirl.
Agent Scully should be front paged.
Jay
On a break from work,
quiet quitting for now, will probably be quitting,
Sucks because the job had so much promise, and of a mechanical mind, got to see some neat stuff, learn new stuff.
Que sera,…..
Jay
@Jay:
eg, 1950’s pipe threader, that had hydraulically activated mechanical arms that locked onto the pipe and centered it. Way to complex for most plumbers, but cool. After all that time, just needed a new oil filter.
Shalimar
I love the clear valuation to $250 billion part. Because he thinks he can turn Twitter into a bank. SVB only had assets of $209 billion when it failed, and it was the bank of choice for all the edgelord assholes like Musk.
Baud
I too see a clear but difficult path to $250 billion. It involves winning a monster lottery pot about 500 times. Mathematically, not impossible.
Shalimar
@Ruckus: Musk is basically saying all the problems with Twitter were lazy employees who didn’t have any incentive to work towards making a profit. Only a matter of time before it all breaks down and he realizes they had institutional knowledge that he can’t replace
And you are so right about the valuation. He had 6 months between offer and purchase. Saying he bought a company he didn’t realize was failing doesn’t make any sense.
Aussie Sheila
Musk’s obvious narcissism and business failure is the best shortcut to taking down the second most pernicious waste of capital after finance that I can think of. It’s spectacular, and nothing he tweets can hide it. The whole world can see his arse, and by extension, all the libertarian arseholes in his wake have been pinged as well.
Excellent work, and one more step to undermining the notion that the Uber wealthy know what they are doing, and that their riches adhere as a result of their superior smarts.
One more brick against the wall.
Betsy
@Dangerman: It’s when you charge money to users, saying it will give the company a revenue stream that it can use to give users a small revenue stream. Lol
lowtechcyclist
@John Revolta:
Sounds right to me!
Mai Naem mobile
@Splitting Image: i would say shutdown not stopdown. I feel sorry for the h1b’s who are stuck there with slim pickings for new jobs.
ColoradoGuy
Man, this guy is high as a kite, on who knows what, not boring old-school cocaine, that’s for sure. What a sight. Right-wing reactionary billionaire loses his mind in public, thinking he’s something between Fidel Castro and Ayn Rand. All that’s missing is the beard and the patronizing, nasal voice, but the rest is pitch-perfect.
lowtechcyclist
Looks like some serious shit happening in Israel right now. Trade unions on strike with the backing of the companies they work for, universities closed, ports and Ben-Gurion Airport shut down, streets flooded with people.
Apparently Israelis aren’t particularly keen on Netanyahu trying to turn himself into a dictator.
Matt McIrvin
@Splitting Image: I think the Mafia term is bust-out.
Frankensteinbeck
Suddenly making pay dependent on stock prices screams desperation.
moonbat
@Amir Khalid: Daggoo?
Steeplejack
@Jay:
What went wrong?
trnc
I thought it was a little odd even for the NYT to create a headline based on pure conjecture on valuation from the CEO, but I figured the article would contain an actual valuation range based on the usual standards, but nope.
WaterGirl
@Jay: I have all but begged for photos of Agent Scully several times. Hoping to see some in my inbox soon. Ish.
Ken
@Frankensteinbeck: I worked at a startup that didn’t manage to start up, and near the end the boss was talking about paying part of the compensation in deferred stock options — that is, we get nothing now, but if the company ever went public, we would receive options.
Sounds like Musk is floating kind of the same idea. That is, if “X Corp” is what he’s planning to call Twitter when taking it public again?
West of the Rockies
@WaterGirl:
She’s Canadian, okay? She goes to a different school.
StringOnAStick
Musk’s pernicious influence is why a friend of mine is quitting a high paying job after 20 years. She’s producing tons of business but if she had an assigned admin person to handle the low level paperwork she could increase production by 1/3. She told the boss she can’t keep doing 50-60 hour weeks; his response was “that’s how Elon does it so you can do it too”. That was when she started implementing her exit plan. Libertarian tech bro BS is some major impenetrable BS.
opiejeanne
@West of the Rockies: That made me giggle.
PaulB
Late to the thread, but I can’t let this one pass. No, this isn’t about base pay; it’s about bonuses. Stock options and stock grants are an integral part of the compensation in the software industry, and engineers were legitimately worried about what would happen to a key component of their compensation when the company went private, meaning no stock.
If Musk wanted to hang on to the few remaining employees, he had to offer them something equivalent to the stock grants and options they could get elsewhere. He’s been promising something like this for months and it looks like he finally has something resembling a plan.
I don’t know enough about the plan to comment on its fairness or its efficacy in hanging onto talent, but it’s not about desperation.
frosty
@WaterGirl: Maybe Ballon-Juice should go on a general strike until we see pix of Agent Scully?
Burnspbesq
@PaulB:
Yeah, but it shouldn’t have taken nearly as long as it did. Every law firm worthy of the name has a wide selection of such plans sitting on its servers, because they’ve been there and done that many times. Leon’s bizarre aversion to lawyers will once again impel him to reinvent the wheel, and God only knows if it will be round.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@frosty: Okay, pictures of Agent Scully, and far, far fewer pics of Trump. Is that a deal for the ages?
WaterGirl
@frosty: @Boris Rasputin (the evil twin):
I would vote for more photos of Agent Scully and
fewerno photos of Trump.