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Atom's avatar

When we venerate sociopaths as the leaders of our economy, we should not be surprised when one acts out on his tendencies. It’s a shame that Twitter is being torn apart this way. The message I take though is that we desperately need workers to have more power in companies, both public and private. There would be fewer mass layoffs and the destruction of Twitter would look very different. Workers have as much or more skin in the game than owners and boards, so they should have a say in the decisions that can cost them their job and home.

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Philip Koop's avatar

I think it was @SevaUT who said that the saga of Musk and Twitter was a mid-life crisis story told from the point of view of the sports car. Seems right.

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Dave Karpf's avatar

Oh damn that's a really good one.

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hw's avatar

Musk apparently tweeted that he was planning to hire a new Twitter CEO, apparently to get out from under the disaster he created and to shift the blame to someone else. Who would walk into a snake pit in a lion's den?

If Musk is focused on an everything app, why wouldn't someone else recreate Twitter, using the Twitter employees who were fired or fled?

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Geoff Anderson's avatar

What I *read* is that he said he would at some point hire a CEO to run twitter. I have to think he will do that some time in the future, after he has had his *fun* with it.

For now, it is all shitposting, and public fighting with the engineers who know how it runs publicly.

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Philip Koop's avatar

OMG that Wired piece is art.

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Dave Karpf's avatar

Top 5 all-time, without question. (And I say this as the guy who read all-of-the-WIREDs.)

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Mark Dykeman's avatar

I must say that I enjoy your takes, Dave. I have felt that he has been trying to turn Twitter back into a startup with the underlying mentality. But, as an analogy, I would not expect an energy utility or an established telco to follow the path they are taking, especially if you believe, like I tend to, that Twitter should be considered vital infrastructure with service levels and reliability.

I mean, in the end the owner will do what he wants but honestly, who the heck would want to sign on for this?

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Cheez Whiz's avatar

Turns out moving fast and breaking things isn't a great idea when you own the stuff you're breaking.

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