The fact that he participated in the D round does not mean he was not part of the A round.
“Tesla was founded not by Elon Musk, but rather by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in July 2003. The two bootstrapped the fledgling auto company until Elon Musk led the company’s $7.5 million Series A …”
ICYMI, last night’s SNL sketch
The point was actually that he did “forget about money”. Others had rejected reusable rockets because they didn’t believe the economics favored reusability (there simply weren’t enough launches each year), though the technology was demonstrated decades ago (McDonnell Douglas DC-X - Wikipedia). Musk solved the problem because he believed it was necessary to colonize Mars. Now he’s had to build a satellite constellation to keep those reusable rockets busy.
Turns out the rushed and poorly planned layoff was rushed and poorly planned.
Musk’s fans here will claim this is a sign of his brilliance.
5 out of ~3,700….doesn’t seem that momentous.
No snarky comment necessary. I have never been a Musk fan. I personally think he’s crazy.
Sorry, but comparing what Musk has done with SpaceX to DC-X is laughable. I don’t say that in a mean way, but really, no comparison.
If he were to run it to the ground, would it be the worst thing?
He had over an year to study Twitter’s organization, so I don’t think the firing is necessary unplanned. I am sure he has consulted his legal team on what’s and what’s not.
DC-X never got to critical mass so we don’t know what it could have become if the funding had been there. Musk has brilliantly manipulated/persuaded investors, governments and customers to give him billions of dollars over the last decade. That’s achieved an enormous amount. Now we have to see what’s sustainable if his aura of brilliance becomes tarnished. When the tide goes out you see who has been swimming naked.
But you have to admit, the success that SpaceX has achieved is stunning. Meanwhile NASAs SLS is late by years, way over budget, and is still using surplus equipment from the space shuttle program. Additionally, SLS boosters are not reusable ensuring that their cost per pound of payload will be enormous. NASAs old approach is like buying a brand new Mercedes S Class each time you want to go to the store and lighting it on fire after you arrive.
IMO it’s the money and power grabs that lead to the human cruelty (such as with mass, sudden layoffs). Major tech advances can be accomplished without being a jerk. Sometimes I wonder what happened to the intrinsic desire to make the world better without the distortion of trying to becoming ultra-rich off it it. Sabin, Salk, Curie, Bell, Edison, Wright brothers, Marconi. Were they doing it to become part of the 0.000001%?
Perhaps, but that is not relevant. Elon has made major tech advances that no one else has, and yes, he is a jerk. And that will cost him a lot of customers, and may even cost him some federal/state contracts & grants. (If NASA had a nice guy who could build rockets, NASA would buy them, but they don’t.)
Perhaps the response is for a nice guy to build a Twitter competitor?
Or, thinking about this another way. The Murdoch’s started Fox News which now significantly beats the cable competition (CNN,MSNBC) in ratings. But I have no doubt that some advertisers think hard and long about possible blowback from advertising on FoxNews, particularly on some of their more strident commentators’ shows. Fox knows that, and don’t much care.
Oh please come down to earth, this is typical for tech companies, don’t take it personally. I left the Bay Area when 90% of engineers got laid off in the dot com burst. Here is another massive lay off coming.
And Intel is laying off thousands (perhaps as many as 20,000) right now. Just in time for the holidays. So, Twitter laying off a few thousand is a comparative drop in the bucket.
H and I worked at a particular fruit company for 10 years. It was common practice to lay off (RIF) employees and then bring them back as contractors for a short period of time.
The contracting rate was higher than the employee rate but the Big Fruit Company could manage staffing much easier since contractors are easily onboarded and then again off boarded.
So…this one is a big meh.
Nearly all big tech firms have become bloated in the last few years. That’s what the lack of competitions often does. Too many ancillary functions/hires/departments that are outside these firms’ core competences and don’t contribute to technological/product advances. Retrenchment is unavoidable and neither is the timing exactly surprising. These firms still need talents but they’ll be much more discriminating in hiring than they have been in the recent past.
And FB is expected to have mass layoffs this week. From what I’ve read majority of Twitter employees layoffs were not from US offices
Yup, happens all the time, big and large companies.
Years ago, I was the Finance guy for a company that was bought/merged with an offshore company. They asked me to stay on to run the US-subsidiary. (Fortunately, one of the Board members told me confidentially, that all ops were moving offshore, and long-term, there would be no US-sub.) So, I was a good soldier, and continued to cranking out reports and do the US and consolidated books.
Months later, the NJ HQ was down to just a few folks, mostly H1-B’s and me. Asked to present at a Board meeting; ss soon as the Board meeting concluded, I received a call from the offshore HQ and was told my “services are no longer required.” Well, ok, I’ll leave my travel receipts in the office for reimbursement, and return home (CA).
A week later, I received a call from my old NJ office. The offshore folks had flown to NJ for transition, and just figured out that they had little idea how to do US accounting, much less the accounting software (Quickbooks) and asked if I ‘could I help them out’. Uh, “your Chairman told me last week that ‘my services were no longer needed’, and that is an exact quote.”
Guys, I sent all the passwords in a secure file to the Chairman. After some professional discussion, and their offer to fly to CA, I said, ‘sure, I’d be happy to help for a daily contractor rate of $xx, paid in advance’. But they expected me to work for free. Uhh, ‘no, not gonna happen’.
784 in SF, 106 in SJ, 93 in Santa Monica according to state filings.