Adrian HonJul 2, 2023

Here's the thing with Elon.

At Tesla and SpaceX, he could hire engineers so passionate about electric cars and building rockets, so frustrated by the slow pace at other organisations, they willingly worked themselves to the bone and covered up for his many shortcomings. Quite how sustainable that is, we'll see.

But there are plenty of other companies with the same mission as Twitter. And software engineers are so sought after, he can't hire the best on peanuts. It can't work.

Show threadMichel van BaalJul 2, 2023
@adrianhon it could be even more subtle: I have the hunch that the success of spacex lies a bunch of ambitious engineers, who managed to get him to open the financial/politcal doors they couldn’t, by cleverly feeding his ego in thinking he was ‘the master space engineer’. That scenario can never work at Twitter.
Show threadDave T-W

@MichelvanBaal @adrianhon SpaceX thrived because they had excellent partners and a tight regulatory framework* to be able to do *anything*. And behind the mad genius energy that Elon brought, proper grownups like Tom Mueller, Hans Koenigsmann and above all, COO Gwynne Shotwell.

*There is a strong concern that they've been cavalier about the permissions they received for Boca Chica, compared to what they ended up doing. That's risky as negative public perception will eventually require government action.

Jul 2, 2023 at 8:01pmWeb
Show threadHairyChrisJul 3, 2023

@davoloid @MichelvanBaal @adrianhon The whole Starship vanity project may well do for SpaceX.

Regularly trashing nature reserves is not a good look.