I realized Elon wasn't a scientist or engineer a long time ago. But a good businessman I thought he was and I think it's too early to say in this case whether that holds true. One issue is that since the company is now private, we most likley will not get to see it's profit. All we will have is what employees or musk says. So I still think it's too soon to make conclusions.
No good businessperson runs around as half-cocked in bright, broad daylight as this guy. I’ve heard plenty of large fund managers say he’s too overboard to take seriously enough to invest in his businesses.
90% of Twitter's revenue comes from ads. Advertisers are reportedly abandoning the platform en masse, and the rest will follow once Musk does his next stupid thing.
No amount of layoffs is going to cover the dissolution of their revenue basis. Twitter will become a thing of the past, like MySpace.
An alternate framing: one was president of the United States and one got pushed down a flight of stairs for making fun of a kid because his father committed suicide.
But as a businessman, Musk has done far more for society with SpaceX and Starlink than Trump ever did as a sketchy real estate developer, or media personality. Let's give that to Musk, not withstanding his dubious personal choices, polarizing public persona, or this questionable decision of buying and then gutting an unprofitable social network.
I have very strong, very mixed feelings about Musk and am not sure if he is a great businessmen or not. However, I did appreciate DHH's blog post about Job's returning to Apple. Massive layoffs and Jobs admitted that mistakes will be made, but at least decisions are being made. Short worthwhile read: https://world.hey.com/dhh/apple-fired-4-100-when-steve-jobs-...
And then races to lay off half the workforce days after coming in, based on napkin calculations that suspiciously work out to cut costs to cover the loans he took with the company as collateral ahead of time.
After trying to fight off in court the completion of this impulse buy.
If Mr. Musk turns this around after so much fumbling around, that would be the display of business acumen that his admirers expect of him, so far trying to say that these moves make sense amounts to saying that these are the tactics of a genius beyond mortal ken, because they simply don't look good.
Don't forget TSLA is down ~63% of it's price since april 14th compared with S&P500 drop to ~86% in the same time frame, impossible to say what's causally linked, but musk is not just out ~40+billion from this whole ordeal.
I wish the Elon anti-fans would wait for Elon fans to say something, then respond to them, rather than posting 900 comments picking fights with people who haven't even posted yet. This obsession with adoring or condemning love-hate branded celebrities as quickly and loudly as possible is unbelievably grating.
