back to article X looks back at year of so-called 'engineering excellence' under Musk

It's no longer just opinion to say the platform formerly known as Twitter has declined in many ways since Elon Musk's takeover, but you wouldn't know that from the sound of all the back-patting from what's left of the company's engineering team. In a post to X on Friday by the XEng account used by Musk's social media …

  1. sarusa Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    I'll give the engineers a pat

    Given the complete sodding omnishambles incompetence of management, all best people quitting or being fired, the toilets not working, no janitors, dealing with f@#$ing Elmo's capricious stupid whims every f@#ing day, it is kind of amazing that the thing is still even creaking along - which is probably due to the 80 hours of unpaid overtime put in every week by the H-1Bs who can't quit.

    Okay, I wouldn't call it Engineering Excellence, just enough people beating their bloody heads against the wall till the wall breaks. If nothing else they get an A for effort.

    1. hittitezombie

      Re: I'll give the engineers a pat

      You also have to honour the fascist techbros who love working with an actual Nazi.

    2. Bebu
      Windows

      Re: I'll give the engineers a pat

      《people beating their bloody heads against the wall till the wall breaks.》

      Perversely this reminded me of the prequel to "Hell Bent" namely "Heaven Sent" where the Capaldi Doctor spent something like three quarters of the age of the Universe escaping a demented clockwork castle by chipping away at a wall of Azbantium with his bare fist.

      I imagine working in the Castle X engine room is pretty much the same but with no hope of escape.

    3. anothercynic Silver badge

      Re: I'll give the engineers a pat

      All the sensible people are bumming invites off other sensible people already on Twitter 2.0 (aka BlueSky). Those who prefer sensible discourse decamped to BlueSky as soon as they could. Twitter is dying amongst those people who initially made Twitter great.

  2. Howard Sway Silver badge

    X "shutdown the Sacramento data center, and began doing much more on-prem"

    That tends to become necessary when lots of users have gone and all that expensive kit is now sat there doing nothing.

    Shut the site down and sack everyone and they'd save even more money.

    1. LordZot

      Re: X "shutdown the Sacramento data center, and began doing much more on-prem"

      Processing efficiencies can also have the same effect.

  3. cjcox

    Move on already

    We need to get to Wayland as soon as possible.

    1. Frumious Bandersnatch
      Alien

      Re: Move on already

      *Weyland-Yutani (FTFY)

      1. Kane
        Joke

        Re: Move on already

        "Weyland-Yutani"

        Building Better Worlds Websites

  4. Lurko

    He's hopeful

    ..wanting all aspects of users financial lives on Tw*tter. After demonstrating the most crap headed managerial incompetence in running the company, who is going to be daft enough to trust him or the company with anything other than the vacuous brain farts that is all Twitter ever was? The one thing I want from my financial providers is that they are dull, the don't do exciting, or inspired, or spur of the moment stuff. They're run by suits who'd rather not make a decision if they can avoid it. There's also an essential plurality to my finances - I'll never rely on one organisation, does Elmo? Does he think other people should? I don't want the real boss of any of my financial providers to be some up-his-own-arse twerp who's all the time interfering with the person who holds the title of CEO, I don't want it to be somebody who's under investigating by the SEC and who's arrogance makes them think the rules still don't apply to them. So really, it's no from me.

    Stick to what you're good at Elmo, which appears to be windbag offers to fight Zuck. Where's that gone, you chickened out again?

    1. aerogems Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: He's hopeful

      Sadly, there are probably plenty of people who will jump at the chance. Just like there were people bragging that they were on disability or something, but were still paying for Twitter's blue check even though it was a significant portion of their total income. All the kool-aid drinkers on the far political right will probably be quick to sign up, not understanding that it's not regulated in any way, and if Twitler loses all their money he doesn't even owe them so much as an insincere "sorry about that." They'll lose their entire life savings, and then the rest of us taxpayers will be stuck bailing them out for the rest of their lives.

      1. quartzz

        Re: He's hopeful

        what a rosy, retarded and realistic future

    2. graeme leggett Silver badge

      Re: He's hopeful

      Lots of crypto fans on Twitter who think Musk is some sort of anointed one - they'll trust him, though they shouldn't.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "they'll trust him, though they shouldn't"

        As Crypto fans that is the main marketable skill.

        Gullible krill to feed to the whales.

        That said, Elon made a good chunk his money off online financial services, money which funded his later projects. I used to think that he was the one of the few salvageable members of the ebay/PayPal mafia. That was in the early Tesla/SpaceX days. But it looks like they all have brain worms. Peter Thiel, Musk, Meg Whitman... a generation of ghouls grasping at power in a post dot-com wasteland partially of their own making.

        No surprise in times of trouble Musk would go back to where he started with x.com, itself doomed to be an also-ran until Thiel and PayPal rescued him from himself.

    3. Ashentaine

      Re: He's hopeful

      >After demonstrating the most crap headed managerial incompetence in running the company, who is going to be daft enough to trust him or the company with anything other than the vacuous brain farts that is all Twitter ever was?

      When it comes to the majority, convenience always trumps security. A large number of people will think nothing of shoving all their personal and sensitive information into a single point of failure if it means they can save two clicks on their next Amazon impulse purchase.

      Thankfully though, Elon seems to be hell-bent on making Xwitter as inconvenient to use as absolutely possible so I imagine there won't be that many takers on this little venture.

      1. aerogems Silver badge

        Re: He's hopeful

        I would trust Amazon with my financial info long before Twitter, and before I let Amazon near that kind of info there'd be a certain southernly locale known for always being hot that would be in the middle of an ice storm.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: He's hopeful

          Adelaide?

    4. A Non e-mouse Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: He's hopeful

      Why would I trust my money to a company who refuses to pay their bills on the whim of their man-child owner? What assurance can I have that I can get my money out whenever I want? Or assurance that the man-child won't close my account because I don't upvote his social media posts enough?

      1. hittitezombie

        Re: He's hopeful

        Well, Trump did the same and managed to become a president somehow.

        Space Karen has bigger ideas, like being the Prophet Emperor King of Mars.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: He's hopeful

          wish he would hurry up and fuck off to mars

          and take his nazi army of fanboys with him

          The videos of them eating themselves would be gruesome but funny

    5. parlei

      Re: He's hopeful

      My thought too:I want my banking to be utterly boring, rules bound and exceedingly predictable. Musk-fun entities are, on the other hand, Chaotic Evil (or at least Evil Adjacent).

    6. quartzz

      Re: He's hopeful

      the one thing I want from a financial company, is a telephone number with a human on the end

      cannot seee that ever happening from tw tter

  5. Omnipresent Bronze badge

    It's tax season

    He's looking for a write off in the spring. All these billionaires write off their loses. How do the dumbest animals on the planet have the most wealth? They do what ever, without regard for anything else, and they stick together.

    Musk, and frumpy, were both planted by putang as new oligarchs in the west. Change my mind.

    1. Ashentaine
      Facepalm

      Re: It's tax season

      >How do the dumbest animals on the planet have the most wealth?

      They either luck into a genuinely useful concept and then have just enough sense to sell it on at an inflated value to people who have the wherewithal to do something useful with it, or they manage to find a way to exploit a system they could otherwise never meaningfully participate in and squeeze as much as they can out of it before slithering away.

      Unfortunately, both methods then give them the false belief that they're smarter than the rest of humanity because of this, and then they get idolized by others who hope to take the same shortcut to the top which feeds their bulbous egos even more, and that's how we get to situations like this.

  6. chivo243 Silver badge
    Go

    Going Down (in Droopy’s voice)

    Gee, paid 44b last year, now it’s value at 19b… that is probably wholly inflated too.

    Monorail anyone?

    1. Roj Blake Silver badge

      Re: Going Down (in Droopy’s voice)

      Well, sir, there's nothing on earth

      Like a genuine, bona fide

      Electrified, six-car monorail

      What'd I say?

      1. The Bobster

        Re: Going Down (in Droopy’s voice)

        Monorail!

  7. aerogems Silver badge
    FAIL

    So pay to play

    Basically, if you don't pay for Twitter, your content is pretty much guaranteed to sink to the bottom of the cesspool it has become.

    And there's just no way in any version of a horrific afterlife that I would ever let Twitter and Twitler be in charge of my financial info. Not without them being as stringently regulated as any other actual bank. That's the bare minimum for me to even consider it, and then they have to overcome the fact that Twitler is the one in charge. I won't say it's an impossible task, but it is certainly somewhere between Herculean and Sisyphean.

    The one and only thing I will grudgingly give Twitler, is that I didn't think the company would survive to see this day. I figured it would be dead and buried months ago. So, by some combination of blind luck and inertia, he managed not to completely kill it... yet, and not for a lack of effort. Of course the people who are left will try to claim how they've done amazing things... their jobs literally depend on it. Twitler is known for just rage firing people who happen to cross his field of view when he's in a bad mood. If they gave an honest assessment of how bad things have become over the last year, they'd be joining the ranks of those having to sue to get any promised severance. Just look at what happened to those SpaceX engineers a while back.

    1. Frumious Bandersnatch

      Re: So pay to play

      At least Hercules cleaned out the Augean stables. I don't see any shit being cleaned out on Twitter.

      1. aerogems Silver badge
        Coffee/keyboard

        Re: So pay to play

        Excellent follow up! Even kept with the Greek mythology theme! I regret that I have but one upvote to give. I guess if Twitler can't even manage the first of the 12 labors, maybe he's not the demigod he thinks he is.

        1. Roj Blake Silver badge

          Re: So pay to play

          I'm terrible with Greek mythology. You might say it's my Hercules' Ankle.

    2. Annihilator

      Re: So pay to play

      "Not without them being as stringently regulated as any other actual bank."

      Yep. Musk will no doubt be proudly banging on about how he'll look to be nimbler than the regulations allow, ignoring that the regulations are blimmin important and there for a reason.

      Anyone with half a brain will swerve whatever system he proffers. Just look to his previous version of X (PayPal) to see the absolute lax controls around that for details.

    3. tiggity Silver badge

      Re: So pay to play

      "Basically, if you don't pay for Twitter, your content is pretty much guaranteed to sink to the bottom of the cesspool it has become."

      Not a problem to me - not a social media fan so generally visit Twitter via links (e.g. in news articles) so a consumer of twitter content - so would not affect me. Must be plenty of other people use it similarly (readers, rather than writers)

  8. Wellyboot Silver badge

    time just flys past

    When you're enjoying El Muskies popcorn and beer events.

    Although the fireworks have been lacking a little in regularity of late.

    8o)

    1. keithpeter Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: time just flys past

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67269549

      Mr Musk is attending(*) a conference in the UK and doing a live discussion with our PM.

      Could be an opportunity for a sparkler or two if not actual fireworks.

      (I shall wait for the edited highlights myself)

      (*) Not sure if actual appearance or video link

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Bots are running rampant over there since Musk took over

    Yea sure, it's not as no one was running bots before Musk took over!

    Hey elon, get with the program. Start paying massive bribes .. er .. campaign contributions over on Capitol Hill and then, just like magic, all your problems will disappear.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Much like Reddit

    Twitters war on bots mostly killed off the useful, fun, and mostly harmless kind.

    The annoying ones just grew back stronger.

  11. LordZot

    Give me the Elon excitement any day

    And just how many of these product developments would have happened under the old board of directors? Zero. They were nothing more than a bored set of rubber stamps waiting to be useful.

    1. aerogems Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: Give me the Elon excitement any day

      How many of them would have been needed under the old Twitter leadership? Also zero. This is sort of like shooting yourself in the foot, then saying what a great job you did dressing the wound. All while ignoring the massive infection because you didn't think to clean the wound before dressing it.

    2. Andy 73 Silver badge

      Re: Give me the Elon excitement any day

      He appears to be destroying the old service (and much of the reason for people to be on there at all) in order to build a completely new and different product that no-one has actually asked for, and that is unrelated to the reasons people were there in the first place.

      I'd also question how many of these "product developments" are anything more than Friday afternoon brain-farts. "Great demo, Elmo, how about you fix the rampant bots that make posting a misery?"

      1. aerogems Silver badge

        Re: Give me the Elon excitement any day

        A few weeks, maybe months, ago I read a column written by some guy who uses ketamine recreationally. He told a story about how the last time he took some ketamine, he came up with what seemed like the most brilliant idea ever for a new TV show, so he made sure to write it down so he wouldn't forget it later. He looked at what he wrote in the cold light of sobriety and it was complete gibberish. Not just that it didn't make sense, it wasn't even words; only random letters. Now tell me that doesn't sound like half the shit Twitler does.

  12. BenDwire Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Nope!

    It's not going to happen. Xitter will have to wrench my financial details from my cold, dead, hands.

    My opinion of Mr Musk is becoming lower every time he makes an announcement. He's lucked out several times in his life, and from what I can make out has stood on the shoulders of giants to get where he is today. If I were him I'd just kick back and let other people run the businesses he's bought - I don't think he has anything more to offer.

    But what do I know? I never used Twitter, and never will.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    TwitterX dating app

    Right Wing INCEL men looking for love!

    1. aerogems Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: TwitterX dating app

      What are you talking about? It's already a place where people go to engage in a good old fashioned circle jerk!

  14. DS999 Silver badge

    Banking, dating, video chat

    I still can't understand how Musk is such a dimbo that he actually thinks people will go to Twitter to get these things that have been done elsewhere for ages, and will certainly be done better than whatever Twitler's remaining wage slaves come up with.

    It is SO inconvenient to have to switch to another app to check my bank balance! I sure do wish I could shoot off a few tweets then immediately video chat, going into Facetime or Skype to do it takes way too long!

    I'm leaning more and more into the theory that he allowed himself to be a guinea pig for Neuralink a few years ago, and it has caused serious brain damage.

    1. hittitezombie

      Re: Banking, dating, video chat

      Trusting your whole banking details and finances to an app where malicious trolls and bots are rampant is a good idea. What can go wrong?

      1. DS999 Silver badge

        Re: Banking, dating, video chat

        Worse, one that laid off most of its security people.

        Though if he does roll it out and a big hack happens I will feel ZERO sympathy for anyone dumb enough to use Twitter for banking and loses their money!

  15. TheMeerkat Silver badge

    It is weird how many hatred people have for Mask that they typed out all these completely irrational messages.

    Twitter still works and has enough users to continue (despite all those prophesies that it would collapse), unlike under previous management it attempts to do something about the bottom line instead of simply burning money without any attempt to change that. It is not ideal, but what is in this life?

    Yes, I disagree with Mask on very many political issues, but I would rather criticise him on those instead of partaking in this irrational hate fest.

    1. abend0c4 Silver badge

      It is weird how many hatred people have for Mask

      Given his attitude and behaviour towards the law, his staff, his suppliers and his users (not to mention his fellow "investors"), it seems like a reasonable, evidence-based reaction.

    2. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

      Understanding the hate

      The previous management took Twitter from nothing through the money pit stage to the point of making a modest profit. When they got an offer to sell out well above market value they converted the offer into a binding legal commitment and completed the sale despite Musk shrieking like a stuck pig.

      I am surprised Musk's critical employee retention skills and rapid changes without any consideration for the consequences have not caused Twitter to cease functioning. I found out how Twitter lasted this long financially: Musk had Twitter borrow more than it needed to complete the purchase from the original shareholders. He has matched expenditure to the halved income by delaying paying most bills. Some of those bills have effectively gone away because the creditors believe they will never be able to collect. Others are a time bomb waiting for crunch time. The bills that actually matter - interest payments on Twitter's loans - have been paid from the excess capital raised for the purchase. That money is coming to and end, the bad debts are getting to the final stages of litigation and Twitter's lack of regulatory compliance is turning into fines. The time is approaching for Twitter to get fresh investment (I can only name one man foolish enough for that) or declare bankruptcy. I suppose trading while insolvent is also an option for someone who thinks unpaid lawyers will save him.

      If you had ever had a significant bad debt get zeroed by bankruptcy you would understand half the hatred. The other half comes from Musk supporting hatred against certain minority groups. Last time I checked bankers were unable to sell Twitter's debt at 60cents per dollar. You have the opportunity to put your retirement fund where your mouth is. Buy some of that debt and hope for that 66% return on investment. I would rather you lost out than have a bunch of bankers split the losses among their investors.

    3. Knightlie

      I suspect it's because Elon Musk is a hate-filled, talentless, unfunny, clueless, reactionary, bigoted, stupid shitstain. People like that are generally, and rightly, reviled by us decent people.

    4. aerogems Silver badge
      Facepalm

      There's a nugget of a point in there in your slavish comment. It's fair to give Twitler a tiny bit of credit for trying something new, but I'm not really sure in what universe anyone with any kind of business sense would think that just indiscriminately firing like 2/3 of the staff is going to lead to great things. Or, for that matter, what kind of business genius would think that not paying your bills is going to result in anything but misfortune. Or, once more, how loading up a company that was barely profitable before you bought it, with billions of dollars in additional debt, is somehow going to make things better. Or, how about when your policy changes start driving away advertisers and users in droves, but then doubling down on them instead of reconsidering that maybe you misread what people actually wanted.

      In his mind, Twitler is someone who can do no wrong, and is a genius among geniuses. In reality, he's never really done much of anything. His parents were rich, which already gave him a leg up over most people. Then he fucked things up so badly at PayPal they forced him out. Then he took that money and invested it in Tesla -- which already existed, so no, he didn't "found" it by any logical definition of the word -- where he's been operating what's basically a pump and dump scam ever since to fund SpaceX. Then there's SpaceX, which has legitimately done some impressive bits of rocket engineering, but that was all in spite of Twitler. Even his own COO at SpaceX said how the government was literally about to hand her a roughly $200m check, and then he went and did something stupid -- think this is when he decided to smoke a blunt on camera -- which almost cost SpaceX the entire contract. The less said about the poor research animals at Neuralink the better. It's one of the cases where if PETA wanted to break in and trash their lab, I'd be in full support of that action. Not to mention someone at Neuralink was transporting hazardous biological material in a completely inadequate and unsafe manner. His hyperloop idea is one that's been around for longer than he's been alive, and if you ever use a pneumatic tube system at a bank, you're using what is essentially a hyperloop system. Boring has only made a couple of minor tunnels, nothing at all like what's been promised, and the whole company seems designed to just fuck with the bidding process for serious companies on municipal contracts.

      You could fill a book with the business failures of Twitler, because everything he touches turns to shit. Even Tesla, the one "success" was only possible because he was denying injured workers proper care, the company has turned a blind eye to things like racism, sexism, and even sexual assault in its factories, they repeatedly violate air quality standards in California, and the only real profit the company makes comes from selling carbon offset credits to other companies. It's not irrational to think the guy's an idiot who has no clue what he's doing, but doesn't let that stop him from just pressing buttons randomly instead of taking the time to learn what he's doing. That's just what he is.

  16. hittitezombie

    Going the way of Dodo bird

    Who remembers Myspace?

    Ahh, it will be a good day when they finally go bankrupt and disappear to irrelevance.

    1. Winkypop Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Going the way of Dodo bird

      MySpace?

      I think I read about that on Geocities..

      1. Roj Blake Silver badge

        Re: Going the way of Dodo bird

        Hearing about MySpace and Geocities is like having two old Friends Reunited.

        1. The Mole

          Re: Going the way of Dodo bird

          Think I might have to Ask Jeeves about this

          1. Boothy

            Re: Going the way of Dodo bird

            Or AltaVista

    2. aerogems Silver badge

      Re: Going the way of Dodo bird

      MySpace is actually still around and doing fairly well. Sure, it's a pale shadow of its one-time glory, but it's found a nice little niche of users that's been keeping it going.

  17. This post has been deleted by its author

  18. Arthur the cat Silver badge
    Happy

    Musk "wanted to add dating app features to X"

    But I already get lots of young ladies(*) offering me the chance to make contact(**).

    (*) with more cleavage than followers.

    (**) ObViz: Fnarr, fnarr.

  19. BebopWeBop
    Facepalm

    Rearranging Deckchairs

    on the Titanic as they say. At least it will give them time to polish their CVs and go job hunting before the inevitable.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like