Reply to post: The problem's Tech culture

Musk tells of risk of Twitter bankruptcy as tweeters trash brands

martinusher Silver badge

The problem's Tech culture

I've worked at California tech companies for half my working life. I've occasionally come across tech culture, the notion that you're irreplaceable and without your genius the place would just fall apart, typically because I have often found myself being brougth in as a trouble shooter -- project(s) are behind and failing, personnel quittting and so on. The culture's nce work if you can get it but it is just not sustainable -- eventually you get hit by the numbers, it just boils down each employee having to create a certain value (typically three times their salary or better) in order to justify their employment. Sometimes in the earlier stages of a company's development this rule is broken because its expedient for a product development, the founders and investors are essentially gambling their captial in the hope of a win, a payback that will justify the capital spent. This is typically the startup phase of a company and its here that stock options get dished out -- not those 'retirement plan' level options you might get as a modern employee at a tech giant like Intel but the 'nickel a share' type options that if the stock vests (or the company gets bought out) can represent real value to the holder. You get sucked into working all hours because you're gambling your time for an eventual payback.

The problem with tech culture it that it can quickly segue into a culture of entitlement. People start believing that their lifestyle is a right rather than something that has to be earned, that their mere presence justifies their position. Especially with software its easy to weave a convincing technical narrative around this (and it doesn't help that the notion of 'work' is entirely fluid with software -- unlike more physical products where its quite obvious whether its working properly or not). But there are always people who can see beyond the hype.

Anyway, I think Musk overpaid something rotten for the brand, he got taken by a bunch of pretty smooth operators, but it will be interesting to see if he can make something out of it. He'll get a whole lot of crap for this -- quite apart from the destructive nihilism that permeates large areas of today's society there's investors who may be feeling a bit unnerved by what's gone down in the last couple of weeks. But my bet is that if anyone can pull it off it will be him. In its previous form Twitter (and other 'tech' companies) isn't sustainable; they're parasites feeding off a parastic ecosystem where advertisers ultimately pay for because they can't envisage an alternative, they're riding a tiger that they need to get off (because the whole advertising thing is crap, frankly -- a huge waste of resources).

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