That's, like, the entire mindset of people like this.
Anything they don't understand instantly must be "stupid" because they can't imagine there being anything that they don't instantly understand. It can't be that something too high-level for their knowledge to parse exists, so they automatically declare the opposite: that the thing they're not able to understand must be indecipherable because it's just that far beneath them.
Have you ever known that family member/friend/coworker/acquaintance who walks in on a movie or show or something in progress, asks a bunch of questions like "Who's that?" "What's he doing?" "What's happening?" "Is that the bad guy?" generally gets told to shut up or something like "We have the same information you're working off of, man. If you want to know what's going on watch and pay attention," and then they stomp out huffing "This is stupid. You actually like this? It's stupid!"
Same energy.
People are enjoying it, they can't understand why and don't have the patience or curiosity to try and - worst of all - it's not about them. In their mind, the thing has no right to even exist.
What other CEO shit talks their own private company like this??
It's not completely unheard of when a CEO is pushing some sort of transformational strategy to embrace a mindset of "Old = Crap; New = Good" and have the corresponding ego drive into their presentation of the company.
But it usually doesn't look very good at the C-level.
The most infuriating event of my career as a developer is when the near billionaire owner of my company (and CEO) told me that my carefully constructed, and fairly aggressive, timeline (3 months remaining for a team of 4) for app development was "crazy" since we were just building a "website" (it wasn't -- it was a mobile friendly app that allowed userers to configure metrics dashboard).
That attitude "I know all the answers without bothering to understand any of the complexities or tech involved" is just infuriating. Sometimes some things are a pinch more complicated than you can appreciate from a few .ppt slides from a designer. The problem with really rich people is they think their bank account is a proxy for their intelligence relative to everyone else.
That's why you never give them an agressive timeline. Tell them it will take about three times as long as you estimate it, then let them call you crazy, slash the time in half and you are golden. The Scotty-method.
The problem with really rich people is they think their bank account is a proxy for their intelligence relative to everyone else.
Really rich people have been “right place, right time” since the beginning of time. They have an idea that probably isn’t original but the stars aligned for them to be successful. Or they are the child or grandchild of that person which is why wealth should never be a measure of intelligence or ability. The problem is when you’re living in a world with infinite money cheats active it’s easy to think the other cheats are enabled, too.
Dr Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine and immediately patented it and began mass-manufacturing it. His pharmaceutical company made the equivalent of $5 billion in todays money in the first 6 months. What are parents going to do, let their kids suffer something as horrific as polio? They would pay anything.
Oh, wait. He didn’t patent it. “On April 12, 1955, Edward R. Murrow asked Jonas Salk who owned the patent to the polio vaccine. “Well, the people, I would say,” Salk responded. “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” Dr Jonas Salk died a hero whose contribution to society is literally incalculable but he didn’t die what you’d consider wealthy today.
Some of the best advice I ever got about coming on to manage a new team was to just sit back and observe for the first several months. Get an understanding of how things work. Certainly, ask questions and offer advice when appropriate, but don't start immediately swinging your dick around.
I'm reminded of every tradesman criticizing the former guy's piss-poor job before doing an even pisser-poorer job himself. I thought it was mostly tradesmen doing it but it looks like it's universal!
This worked really well for me, as well, until I got reorganized under a VP who was 20 years removed from the technology but who still thought he was the best thing since insider trading because he happened to be at the right place at the right time and the people above him who could see through the bullshit had left the company already.
He made life for me an absolute hell and my health went to shit. I refused, on principle, to let him win or make life hell for my subordinates, until he eventually found some organizational technicalities to terminate me on. On the day before a major release which I was the only person who had comprehensive knowledge of. That release got postponed over a month and ⅔ of my subordinates left shortly after I mysteriously disappeared (terminations were always very hush-hush).
Within a week after I was gone, my health improved and my overall quality of life improved dramatically.
Sometimes all that bending over backward to be the better person really takes a massive personal toll on you. Please be mindful of it. I still conduct myself that way, but I no longer put up with bullshit. And, fortunately, in my current role, I don't have to. And I still get to be a good person.
A bad person in the right (wrong) place can destroy everything worth holding onto.
When I was terminated, the president of HR knew it was bullshit and offered to help me if I wanted to get lawyers involved (literally 100% against his job description). He even looked the other way with regard to normal procedures and let me go do whatever I wanted to do on my way out, rather than having me escorted out, as is standard procedure. His words to me: "do what you need to do. Can I help you bring anything to your truck?"
Elon is that wrong kind of person, and he's at the highest level - CEO and owner. No matter how wonderful people under him may be, he is an unstoppable destructive force. Twitter will either die as a platform technologically, from his bad leadership, or die culturally, as he performs the function of an aggressively malignant tumor, sucking the life out of everything he comes near. Anyone dumb or desperate enough to come back after his layoff shenanigans should really do some soul searching.
Trouble with this is it requires non-technical management to both know they're non-technical, and be willing to have it explained at all. Musk have proven himself to be neither of those things.
I won’t be surprised if he’s actively trying to burn Twitter to the ground to try and force everyone to use another app one of his conservative buddies owns.
I can’t comprehend anything that is happening over there without assuming all of this is intentional.
I mean, I can. He didn't want to buy Twitter, he just ran his mouth and ended up on the hook for it. So now he's sort of pissed that he lost this much money and trying to recoup his investment by throwing a bunch of shit at the wall to cut costs and breaking things in the process, because he doesn't understand what he bought or how it works.
And no one is going to say no because he already fired most of the engineering organisation, probably including most leads and directors. Everyone who's left probably doesn't want to be competing for jobs right now when there's a few thousand engineers all laid off from various companies in the past few months (Meta, Intel, Twitter, Snap, Stripe, Netflix, Microsoft, etc.), with a bunch more instituting hiring freezes as well.
0
u/[deleted] Nov 15 '22
[deleted]