> at serving ads in a relevant and effective way.

Anyone ever seen a relevant Twitter ad?

Just seems very dumb location based placement. Nowhere near the level of IG.

> Nowhere near the level of IG

Facebook and Google are in a completely different league which is why for most brands ~95% of online ad spend is spent there.

Twitter has been slowly getting better until now when Musk's attitude has frightened the brands off i.e. GM, L'Oreal, Pfizer etc.

It's crazy the number of people on HN somehow claiming that Twitter is this well run and well functioning tech company now that bad rocket man took the reigns and decided to lay off everyone... Isn't it a consensus among tech people that Twitter is the absolute worst tech company?

Twitter was a bit shit. But its up and running more or less in real time for millions of users. Thats pretty impressive. Its business is shit, yes.

Musk looks like hes done the classic: "the office is clean why do I need cleaners" dance. I am surprised he can fire that many people that quickly and still expect momentum.

It doesn't help that he appears to be shitting out product ideas that he's just "dreamt" up. Rather than talking to people to see why twitter didn't do it in the first place. He clearly has a low opinion of the entire company.

There's a ton of websites that are up and running for millions of users. That should be table stakes for running an online service.

> Isn't it a consensus among tech people that Twitter is the absolute worst tech company?

I don't think so. I see far more hate towards Meta and Amazon.

I think a lot of people viewed Twitter as poorly-monetized and -managed as product and business, but generally competitive as a technical organization.

Not really. It's been known for a while that the tech side of Twitter is incredibly low-performing.

Over the years in various hiring threads it's been common to describe Twitter as the giant tech comapny you go to when you can't get hired anywhere else. Twitter has definitely had a reputation for a long time for being bloated and filled with less-than-competent employees. It's only earlier this year that I've seen the discussion shift towards this idea of Twitter being a competent group.

Whew - even with your empty caveat against saying what I’m about to say:

Designing reusable rockets and launching hundreds of them into space for profit, is more complicated and requires a different caliber of frankly higher IQ worker, than building and maintaining the existing Twitter.

Not that there aren’t some smart web people, obviously.

Well up till now, Twitter paid better and was considered a near FAANG caliber gig.

Tesla is known for fucked up WLB and low compensation compared to FAANG.

I bet Twitter employees have higher average IQ. Especially compared to whoever at Tesla authorized removing radar and parking sensors.

I assume tesla could attract talent at those salaries due to the stock prospects. Wonder if that's the case nowadays.

  Especially compared to whoever at Tesla authorized removing radar and parking sensors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W1JBAfV4Io

Their crappy auto wipers and auto highbeams haven't dissuaded customers, so why not crappy parking sensors.

Just because it's easy for you, doesn't mean it's easy for everyone.

rocket science and software engineering are two skills that take years of experience to hone. they come with their own set of challenges.

i feel like this sentiment belongs alongside "isn't netflix just an ftp server and a media player?"

My guess is you have no idea what you are talking about.

About rockets? Or websites?

I’m writing from a faang office with a few decades of experience. I know some people in aerospace. They’re on average smarter than 4/5ths of my colleagues (who are also clever).

I’m much more junior, but to exchange anecdotes, I think it’s difficult to accurately say that people in FAANG are less, equal, or more intelligent than people in aerospace. To define intelligent, I will use the everyday definition that mixes speed of learning with the ability to solve hard problems (acknowledging that the academic definition of intelligence is different).

For one, I anecdotally know people in FAANG who were smart by effectively “studying for the test” by focusing more on leetcode than projects/intellectual exploration. In contrast, the people I know who went into aerospace tended to have a genuine interest in physics (and some with more interest in philosophy), and had more experience with projects (e.g. worked on an aerospace team in university), with many of them having little-to-know experience with software development.

Interestingly, the aerospace people I know anecdotally happened to be better at soft skills/networking for getting into companies, whereas the FAANG people focused on leetcode for admissions. After getting into a company, also from my anecdotal experience, more FAANG people focused on metrics/compensation, whereas more aerospace people tended to focus more on the mastery of the craft. I acknowledge that my anecdotes shouldn’t be generalized, but it aligns with the motivations of many people looking to get into each company (it seems more people go into FAANG for compensation/prestige, whereas more people go into aerospace for the passion).

So, I would say that people from both categories tended to be very smart at learning quickly and solving hard problems, though anecdotally, the aerospace people seemed to be generally more intellectually curious. Then again, perhaps the aerospace people were better at soft skills/presenting themselves so they appeared smarter, whereas the FAANG people didn’t focus on presenting themselves as intelligently. For limitations, note that the people I’m thinking of are at the junior level.

In any case, I don’t think one can conclusively say that people in FAANG have more/less/the same intelligence as people in aerospace companies, though maybe one can tentatively say that people who go into aerospace tend to be more curious and interested in mastery of one’s profession (versus material compensation).

Is any of that suppose to be convincing in any way? I also have been in faang and wouldn't use "I am or know people" argument, silly.

Is “I know; I am” not what knowledge and experience boils down to?

I've worked on a large scale website everyone knows. There are lots of interesting problems, and lots of super clever people who solve them in clever ways, but it's not literal rocket science.

i used to work on rockets and now i work in software, so i think i'm pretty qualified to say that you have no idea what you're talking about.

Really? You don’t think the aerospace folks were smarter?

How many employees would it take to just maintain the status quo? Code freeze, no more features and bug fixes. Just keep the lights on and keep selling ads.