TIL about Ian Brown
POSTED ON:
For me, this is current events. But for you, this might be ancient history.
You might be familiar with forced acquisition of Twitter, who was toying with the market until he was sued to buy it.
Well, after massive layoffs and a whole bunch of boneheaded moves, Musk continued to beat the "we need a re-write" drum.
During the call, Musk said that Twitter would need to do a “total rewrite of the whole thing” if it wanted to have a “really high velocity.”
“Wait, seriously, a total rewrite? That’s your prediction for velocity?” A developer asked in the shadows.
“Yeah,” Musk quickly replied.
The dev asked: “break it down.”
And that's where Musk, in his infinite technical wisdom, shows what kind of human being he was. Unable to give a technical answer, Musk asked who this guy was, then called him a jackass.
You can watch the whole video here.
Who was that developer who challenged Musk? That was Netflix engineer Ian Brown, who worked at Twitter for more than 8 years as the Sr. Engineering Manager.
In the words of Richard Feynman: “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
You have real people who want to do what's best for Twitter. But then you have a egotistic manchild so sensitive to being emotionally hurt, that he will continue you burn it to the ground. Well, it's your money, Elon!
P.S. If only someone wrote a post about why complete re-writes are bad ideas. Oh wait here's one from 2000.
Related TILs
Tagged: twitter