AUSTIN | Economic Development

[enragedcamel]

Anyway, with the Twitter meltdown, it seems quite unlikely that their HQ will be moving to Austin as some people here were speculating. There's rumor that the company may not survive for much longer, having lost most of its workforce within the span of a week or two.

It's a shame IMO. We could have used another big name software company - and I say that despite my dislike of Twitter.

[freerover]

Originally Posted by enragedcamel

Anyway, with the Twitter meltdown, it seems quite unlikely that their HQ will be moving to Austin as some people here were speculating. There's rumor that the company may not survive for much longer, having lost most of its workforce within the span of a week or two.

It's a shame IMO. We could have used another big name software company - and I say that despite my dislike of Twitter.

It still might but there needs to be some stability established. Seems like he has reduced the workforce to people who are willing to work unpaid overtime so he’ll be getting a lot of hours out of the staff he has left. We’ll see. He might pull twitter off with the help of his ability to have workers consent to their own exploitation. It’s quite impressive but that’s why selling yourself as a cult like figure pays off.

[paul78701]

Originally Posted by freerover

It still might but there needs to be some stability established. Seems like he has reduced the workforce to people who are willing to work unpaid overtime so he’ll be getting a lot of hours out of the staff he has left. We’ll see. He might pull twitter off with the help of his ability to have workers consent to their own exploitation. It’s quite impressive but that’s why selling yourself as a cult like figure pays off.

Some of the people left (I have no idea what percentage) aren't exactly consenting. Some have work visas that were sponsored by Twitter. Those people can't just up and quit. They are in a real bind.

[paul78701]

Originally Posted by enragedcamel

Anyway, with the Twitter meltdown, it seems quite unlikely that their HQ will be moving to Austin as some people here were speculating. There's rumor that the company may not survive for much longer, having lost most of its workforce within the span of a week or two.

It's a shame IMO. We could have used another big name software company - and I say that despite my dislike of Twitter.

This whole idea that Twitter is about to just break beyond repair is pure nonsense. It's being pushed by people who have zero understanding of how this stuff works.

Could Twitter have outages? Sure. The fact that they've lost a lot of Site Reliability Engineers definitely makes this possible. But it's not like a bridge that falls down and needs to be completely rebuilt. As long as the data remains intact, they'll be able to bring it back up. It just might take longer than normal due to the loss of people who have more intimate knowledge of the software and infrastructure behind it all.

Twitter could run into business/revenue issues due to the crazy man in charge chasing away advertisers and whatnot, but that doesn't mean that the doors are going to shut overnight. Even if Twitter does file for bankruptcy, it's more likely to be of the reorganizing type than the going out of business type.

[lonewolf]

wow! misguided speculation and personal agendas have turned this into an elon thread!
who could have guessed!

I think the solution is to bring back the elon/twitter/tesla/neuralink/boring/spacex/etc thread and try to contain it.

I strongly feel we cannot allow any discussion pertaining to elon or his companies on any of the other threads.

I also feel an outright ban on talking about him is unfair given how central he is to austins economy and what we talk about on here (infrastucture/construction) is based on local economic performance.

The thread will be an absolutely toxic dumpster fire but we have to allow an avenue for people who want to get on here and just talk construction. The best bet IMO is attempted containment.

[freerover]

Originally Posted by lonewolf

I strongly feel we cannot allow any discussion pertaining to elon or his companies on any of the other threads.

How about this. How about not moderating content unless someone breaks the terms of service. If you don't want to participate in a conversation, then you don't have to. You also don't have to let other people know that they aren't posting content you want to see. You can just not enjoy it and move on to something else. This is suppose to be a place where we can talk about complicated multi-layered developments so if Elon or his companies are relevant to a thread like in one called "economic development" then you should be able to do so. If you don't want to participate in that conversation then don't. You can reply to a different post or you can post your own item of interest. No One is obligated to reply to every single post here which is why it's so strange that news related to Tesla and Musk is moderated so heavily.

[lonewolf]

Originally Posted by freerover

How about this. How about not moderating content unless someone breaks the terms of service. If you don't want to participate in a conversation, then you don't have to. You also don't have to let other people know that they aren't posting content you want to see. You can just not enjoy it and move on to something else. This is suppose to be a place where we can talk about complicated multi-layered developments so if Elon or his companies are relevant to a thread like in one called "economic development" then you should be able to do so. If you don't want to participate in that conversation then don't. You can reply to a different post or you can post your own item of interest. No One is obligated to reply to every single post here which is why it's so strange that news related to Tesla and Musk is moderated so heavily.

the problem is we have low cognition bad actors who have a personal vendetta with musk and use this forum as a medium to broadcast their personal narrative. thus creating the need for moderation

the mods don't enjoy moderating. people don't like reading emotionally held opinions about public figures on a construction forum. the discourse on here wrt musk is not remotely close to "a place where we can talk about complicated multi-layered developments" it's more akin to monkeys throwing feces at a wall then screeching at the moderators when they have to clean it up

it's unfortunate but it is what it is

[freerover]

Originally Posted by lonewolf

the problem is we have low cognition bad actors who have a personal vendetta with musk and use this forum as a medium to broadcast their personal narrative. thus creating the need for moderation

the mods don't enjoy moderating. people don't like reading emotionally held opinions about public figures on a construction forum. the discourse on here wrt musk is not remotely close to "a place where we can talk about complicated multi-layered developments" it's more akin to monkeys throwing feces at a wall then screeching at the moderators when they have to clean it up

it's unfortunate but it is what it is

very curious. Where do you see yourself within this web of moderators, bad actors, "normal users" or whatever you want to call it. Neutral users? Do you see this as a community of neutral users and biased users? How do you determine which is which?

[JAM]

Originally Posted by lonewolf

the problem is we have low cognition bad actors who have a personal vendetta with musk and use this forum as a medium to broadcast their personal narrative. thus creating the need for moderation

the mods don't enjoy moderating. people don't like reading emotionally held opinions about public figures on a construction forum. the discourse on here wrt musk is not remotely close to "a place where we can talk about complicated multi-layered developments" it's more akin to monkeys throwing feces at a wall then screeching at the moderators when they have to clean it up

it's unfortunate but it is what it is

Yep - painfully obvious.

[enragedcamel]

Originally Posted by lonewolf

the problem is we have low cognition bad actors who have a personal vendetta with musk and use this forum as a medium to broadcast their personal narrative. thus creating the need for moderation

the mods don't enjoy moderating. people don't like reading emotionally held opinions about public figures on a construction forum. the discourse on here wrt musk is not remotely close to "a place where we can talk about complicated multi-layered developments" it's more akin to monkeys throwing feces at a wall then screeching at the moderators when they have to clean it up

it's unfortunate but it is what it is

Elon Musk is an enormously influential and polarizing figure, as evidenced by the fact that the subject of him causes these types of deep disagreements even on a construction forum.

I don't think it's realistic to expect people to act like robots and withhold their personal opinions of him when they talk about his companies because his behavior and his values are reflected in those companies at least to some extent. It should be totally okay to welcome his positive contributions to Austin and its economy, while at the same time expressing skepticism about the way he acts, the way he manages his business affairs and the way his companies operate and treat their employees.

IMHO the only thing that should be off-limits is his personal life and news and gossip related to that. Everything else is relevant. For example it would be irresponsible to discuss various local Boring Company proposals without mentioning the fact that he flat out told his biographer, Ashlee Vance, that the only reason he introduced the idea of "hyperloop" was to sabotage the progress of High Speed Rail in California and try to get it canceled, and we should be very skeptical of, say, his suggestion of digging a tunnel between Austin and San Antonio.

[StoOgE]

Looks like tesla is effectively returning its HQ to Palo Alto.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aut...rs-2023-02-22/

[GoldenBoot]

Originally Posted by StoOgE

Looks like tesla is effectively returning its HQ to Palo Alto.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aut...rs-2023-02-22/

I do not read it that way. They're simply creating a global engineering HQ in the old HP headquarters. In fact, I believe their core software and hardware engineering operations never rally left California.

There was zero talk of corporate operations moving back to California. So, I would assume the head of the new organization will report to someone in Austin.

[lzppjb]

Personally, I don't care if Elon gets discussed here. I skip over most of it anyway.

What I don't like, and why it was moderated, is when it devolves into politics. That is such a divisive topic to even hint at, I think it's a good idea to keep it off of here. There are places on this website to discuss politics.

[freerover]

Originally Posted by lzppjb

Personally, I don't care if Elon gets discussed here. I skip over most of it anyway.

What I don't like, and why it was moderated, is when it devolves into politics. That is such a divisive topic to even hint at, I think it's a good idea to keep it off of here. There are places on this website to discuss politics.

I think it depends on the context in which his politics is brought up because it’s possible it could be relevant based on the man’s own statements about politics and how it relates to his businesses. I mean, does anyone think Elon really belongs to either party? The point of pretending like he is a partisan is to distract from the fraud investigations related to autopilot and FSD. The dude is not a republican, he’s not a democrat. He is a musk.

Also, I think you misread that comment in the locked Tesla thread. He wasn't saying that voting republican is wrong. He was pointing to the reason why there is a perceived red/blue fight with Musk. I would suggest going back and re-reading that exchange.

[enragedcamel]

Elon Musk may be one of the richest people in the world but he's not THAT central to Austin's economy. Remember that our economy was booming way before Tesla moved its HQ here. And if Tesla happened to disappear tomorrow for whatever reason, we would continue to do quite well.

That's actually one of the nice things about Austin's economy and what makes it healthy and resilient: it doesn't revolve around a single employer like the economies of a lot of cities.

[StoOgE]

I do feel moderately frustrated that when Elon coming to Austin was good news we were able to discuss wildly speculative nonsense but once the worm started turning and he started acting like a weirdo publicly everything got locked down.

I mean, the guy has proposed radically transforming our city, building new neighborhoods, boring tunnels to San Antonio and right when news was breaking about unsafe treatment of contractors on a worksite for Tesla everything was Thanos snapped out of existence.

I think a forum can be generally pro-development and not just be a cheerleading section for developers.

[psychlotron]

I honestly don't care (i.e. neither like nor dislike) the idea of posting about Musk on this forum. After all, he's in the news either way. Constantly!

But I thought it was a good idea when somebody started a thread specifically about Musk/Space/Boring/Tesla. And I think they did that back when things were generally positive.

It's obviously relevant to talk about Musk in the "Economic Development" thread. But doing so really does seem to crowd other topics out.

Speaking only for myself here: I'd rather see it in the Musk/Space/Boring/Tesla section.

I'll still read it if it looks interesting!

[We vs us]

Fairly significant takedown (IMO) of the Boring Company by WSJ.

Elon Musk’s Boring Company Ghosts Cities Across America
The tunnel venture has repeatedly teased local officials with a pledge to ‘solve soul-destroying traffic,’ only to back out

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-mu...ic-11669658396

I have to say, not particularly surprising, based on what we've seen so far in our own backyard.

[Tyrone Shoes]

Originally Posted by We vs us

Fairly significant takedown (IMO) of the Boring Company by WSJ.

Elon Musk’s Boring Company Ghosts Cities Across America
The tunnel venture has repeatedly teased local officials with a pledge to ‘solve soul-destroying traffic,’ only to back out

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-mu...ic-11669658396

I have to say, not particularly surprising, based on what we've seen so far in our own backyard.

[enragedcamel]

https://www.businessinsider.com/remo...alypse-2022-12

Remote Work Is Gutting Downtowns, Will Cost Cities $453B

Even in cities where more workers have returned, like Austin or Dallas, occupancy rates are still only 60% of what they were prepandemic. These shifts follow the unassailable stickiness of remote work; researchers for the National Bureau of Economic Research predicted that 30% of workdays would be worked from home by the end of this year, a huge jump from before the pandemic.