“Chief Twit” Elon Musk lost it when he grilled Tuesday night about Twitter’s software engineering and coding, calling the questioner an “asshole” for insisting on specific details.
During a Twitter Space hosted by famed hacker George Hotz, who had resigned from Twitter earlier in the day, Musk said Twitter would have to “completely rewrite the whole thing” if it wanted to have “really fast speed.” prompting Netflix engineer Ian Brown to interrupt with some pointed questions.
“Wait, seriously, a total rewrite? That’s your prediction for speed?” Brown wondered.
“Yes,” Musk replied quickly.
“Well, when you say a total rewrite, do you mean starting with the skeleton?” interrupted Hotz. “Or a bunch of engineers sit down with a whiteboard and say, ‘What is Twitter?’ Revolution or reform?”
Musk finally said, after zooming and crying for a few seconds, that “you either had to adapt or rewrite the crazy stack that exists,” Brown jumped back in to ask the Tesla founder what he explicitly meant and whether he “did it could break”. down.”
After an awkward silence, Musk wondered if Brown had “seen George’s diagram,” causing the Netflix employee to burst into laughter.
“Are you – who are you?!” an increasingly nervous Musk shot back.
“What do you mean who am I? I do not know! You gave me the goddamn microphone! replied Brown. Hotz, meanwhile, acknowledged giving Brown the opportunity to speak, calling for things to be “more civilized” in his Space.
“I mean, man, you’re in charge of the servers and the programming and whatever,” Brown continued. ‘What’s the stack, Elon? Take me from top to bottom. What does the stack look like now? What’s so crazy about it? What’s so anomalous about this stack compared to any other large-scale system on the planet, friend? Come on!”
Instead of answering Brown’s questions, Musk resorted to ad hominem attacks.
“Great! You’re a jerk!” infuriated the Twitter CEO.
“Haha okay! Got no credibility here mate,” Brown fired back before Hotz pulled the plug on his mic.
“Good! What an idiot,” Musk added, taking the last word.
The Daily Beast has contacted Brown for comment.
Musk, who also likened Twitter to a plane crash on Tuesday night to justify “crazy” cost cutting, recently said he would step down as CEO of the site once he found someone “foolish enough to take the job.” At the same time, Musk has claimed he will stay on to lead Twitter’s software and server teams.
Since acquiring the company for $44 billion in October, Musk’s shaky reign at Twitter has been marked by chaos, hypocrisy and heartburn among investors in his other companies.
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