I know this is a mistake. I know he wants us all to be talking about him, and here I am talking about him. But what's happening right now with Twitter is unprecedented, and I can't stop watching the train wreck. P.S. Can we stop it with the unprecedented events for a while?

"Leadership"

I wrote a Twitter thread yesterday about Elon's terrible leadership. It's here in case you missed it. I highly recommend avoiding the replies. I had to mute it due to the number of terrible opinions coming from his fanboys.

I don't want to rehash the whole thread but honestly I'm shocked by how much ineptness he's displayed in less than three weeks. Today's updates include him firing former Twitter Android engineer Eric Frohnhoefer, who dared to challenge Elon with correct information, and Elon declaring that he was going to start turning off a bunch of microservices. I hope you weren't using SMS for 2FA.

This all resulted in many reply guy Elon stans explaining to a lot of us in tech that microservices are indeed bad, and that shutting a bunch of them off is actually a galaxy brain move, not the worst interpretation of chaos engineering ever.

This guy is in so far over his head. He doesn't understand the first thing about managing a large distributed platform like Twitter, and he has sycophants like David Sacks and Jason Calcanis telling him what a genius he is. Things are going to get a lot worse real fast.

If you care about your Twitter data and haven't downloaded it, it's best to try downloading your archive now. I've heard of it taking more than a week so I recommend hitting the button ASAP before it's too late. You should also definitely follow Ian's advice to see what apps you are using Twitter OAuth for. And there have been multiple reports of people being able to publicly view tweets from private accounts. If your account is private, I suggest assuming that everything you post from now is public. Screenshots are forever.

Oh and if you are waiting for Jack Dorsey to step in and save the day, don't hold your breath. A lot of folks seem to have missed the memo that Jack rolled over his investment into Elon's new Twitter. He's one of the owners and it's not in his financial interest to speak out against Elon. This is possibly why Jack threw himself under the bus so hard about the layoffs.

Leadership

Maybe you'd like an example of someone who actually understands leadership? If you like soccer, the Arsenal: All or Nothing documentary on Amazon Prime Video about Premiere League club Arsenal is pretty fantastic. I'm watching it for a second time now and Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta gets me super fired up. I love this quote from him in episode 1:

Football is about trying to give positive emotions to people. And if we are able to do that, hopefully beautiful things will happen.

Arteta recognizes the power that passion and positive emotions can have. He knows that the fans in the stadium can give the team energy, if the players give them reasons to do that. He's described by the players as demanding, and he can be firm when he feels the club's values are being disrespected, but he also has a talent for connecting with the players and inspiring them.

The documentary covers last season (2021-2022). What Arteta has done is clearly working, as Arsenal sits at the top of the league table heading into the World Cup break. Go Gunners.

Welcome

Maybe I should have started here but hello and welcome to my newsletter. I've considered doing one for a while, and as I saw the flames rising on Twitter today I realized it was time. Things aren't pretty here yet, I need to look at things like the available themes. But hopefully the writing matters more to you.

This newsletter is free and will remain so. I have so much appreciation for everyone who supports me with kind words, likes, etc., on any of the platforms you find me on. I've set up a Linktree in case you'd like to add me on Mastadon, LinkedIn, or the other places I hang out online.

I expect there will be a few of these newsletters a month, depending on what I have to share. I'm currently editing a new episode of my podcast about Kubernetes called Kube Cuddle. It's an interview with one of the founders of the Kubernetes project, Joe Beda. You can search for Kube Cuddle in your podcast player and subscribe to make sure not to miss it. I'll send out a note when the episode with Joe is live.

Thanks again.