Typical garbage take by the Guardian. It used to be a good paper.

And not news. This is an opinion piece/diatribe.

Whether their hubris is punished or not is of no consequence to me. In some ways the ultimate karma is waking up every day to find out we are ourselves. I'm more concerned with building cool stuff for us to use than with anyone getting what I think is their comeuppance.

That's great. Teaching them what it is capable of opens new vistas (not that Vista) and that there are lots of possibilities with other software as well. Not a MS fan at all but Excel is powerful and the point comes through regardless of the platform.

Half the fun is using things for how they weren't intended.

there’s an assumption by older generations that because zoomers have grown up with smartphones that they’ll automatically be proficient with tech as a whole

That's like thinking someone knows how to cook because they can order at McDonalds.

How are you able to see what's going on at Twitter? Do you work there in a position where you have a decent overview of the company?
And sure, he might totally run Twitter into the ground. Like I said, I wouldn't put money into the company. But it's about where every other company he has run was, so I wouldn't bet against his success there either.
The idea that if he fails at making Twitter a success means he is an idiot and Tesla and SpaceX are a fluke are delusional though.

You mean invested in it. Then took over as CEO when the board voted the former CEO out because he was spending everything they had without getting close to producing a car they could manufacture.
Telsa never produced any cars until Musk was running it.
The continued success under his leadership for the ramp ups for the Model S and and full on ramp up to mass manufacturing the Model 3 kind of demonstrates that. To say nothing of Spacex.
\What did Eberhard do after Tesla again?
Saying he did nothing of consequence at SpaceX would be claiming that everyone who worked with him there is flat out lying. People don't talk smack about their former employers even if they don't like them or think they are idiots.. But they don't make an effort to praise their abilities in that case either. I'm thinking it is more likely that you aren't exactly in a position to know more than they do.

Twitter would be the only mature company with any previous success that he actually ever bought into and the only one he did not build from the ground up. Eberhard building a crap foundation that needed a lot of rebuilding doesn't count.

I know you don't want any of this to be true because he's a dick. But the world isn't a Hollywood movie where the bad guys get what you think they deserve and only the nice people are brilliant.

"Stealing ideas" isn't a thing. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Prototypes are much rarer. The even more difficult part is taking things and mass manufacturing them in a way that people can afford and also want.
There's no scam to manufacturing a million cars a year. Nor is SpaceX remotely a scam.
No matter how much of a dick he is on Twitter it doesn't mean he is stupid and can't build and organize companies that work really, really well. Nothing about doing that depends on someone being a "good" or likeable person.
I don't worship anyone. But I don't make up reality just to fit with my beliefs about how things should be according to my ideology.

Tesla paid down much more debt than that before it was as profitable as it is now. $10 billion isn't going to sink Tesla. Or SpaceX. They are both materially valuable in a way companies like Twitter are not.

That's a discussion about working conditions. Europeans aren't having to put up with being available after work hours. Sane workplaces in the US don't do that either.

Euros don't have to deal with that shit because they are smart enough to organize enough to end that crap.

Did you mean ride their bike to the library? Yeah. You're right on the money.
Also cars were much less reliable back then. Nothing like breaking down again and walking to a payphone... and that's just the beginning.