As long as money is present, taking over a company shouldn't be that difficult. What's difficult, is leading it, and making it thrive.
Twitter, the popular microblogging platform, has been acquired by billionaire Elon Musk in a $44 billion deal.
Ever since Musk took the lead, the company's headcount has decreased through layoffs and resignations. Only a small fraction of its original number is left. Amid this, the "Chief Twit" of Twitter has hired George Hotz, the man who rose to instant fame for hacking Apple's iPhones in 2007.
According to a Twitter conversation between Musk and Hotz, the former iPhone hacker has been hired as a Twitter intern for 12 weeks, in order to fix the "broken" search feature on the platform.
Hotz's job is to also remove the non-dismissible login pop-up that appears if one is trying to browse.
Hotz said that:
"I'll put my money where my mouth is. I'm down for a 12 week internship at Twitter for cost of living in SF. It's not about accumulating capital in a dead world, it's about making the world alive."
Hotz offered Musk his assistance after he appreciated Musk's ultimatum to Twitter employees to go "extremely hardcore" or leave.
After receiving a response from Musk, Hotz replied with, "Cool, my phone number hasn't changed."
However, he added that he's "not the guy" if Musk wants "long term stability."
"I really enjoy diving in to complex codebases and think I could help document and clean up some of those 1000 microservices in 12 weeks," Hotz tweeted to Musk.
"Reverse engineering!"
Sure, let’s talk.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 16, 2022
I'm here to party and make Twitter better. If I wanted to get rich I'd run a crypto exchange and steal all the customers deposits.
— George Hotz (@realGeorgeHotz) November 23, 2022
As far as George "Geohot" Hotz's background is concerned, he is notable security hacker known for developing iOS jailbreaks and reverse engineering Sony's Play Station 3.
He also founded Comma.ai, which is a driver assistance system startup that aims to bring Tesla Autopilot-like functionality to other cars.
Since then, Hotz caught Musk's attention, and that Musk attempted to hire him at Tesla in a multimillion dollar contract, but failed because Hotz "kept changing terms."
But this time, the two seem to have settled to a deal.
It also seems that Musk recognizes game when he sees one.
While Musk may come across as a brash troll at times, and has become a troll himself from time to time, the Tesla and Twitter CEO surely respects tech skills and people who demonstrate their technical prowess and know what they are doing.
"That's what Elon told me my job was, and I will try my hardest to do it. I have 12 weeks. also trying to get rid of that nondismissable login pop up after you scroll a little bit ugh these things ruin the Internet," he said.
if I just get rid of the pop up I still consider my internship a win. I have a chrome extension on my laptop to block it
reminds me of the guy who got a job at Apple, made Wallet automatically delete your expired boarding passes, and quit the next week— George Hotz (@realGeorgeHotz) November 22, 2022
By taking over Twitter and making numerous changes, as well as firing many of its employees, Musk certainly has lots of haters.
But regardless, there are always two sides of a coin, and that Musk also has plenty of supporters, many of whom want to help him improve Twitter.
And Hotz is just one of them.
"Today, I'm a Tweep!," Hotz subsequently posted, using Twitter's internal nickname for its staff.
"The internet feels full of possibility again."
Hotz who is little known outside of the tech world but he is well established within it, has tens of thousands of followers on Twitter, Instagram, and code sharing platform GitHub.
The software engineer began his career in his teens as a security hacker, exposing weaknesses in software by breaking into them.
Read: 'Twitter Is Alive': Elon Musk Responded To The #RIPTwitter Hashtag Trend
