4 ms·

> He is a walking PR campaign. Why do we barely know any of the higher level engineers at Space X or Tesla? Remind me a great deal of what existed with Steve J

by gist 10y ago

> He is a walking PR campaign. Why do we barely know any of the higher level engineers at Space X or Tesla? Remind me a great deal of what existed with Steve Jobs. Another example is Jeff Bezos with Amazon. Not saying that in tech circles some of their execs and/or engineers are not well known but certainly not people that your Aunt would have heard about. Also I guess Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook (although Sheryl Sandberg is fairly well known). Another is the "Google Guys" but you don't hear much about them lately probably because the PR has been tamped down. But early on it was every magazine cover and apparently from what I heard later Sergey wasn't even anywhere near as important as Larry was. This happens also with VC firms. One partner (in a small firm like AVC) is the big cheese, the others you barely hear about. That said this is not unusual in business or for that matter team sports or even entertainment. For many reason including some people simply want to be behind the scenes.

thomaskcr 10y ago
I have literally never heard Elon mention another person who already worked at the company. I can find plenty of times he was announcing a key hire, like when they brought in Peter Hochholdinger. Every new feature, product, etc is announced by Musk. Which like you said is similar to Apple. I think similar to Jobs, Elon is at least significantly involved in a lot of details - and I think similar to Jobs he feels that since he was involved it wouldn't have happened without him. Google isn't a good example in my opinion though, generally people besides the CEO announce their products, i.e. Google Maps was announced by Bret Taylor. Look at the history of Google and Microsoft and you will see tons of "xxx announces/introduces yyy". Tesla's entire history is "Elon Musk announces ..." (after teasing on Twitter for 5 months to keep the stock price up). I don't think everything is bad about him. I think the thing he is amazing at is setting the vision for his companies - which is really valuable. It really seems like everyone understands the mission and where things are going and he's very clear about it. So I think he has good qualities, I just think he's also narcissistic, financially impulsive and unfocused.
- sheer_horror 10y ago
  In most all Tesla product unveilings, Elon will make a directed thank-you to the 'Tesla Team'. The blog posts are mostly made by the Tesla Team. In the gigafactory unveiling, some speeches in Norway and the Netherlands, and other press events, a top engineer JT speaks alongside him. He brought his chief designer on stage at the gigafactory unveiling, as well as another engineer aside from JT. Companies like this need a BDFL. It's crucial that Elon stays in complete control to ensure focus, not to flounder it.

by gist 10y ago

thomaskcr 10y ago

I have literally never heard Elon mention another person who already worked at the company. I can find plenty of times he was announcing a key hire, like when they brought in Peter Hochholdinger. Every new feature, product, etc is announced by Musk. Which like you said is similar to Apple. I think similar to Jobs, Elon is at least significantly involved in a lot of details - and I think similar to Jobs he feels that since he was involved it wouldn't have happened without him. Google isn't a good example in my opinion though, generally people besides the CEO announce their products, i.e. Google Maps was announced by Bret Taylor. Look at the history of Google and Microsoft and you will see tons of "xxx announces/introduces yyy". Tesla's entire history is "Elon Musk announces ..." (after teasing on Twitter for 5 months to keep the stock price up). I don't think everything is bad about him. I think the thing he is amazing at is setting the vision for his companies - which is really valuable. It really seems like everyone understands the mission and where things are going and he's very clear about it. So I think he has good qualities, I just think he's also narcissistic, financially impulsive and unfocused.

sheer_horror 10y ago
In most all Tesla product unveilings, Elon will make a directed thank-you to the 'Tesla Team'. The blog posts are mostly made by the Tesla Team. In the gigafactory unveiling, some speeches in Norway and the Netherlands, and other press events, a top engineer JT speaks alongside him. He brought his chief designer on stage at the gigafactory unveiling, as well as another engineer aside from JT. Companies like this need a BDFL. It's crucial that Elon stays in complete control to ensure focus, not to flounder it.