4 ms·

I'm a huge Elon Musk fan and I deeply share his vision for getting humans on mars, being more environmentally friendly, etc. However, I'm starting to lose faith

I'm a huge Elon Musk fan and I deeply share his vision for getting humans on mars, being more environmentally friendly, etc. However, I'm starting to lose faith in him. First of all, the guy is stretched way too thin. He runs two huge companies. Now he is starting some other company to be even more distracted. (Boring company) It sounds like he really pushes his workers way too hard. I wouldn't want to work at one of his companies. Long hours, a lot of stress, and you're underpaid! He rushes too damn much. I understand wanting to be first and beat the competition, but Telsa is moving way too fast with the Model 3. Rushing this car to production. With software, when has this ever played out well? They are building cars that real people will drive. You can't rush or cut corners with something that will kill people. I really fear if he doesn't step back and change his ways a bit, he just won't be able to hire and retain the talent needed to change the world.

vkou 9y ago
> You can't rush or cut corners with something that will kill people. Do you have reason to believe that safety-critical features of the Model 3 will not be up to par? Tesla has a history of mechanical problems with their vehicles, but AFAIK, safety-critical stuff* works just fine. Your door might not open, but your brakes are pretty much guaranteed to work. * I'm exempting autopilot from this.
- atempthrow 9y ago
  > > You can't rush or cut corners with something that will kill people. I worked in Detroit for an automotive company on their software. I assure you, they rush and cut corners. They iron out the wrinkles in QA and rewrite parts of software a few times. It's not uncommon to have teams (outsourced, the actual employees seem to have reasonable workloads) working 60+ hour weeks regularly on software.
  - unprepare 9y ago
    I just declined an offer from Ford on an in house team where everyone is averaging 70 hour weeks; so its not /only/ contractors, but its true, the big 3 use contracting very heavily
  - jensv 9y ago
    Better in QA than on the streets.
ianai 9y ago
"how do we survive? How do we not die and have everyone lose their jobs?" Pretty bad thought to entertain at the CEO level. You can justify nearly anything with that basic level. What happened to Ford's "pay them enough to afford what they make"? Sheesh.
- krapp 9y ago
  >What happened to Ford's "pay them enough to afford what they make"? Sheesh. Henry Ford didn't do business in a global market where he could shop for labor in China or Mexico. A modern day Henry Ford doesn't need to care whether his employees can afford what they make, when he has the entire world to sell to.
  - danielvf 9y ago
    You are aware Ford has thousands of employees in Brazil in the 20's and 30's?
    - krapp 9y ago
      I was not aware. Guess I stand corrected, then. I think my general point still stands - a modern business doesn't necessarily benefit from enriching its employees or the community in which it operates.
      - User_424 9y ago
        The civility here never fails to disappoint me
        mathperson 9y ago
        Huh? Never fails to impress?
    - marcosdumay 9y ago
      And paid very well in Brazil too. Much above the average here.
awkwardtortoise 9y ago
> I'm a huge Elon Musk fan and I deeply share his vision for getting humans on mars, being more environmentally friendly, etc. However, I'm starting to lose faith in him. Same here. A fan of musk. But SCTY's demise should serve as a canary in the mine. TSLA had to buy SCTY to prevent it from going bankrupt. Not going to bet against Musk since he is a great salesman and he seems to have a lot of powerful friends who have and are willing to bail him out, but TSLA is a company that might not be around in 5 to 10 years if the business/economic environment shifts against him. He better hope his TSLA self-driving software is the best in class. People forget that Musk and TSLA was pretty much bankrupt 10 years ago before he got bailed out.
dismantlethesun 9y ago
> First of all, the guy is stretched way too thin. He runs two huge companies. As a CEO and founder, if he doesn't do enough, he can place greater burdens on his executive staff. Now, this can be seen as 'unfair', but to whom? Why? > They are building cars that real people will drive. You can't rush or cut corners with something that will kill people. I feel that this is up to government regulation. The government should prevent unsafe cars from entering the road, not leave it up to the judgment of car-company CEOs. > However, I'm starting to lose faith in him. I maybe a natural cynic, but I never had 'faith' in him. He's doing the best he can, but his success or failure isn't something I root for. If he succeeds, well with all luck the outcome will benefit us all. If he fails, well perhaps his competition will succeed in his place. It might take longer, but having electric cars popularized in 5 years, or in 15 years isn't too big a difference to me.
- msl 9y ago
  > I feel that this is up to government regulation. The government should prevent unsafe cars from entering the road, not leave it up to the judgment of car-company CEOs. Unfortunately, this might be asking your government a bit too much. If a car company decides to cut some obscure corners and keeps quiet about it [1], it will be very difficult for any outsider to catch it in time to prevent loss of life. Sure, you can punish them later, but by then, people will already have died. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch_recalls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch... EDIT: Changed the link in [1] (from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/another-fatal-crash-may-be-linked-to-gm-ignition-switch-defect/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/another-fatal-crash-may-be-linke...).
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  I still hope for his success, primarily because I don't have any faith in the competition. Elon is driven by ideas and his businesses are only the most direct means to the end. The same cannot be said about other players in the sector. He's not the only one on the planet who uses wealth for something more than making more wealth, but those people are quite rare and I believe they deserve to be supported.
pg_is_a_butt 9y ago
yeah, good thing the manhattan project spent 40 years in small trials instead of cutting corners to end a war by killing people. you're all idiots.
dv_dt 9y ago
Sometimes founders get booted from their company because they can't handle transition of the company processes from the bootstrapping phase to the run stably long-term phase. I think the transition is still to come for Musk's companies, but somewhere in there is a transition from a workforce of people attached to the vision and willing to give up something for it at some level vs needing to run a company with regular staff running for more nominal exchange of mutual benefit. People can't live their lives on vision alone - even if that is what Musk is living for, he is in a far better position to defer his personal life/finances for the long term payoff than are his employees.
nickik 9y ago
I see a couple of problems with your arguments. > First of all, the guy is stretched way too thin. He runs two huge companies. Now he is starting some other company to be even more distracted. (Boring company) He has done that for a while and both his companies have thrived. That said, he himself only took control of Tesla because of bad times and want to leave he reached a certain point. SpaceX is what he really want to do. The Boring Company is basically a hobby. He will continue to do fine. > It sounds like he really pushes his workers way too hard. I wouldn't want to work at one of his companies. Long hours, a lot of stress, and you're underpaid! Lots of stuff gets made where you wouldn't want to work. Tesla workers have better condition then most people in the world. Plus I'm sure this is not something new, now the media has just discovered this topic and is pushing it. I'm sure we could find many of the same stories for other companies, but nobody in the media gives a fuck if somebody works a 16h shift at some small company in the middle of nowhere. If we want to talk about this stuff we should talk about actual statistics and not periodic media flairs. > They are building cars that real people will drive. You can't rush or cut corners with something that will kill people. His cars are proven to be saver then other cars already. How bad do you think they can mess up in order to undo that advantage. Musk is a business person and he understand that there are diminishing returns, sure they could spend the next 3 years writing the perfect software, but that would be nonsensical. Also no other car company does it (given the quality of software we observe). Why are you applying a different standard, specially when its already saver. > I really fear if he doesn't step back and change his ways a bit, he just won't be able to hire and retain the talent needed to change the world. I feel like if SpaceX/Tesla were not making super modern things that techis and environmentalist love nobody would care about any of these issues in his company. There seems to be a need to hold him to different standards.

vkou 9y ago

> You can't rush or cut corners with something that will kill people. Do you have reason to believe that safety-critical features of the Model 3 will not be up to par? Tesla has a history of mechanical problems with their vehicles, but AFAIK, safety-critical stuff* works just fine. Your door might not open, but your brakes are pretty much guaranteed to work. * I'm exempting autopilot from this.

atempthrow 9y ago
> > You can't rush or cut corners with something that will kill people. I worked in Detroit for an automotive company on their software. I assure you, they rush and cut corners. They iron out the wrinkles in QA and rewrite parts of software a few times. It's not uncommon to have teams (outsourced, the actual employees seem to have reasonable workloads) working 60+ hour weeks regularly on software.
- unprepare 9y ago
  I just declined an offer from Ford on an in house team where everyone is averaging 70 hour weeks; so its not /only/ contractors, but its true, the big 3 use contracting very heavily
- jensv 9y ago
  Better in QA than on the streets.

ianai 9y ago

"how do we survive? How do we not die and have everyone lose their jobs?" Pretty bad thought to entertain at the CEO level. You can justify nearly anything with that basic level. What happened to Ford's "pay them enough to afford what they make"? Sheesh.

krapp 9y ago
>What happened to Ford's "pay them enough to afford what they make"? Sheesh. Henry Ford didn't do business in a global market where he could shop for labor in China or Mexico. A modern day Henry Ford doesn't need to care whether his employees can afford what they make, when he has the entire world to sell to.
- danielvf 9y ago
  You are aware Ford has thousands of employees in Brazil in the 20's and 30's?
  - krapp 9y ago
    I was not aware. Guess I stand corrected, then. I think my general point still stands - a modern business doesn't necessarily benefit from enriching its employees or the community in which it operates.
    - User_424 9y ago
      The civility here never fails to disappoint me
      - mathperson 9y ago
        Huh? Never fails to impress?
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    And paid very well in Brazil too. Much above the average here.

awkwardtortoise 9y ago

> I'm a huge Elon Musk fan and I deeply share his vision for getting humans on mars, being more environmentally friendly, etc. However, I'm starting to lose faith in him. Same here. A fan of musk. But SCTY's demise should serve as a canary in the mine. TSLA had to buy SCTY to prevent it from going bankrupt. Not going to bet against Musk since he is a great salesman and he seems to have a lot of powerful friends who have and are willing to bail him out, but TSLA is a company that might not be around in 5 to 10 years if the business/economic environment shifts against him. He better hope his TSLA self-driving software is the best in class. People forget that Musk and TSLA was pretty much bankrupt 10 years ago before he got bailed out.

dismantlethesun 9y ago

> First of all, the guy is stretched way too thin. He runs two huge companies. As a CEO and founder, if he doesn't do enough, he can place greater burdens on his executive staff. Now, this can be seen as 'unfair', but to whom? Why? > They are building cars that real people will drive. You can't rush or cut corners with something that will kill people. I feel that this is up to government regulation. The government should prevent unsafe cars from entering the road, not leave it up to the judgment of car-company CEOs. > However, I'm starting to lose faith in him. I maybe a natural cynic, but I never had 'faith' in him. He's doing the best he can, but his success or failure isn't something I root for. If he succeeds, well with all luck the outcome will benefit us all. If he fails, well perhaps his competition will succeed in his place. It might take longer, but having electric cars popularized in 5 years, or in 15 years isn't too big a difference to me.

msl 9y ago
> I feel that this is up to government regulation. The government should prevent unsafe cars from entering the road, not leave it up to the judgment of car-company CEOs. Unfortunately, this might be asking your government a bit too much. If a car company decides to cut some obscure corners and keeps quiet about it [1], it will be very difficult for any outsider to catch it in time to prevent loss of life. Sure, you can punish them later, but by then, people will already have died. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch_recalls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch... EDIT: Changed the link in [1] (from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/another-fatal-crash-may-be-linked-to-gm-ignition-switch-defect/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/another-fatal-crash-may-be-linke...).
TeMPOraL 9y ago
I still hope for his success, primarily because I don't have any faith in the competition. Elon is driven by ideas and his businesses are only the most direct means to the end. The same cannot be said about other players in the sector. He's not the only one on the planet who uses wealth for something more than making more wealth, but those people are quite rare and I believe they deserve to be supported.

pg_is_a_butt 9y ago

yeah, good thing the manhattan project spent 40 years in small trials instead of cutting corners to end a war by killing people. you're all idiots.

dv_dt 9y ago

Sometimes founders get booted from their company because they can't handle transition of the company processes from the bootstrapping phase to the run stably long-term phase. I think the transition is still to come for Musk's companies, but somewhere in there is a transition from a workforce of people attached to the vision and willing to give up something for it at some level vs needing to run a company with regular staff running for more nominal exchange of mutual benefit. People can't live their lives on vision alone - even if that is what Musk is living for, he is in a far better position to defer his personal life/finances for the long term payoff than are his employees.

nickik 9y ago

I see a couple of problems with your arguments. > First of all, the guy is stretched way too thin. He runs two huge companies. Now he is starting some other company to be even more distracted. (Boring company) He has done that for a while and both his companies have thrived. That said, he himself only took control of Tesla because of bad times and want to leave he reached a certain point. SpaceX is what he really want to do. The Boring Company is basically a hobby. He will continue to do fine. > It sounds like he really pushes his workers way too hard. I wouldn't want to work at one of his companies. Long hours, a lot of stress, and you're underpaid! Lots of stuff gets made where you wouldn't want to work. Tesla workers have better condition then most people in the world. Plus I'm sure this is not something new, now the media has just discovered this topic and is pushing it. I'm sure we could find many of the same stories for other companies, but nobody in the media gives a fuck if somebody works a 16h shift at some small company in the middle of nowhere. If we want to talk about this stuff we should talk about actual statistics and not periodic media flairs. > They are building cars that real people will drive. You can't rush or cut corners with something that will kill people. His cars are proven to be saver then other cars already. How bad do you think they can mess up in order to undo that advantage. Musk is a business person and he understand that there are diminishing returns, sure they could spend the next 3 years writing the perfect software, but that would be nonsensical. Also no other car company does it (given the quality of software we observe). Why are you applying a different standard, specially when its already saver. > I really fear if he doesn't step back and change his ways a bit, he just won't be able to hire and retain the talent needed to change the world. I feel like if SpaceX/Tesla were not making super modern things that techis and environmentalist love nobody would care about any of these issues in his company. There seems to be a need to hold him to different standards.