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To be honest all of the Silicon Valley innovators have this cult of personality that once you look behind the curtain they act in their own self interest (which
by zitterbewegung 8y ago
To be honest all of the Silicon Valley innovators have this cult of personality that once you look behind the curtain they act in their own self interest (which isn't a bad thing).
For example Elon Musk has his "Iron Man" persona that puts himself on a pedestal and projects an ideal that his companies will solve the worlds problems. Once you look behind the curtain you see that he uses this to justify long hours by his workers. The innovation he has is an acceptance of failure for mission critical systems and quality assurance like cars or rockets.
The moral of the story is that while the people at the top might make it seem like they do the right things for the right reasons the reasons that any rational person actually do are the right things for the reasons to expand your new business.
- manigandham 8y ago> The innovation he has is an acceptance of failure for mission critical systems and quality assurance like cars or rockets. That's definitely not the case unless you're really just out of touch or purposefully trolling here.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mathattack 8y agoIt pays to signal that you’re mission driven. Employees engage more.
- Apocryphon 8y agoYes, but it can also be an easy way to justify exploitative work conditions worse than industry standard.
- mathattack 8y agoYes. And underpay. I was arguing why someone would rationally seek to appear mission driven. It holds in many cases.
- ben_w 8y agoElon Musk is probably the easiest person to point at because he’s worst at it. He has a novel approach of talking down the odds of success of any newsworthy rocket launch and he clearly doesn’t understand that criticising journalists’ reporting of Tesla autopilot issues isn’t going to encourage good reporting. He looks and sounds so awkward in interviews that he may have as little charisma as I do… at least, if you can ignore the fact he’s a billionaire, which some people find very charismatic in itself.
- ponderatul 8y agoSee, I don't want to defend Elon but he seems the most balanced among big tech executives, in that he is invested himself in the outcomes of the companies. He spends the long hours, or at least spent them in the past. I think he is more self aware in general than other execs. He found away to mix self-interest with solving worlds problems. I mean there is still potential for things to go awry. But at least he is not Facebook. He is not a casino owner or something similar. With him I don't think you can separate the right reasons and the business reasons