7 ms·

> Will Elon stop with tweets that hurt Tesla? Appoint a CEO, or COO to run things People have been saying that for years and years. It's beyond stale. Meanwhil

by Reedx 6y ago

> Will Elon stop with tweets that hurt Tesla? Appoint a CEO, or COO to run things People have been saying that for years and years. It's beyond stale. Meanwhile Tesla and SpaceX have continued to succeed beyond expectations for over a decade now. If there's occasional twitter volatility in-between simultaneously landing two rockets returning from space... so be it. Besides, if it bothers you that much, you don't have to buy their cars or invest or even pay attention to it. The constant handwringing, mind reading and speech policing is ridiculous. That's how we end up with nothing but layers upon layers of focus tested marketing speak and people afraid to challenge orthodoxy.

threeseed 6y ago
Of course what Musk does matters. He's the CEO. And his erratic and reprehensible behaviour is degrading the Tesla brand as well as reaffirming the long held idea amongst shareholders that he is too unstable to be running the company.
- llsf 6y ago
  Nobody is perfect. Mr. Musk shown that he could build from the ground up and manage several large companies. Could he be even better ? Maybe. But until Tesla and SpaceX can find someone unequivocally better than Mr. Musk, those companies will have to do (and maybe fail) with him.
- woodandsteel 6y ago
  I can think of no important way in which Tesla or SpaceX would be significantly more successful today if Musk had publicly communicated more like a standard CEO.
- forgotmylogin2 6y ago
  It's not degrading the Tesla brand though. Tesla is the second largest automaker in the world by market cap. Toyota, the only company larger than Tesla, was founded 65 years before Tesla. What Musk (and all Tesla employees) have built so far is nothing short of astounding. To imply he's leading them to ruin with his unfiltered twitter account could not be farther from the truth.
- tbrock 6y ago
  There would be no Tesla brand without him. The brand is quite literally "We are building electric cars, get the fuck out of our way!" so I think it's pretty on brand for him to be saying what he's saying. The man demands action, if he didn't he wouldn't be running the most ambitious companies on the planet.
  - cma 6y ago
    "There would be no Tesla brand without him." > Founded as Tesla Motors, Tesla was incorporated on July 1, 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.
    - tbrock 6y ago
      Yeah and who knew about it? Nobody.
      - matthewbauer 6y ago
        Sure but being a good publicist doesn’t mean you’re a good CEO.
    - xeromal 6y ago
      What products did they have before Elon?
    - nickik 6y ago
      Before Elon Tesla was 2 guys with a piece of paper saying 'we should build Electric cars'. Elon provided most of the funding, and it wouldn't have gotten of the ground without him. Next Eberhard ran the company straight into the ground and Elon had to take over. Then Elon had to invest even more money to save the company. From there he made it one of the most valuable car companies in the world. Thus, anybody who thinks Tesla would actually exist without Elon is just a fool.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- icelancer 6y ago
  >> And his erratic and reprehensible behaviour is degrading the Tesla brand as well as reaffirming the long held idea amongst shareholders that he is too unstable to be running the company. Good point. Stock is collapsing relative to SPY and the Q1 report was just brutal, wasn't it?
- maxharris 6y ago
  As Peter Thiel famously said, "Never bet against Elon Musk." I'm a shareholder. I expect that Elon's leadership will make my shares go up an incredible amount in the future. I have over half of my life savings at stake on TSLA, so I have a lot of skin in the game. If you think he's so bad, why don't you short his stock? It would be fun to check back in six months and compare how we did!
  - raverbashing 6y ago
    > As Peter Thiel famously said, "Never bet against Elon Musk." Yes, because for better or worse Elon is "seeing the future" and has the capability to execute it. In a world where a lot of CxOs and Senior Executives "didn't believe" in remote work in January of this year, you see that the average group vision is poor and execution ability is even poorer
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      I think it's very helpful that Musk has an actual goal to achieve with his companies, that isn't "raking in tons of money" or "seeing the stocks soar". Most companies seem to be the real-world equivalent of clicker games. Do $whatever to make money. Use that money to do $whatever faster and better to make money. Ad infinitum. What that $whatever is is immaterial. I sometimes call these "toilet paper companies", i.e. companies that would happily pivot from whatever they're doing into selling toilet paper if they could make more money with it. But with TP being a quite sensitive topic these days, I guess I'll need to find a better analogy.
  - jahaja 6y ago
    Well, this was just unfortunate timing. I hope it sorts itself out in six months for you.
- nickik 6y ago
  > as well as reaffirming the long held idea amongst shareholders that he is too unstable to be running the company. I don't know a single person that believes this. This is what people who hate Elon and Tesla believe about Tesla stockholders. Its honestly crazy if you look at what Tesla has done since Elon took over, to think that he is a problem. He is the opposite.
rtsil 6y ago
> Meanwhile Tesla and SpaceX have continued to succeed beyond expectations for over a decade now. I think people underestimate how essential Gwynne Shotwell is to SpaceX.
- trianglem 6y ago
  Yeah for process but there’s no spacex without Elon.
  - sjwright 6y ago
    I personally feel there's a big overlap between Jobs and Musk—but none more so than the fact that they had the key combination of sufficient intelligence, clear vision, high self-confidence and (most importantly) strong influence over corporate direction. One of my favourite Steve Jobs quotes is just after he returned to Apple and began dismantling the massive pile of legacy cruft. When asked about a particular (terrible) technology that Apple scrapped, Steve went on a particularly insightful rant that holds numerous insights into what he believes to be key to a successful company. And history proved those insights to be exactly right. The quote— "Some mistakes will be made along the way. That's good. Because at least some DECISIONS are being made along the way, and we'll find the mistakes and we'll fix them." https://youtu.be/yQ16_YxLbB8?t=3286 https://youtu.be/yQ16_YxLbB8?t=3286 In other words, as long as you're right often enough, being decisive is more important than being right every single time. Musk strikes me as sharing that mentality. He's right often enough that it's more efficient to "fix" the mistakes than to suffocate big decisions with big committees. And it's not like any big committee is sure to be right more often than Jobs/Elon anyway. (That YouTube video is fantastic IMHO. Watched with the benefit of hindsight it shows that Apple's success wasn't an accident. Steve really did understand the formula that ultimately led to it.)
    - xeromal 6y ago
      I love this comment. Thanks for sharing.
    - matthewbauer 6y ago
wilg 6y ago
Is it so much to ask for him to tweet responsibly so we can enjoy the fun future stuff without all the bullshit?
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > Is it so much to ask for him to tweet responsibly so we can enjoy the fun future stuff without all the bullshit? I don't know, that rave cave in Berlin sounds pretty awesome, and that was from a tweet. The Pedo thing was in poor taste, sure, but they got Tesla guys working on a sub to get some kids out of the cave, so you have to see the positive outweighing the negative. Besides, he won that case and no one here cared. The Truth is that his controversy is part of his Branding Prowess, him smoking weed on JRE created way much more awareness for everything he is involved in amongst the masses more than I thought it would. And I saw it happen live. > - TSLA trying to run an amazon HQ2 like process for Truck and Model Y factories, look for small, southern, and poor cities to bid and probably win Does this apply to Cybertruck or Semi? I was thinking of putting a deposit on a dual motor Cybertruck but I'm waiting to see where it will be built. Fremont was already building Y does that mean they will stop if they get another US based factory online? I just don't understand why Sparks isn't being utilized, its so f'ing massive!
  - wilg 6y ago
    I didn't say he shouldn't tweet about having a dance club, try to save kids, smoke weed, or be weird. He just shouldn't do irresponsible things like spread misinformation about a global pandemic or lie.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    > The Pedo thing was in poor taste, sure Poor taste is one thing, potentially ruining someone's life is another.
  - gustavo-fring 6y ago
    To be clear, he tried to destroy an innocent man/hero's life because said guy dared criticize his attempt to take the glory for himself. He then doubled and tripled down on it and hired a fraudulent private investigator to prove it (he did not). There are those of us that care very much and find actions like that horrific, but we're in the silent minority apparently. It struck me as the actions of a sociopath. Why do you feel like that is appropriate behavior?
LiquidSky 6y ago
>That's how we end up with nothing but layers upon layers of focus tested marketing speak and people afraid to challenge orthodoxy. A billionaire with a massive social media presence publicly mocking some random guy in Thailand: speaking truth to power. A billionaire lying about his company going private: speaking the truth that others dare not.

by Reedx 6y ago

threeseed 6y ago

Of course what Musk does matters. He's the CEO. And his erratic and reprehensible behaviour is degrading the Tesla brand as well as reaffirming the long held idea amongst shareholders that he is too unstable to be running the company.

llsf 6y ago
Nobody is perfect. Mr. Musk shown that he could build from the ground up and manage several large companies. Could he be even better ? Maybe. But until Tesla and SpaceX can find someone unequivocally better than Mr. Musk, those companies will have to do (and maybe fail) with him.
woodandsteel 6y ago
I can think of no important way in which Tesla or SpaceX would be significantly more successful today if Musk had publicly communicated more like a standard CEO.
forgotmylogin2 6y ago
It's not degrading the Tesla brand though. Tesla is the second largest automaker in the world by market cap. Toyota, the only company larger than Tesla, was founded 65 years before Tesla. What Musk (and all Tesla employees) have built so far is nothing short of astounding. To imply he's leading them to ruin with his unfiltered twitter account could not be farther from the truth.
tbrock 6y ago
There would be no Tesla brand without him. The brand is quite literally "We are building electric cars, get the fuck out of our way!" so I think it's pretty on brand for him to be saying what he's saying. The man demands action, if he didn't he wouldn't be running the most ambitious companies on the planet.
- cma 6y ago
  "There would be no Tesla brand without him." > Founded as Tesla Motors, Tesla was incorporated on July 1, 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.
  - tbrock 6y ago
    Yeah and who knew about it? Nobody.
    - matthewbauer 6y ago
      Sure but being a good publicist doesn’t mean you’re a good CEO.
  - xeromal 6y ago
    What products did they have before Elon?
  - nickik 6y ago
    Before Elon Tesla was 2 guys with a piece of paper saying 'we should build Electric cars'. Elon provided most of the funding, and it wouldn't have gotten of the ground without him. Next Eberhard ran the company straight into the ground and Elon had to take over. Then Elon had to invest even more money to save the company. From there he made it one of the most valuable car companies in the world. Thus, anybody who thinks Tesla would actually exist without Elon is just a fool.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
icelancer 6y ago
>> And his erratic and reprehensible behaviour is degrading the Tesla brand as well as reaffirming the long held idea amongst shareholders that he is too unstable to be running the company. Good point. Stock is collapsing relative to SPY and the Q1 report was just brutal, wasn't it?
maxharris 6y ago
As Peter Thiel famously said, "Never bet against Elon Musk." I'm a shareholder. I expect that Elon's leadership will make my shares go up an incredible amount in the future. I have over half of my life savings at stake on TSLA, so I have a lot of skin in the game. If you think he's so bad, why don't you short his stock? It would be fun to check back in six months and compare how we did!
- raverbashing 6y ago
  > As Peter Thiel famously said, "Never bet against Elon Musk." Yes, because for better or worse Elon is "seeing the future" and has the capability to execute it. In a world where a lot of CxOs and Senior Executives "didn't believe" in remote work in January of this year, you see that the average group vision is poor and execution ability is even poorer
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    I think it's very helpful that Musk has an actual goal to achieve with his companies, that isn't "raking in tons of money" or "seeing the stocks soar". Most companies seem to be the real-world equivalent of clicker games. Do $whatever to make money. Use that money to do $whatever faster and better to make money. Ad infinitum. What that $whatever is is immaterial. I sometimes call these "toilet paper companies", i.e. companies that would happily pivot from whatever they're doing into selling toilet paper if they could make more money with it. But with TP being a quite sensitive topic these days, I guess I'll need to find a better analogy.
- jahaja 6y ago
  Well, this was just unfortunate timing. I hope it sorts itself out in six months for you.
nickik 6y ago
> as well as reaffirming the long held idea amongst shareholders that he is too unstable to be running the company. I don't know a single person that believes this. This is what people who hate Elon and Tesla believe about Tesla stockholders. Its honestly crazy if you look at what Tesla has done since Elon took over, to think that he is a problem. He is the opposite.

rtsil 6y ago

> Meanwhile Tesla and SpaceX have continued to succeed beyond expectations for over a decade now. I think people underestimate how essential Gwynne Shotwell is to SpaceX.

trianglem 6y ago
Yeah for process but there’s no spacex without Elon.
- sjwright 6y ago
  I personally feel there's a big overlap between Jobs and Musk—but none more so than the fact that they had the key combination of sufficient intelligence, clear vision, high self-confidence and (most importantly) strong influence over corporate direction. One of my favourite Steve Jobs quotes is just after he returned to Apple and began dismantling the massive pile of legacy cruft. When asked about a particular (terrible) technology that Apple scrapped, Steve went on a particularly insightful rant that holds numerous insights into what he believes to be key to a successful company. And history proved those insights to be exactly right. The quote— "Some mistakes will be made along the way. That's good. Because at least some DECISIONS are being made along the way, and we'll find the mistakes and we'll fix them." https://youtu.be/yQ16_YxLbB8?t=3286 https://youtu.be/yQ16_YxLbB8?t=3286 In other words, as long as you're right often enough, being decisive is more important than being right every single time. Musk strikes me as sharing that mentality. He's right often enough that it's more efficient to "fix" the mistakes than to suffocate big decisions with big committees. And it's not like any big committee is sure to be right more often than Jobs/Elon anyway. (That YouTube video is fantastic IMHO. Watched with the benefit of hindsight it shows that Apple's success wasn't an accident. Steve really did understand the formula that ultimately led to it.)
  - xeromal 6y ago
    I love this comment. Thanks for sharing.
  - matthewbauer 6y ago

wilg 6y ago

Is it so much to ask for him to tweet responsibly so we can enjoy the fun future stuff without all the bullshit?

Melting_Harps 6y ago
> Is it so much to ask for him to tweet responsibly so we can enjoy the fun future stuff without all the bullshit? I don't know, that rave cave in Berlin sounds pretty awesome, and that was from a tweet. The Pedo thing was in poor taste, sure, but they got Tesla guys working on a sub to get some kids out of the cave, so you have to see the positive outweighing the negative. Besides, he won that case and no one here cared. The Truth is that his controversy is part of his Branding Prowess, him smoking weed on JRE created way much more awareness for everything he is involved in amongst the masses more than I thought it would. And I saw it happen live. > - TSLA trying to run an amazon HQ2 like process for Truck and Model Y factories, look for small, southern, and poor cities to bid and probably win Does this apply to Cybertruck or Semi? I was thinking of putting a deposit on a dual motor Cybertruck but I'm waiting to see where it will be built. Fremont was already building Y does that mean they will stop if they get another US based factory online? I just don't understand why Sparks isn't being utilized, its so f'ing massive!
- wilg 6y ago
  I didn't say he shouldn't tweet about having a dance club, try to save kids, smoke weed, or be weird. He just shouldn't do irresponsible things like spread misinformation about a global pandemic or lie.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  > The Pedo thing was in poor taste, sure Poor taste is one thing, potentially ruining someone's life is another.
- gustavo-fring 6y ago
  To be clear, he tried to destroy an innocent man/hero's life because said guy dared criticize his attempt to take the glory for himself. He then doubled and tripled down on it and hired a fraudulent private investigator to prove it (he did not). There are those of us that care very much and find actions like that horrific, but we're in the silent minority apparently. It struck me as the actions of a sociopath. Why do you feel like that is appropriate behavior?

LiquidSky 6y ago

>That's how we end up with nothing but layers upon layers of focus tested marketing speak and people afraid to challenge orthodoxy. A billionaire with a massive social media presence publicly mocking some random guy in Thailand: speaking truth to power. A billionaire lying about his company going private: speaking the truth that others dare not.