4 ms·

This isn't a comment on the advertising but I am struck by how Tesla and Elon Musk remind me of Apple and Steve Jobs. Both very divisive companies and leaders p

by awad 6y ago

This isn't a comment on the advertising but I am struck by how Tesla and Elon Musk remind me of Apple and Steve Jobs. Both very divisive companies and leaders prone to downright emotional attacks from one side and staunch defense by the other. While has been quite a bit of hyperbole, overselling, and straight up failure to deliver, you can't dispute that both pushed their respective industries forward almost singlehandedly and consequently reap the financial success.

ashtonkem 6y ago
Tales of both men’s greatness diminish rapidly the closer one got to them too.
- alasdair_ 6y ago
  The same is true for every great figure I can think of, from Gandhi to Einstein, except perhaps Mr Rogers. I’m still glad these people exist.
mola 6y ago
They also pushed a culture of deception and exaggeration. I dunno if iPhones are worth making this behavior normal and even worshipped. Trump=Elon=Jobs They are all successful bullies and liars. If these are our role models...
AgloeDreams 6y ago
Steve Jobs didn't go off talking about how the stock is overvalued and go off producing short shorts as a joke. He had numerous notes of how he didn't care about what the competitors or nay-sayers said. Job's jabs at others (flash, app store rejections) were generally marketing, breif, and thought through. He almost never talked about future products and would often say 'let's see what the future holds'. Both are product minded people who were interested in going into the weeds of the product but Jobs was focused on the UX but Musk is incredibly focused on being impressed by technical details for either the cool factor or some other detail. These two both were micromanagers and outspoken leaders but thats where the similarities end. Musk is about his own interests of humor, cool factor, or impression. Jobs was focused on 'best' to a fault. I think the biggest difference between the two is that Jobs had a lot of time to get beat down by failure so he could become humble and learn how to lead people and care. (Not to say he is an insane example of it, I simply mean that early Jobs acted closer to Elon and leadership risk factor. Next changed that.)
- waterhouse 6y ago
  A thought comes to mind: Twitter wasn't a thing for most of Steve Jobs's career. (Looking at Wiki pages, Jobs's time at Apple was 1976-1985, then 1997-2011; Twitter was created in 2006.) Meanwhile, my impression is that most of Musk's antics occur on Twitter. If Steve Jobs grew up in the Twitter age, would he have done that kind of stuff too? A Quora answer says Jobs didn't make any social media accounts at all, using only phone and email for communication (although it doesn't cite sources), and another article supports the idea that he never made a Twitter account. So that's a point against that theory. Though not against the underlying theory: "If you're a CEO with a certain kind of personality, you should stay the hell away from Twitter".
  - bosie 6y ago
    Musk isn't some young kid but a 49 year old. 2 years ago he baselessly accused a rescue diver as a pedophile and doubled down on it in court. For some reason, I doubt Steve Jobs would have done that. I don't know what "kind of personality" this is but if you have that kind of personality (CEO or not), yes, stay away from Twitter and all social media. Though that wouldn't be your biggest problem anyways.
    - waterhouse 6y ago
      For what it's worth, Musk's defense on that one is that, where he grew up, "pedo guy" was generally used as an insult not to be taken literally, any more than "idiot" seriously means "IQ between 0 and 25". He does seem to be telling the truth on that one; his judgment is questionable on multiple counts, but it's not a case of deliberately making up an accusation. "Elon Musk is right, it seems: in the 1980s the phrase "pedo guy" was used as an insult in Pretoria, where he grew up – and it was a generic reference that did not necessarily mean someone was a pedophile. But telling a court in the United States that the slang was "common" in South Africa may be stretching the truth, according to other people's recollections." https://www.businessinsider.co.za/elon-musk-pedo-guy-really-was-an-insult-in-south-africa-but-not-common-2019-9 https://www.businessinsider.co.za/elon-musk-pedo-guy-really-... He did then hire a private investigator, who apparently produced some suggestive reports: "that Unsworth had met his wife when she was eleven or twelve, and that he had been unpopular in the cave rescue team because he was "creepy"". Apparently on the basis of this, Musk made further accustions in a later email to a third party—one prefaced "off the record", but that wasn't legally binding: "“I suggest that you call people you know in Thailand, find out what’s actually going on and stop defending child rapists, you fucking asshole,” Musk wrote in the email, according to BuzzFeed News. “He’s an old, single white guy from England who’s been traveling to or living in Thailand for 30 to 40 years, mostly Pattaya Beach, until moving to Chiang Rai for a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time," the email continued." http://web.archive.org/web/20200605035828/https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-cave-diver-buzzfeed-2018-9?r=US&IR=T http://web.archive.org/web/20200605035828/https://www.busine... Clearly impulsive, and he seems to have leapt to conclusions from the PI's report (I don't know exactly what was in it and how much was Musk reading between the lines) that seem to be false. But at that time, the accusation didn't seem baseless to him.

by awad 6y ago

ashtonkem 6y ago

Tales of both men’s greatness diminish rapidly the closer one got to them too.

alasdair_ 6y ago
The same is true for every great figure I can think of, from Gandhi to Einstein, except perhaps Mr Rogers. I’m still glad these people exist.

mola 6y ago

They also pushed a culture of deception and exaggeration. I dunno if iPhones are worth making this behavior normal and even worshipped. Trump=Elon=Jobs They are all successful bullies and liars. If these are our role models...

AgloeDreams 6y ago

Steve Jobs didn't go off talking about how the stock is overvalued and go off producing short shorts as a joke. He had numerous notes of how he didn't care about what the competitors or nay-sayers said. Job's jabs at others (flash, app store rejections) were generally marketing, breif, and thought through. He almost never talked about future products and would often say 'let's see what the future holds'. Both are product minded people who were interested in going into the weeds of the product but Jobs was focused on the UX but Musk is incredibly focused on being impressed by technical details for either the cool factor or some other detail. These two both were micromanagers and outspoken leaders but thats where the similarities end. Musk is about his own interests of humor, cool factor, or impression. Jobs was focused on 'best' to a fault. I think the biggest difference between the two is that Jobs had a lot of time to get beat down by failure so he could become humble and learn how to lead people and care. (Not to say he is an insane example of it, I simply mean that early Jobs acted closer to Elon and leadership risk factor. Next changed that.)

waterhouse 6y ago
A thought comes to mind: Twitter wasn't a thing for most of Steve Jobs's career. (Looking at Wiki pages, Jobs's time at Apple was 1976-1985, then 1997-2011; Twitter was created in 2006.) Meanwhile, my impression is that most of Musk's antics occur on Twitter. If Steve Jobs grew up in the Twitter age, would he have done that kind of stuff too? A Quora answer says Jobs didn't make any social media accounts at all, using only phone and email for communication (although it doesn't cite sources), and another article supports the idea that he never made a Twitter account. So that's a point against that theory. Though not against the underlying theory: "If you're a CEO with a certain kind of personality, you should stay the hell away from Twitter".
- bosie 6y ago
  Musk isn't some young kid but a 49 year old. 2 years ago he baselessly accused a rescue diver as a pedophile and doubled down on it in court. For some reason, I doubt Steve Jobs would have done that. I don't know what "kind of personality" this is but if you have that kind of personality (CEO or not), yes, stay away from Twitter and all social media. Though that wouldn't be your biggest problem anyways.
  - waterhouse 6y ago
    For what it's worth, Musk's defense on that one is that, where he grew up, "pedo guy" was generally used as an insult not to be taken literally, any more than "idiot" seriously means "IQ between 0 and 25". He does seem to be telling the truth on that one; his judgment is questionable on multiple counts, but it's not a case of deliberately making up an accusation. "Elon Musk is right, it seems: in the 1980s the phrase "pedo guy" was used as an insult in Pretoria, where he grew up – and it was a generic reference that did not necessarily mean someone was a pedophile. But telling a court in the United States that the slang was "common" in South Africa may be stretching the truth, according to other people's recollections." https://www.businessinsider.co.za/elon-musk-pedo-guy-really-was-an-insult-in-south-africa-but-not-common-2019-9 https://www.businessinsider.co.za/elon-musk-pedo-guy-really-... He did then hire a private investigator, who apparently produced some suggestive reports: "that Unsworth had met his wife when she was eleven or twelve, and that he had been unpopular in the cave rescue team because he was "creepy"". Apparently on the basis of this, Musk made further accustions in a later email to a third party—one prefaced "off the record", but that wasn't legally binding: "“I suggest that you call people you know in Thailand, find out what’s actually going on and stop defending child rapists, you fucking asshole,” Musk wrote in the email, according to BuzzFeed News. “He’s an old, single white guy from England who’s been traveling to or living in Thailand for 30 to 40 years, mostly Pattaya Beach, until moving to Chiang Rai for a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time," the email continued." http://web.archive.org/web/20200605035828/https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-cave-diver-buzzfeed-2018-9?r=US&IR=T http://web.archive.org/web/20200605035828/https://www.busine... Clearly impulsive, and he seems to have leapt to conclusions from the PI's report (I don't know exactly what was in it and how much was Musk reading between the lines) that seem to be false. But at that time, the accusation didn't seem baseless to him.