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I've always found the reports of his behind the scenes behavior and its stark contrast with his public persona to be incredibly disturbing, because it paints a

• ProAm 5y ago
  > stark contrast with his public persona What do you mean? He called a person a pedo in public.
  • mhh__ 5y ago
    Then backed down, while doubling down to a journo, if I have the chronology right.
  • rebelos 5y ago
    True. I guess I'm considering his public image in the aggregate, excepting those occasional blunders.
  • ChildOfChaos 5y ago
    Haha that was pretty funny though, an example of playing to his audience in public.
    • luffapi 5y ago
      It wasn’t funny to call a guy trying to rescue trapped children a “pedo”. That was very public bullying. He says a lot of stupid and hostile stuff. I’m surprised people found his public persona incongruent with the reports of abuse.
      • belltaco 5y ago
        >It wasn’t funny to call a guy trying to rescue trapped children a “pedo” That guy first told Elon to stick his small submarine up his own ass, so maybe he shouldn't have told "a guy trying to rescue trapped children" to sodomize himself with a very large object?
        • luffapi 5y ago
          Elon wasn’t helping anyone, he was clamoring for attention. He then made viscous and immature smears against someone actually helping. It’s incredible that someone would defend Musk on this.
          • belltaco 5y ago
            >He then made viscous and immature smears against someone actually helping Telling someone to stick a large object up their ass is mature to you? And somehow not attention seeking?
            • luffapi 5y ago
              He was trying to get a job done and Musk was interfering for attention. His response was warranted.
        • lamontcg 5y ago
          That submarine really was a bad design and a distraction from the rescue effort. He swooped in knowing zero about cave diving and produced something that only worked in a pool demo. He could have instead offered to help, quietly behind the scenes, and asked the team if could be of assistance, but he went internet-celebrity mode and splashed all his showerthoughts in real time all over twitter. That was attention-whoring behavior.
          • belltaco 5y ago
            And the diver could have pointed out the issues with it instead telling him to stick it up his ass.
    • colesantiago 5y ago
      > The guy was likely a pedo though and that was pretty funny… I don’t think calling someone that without evidence is funny at all, if not this is an extremely libellous accusation. Grow up.
  • morpheos137 5y ago
    Yeah musk is a classic con man public and private to anybody who has a brain. Jim Jones had fans too.
  • camjohnson26 5y ago
    See also his treatment of Martin Tripp that was documented here: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/when-elon-musk-tried-to-destroy-a-tesla-whistleblower https://getpocket.com/explore/item/when-elon-musk-tried-to-d...
• vkou 5y ago
  I think all it paints is a picture of someone who is good at virtue signaling in public. I don't think there's a need to dig much past that.
  • MattGaiser 5y ago
    I think everyone does this to some extent. For Musk, publicity is a large part of his work. That requires a certain friendliness. When someone is yo ur job, you adapt your personality. I am certainly not my authentic self at work and that is to facilitate my work.
    • vkou 5y ago
      > I think everyone does this to some extent. They do, and that's fine. Politicians and people like him do it more frequently than, say, Larry Ellison. What we shouldn't do is take a carefully-curated public persona, and try to extrapolate too hard about how <that person> 'really' behaves.
• peakaboo 5y ago
  This may sound a bit weird but haven't you noticed they all are psychopaths? Although high functioning ones. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezoz... These are not healthy people mentally. But they are rich and powerful.
  • m12k 5y ago
    See also https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
  • andi999 5y ago
    Gates seems pretty normal to me.
    • UncleOxidant 5y ago
      He's gone out of his way to cultivate that image.
      • rglover 5y ago
        You mean the well-timed documentary humanizing him as a caring genius just before all this started was intentional?! Nah...
      • chaostheory 5y ago
        Even before the Epstein scandal, there were hints of it old personality like when he claimed in Steve Job's biography that Next OS had no role or association with the creation of OSX (now Mac OS); hinting that Jobs was hired back on the board's whim.
      • SmellTheGlove 5y ago
        There was a couple year span on Reddit where you'd see a couple of really positive Bill Gates posts each day. At a glance it seemed organic, but people were always in the comments suggesting it was great PR. Seems like they were probably right.
• breck 5y ago
  Anger is a natural human emotion. There's a time and a place for it. If you're in the NFL, on the field. If you're in the NFL of car making, on the factory floor. Tom Brady isn't so polite for 60 minutes on Sundays. Never once in my life have I met a world class performer who doesn't have some "field" where anger and profanity are permitted. If you want to be the best you can be I don't see how you can hit that without utilizing one of your core emotions.
  • peakaboo 5y ago
    Anger is the ego being upset that people and the world didn't do what you expected. It's natural, but it's absolutely not a good leadership quality to be angry.
    • bostonsre 5y ago
      > Anger is the ego being upset that people and the world didn't do what you expected Why does ego play a role? Couldn't one be mad because of what they believe is wrong is being done? It's not right to be angry at someone that didn't know any better but there are individuals that I've worked with that aren't aligned with the company well, are lazy and do selfish things. Why am I not allowed to be angry at a person like that?
      • peakaboo 5y ago
        You are allowed but there is a reason old people are not very angry anymore. They have learned to be humble though life, realizing people tend to do their best. If someone is not performing at work, it's usually because of motivation, and that's the job of a good manager to create. But I think the American culture is quite different from what I'm used to so maybe I sound weird in this context. :)
      • lazide 5y ago
        Anger generally is anchored to something that is being threatened - it is a defense mechanism. Sometimes, like if you’re angry at an opposing tribesman for attacking your village, it can be helpful. Other times, it can lead to acting out in ways that hurt you (like being so angry you don’t pay attention to your surroundings and get ambushed while trying to counter attack said enemy). There are many possible scenarios - anger at the threat to his stock valuations, or anger at the threat to his public image, or anger at the threat to the illusion he personally held that everything was going ok, or anger and frustration at his inability to get control of the situation in a productive way, which is a threat to many of these things. Most abuse is when a person is unable to properly manage and avoid painful emotions (such as anger), and projects fault and bad intent onto others - to scapegoat for instance as a maladaptive behavior they haven’t learned an alternative to, among other reasons. What is being described in the article is classic abusive behavior, no matter the venue. It is not ok, in any environment, and it causes destruction and missed opportunities anywhere it is deployed. The reason I think you don’t see that in his public persona because he knows it isn’t ok - but can’t control it sometimes, or even worse, thinks it’s a good thing when he can do it in ‘private’. He ‘knows how to treat his woman so he gets dinner on time’, as it were, and she’d better put her makeup on better so he doesn’t look bad in front of his friends I expect there are many internal witch hunts ongoing for leakers after this, and have been for other leaks too. Since after all, in his eyes it is not the behavior that is wrong, it’s being embarrassed in public that is.
• jcranmer 5y ago
  > stark contrast with his public persona I don't really follow Musk, so pretty much everything I hear about him comes from whatever antics bubbles up to a tech-y press (such as Ars Technica or posts here). As a result, the mental image of him that I have is that he's an arrogant, egotistical smartass with a selfish streak that sometimes can be seen as altruistic. Which is basically the kind of behavior that this article seems to confirm. ... so what is in his public persona that is in stark contrast to this constant portrayal in the news? What am I missing?
  • dragontamer 5y ago
    The public persona is that he's good at engineering. When in actuality, all of these stories seem to indicate that he's incompetent at it. People were willing to put up with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (other egotistical jackasses) because they made good engineering decisions. But Elon Musk's decisions are "Lets have an automated factory line, and I'm planning the factory will only have 30,000 workers". Then suddenly 40,000 need to be hired instead (because there's no automation technology to do the things he wanted), and now his financials are a mess and he has to build a Tent in the parking lot to house all of the extra production lines. And now people wonder why their Model 3 / Model Y have paint issues or other quality-control defects (Wompy Wheels)
    • caconym_ 5y ago
      Totally serious question: if Musk is so bad at engineering, to the extent that he's supposedly (?) not just making bad calls himself but also sabotaging the ability of those under him to make good calls, how has he ended up in charge of two companies that have both found (contemporarily) unprecedented success at scale in markets that have been absolutely dominated by huge incumbents for many decades? Tesla and SpaceX both seem to (at the very least) require a facility for making good technical decisions at a relatively high level, whether it's Musk or someone else. Is he just astronomically lucky? Or such an incredible bully that he bends the very fabric of reality to his will? It's one (valid) thing to criticize his persona[lity], but his results seem rather more difficult to argue with.
• patkai 5y ago
  I agree with you. Also, the Gervais principle should be required reading for everybody on HN. Half of the discussions would be so much simpler. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/ To put it simple: it would be hard to operate a large organization without some of the above mentioned tendencies. Regarding awful fathers: what do we know about the father of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos or even Arnold Schwarzenegger? All of this plays out in society in a non-black-and-white way.
• mrits 5y ago
  What a weird thing to say about someone you don't know personally and I'm guessing never even talked to before.
• bob33212 5y ago
  It is really frustrating when you are a very hard worker and very good at your job and then find out that other people are not getting things done. Watch the Michael Jordan documentary if you don't understand this.
  • dragontamer 5y ago
    Its very frustrating when you're a competent worker, and someone else is putting a lot of effort spinning wheels on worthless ideas and then trying to convince everyone else that the useless work is in fact useful. Elon Musk made the wrong call on "alien dreadnaught". Elon did not understand automation, and fired the man who did. Then complained about having 10,000+ more workers than originally planned (because his original plans were terrible). The article doesn't say anything about "hard worker". Its about Elon making the wrong call, and then angrily firing the executives who tried to make it work. When there wasn't enough space, Elon set up the "tent" outside to expand manual assembly (since the factory was never designed to house this many workers). ----------- But that's fine. Elon can run his company however he likes under normal circumstances. The thing that pisses me off is his flaunting of COVID19 lockdowns last year. This internal politics thing is just that: internal politics that happen everywhere. But its no longer internal when it comes to disease. We have to work together, and Elon Musk spreading COVID19 lies and disinformation so that he can keep his Fremont factory open really made me angry.
• rvz 5y ago
  > I've always found the reports of his behind the scenes behavior and its stark contrast with his public persona to be incredibly disturbing, because it paints a picture of someone with psychopathic tendencies. That is a reality distortion field. The Tesla CEO is good at that and it reflects on the deceptive advertisement of FSD and the actual reality of it being unfinished and still unsafe and it puts the lives of many drivers at risk on the roads.
  • bob33212 5y ago
    What about the lives that have been saved? Do those not count? Just this week a drunk driver passed out and the Tesla safely slowed down to a stop. What if that guy was in an Audi and ran over a child while passed out?
    • rvz 5y ago
      > Just this week a drunk driver passed out and the Tesla safely slowed down to a stop Maybe that 'driver' shouldn't be behind the wheel in the first place given that he was drunk? You have to knowingly get inside of the car and start it up all manually to use it. Does being drunk give a pass to everyone behind the wheel to do the same thing? You are still putting other drivers at risk regardless of the car that is driven, even especially what you are using is beta software. I wouldn't want to use such software that confuses the moon with a traffic light [0] [0] https://twitter.com/JordanTeslaTech/status/1418413307862585344 https://twitter.com/JordanTeslaTech/status/14184133078625853...
      • outworlder 5y ago
        > Maybe that 'driver' shouldn't be behind the wheel in the first place That particular driver, no. What about a medical condition? The moon thing is funny but was that unsafe? There's also the truck that was carrying traffic lights. Edge cases. Humans make even worse decisions daily, nobody cares but people still die.
        • dragonwriter 5y ago
• justicezyx 5y ago
  If you observe yourself closely enough, note the most capable self observer is still at least an order of magnitude less effective than a 3rd party, you'll see a bunch of startling behavior. Indeed, one type of commenting on HN is to dig the past comments and come up with an observation. And one immediately was startled by the past behavior of the commentators. Sure, are these behaviour bad? Yes of course, but does the article gives the full pictures? Likely not... Without contexts, the assessment of behavior is just meaningless.
• choppaface 5y ago
  I talked with Jinnah Hosein who, without any prompting from me, told me Elon Musk is a certifiable psychopath based on his experience at Tesla and SpaceX. Don’t let the Saturday Night Live appearance fool you— the exterior is nothing like the what happens behind the scenes. The OP article might be a response to investor lawsuits filed against Blizzard and/or the Google lawsuit for the Andy Rubin and David Drummond cases. Abusing your employees it not just bad for them but can also be a violation of fiduciary duty. Musk is pretty transparent about his disdain for the SEC among other things.. .. If more people finally come foreword about Musk, he’ll never change his behavior, but at least everyone else will pay less for it.
  • supperburg 5y ago
    What was the context for having the occasion to speak to Hosien? Can you offer more specifics about what he told you?
• markdown 5y ago
  > and its stark contrast with his public persona Isn't that just... human? Do you "act" like shit in public? Don't most of us put on a show in public (social media, etc)?
• parineum 5y ago
  >because it paints a picture of someone with psychopathic tendencies. I'm so tired of this. The article making that claim about CEOs being psychopaths has been latched into in pop culture so hard and yet it's roundly thought of as, at best, an incredible overstep of applied psychiatry. Just because someone doesn't care about you doesn't mean they're incapable, they could just be a dick.
  • lamontcg 5y ago
    At what point does someone who is consistently a dick become a diagnosable sociopath?
    • parineum 5y ago
      That's for psychiatrists with a personal familiarity with the patient to determine. A reputable professional wouldn't diagnose from a distance and everyone else is covered by HIPAA.
      • lamontcg 5y ago
        Well that's super convenient for sociopaths, glad we're ensuring that they don't suffer from any criticism at all. Same with the assholes who get misdiagnosed from a distance as sociopaths. Must protect our most vulnerable members of society.
        • parineum 5y ago
          >glad we're ensuring that they don't suffer from any criticism This is what's known as a strawman.
• bastardoperator 5y ago
  Is it? When staff during my interview at Spacex several years back told me they work for a billionaire but accept lower wages because it's about the mission and not their own well being... I knew all I needed to know about Elon Musk.
• sunstone 5y ago
  Personally these stories are just as likely to be hit pieces orchestrated by competitors that want to slow musk down. If he was really as you suggest he would have a hard time recruiting world class talent such as Jim Keller.
• rebelos 5y ago
  Hmm this comment was nuked. Probably one of the highest upvote counts but substantially far down the page. Guess I struck a nerve, perhaps with the very man himself, as he undoubtedly reviews anything here that involves him. Shadowy HN is my favorite HN.