3 ms·

So you're essentially saying that if you look at any high-profile success of Tesla or SpaceX, you'll see a result that could have been accomplished by others wo

So you're essentially saying that if you look at any high-profile success of Tesla or SpaceX, you'll see a result that could have been accomplished by others working in the field for substantially less money? This seems really questionable to me. I see a fair amount of investment in these fields, but nobody else--even companies of comparable vintage, with comparable money on tap--has come close to the success of Musk's companies. And at the beginning of the time range you're talking about, essentially the last 5 years, both companies had arguably already achieved--if not yet the relatively dominant positions they enjoy now--at least the momentum that got them here. Compared to the vaporous field of EV and space launch startups, they seem like obvious targets for investment.

dragontamer 5y ago
> So you're essentially saying that if you look at any high-profile success of Tesla or SpaceX, you'll see a result that could have been accomplished by others working in the field for substantially less money? No. You're the one saying that. What I said was what I said in my above post. Elon Musk is incredibly good at raising money, and leverages this skill to the max in his companies. No one else in the world seems to compare against Elon Musk at generating hype and extracting money from bonds, secondary offerings, and other maneuvers in the modern stock market. Feel free to disagree with me on this issue, but I have the numbers. The amount that public companies raise from bonds and/or stock offerings is public. I don't feel like digging them up right now, but I'm confident that I can procure the numbers if you push me on that subject.
- caconym_ 5y ago
  > No. You're the one saying that. I disagree. Your first claim was that Musk is a bad engineer whose poor technical leadership verges on self-sabotage. I asked why, then, are his companies so successful? To which you responded that he is good at raising money, implying that his companies have succeeded primarily because he raised a lot of money for them. Since you previously criticized his technical leadership, the implication is that his companies succeed on the back of this money-raising ability despite his technical leadership. Can you please explain how else I am supposed to reconcile your claims about Musk's strengths and weaknesses as a leader wrt. his companies' singular success per my first comment in this subthread?
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    > Your first claim was that Musk is a bad engineer whose poor technical leadership verges on self-sabotage. Did you read the article that this thread is under? All I said earlier was just a summary of the points made in the article. If you think the article is factually wrong, we can start with that if you like. What part of the article is incorrect in your opinion? (Alternatively: If you think I made a bad summary, we can work off of that as well. I am prone to oversimplifying things and maybe writing in a misleading fashion by accident. In case I made an error in my summary, I apologize in advance) EDIT: A lot of my example came from these two paragraphs from the original article: > Adding additional assembly lines, especially unautomated ones, would require many more workers on the car than originally planned. In meetings, Musk lost track of the numbers. He kept talking about having around 30,000 employees, when in fact the head count with outside contracts had grown to more than 40,000. (Musk’s attention was said to sometimes wander after the start of budget presentations.) Deepak Ahuja, the returned CFO, finally had to gently confront Musk with the fact that the company now had many more people. > Musk didn’t take it well. It was the kind of detail that he latched on to, as if it crystallized a bigger issue, namely that Tesla’s cost structure wasn’t working. The plan had been for Tesla to break even on a rate of 2,500 Model 3s a week. But the added manual labor was jacking up the cost. Ahuja’s new calculations that spring didn’t have the company breaking even at 5,000 a week. Musk began to freeze spending, including a halt to plans to dramatically increase the size of service and delivery centers across North America. Musk wanted to slash jobs as quickly as they could.
    - caconym_ 5y ago
      If you don't want to take responsibility for your previous statement that Musk is incompetent at engineering, we don't really have anything to talk about. I will not deny that he is good at raising money, nor that Tesla might be overvalued, nor etcetera. IMO, it was certainly not clear in your initial comment that "Musk is an incompetent engineer" (here paraphrased) was meant to be a paraphrasing of other sources and not your own stated opinion.
      - dragontamer 5y ago

dragontamer 5y ago

> So you're essentially saying that if you look at any high-profile success of Tesla or SpaceX, you'll see a result that could have been accomplished by others working in the field for substantially less money? No. You're the one saying that. What I said was what I said in my above post. Elon Musk is incredibly good at raising money, and leverages this skill to the max in his companies. No one else in the world seems to compare against Elon Musk at generating hype and extracting money from bonds, secondary offerings, and other maneuvers in the modern stock market. Feel free to disagree with me on this issue, but I have the numbers. The amount that public companies raise from bonds and/or stock offerings is public. I don't feel like digging them up right now, but I'm confident that I can procure the numbers if you push me on that subject.

caconym_ 5y ago
> No. You're the one saying that. I disagree. Your first claim was that Musk is a bad engineer whose poor technical leadership verges on self-sabotage. I asked why, then, are his companies so successful? To which you responded that he is good at raising money, implying that his companies have succeeded primarily because he raised a lot of money for them. Since you previously criticized his technical leadership, the implication is that his companies succeed on the back of this money-raising ability despite his technical leadership. Can you please explain how else I am supposed to reconcile your claims about Musk's strengths and weaknesses as a leader wrt. his companies' singular success per my first comment in this subthread?
- dragontamer 5y ago
  > Your first claim was that Musk is a bad engineer whose poor technical leadership verges on self-sabotage. Did you read the article that this thread is under? All I said earlier was just a summary of the points made in the article. If you think the article is factually wrong, we can start with that if you like. What part of the article is incorrect in your opinion? (Alternatively: If you think I made a bad summary, we can work off of that as well. I am prone to oversimplifying things and maybe writing in a misleading fashion by accident. In case I made an error in my summary, I apologize in advance) EDIT: A lot of my example came from these two paragraphs from the original article: > Adding additional assembly lines, especially unautomated ones, would require many more workers on the car than originally planned. In meetings, Musk lost track of the numbers. He kept talking about having around 30,000 employees, when in fact the head count with outside contracts had grown to more than 40,000. (Musk’s attention was said to sometimes wander after the start of budget presentations.) Deepak Ahuja, the returned CFO, finally had to gently confront Musk with the fact that the company now had many more people. > Musk didn’t take it well. It was the kind of detail that he latched on to, as if it crystallized a bigger issue, namely that Tesla’s cost structure wasn’t working. The plan had been for Tesla to break even on a rate of 2,500 Model 3s a week. But the added manual labor was jacking up the cost. Ahuja’s new calculations that spring didn’t have the company breaking even at 5,000 a week. Musk began to freeze spending, including a halt to plans to dramatically increase the size of service and delivery centers across North America. Musk wanted to slash jobs as quickly as they could.
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    If you don't want to take responsibility for your previous statement that Musk is incompetent at engineering, we don't really have anything to talk about. I will not deny that he is good at raising money, nor that Tesla might be overvalued, nor etcetera. IMO, it was certainly not clear in your initial comment that "Musk is an incompetent engineer" (here paraphrased) was meant to be a paraphrasing of other sources and not your own stated opinion.
    - dragontamer 5y ago