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> 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 aske

> 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
    > 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. Fair. But I assure you it was made with respect to the information in the article. I do admit that I happen to have heard this story before, years ago when it was first reported. But reading this long-form story here reminded me of that opinion of mine, and I do believe the proof is in this article as it stands. The additional details in this article (and maybe the book its trying to sell) don't give me much confidence in Elon's engineering skill at all.
    - caconym_ 5y ago
      For whatever reason, I've observed public opinion of Musk to be highly polarized. Some (very strange) people literally worship him, and others seem almost personally affronted by his existence and bend over backwards to ignore and/or explain away his obvious, somewhat unprecedented successes. Since to me they are rather obvious, I tend to take any one-dimensional criticism of his abilities as a technical leader with a grain or two of salt. I would never want to work for him, but that's not quite the same question.
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        It used to be mostly just for fun / internet drama for the most part. Like, PS3 vs XBox sorta thing. I take sides but its all just for fun. At least, it was all just fun internet drama until last year when Elon's COVID19 denials went on 100% full display so that he could keep his Fremont factory open. That pissed me off significantly, so I admit to being angrier today than normal. When I saw him use his "hype" to pretend that he was going to build ventilators for hospitals (with 100% confidence that he was bullshitting everyone again), that just made me angrier. Its no longer just him running a quirky company, he's actively stepping into dangerous territory and explicitly spreading COVID19 conspiracy theories among his fans now to push political ideologies that are convenient for him. He's playing both sides: COVID19 denials when it keeps his factory open... COVID19 production ("ventilators", which happened to be worthless CPAP machines) to boost his own ego afterwards and help negate the damage. Its pretty annoying. (It is a donation of medical equipment, but it didn't help the COVID19 cause at all) So that crossed a line for me. I do try to keep things in the "fun XBox vs PS3" kind of debate as much as possible, but I have to admit that the past year has really bothered me with regards to Elon. ----------- Even now, this year, he's suggesting that people don't get the second jab: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1370524129212964867 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1370524129212964867 So while he's not quite anti-vax, he's spreading the paranoia about the vaccines (and was certainly spreading COVID19 denialism last year 100%, likely in support of his preferred factory politics)

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
  > 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. Fair. But I assure you it was made with respect to the information in the article. I do admit that I happen to have heard this story before, years ago when it was first reported. But reading this long-form story here reminded me of that opinion of mine, and I do believe the proof is in this article as it stands. The additional details in this article (and maybe the book its trying to sell) don't give me much confidence in Elon's engineering skill at all.
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    For whatever reason, I've observed public opinion of Musk to be highly polarized. Some (very strange) people literally worship him, and others seem almost personally affronted by his existence and bend over backwards to ignore and/or explain away his obvious, somewhat unprecedented successes. Since to me they are rather obvious, I tend to take any one-dimensional criticism of his abilities as a technical leader with a grain or two of salt. I would never want to work for him, but that's not quite the same question.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      It used to be mostly just for fun / internet drama for the most part. Like, PS3 vs XBox sorta thing. I take sides but its all just for fun. At least, it was all just fun internet drama until last year when Elon's COVID19 denials went on 100% full display so that he could keep his Fremont factory open. That pissed me off significantly, so I admit to being angrier today than normal. When I saw him use his "hype" to pretend that he was going to build ventilators for hospitals (with 100% confidence that he was bullshitting everyone again), that just made me angrier. Its no longer just him running a quirky company, he's actively stepping into dangerous territory and explicitly spreading COVID19 conspiracy theories among his fans now to push political ideologies that are convenient for him. He's playing both sides: COVID19 denials when it keeps his factory open... COVID19 production ("ventilators", which happened to be worthless CPAP machines) to boost his own ego afterwards and help negate the damage. Its pretty annoying. (It is a donation of medical equipment, but it didn't help the COVID19 cause at all) So that crossed a line for me. I do try to keep things in the "fun XBox vs PS3" kind of debate as much as possible, but I have to admit that the past year has really bothered me with regards to Elon. ----------- Even now, this year, he's suggesting that people don't get the second jab: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1370524129212964867 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1370524129212964867 So while he's not quite anti-vax, he's spreading the paranoia about the vaccines (and was certainly spreading COVID19 denialism last year 100%, likely in support of his preferred factory politics)