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Tesla and SpaceX are technology/engineering problems. This is what Musk is good at and can take huge risks to go after it. Twitter is NOT engineering or technol

Tesla and SpaceX are technology/engineering problems. This is what Musk is good at and can take huge risks to go after it. Twitter is NOT engineering or technology problem. The politics and policies are not Musk's forte, at least not yet. However, the more concerning part is his continued defragmentation of attention. Tesla is now genuinly falling behind with massive new competitions rising up. New models haven't been on market for a while. Previously announced models aren't getting delievered. Pace of growth of superchargers is not keeping up. There is a lot at stack where Musk can make huge difference.

standyro 5y ago
Beg to disagree, other manufacturers are catching up but Musk's playbook since Tesla's inception has been to consistently overpromise to the nth degree, so it's not anything new. Remember it took 2-3 years from the Model 3 announcement for them to ship in any meaningful number (2015 -> 2019). Same thing currently happening for the Cybertruck, Roadster, Semi, etc. Are they being too ambitious? Certainly. But it's not really anything new for Tesla. If anything having Musk's attention being frayed to various companies is probably a benefit, from my anecdotal personal interactions with top employees at SpaceX and Tesla. A lot of employees left because Elon is a great figurehead and product leader but an annoying micromanager.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
presentation 5y ago
Definitely not his forte, all his projects in urban planning have been so, so bad.
hsn915 5y ago
SpaceX is not just a technology problem. It's a sales and marketing problem. You're not selling to the mass market, you're selling to a government. You need to convince people with power to buy your product. If they don't, your business can't get off the ground.
- ovao 5y ago
  It’s hard to overstate how difficult this is.
- tomp 5y ago
  "We're 10x cheaper" is great marketing.
- Breza 4y ago
  If you're interested in the realitiesof running a modern rocket company, I highly recommend the book "Financing the New Space Industry." It talks about marketing and other aspects.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
joering2 5y ago
> Tesla is now genuinly falling behind with massive new competitions rising up. I think you still being too generous. Other than Teslas which starting to get large amount of competitors who were late to EVs market, and SpaceX, which won't have many competitors because we still kind of figuring out what the heck we need to fly in space for (at this price points), Musk's basket is full of terrible failures. The most shocking to me is a Boring company. What was promised - vast network of 3D tunnels where cars will move at 150mph speeds. Eventually trip from New York to Shanghai will take less than 2 hours. What was delivered? A short tunnel with absolutely zero safety features, no ventilation, no exit points, build with state-of-the-art technology that turned out to be 3 times slower (per mile) than 30 years old boring machine that dug La-Manche, and Teslas are driving in that tunnel at... 35mph. And Musk as we could all predicted came out in defense of all this tweeting that "We made the whole thing much simpler" - no elevator ramps, no high speeds, simple one-lane tunnel. And his base ate it up like some sort of genius he is that he invented moving traffic in one lane underground at bicycle-ride speed. I say the same thing will happen to twitter. Initially it will be: - open algorithms (99.9% people would not understand what they looking at, at probably 80% of engineers wouldn't either - as an ex-Googler, I can tell you these algorithms are like rings inside a tree - hundreds of layers amassed on the top of each other over the years; - allow full free speech (so no control over even nastier language) - fight with bots. Fast forward 5 years from now, the only people who understand the algorythms will be large bot farms and they will game the system to get throw to the top before anyone elses tweets. Just like there is reason Google is hiding their algo instead of f.e. patent those, they do that because they don't want smart people to game the system. Full free speech will bring even more maneuver to the site, and at the end of the day its impossible to remove bots. In China for 5 cents you can get someone's real ID. For 10 cents they provide you photo of ID with todays date. For 15 cents they will show up on any video call to provide they are who they are. So at the end of the day small trolls and insignificant bot farms will get wiped out, but the big players who make decent buck by trolling, they will continue undisputed. In a few years Musk will abandon Twitter to focus momentarily on another shiny object. "in fight for humanity freedom", like he couldn't do that when he proposed to solve world's hunger. On the top of that, isn't his involvement in another project just a big fuck-you to everyone still waiting for: - Solar City - roof shingles that will revolutionized electricity and actually will make you the homeowner to sell electricity to the power plant. - Tesla trucks and semi trucks - nothing new on that? - Boring company - no new progress after years of LV "loop". - Flying to Mars (many things changed now - from fancy trip sort of Cruise Trip with fun games etc, now the word is that many people will die during the trip and it wont be fun) Seriously if all these projects would run full speed ahead on all cylinders, I would be happy Musk is taking over another project. But they are not. Most are terrible failures and Musk is still in hot water re: Solar City buyout. I'm starting to think all these projects were just temporary scams to boost Tesla stock value (which Musk succeed with 20 x P/E), and that's about it.
cachvico 5y ago
> Twitter is NOT engineering or technology problem. It absolutely is an engineering and technology problem.
- randoglando 5y ago
  Parts of it are, but not the free speech parts.
benrapscallion 5y ago
Wasn’t he the founder of X.com the precursor entity to PayPal?

standyro 5y ago

Beg to disagree, other manufacturers are catching up but Musk's playbook since Tesla's inception has been to consistently overpromise to the nth degree, so it's not anything new. Remember it took 2-3 years from the Model 3 announcement for them to ship in any meaningful number (2015 -> 2019). Same thing currently happening for the Cybertruck, Roadster, Semi, etc. Are they being too ambitious? Certainly. But it's not really anything new for Tesla. If anything having Musk's attention being frayed to various companies is probably a benefit, from my anecdotal personal interactions with top employees at SpaceX and Tesla. A lot of employees left because Elon is a great figurehead and product leader but an annoying micromanager.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

presentation 5y ago

Definitely not his forte, all his projects in urban planning have been so, so bad.

hsn915 5y ago

SpaceX is not just a technology problem. It's a sales and marketing problem. You're not selling to the mass market, you're selling to a government. You need to convince people with power to buy your product. If they don't, your business can't get off the ground.

ovao 5y ago
It’s hard to overstate how difficult this is.
tomp 5y ago
"We're 10x cheaper" is great marketing.
Breza 4y ago
If you're interested in the realitiesof running a modern rocket company, I highly recommend the book "Financing the New Space Industry." It talks about marketing and other aspects.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

joering2 5y ago

> Tesla is now genuinly falling behind with massive new competitions rising up. I think you still being too generous. Other than Teslas which starting to get large amount of competitors who were late to EVs market, and SpaceX, which won't have many competitors because we still kind of figuring out what the heck we need to fly in space for (at this price points), Musk's basket is full of terrible failures. The most shocking to me is a Boring company. What was promised - vast network of 3D tunnels where cars will move at 150mph speeds. Eventually trip from New York to Shanghai will take less than 2 hours. What was delivered? A short tunnel with absolutely zero safety features, no ventilation, no exit points, build with state-of-the-art technology that turned out to be 3 times slower (per mile) than 30 years old boring machine that dug La-Manche, and Teslas are driving in that tunnel at... 35mph. And Musk as we could all predicted came out in defense of all this tweeting that "We made the whole thing much simpler" - no elevator ramps, no high speeds, simple one-lane tunnel. And his base ate it up like some sort of genius he is that he invented moving traffic in one lane underground at bicycle-ride speed. I say the same thing will happen to twitter. Initially it will be: - open algorithms (99.9% people would not understand what they looking at, at probably 80% of engineers wouldn't either - as an ex-Googler, I can tell you these algorithms are like rings inside a tree - hundreds of layers amassed on the top of each other over the years; - allow full free speech (so no control over even nastier language) - fight with bots. Fast forward 5 years from now, the only people who understand the algorythms will be large bot farms and they will game the system to get throw to the top before anyone elses tweets. Just like there is reason Google is hiding their algo instead of f.e. patent those, they do that because they don't want smart people to game the system. Full free speech will bring even more maneuver to the site, and at the end of the day its impossible to remove bots. In China for 5 cents you can get someone's real ID. For 10 cents they provide you photo of ID with todays date. For 15 cents they will show up on any video call to provide they are who they are. So at the end of the day small trolls and insignificant bot farms will get wiped out, but the big players who make decent buck by trolling, they will continue undisputed. In a few years Musk will abandon Twitter to focus momentarily on another shiny object. "in fight for humanity freedom", like he couldn't do that when he proposed to solve world's hunger. On the top of that, isn't his involvement in another project just a big fuck-you to everyone still waiting for: - Solar City - roof shingles that will revolutionized electricity and actually will make you the homeowner to sell electricity to the power plant. - Tesla trucks and semi trucks - nothing new on that? - Boring company - no new progress after years of LV "loop". - Flying to Mars (many things changed now - from fancy trip sort of Cruise Trip with fun games etc, now the word is that many people will die during the trip and it wont be fun) Seriously if all these projects would run full speed ahead on all cylinders, I would be happy Musk is taking over another project. But they are not. Most are terrible failures and Musk is still in hot water re: Solar City buyout. I'm starting to think all these projects were just temporary scams to boost Tesla stock value (which Musk succeed with 20 x P/E), and that's about it.

cachvico 5y ago

> Twitter is NOT engineering or technology problem. It absolutely is an engineering and technology problem.

randoglando 5y ago
Parts of it are, but not the free speech parts.

benrapscallion 5y ago

Wasn’t he the founder of X.com the precursor entity to PayPal?