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Making a bunch of money does not give you ethical credits you can spend later. He can probably get away with it though.
by bitexploder 4y ago
Making a bunch of money does not give you ethical credits you can spend later. He can probably get away with it though.
- geerlingguy 4y agoMany shareholders would offer their firstborn if Elon asked. He's a strange and unique character among the billionaires.
- kaesar14 4y agoProven track record gives you a really, really long leash. Only Steve Jobs has attained the rarefied air of being able to do whatever the fuck you want that Musk has.
- dmitriid 4y ago
- notjoemama 4y agoI recall Steve Jobs was known to blow up at his staff, sometimes seemingly randomly. He arguably created a hostile work environment. He also denied and estranged his own daughter. Let's not put CEOs on a scale. @kcplate Site isn't allowing me to reply, but I guess I can edit here? What I meant by scale was weighing CEOs or their behavior against each other. It sounded to me, and maybe I read it wrong, from the comment I replied to that Musk's issues were being levied against Musk with the implication (Their first sentence) Jobs didn't have issues like that. A better example of Jobs tanking Apple stock price was the partnership with Microsoft. At the time that was seen as Apple marrying the evil Jobs regularly criticized. So much for thinking different. But my point was the other things carried some form of risk and certainly didn't paint Jobs as not having character flaws. So I'm in agreement with you, he's human, Musk is human, mistakes are allowed to be made without, I don't know, "cancelling" someone I guess. Maybe it's just fashionable to pick on Musk right now? I don't know some people are so judgmental. I mean honestly, what does the average HackerNews user know about the nature of the Tesla engineers reviewing Twitter code? While it could be a problem, it could also be legal and considered above board. No one here seems to know the contractual agreements and why would they? Companies don't publish every thing that runs across executives desks.
- kcplate 4y agoExactly what is the point here? I’ve seen fast food shift supervisors blow up at their staff and know at least one person who is estranged from a child. Are CEOs (including famous ones) not allowed to be human. I have never met a human that wasn’t to some degree or another a shithead at various points of time.
- Klinky 4y agoI think their point is exactly that, they're human. The whole Twitter acquisition seems impulsive, petty, and obviously was poorly thought out.
- paulryanrogers 4y agoI think personal flaws can taint professional accomplishments. And the worship of these strong/genius people only reinforces bad behavior. Of course there should be some slack given for indiscretions of youth. No one is born perfect. For adults though, let's keep our eyes wide open and praise the good works--not the flawed people who do them.
- noobermin 4y agobillionaires aren't smart, they just had an easier spawn point and loadout
- concordDance 4y agoMusk's, Gate's, Zuckerberg, other-tech-billionaires spawn point was about as good as any other upper middle class American kid's. If you exclude genes were they probably got a bit luckier than average.
- yakubin 4y agoI can sort of see how that may be the case with Musk and Zuckerberg, but Gates? Is it normal in US for upper middle class fathers to be partners at multi-national law corporations?
- acdha 4y ago… and specifically to have a company-defining early deal go to someone who shared a board membership with their mother? Microsoft didn’t even have a product when the deal went through (they bought a CP/M knockoff from a smaller company). Gates certainly executed well but most people wouldn’t have had the opportunity to even attempt something like that. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/how-bill-gates-mother-influenced-the-success-of-microsoft.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/how-bill-gates-mother-influe...
- mrdatawolf 4y agoDo you remember why he got kicked? He could miss big too.
- darkwater 4y agoBecause Jobs spent 70% of his career without any sort of social media or globally interconnected world around.
- HyperSane 4y agoMusk's track record is more hype than substance.
- kcplate 4y agoTrue. Watching him shoot rockets into space from my backyard 3-4x a month and seeing a half dozen Teslas on the road every time I drive a few miles isn’t very substantive at all.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- slaw 4y agoI think SpaceX and Tesla succeeds despite Musk actions.
- root_axis 4y agoWhat about FSD? Boring Company? Robo Taxies? Solar? Cybertruck? Neurolink? Mars colonies? Elon has had some amazing successes, that's just a fact, but judging what he will accomplish based on what he says is almost always a losing bet.
- Phlarp 4y agoYou forgot roadster 2.0 and the mannequin robot
- viraptor 4y agoAnd hyperloop.
- jlmorton 4y agoBoring Company is right up with Tesla and SpaceX on the success trajectory by lots of measures. This is a company that just started from nothing a few years ago, and it’s already building a massive transit project, and is in final bidding in several other major projects. They’re already building their own tunnel boring equipment. The company raised $675 million at a $5.65 billion valuation, putting it ahead of several S&P 500 stocks in market cap, closest to Alaska Airlines. To say this is unusual is an understatement. At this point in SpaceX history, the company had yet to launch Falcon 1. I think a whole lot of people are going to be mightily shocked at how successful this company will turn out. In ten years, when it’s clear how successful it is, everyone will pretend the idea was stunningly obvious and was only successful through public financing, or something like that.
- lolbert2 4y ago
- lolbert3 4y ago
- burnte 4y agoYeah, it does.
- tedunangst 4y agoMartin Shkreli returned a profit for his investors, and yet...
- mikeyouse 4y agoWinning at the casino with money you stole from the gas station doesn’t make the original theft okay, even if you return more than you stole.
- deaddodo 4y agoExactly the point being made. Musk stealing Tesla's resources to buy an asset for himself is not ok, even if it later helps Tesla.
- notjoemama 4y agoIsn't it the case people on news.ycombinator.com aren't familiar with the nature of the arrangement? Is there maybe a source that substantiates a perspective of "theft"? Or am I just missing that a rhetorical discussion is being had here?
- tedunangst 4y agoGiven the timeframe, I think people are skeptical that 1. Elon arranged for twitter to contract with Tesla for code review and 2. Recused himself from the negotiations regarding scope of work and rate charged.
- ericd 4y agoWho cares? The companies in his orbit benefit substantially from the cross pollination between them, and the PR opportunities that generates - much more than any arms-length negotiated rate would. Avoiding the type of fake work that you describe is very helpful for achieving the high iteration speeds his companies have.
- ilyt 4y agoYeah, investors don't care about ethics
- threatofrain 4y ago> Making a bunch of money does not give you ethical credits you can spend later. If this wasn't in the realm of how moral calculations work in society, then you wouldn't need to make this argument. People do accept funny moral trades and it's not clear how the calculus works. Tesla shareholders accept the fact that the guy in charge sometimes plays games like "FUNDING SECURED $420", so the fact that some Tesla engineers were borrowed/contracted/whatever is just a tiny detail in the big picture.