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Are you saying musk’s role in SpaceX and Tesla is as an investor? That seems so disingenuous that it’s impossible not to conclude this post is purely emotional.

Are you saying musk’s role in SpaceX and Tesla is as an investor? That seems so disingenuous that it’s impossible not to conclude this post is purely emotional. If you hate Musk, fine, but please just stick to the facts and articulate why you hate him. I don’t understand why there is so much emotion around Musk. He has done good things and bad things. He has done incredible, near possible things. He works ridiculously hard. He’s rich. He has said and posted things he shouldn’t. I don’t feel that I am in a position to say he is a terrible person. I don’t even know the guy. I wouldn’t want to live in a world without SpaceX and Tesla. I am genuinely fascinated by this hatred. I’ve tried to compile a list of why people might hate him: - posted a conspiracy theory on Twitter (which he did then delete) - childishly insulted a diver - is a shameless self promoter - fires staff brutally - makes huge and sometimes unreasonable demands on his workforce - disagreed with covid policy, partly on the argument that the fatality rate is low and there’s not much you can really do about it Ok, these are bad. But he’s hated as if he is the new Hitler. I don’t get it. I’d really appreciate it if someone could rationally explain why Elon is deserving of such great hatred.

smcl 4y ago
Eh, guess I just don't know enough about SpaceX then. If you read my comment and interpreted it as "hatred" then that is odd. I don't think it's possible to hate someone you don't know. I mean, every time he has popped up in the last 5 years or so he's been saying or doing something dumb or annoying so quite a lot of people have gradually gotten tired of that. But it’s not hatred at all. He's not treated like the next Hitler by any stretch of the imagination. He's more like a village drunk who just keeps showing up doing stupid things like peeing on your doorstep or passing out in your garden. You don't hate that person, you're just like "[sigh] ok I guess we have to deal with him again..."
- llamaLord 4y ago
  He’s also built rockets that land themselves, scaled electric car manufacturing, launched a world-wide low-latency satellite internet service, and made more progress on self-driving vehicles than literally any other company in that same time. If your town drunk is doing that much good for the world, I think you’d forgive them for pissing on your doorstep once or twice a year.
  - smcl 4y ago
    Well this is the other side of the public opinion on Elon Musk. His companies have done a bunch of things, ranging from impressive to bad. As outsiders all we know is that his involvement with, say, a rocket that can land itself is somewhere between "Elon single-handedly designed, constructed and assembled every part of it" and "Elon told someone the rockets re-usable". There's no way to know, but you and a legion of people seem to be portraying his involvement as closer to the former (literally "He’s also built rockets that land themselves..." - come on) Honestly this discourse has played out a thousand times over. Some people love him, attribute all his companies' wins to him and memory-hole any of the fuck-ups or gaffes. Some people acknowledge his business acumen, don't quite believe the hype on the company-level achievements that get attributed to him personally and find his personality as portrayed on traditional and social media to be grating. I'm clearly in the latter group and I think that's a pretty uncontroversial position to take. Edit: would the drive-by downvoters care to explain?
    - trashtester 4y ago
      He does seem to be a lot more hands-on with the technical stuff than most C level execs, and for SpaceX there are reports that he is actually doing the work that comes with his role as Chief Engineer: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
    - mancerayder 4y ago
      >"Elon single-handedly designed, constructed and assembled every part of it" and "Elon told someone the rockets re-usable". There's no way to know, but you and a legion of people I think that's missing the point, which is the question of whether these innovations (the re usable rockets, scaling e cars) would have happened without his involvement. If the answer is no, then the question of whether 'someone else did it and he took credit' seems irrelevant. That's what leadership is, driving results, not pulling up your sleeves and doing it yourself.
      - smcl 4y ago
tommiegannert 4y ago
> I am genuinely fascinated by this hatred. At a meta level, I consider Musk and Trump both to have the same approach to media: say whatever you want to create publicity. Words mean nothing, in the sense that there are no repercussions large enough to outweigh the created buzz/fame. Outrage works extremely well to that end (look at this thread.) Because he says things helping both extreme sides (lovers and haters,) all they have to do is latch on to whatever fuels their fire, and ignore the other words. And it is well-know that confirmation bias is a thing among humans. This causes polarization that fuels the debates, creating a spiral of even more debates, buzz and fame. Even sparks meta-debates. Edit: Another side of this is that it seems that everything must be classified as good or bad. Both on HN and elsewhere, commentors go to extraordinary lengths to argue why something has one abstract label or the opposite. Does everything have to have emotions assigned to it? Does everything have to be categorized in the very coarse good and bad buckets? It would be nice to read comments where the author tries to explain both sides, instead of just arguing for one.
- smcl 4y ago
  I don't think I made any statement here about whether he is good or bad. I've said that I find his public persona to be annoying, justified why I think that, and have said he's probably not as responsible for everything he's credited for than many of his supporters believe. I think that's a really reasonable comment to make - there are people frothing mad about him and there are people who are rabid supporters of him. But I haven't seen either in this thread. Edit: ok I just saw someone call him “Elongated Muskrat” so now there is someone who is mad at him in the thread :-)
  - tommiegannert 4y ago
    Yepp, it wasn't a reflection on your comment. I just think the good/bad dichotomy ties in to my argument about polarization. It doesn't happen with every comment, but when it does, it adds fuel to the fire. Sorry if that wasn't clear. ... I wonder if polarization can be seen as a market spread, and that more polarization causes higher volatility, which leads to more "trading" to close the spread. I.e. discussions follow some version of the efficient market hypothesis? Need to do a PhD on this. :)
llamaLord 4y ago
IMO - my theory is that 5 years ago Musk was successful enough that regular people in the tech industry admired him, but not so successful that most people who admired him realised he was substantially more successful than they were ever going to be. These days though, it’s quite clear to the 250k a year tech-guy that, even though they’re making bank, they’re never going to be “Elon rich”, and so the jealousy disguised as virtue has come out in full swing. Is he perfect? Of course he fucking isn’t… we work in tech, we all work with atleast one “brilliant ass-hole”… they’re the ones that make our days a little bit more painful but also write the fucking insane code that makes most of our workplaces profitable. Elon is just the end of that bell-curve.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Macha 4y ago
  Alternatively, 5 years ago the reaction was "oh, the tesla/spacex guy? those are cool companies, guess he must be pretty cool", but since then he's made himself more of a celebrity which comes with much more visibility on those actions. As a result people are now judging based on actions they've heard about rather than the top line of a bio summary
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- sylens 4y ago
  Five years ago was also before he showed his ass throwing around the term pedophile to describe people working on the Tham Luang cave rescue
- refurb 4y ago
  I don’t think it’s jealousy. I think his politics are clearly making him “the bad guy”. It’s pretty clear he leans right so that makes him an enemy of a lot of people automatically. If he leaned left, nobody would care. Hell, they’d probably encourage it.
heartbreak 4y ago
You missed his recent pro-Russian plan for Ukraine and subsequent blackmailing over Starlink.
- Aunche 4y ago
  I don't like Musk, but he's done more for Ukraine than you can dream of. But he also sent a few stupid tweets that he took back, so that's a good enough excuse for virtue signalers to feel superior.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    Ukrainians literally pay for the internet access.. what did he do?
    - Aunche 4y ago
      According to Musk, Starlink has spent $80-120 million to subsidize Ukraine. He could be making this up, but this is supported by a letter SpaceX sent to the Pentagon even before Musk's infamous Ukraine tweets. https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-ukraine https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-sta...
  - slaw 4y ago
    Poland bought for Ukraine more than half of the starlink terminals. https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/ukraine-uses-over-11000-internet-links-bought-by-poland-33810 https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/ukraine-uses-over-11000...
    - Aunche 4y ago
      From your source: > SpaceX has said it pays for about 70 percent of the services used by Ukraine, offering all the terminals in that country the best possible option, valued at USD 4,500 per month even though most have contracts signed only for the USD 500-per-month service option.
- 4y ago
Pigalowda 4y ago
Don’t forget his initial support for Ukraine and then his attempted about face with star link terminals. I’m very curious why all of that intrigue seems to have dried up. How did Musk know the Crimean peninsula was dry and needed water guarantees from Ukraine? It’s weird and i believe the critics, he actually talked to Putin and felt like a big man so he started shilling for russian “peace”. I thought he was just a lucky cult like futurist before but now I think of him as what he truly is - a billionaire narcissist that craves adulation from the mob.
UncleMeat 4y ago
Major world powers invaded Germany, tore the country in two, and Hitler killed himself. Musk is a complete dick in public and people are right to criticize him, but you are being plainly ridiculous when you say "he’s hated as if he is the new Hitler."
- randomsearch 4y ago
  That's a fair criticism of me using a lazy shorthand, but it really is quite difficult to capture the level of vitriol against Musk. It's at a level I've never seen against anyone in my lifetime. People certain express strong hatred towards him than, say, Putin or Xi.
  - Strom 4y ago
    Obviously in reality Musk has done nothing to be compared to Hitler, however as far as how much hate he gets in 2022, I would say he easily surpasses Hitler by at least a factor of a thousand. Very few people even talk about Hitler anymore, so it doesn't really capture the sense of hate either. I think a good comparison in the US would be Trump and I think more people hate Trump than Musk.
    - randomsearch 4y ago
      Hmm this is excellent analysis and the comparison is not incidental.
MSFT_Edging 4y ago
"makes huge and sometimes unreasonable demands on his workforce" Weird way to spell serial labor law violator https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/02/tesla-factory-is-racially-segregated-workplace-calif-state-agency-alleges/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/02/tesla-factory-is...
willmadden 4y ago
>He has said and posted things he shouldn’t. According to whom? His internet comments are sci-fi libertarian mainstream with a dash of NWO. His business accomplishments are impressive, but he's rather boring, no pun intended. I think the only argument against Musk's success is that he enjoyed unfair regulatory advantages. PayPal's KYC was non-existent for years, you could send money with little more than an email. Amazon had similar miraculous regulatory exceptions. No State sales tax until it had a near-monopoly network effect.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  >>He has said and posted things he shouldn’t. >According to whom? I found that time he called a diver who was trying to save those kids a pedophile to be pretty revealing. Also, calling himself "Lorde Edge" was pretty awful. I suppose if you're asking "who has the right to tell him not to say that?" the answer is "no one", but I find it hard to respect the guy when he acts so childishly.
canucklady 4y ago
He sexually harassed employees and then paid them off to stay quiet: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-sexual-misconduct-claim-involved-horse-for-erotic-massage-2022-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-sexual-misconduct-... His factories have a history of complaints about racial abuse: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-hit-by-new-lawsuit-alleging-racial-abuse-against-black-workers-2022-07-01/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-... Elon Musk hates the color yellow so hazards in the factory aren't properly identified: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/tesla-workers-getting-hurt-because-elon-musk-hates-yellow.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/tesla-workers-gettin... Elon Musk made up the hyperloop just to kill high speed rail and sell more cars: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/editorials/article264451076.html https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/editorials/article26445107...
- randomsearch 4y ago
  Thanks for posting links, that's the kind of answer I'm interested in. (Thanks also to whoever un-downed me, as it is from genuinely wanting to understand). The last link is paywalled, but I doubt that is really his motive. It sounds silly. There was plenty of outspoken criticism against that highspeed rail link without a Musk conspiracy theory. He gave an interview on the BBC where he was similarly bemused by how poor our high speed efforts were, and his criticism was fair. I'm not sure we can see incidents in very large organisations as indicative of the character of the CEO. For sure he is ultimately to answer for them, and has a responsibility to sort them out, but Tesla employees about 100 000 people and in any sample of people that large you'll have some horrible ones. Someone else told me about the harassment suit today, now that is directly attributable to Musk and awful. Are there other such incidents? Still, doesn't seem to explain the sheer hatred for the man. I do have a different theory about that having spoken to others, which I'll post elsewhere...
  - canucklady 4y ago
    The hyperloop article is sourced directly from his own statements in text messages turned over during discovery. I'm always amazed at the double standard where musk is solely responsible for the success of multiple companies, but any fault is attributable to someone else. He claims to have slept in the factory! He's this hands on car-building ubermensch. How can he be completely oblivious to safety and discrimination issues?
random314 4y ago
At Tesla, Elon is a manager like any other CEO. At Space X, he clearly is not and Gwynne Shotwell with decades of experience in Aerospace engineering runs the show. As much as people would like to believe that Elon musk, a materials science graduate with his only career experience being online payments with PayPal, is actually responsible for the core founding engineering of SpaceX and Tesla is crazy. Musk made bank with PayPal and has been an investor in many companies including failures like Neuralink, boring company etc. He has both invested and managed Tesla.

smcl 4y ago

Eh, guess I just don't know enough about SpaceX then. If you read my comment and interpreted it as "hatred" then that is odd. I don't think it's possible to hate someone you don't know. I mean, every time he has popped up in the last 5 years or so he's been saying or doing something dumb or annoying so quite a lot of people have gradually gotten tired of that. But it’s not hatred at all. He's not treated like the next Hitler by any stretch of the imagination. He's more like a village drunk who just keeps showing up doing stupid things like peeing on your doorstep or passing out in your garden. You don't hate that person, you're just like "[sigh] ok I guess we have to deal with him again..."

llamaLord 4y ago
He’s also built rockets that land themselves, scaled electric car manufacturing, launched a world-wide low-latency satellite internet service, and made more progress on self-driving vehicles than literally any other company in that same time. If your town drunk is doing that much good for the world, I think you’d forgive them for pissing on your doorstep once or twice a year.
- smcl 4y ago
  Well this is the other side of the public opinion on Elon Musk. His companies have done a bunch of things, ranging from impressive to bad. As outsiders all we know is that his involvement with, say, a rocket that can land itself is somewhere between "Elon single-handedly designed, constructed and assembled every part of it" and "Elon told someone the rockets re-usable". There's no way to know, but you and a legion of people seem to be portraying his involvement as closer to the former (literally "He’s also built rockets that land themselves..." - come on) Honestly this discourse has played out a thousand times over. Some people love him, attribute all his companies' wins to him and memory-hole any of the fuck-ups or gaffes. Some people acknowledge his business acumen, don't quite believe the hype on the company-level achievements that get attributed to him personally and find his personality as portrayed on traditional and social media to be grating. I'm clearly in the latter group and I think that's a pretty uncontroversial position to take. Edit: would the drive-by downvoters care to explain?
  - trashtester 4y ago
    He does seem to be a lot more hands-on with the technical stuff than most C level execs, and for SpaceX there are reports that he is actually doing the work that comes with his role as Chief Engineer: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
  - mancerayder 4y ago
    >"Elon single-handedly designed, constructed and assembled every part of it" and "Elon told someone the rockets re-usable". There's no way to know, but you and a legion of people I think that's missing the point, which is the question of whether these innovations (the re usable rockets, scaling e cars) would have happened without his involvement. If the answer is no, then the question of whether 'someone else did it and he took credit' seems irrelevant. That's what leadership is, driving results, not pulling up your sleeves and doing it yourself.
    - smcl 4y ago

tommiegannert 4y ago

> I am genuinely fascinated by this hatred. At a meta level, I consider Musk and Trump both to have the same approach to media: say whatever you want to create publicity. Words mean nothing, in the sense that there are no repercussions large enough to outweigh the created buzz/fame. Outrage works extremely well to that end (look at this thread.) Because he says things helping both extreme sides (lovers and haters,) all they have to do is latch on to whatever fuels their fire, and ignore the other words. And it is well-know that confirmation bias is a thing among humans. This causes polarization that fuels the debates, creating a spiral of even more debates, buzz and fame. Even sparks meta-debates. Edit: Another side of this is that it seems that everything must be classified as good or bad. Both on HN and elsewhere, commentors go to extraordinary lengths to argue why something has one abstract label or the opposite. Does everything have to have emotions assigned to it? Does everything have to be categorized in the very coarse good and bad buckets? It would be nice to read comments where the author tries to explain both sides, instead of just arguing for one.

smcl 4y ago
I don't think I made any statement here about whether he is good or bad. I've said that I find his public persona to be annoying, justified why I think that, and have said he's probably not as responsible for everything he's credited for than many of his supporters believe. I think that's a really reasonable comment to make - there are people frothing mad about him and there are people who are rabid supporters of him. But I haven't seen either in this thread. Edit: ok I just saw someone call him “Elongated Muskrat” so now there is someone who is mad at him in the thread :-)
- tommiegannert 4y ago
  Yepp, it wasn't a reflection on your comment. I just think the good/bad dichotomy ties in to my argument about polarization. It doesn't happen with every comment, but when it does, it adds fuel to the fire. Sorry if that wasn't clear. ... I wonder if polarization can be seen as a market spread, and that more polarization causes higher volatility, which leads to more "trading" to close the spread. I.e. discussions follow some version of the efficient market hypothesis? Need to do a PhD on this. :)

llamaLord 4y ago

IMO - my theory is that 5 years ago Musk was successful enough that regular people in the tech industry admired him, but not so successful that most people who admired him realised he was substantially more successful than they were ever going to be. These days though, it’s quite clear to the 250k a year tech-guy that, even though they’re making bank, they’re never going to be “Elon rich”, and so the jealousy disguised as virtue has come out in full swing. Is he perfect? Of course he fucking isn’t… we work in tech, we all work with atleast one “brilliant ass-hole”… they’re the ones that make our days a little bit more painful but also write the fucking insane code that makes most of our workplaces profitable. Elon is just the end of that bell-curve.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Macha 4y ago
Alternatively, 5 years ago the reaction was "oh, the tesla/spacex guy? those are cool companies, guess he must be pretty cool", but since then he's made himself more of a celebrity which comes with much more visibility on those actions. As a result people are now judging based on actions they've heard about rather than the top line of a bio summary
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
sylens 4y ago
Five years ago was also before he showed his ass throwing around the term pedophile to describe people working on the Tham Luang cave rescue
refurb 4y ago
I don’t think it’s jealousy. I think his politics are clearly making him “the bad guy”. It’s pretty clear he leans right so that makes him an enemy of a lot of people automatically. If he leaned left, nobody would care. Hell, they’d probably encourage it.

heartbreak 4y ago

You missed his recent pro-Russian plan for Ukraine and subsequent blackmailing over Starlink.

Aunche 4y ago
I don't like Musk, but he's done more for Ukraine than you can dream of. But he also sent a few stupid tweets that he took back, so that's a good enough excuse for virtue signalers to feel superior.
- kaba0 4y ago
  Ukrainians literally pay for the internet access.. what did he do?
  - Aunche 4y ago
    According to Musk, Starlink has spent $80-120 million to subsidize Ukraine. He could be making this up, but this is supported by a letter SpaceX sent to the Pentagon even before Musk's infamous Ukraine tweets. https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-ukraine https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-sta...
- slaw 4y ago
  Poland bought for Ukraine more than half of the starlink terminals. https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/ukraine-uses-over-11000-internet-links-bought-by-poland-33810 https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/ukraine-uses-over-11000...
  - Aunche 4y ago
    From your source: > SpaceX has said it pays for about 70 percent of the services used by Ukraine, offering all the terminals in that country the best possible option, valued at USD 4,500 per month even though most have contracts signed only for the USD 500-per-month service option.
4y ago

Pigalowda 4y ago

Don’t forget his initial support for Ukraine and then his attempted about face with star link terminals. I’m very curious why all of that intrigue seems to have dried up. How did Musk know the Crimean peninsula was dry and needed water guarantees from Ukraine? It’s weird and i believe the critics, he actually talked to Putin and felt like a big man so he started shilling for russian “peace”. I thought he was just a lucky cult like futurist before but now I think of him as what he truly is - a billionaire narcissist that craves adulation from the mob.

UncleMeat 4y ago

Major world powers invaded Germany, tore the country in two, and Hitler killed himself. Musk is a complete dick in public and people are right to criticize him, but you are being plainly ridiculous when you say "he’s hated as if he is the new Hitler."

randomsearch 4y ago
That's a fair criticism of me using a lazy shorthand, but it really is quite difficult to capture the level of vitriol against Musk. It's at a level I've never seen against anyone in my lifetime. People certain express strong hatred towards him than, say, Putin or Xi.
- Strom 4y ago
  Obviously in reality Musk has done nothing to be compared to Hitler, however as far as how much hate he gets in 2022, I would say he easily surpasses Hitler by at least a factor of a thousand. Very few people even talk about Hitler anymore, so it doesn't really capture the sense of hate either. I think a good comparison in the US would be Trump and I think more people hate Trump than Musk.
  - randomsearch 4y ago
    Hmm this is excellent analysis and the comparison is not incidental.

MSFT_Edging 4y ago

"makes huge and sometimes unreasonable demands on his workforce" Weird way to spell serial labor law violator https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/02/tesla-factory-is-racially-segregated-workplace-calif-state-agency-alleges/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/02/tesla-factory-is...

willmadden 4y ago

>He has said and posted things he shouldn’t. According to whom? His internet comments are sci-fi libertarian mainstream with a dash of NWO. His business accomplishments are impressive, but he's rather boring, no pun intended. I think the only argument against Musk's success is that he enjoyed unfair regulatory advantages. PayPal's KYC was non-existent for years, you could send money with little more than an email. Amazon had similar miraculous regulatory exceptions. No State sales tax until it had a near-monopoly network effect.

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
>>He has said and posted things he shouldn’t. >According to whom? I found that time he called a diver who was trying to save those kids a pedophile to be pretty revealing. Also, calling himself "Lorde Edge" was pretty awful. I suppose if you're asking "who has the right to tell him not to say that?" the answer is "no one", but I find it hard to respect the guy when he acts so childishly.

canucklady 4y ago

He sexually harassed employees and then paid them off to stay quiet: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-sexual-misconduct-claim-involved-horse-for-erotic-massage-2022-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-sexual-misconduct-... His factories have a history of complaints about racial abuse: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-hit-by-new-lawsuit-alleging-racial-abuse-against-black-workers-2022-07-01/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-... Elon Musk hates the color yellow so hazards in the factory aren't properly identified: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/tesla-workers-getting-hurt-because-elon-musk-hates-yellow.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/tesla-workers-gettin... Elon Musk made up the hyperloop just to kill high speed rail and sell more cars: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/editorials/article264451076.html https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/editorials/article26445107...

randomsearch 4y ago
Thanks for posting links, that's the kind of answer I'm interested in. (Thanks also to whoever un-downed me, as it is from genuinely wanting to understand). The last link is paywalled, but I doubt that is really his motive. It sounds silly. There was plenty of outspoken criticism against that highspeed rail link without a Musk conspiracy theory. He gave an interview on the BBC where he was similarly bemused by how poor our high speed efforts were, and his criticism was fair. I'm not sure we can see incidents in very large organisations as indicative of the character of the CEO. For sure he is ultimately to answer for them, and has a responsibility to sort them out, but Tesla employees about 100 000 people and in any sample of people that large you'll have some horrible ones. Someone else told me about the harassment suit today, now that is directly attributable to Musk and awful. Are there other such incidents? Still, doesn't seem to explain the sheer hatred for the man. I do have a different theory about that having spoken to others, which I'll post elsewhere...
- canucklady 4y ago
  The hyperloop article is sourced directly from his own statements in text messages turned over during discovery. I'm always amazed at the double standard where musk is solely responsible for the success of multiple companies, but any fault is attributable to someone else. He claims to have slept in the factory! He's this hands on car-building ubermensch. How can he be completely oblivious to safety and discrimination issues?

random314 4y ago

At Tesla, Elon is a manager like any other CEO. At Space X, he clearly is not and Gwynne Shotwell with decades of experience in Aerospace engineering runs the show. As much as people would like to believe that Elon musk, a materials science graduate with his only career experience being online payments with PayPal, is actually responsible for the core founding engineering of SpaceX and Tesla is crazy. Musk made bank with PayPal and has been an investor in many companies including failures like Neuralink, boring company etc. He has both invested and managed Tesla.