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As an ex spacex employee I can definitely say that it wouldn’t have been half the company today if Musk want in charge. Not a fanboy but trying to give an hones

As an ex spacex employee I can definitely say that it wouldn’t have been half the company today if Musk want in charge. Not a fanboy but trying to give an honest evaluation. Space is crazy hard and doesn’t happen without brilliant people so of course the credit for the success of the company goes to the engineers and everyone that gave some of their best work to making it happen though that type of success doesn’t happen without Musk at the helm. When it comes to space, he is truly a visionary that pushes for the craziest ideas and then challenges these brilliant people to make it happen. He truly loves space and has embraced learning everything there is to know about the engineering side of things so it’s not like what he’s proposing is impossible. It’s just batshit crazy, moon shot type of ideas and then the brilliant people that he’s been able to recruit are able to make it happen. It’s a BRUTAL work environment from a work life balance perspective but you don’t mind because you’re working on SPACESHIPS with some of the most brilliant people you’ve ever met and doing some of the most impactful work of your life. I try to separate the visionary tech genius side of him from the public crap that he’s done to ruin his public image. He has achieved the impossible so many times that he’s developed a god complex. I can’t speak to the electric car part but I’m impressed that he was able to will the country into caring about electric cars. He literally reinvented the space industry and made it cool again. But personally he’s a shit show that has gone unchecked for too long. When it comes to Twitter I doubt his magic is going to carry over to running a social media company. His style works because of the culture he’s able to build and the vision that he’s able to sell. From what I can tell he’s ruining the good parts of the Twitter culture and he doesn’t have a vision. Good luck to anyone working there. The years that I spent a working at spacex were the best years of my life that I’d never want to repeat again.

rurp 4y ago
Thanks for sharing a nuanced take and some first person experience.
tsunamifury 4y ago
Have you considered for a second that sending people to an irradiated hell hole planet where conditions are worse than earth even with 1000 years of climate change isnt the idea it’s cracked up to be?
- aardvarkr 4y ago
  Lmao you must really hate progress. Clearly anything risky is not worth doing and tough problems can’t be solved
  - tsunamifury 4y ago
    I think understanding the difference between a poorly considered plan and real progress is very important. Elon seems to demonstrate repeatedly (even if he has a mythos otherwise) he does not think multiple detailed steps ahead as illustrated by several failures like Boring company.
    - Railander 4y ago
      To be fair, doesn't seem like he's putting any effort into digging holes. The strongest argument is Tesla still doesn't have self-driving cars considering he's given it tons of attention for years and missed ETAs many times, but they're clearly getting there. That said, while I do think space travel is crazy cool, the prospects of living on Mars are quite long-term and a _lot_ of work to the point you might ask if it's really worth it worrying about it right now. How are they going to solve the atmosphere? Or even more impossible, how are they going to solve the ionizing radiation from space? I guess they could just live in closed-off domes but still...
      - tsunamifury 4y ago
        Exactly the how and why of mars haven’t been explained at all. Because he isn’t serious. Fsd, mars, etc are all grifts to get engineers to work harder and give up more value so they think they are a part of some meaning.
  - maxbond 4y ago
    The notion of "progress" is just mythologizing the past and fetishizing a particular version of the future. It only serves to portray alternatives as "anti-progress"; it is a rhetorical cudgel devoid of substance. We have problems that need solving, climate change is one of them. Musk's notion of Mars as "Planet B" is an entirely unworkable idea, and dangerous in that it invites postponing action in favor of a silver bullet that will never arrive. Things are not worth doing simply because they are risky - that's just more fetishism. They are worth doing because they solve problems. Space travel has the potential to solve certain problems, and is already solving lots of problems today. Mars colonization is not a serious proposal to any problem, because it can't be accomplished on any time horizon we're planning for. Mars colonization will likely never happen, and if it does, it is far beyond the foreseeable future (>100 years). So; SpaceX's rockets (and satellites) could certainly be useful, and are certainly useful today, but as GP pointed out, Musk's stated purpose is nonsense.
travisgriggs 4y ago
Thanks for sharing your ex-space-x perspective. I too, am skeptical about any good coming from this. I observe that Musk’s biggest wins is where he has used his enthusiasm and large cachet of celebrity capital to challenge the status quo. Tesla and SpaceX both embody elements of society that sci-fi has been dreaming since we were kids. Self landing rockets flying all the time! Electric robot cars that drive themselves! He challenges entrenched industries to do a thing that people wish they would do, but the bean counters say isn’t worth it. It least that’s how the fanciful narrative goes. The problem with Twitter (or any social network/super app) is that it is not clear what that “go big, go beyond, dream big” trajectory is. For me personally, it’d be about open source, open walls, federation, and above all no fricking advertisement/surveillance economy. I don’t see how Musk’s acquisition here achieves that or any other “dream for the stars” aspiration one has for Twitter.
- theonething 4y ago
  He has talked about open sourcing Twitter's algorithms. And His dream for the stars aspiration for Twitter is a public square where people exchange communication and ideas freely, civilly and honestly. Some might argue that is a crazier dream than autonomous rockets, Mars and electric cars!
pclmulqdq 4y ago
He has done a fantastic job at fundraising for SpaceX. Most other companies can't get past Series G as a private company. I think SpaceX is on series N, or around there. The talent pool available to SpaceX and Tesla is also very smart and motivated, and will put up with a lot of BS from the companies because they are so mission-driven. That is his really great talent: getting smart people to put their resources behind ambitious projects. That was also Elizabeth Holmes's talent, and Adam Neumann's. So far, he has done well at pivoting that inspiring message to real results, unlike the other two.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Is SpaceX the most valuable privately held company in the world now?
  - shasts 4y ago
    There are privately held companies that has 100B+ revenue per year. Cargill to Ikea
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      Sure, but that is revenue, not valuation, which can be lower (or higher). For example, Walmart has 560B+ revenue per year and a market cap of 380B.
      - protomyth 4y ago
        Cargill would have an amazingly high valuation just due to all the assets owned.
        s1artibartfast 4y ago
        You may very well be right! I didn't mean to come off saying you are wrong, just that Revenue isn't a proxy. IKEA on the other hand I very highly doubt has a higher market cap. Retail typically has high Revenue and low margin, like Walmart
the_cat_kittles 4y ago
"It’s just batshit crazy, moon shot type of ideas and then the brilliant people that he’s been able to recruit are able to make it happen" you can read this sentence and come away with the conclusion that he doesn't do anything, or that he is responsible for everything. To me, it mostly seems like he has a bunch of money / financing so he can pay people to try lots of often very dumb ideas and some might work. His core "skill" being an accumulation of immense wealth. you might say "you need both ideas and execution, and he is an ideas guy", which is correct, but i think the level of credit (and compensation) is wildly skewed towards the "ideas guy" in this case
- googlryas 4y ago
  It's not all ideas, but an ideas guy is a necessary but insufficient condition for the ultra talented "do-ers" to do their amazing things. Elon could have bought a big chunk of Google or apple if he wanted to with all his wealth and just generated nice returns, but t we probably wouldn't have boosters that return to land and can be reused if he did.
  - edwardotis 4y ago
    Funny, how a Series A investor in someone else' pre-existing company got people to think that he was the "ideas guy". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#Founding_(2003%E2%80%932004) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#Founding_(2003%E2%...
    - googlryas 4y ago
      You can still do that. Just "electric battery car" was not a novel idea in 2003. Jobs was viewed as the idea guy when he went back to apple, and it wouldn't have been really different if that was his first time there instead of returning.
    - somenameforme 4y ago
      Musk essentially was the A series, which led to him becoming the chairman and majority owner of the 7 month old company, which at that point just had a handful of guys. He ended up dismissing the original founders of the company before production began on their first product. Their impact on the Roadster is debatable. Their impact on Tesla, as a whole, is effectively zero.
bink 4y ago
SpaceX is unique because there are a whole lot of people who want to work on space exploration and very few big companies that are making serious progress in the field. Many people will put up with lower pay and extreme working conditions just for the chance to be a part of something like that. I don't think we can say the same for Twitter.
MetaWhirledPeas 4y ago
> From what I can tell he’s ruining the good parts of the Twitter culture and he doesn’t have a vision. Maybe? But I think he and others would argue that Twitter was gradually losing popularity and had no direction. So I'm not sure "slow death" is such a great culture to hold onto.

rurp 4y ago

Thanks for sharing a nuanced take and some first person experience.

tsunamifury 4y ago

Have you considered for a second that sending people to an irradiated hell hole planet where conditions are worse than earth even with 1000 years of climate change isnt the idea it’s cracked up to be?

aardvarkr 4y ago
Lmao you must really hate progress. Clearly anything risky is not worth doing and tough problems can’t be solved
- tsunamifury 4y ago
  I think understanding the difference between a poorly considered plan and real progress is very important. Elon seems to demonstrate repeatedly (even if he has a mythos otherwise) he does not think multiple detailed steps ahead as illustrated by several failures like Boring company.
  - Railander 4y ago
    To be fair, doesn't seem like he's putting any effort into digging holes. The strongest argument is Tesla still doesn't have self-driving cars considering he's given it tons of attention for years and missed ETAs many times, but they're clearly getting there. That said, while I do think space travel is crazy cool, the prospects of living on Mars are quite long-term and a _lot_ of work to the point you might ask if it's really worth it worrying about it right now. How are they going to solve the atmosphere? Or even more impossible, how are they going to solve the ionizing radiation from space? I guess they could just live in closed-off domes but still...
    - tsunamifury 4y ago
      Exactly the how and why of mars haven’t been explained at all. Because he isn’t serious. Fsd, mars, etc are all grifts to get engineers to work harder and give up more value so they think they are a part of some meaning.
- maxbond 4y ago
  The notion of "progress" is just mythologizing the past and fetishizing a particular version of the future. It only serves to portray alternatives as "anti-progress"; it is a rhetorical cudgel devoid of substance. We have problems that need solving, climate change is one of them. Musk's notion of Mars as "Planet B" is an entirely unworkable idea, and dangerous in that it invites postponing action in favor of a silver bullet that will never arrive. Things are not worth doing simply because they are risky - that's just more fetishism. They are worth doing because they solve problems. Space travel has the potential to solve certain problems, and is already solving lots of problems today. Mars colonization is not a serious proposal to any problem, because it can't be accomplished on any time horizon we're planning for. Mars colonization will likely never happen, and if it does, it is far beyond the foreseeable future (>100 years). So; SpaceX's rockets (and satellites) could certainly be useful, and are certainly useful today, but as GP pointed out, Musk's stated purpose is nonsense.

travisgriggs 4y ago

Thanks for sharing your ex-space-x perspective. I too, am skeptical about any good coming from this. I observe that Musk’s biggest wins is where he has used his enthusiasm and large cachet of celebrity capital to challenge the status quo. Tesla and SpaceX both embody elements of society that sci-fi has been dreaming since we were kids. Self landing rockets flying all the time! Electric robot cars that drive themselves! He challenges entrenched industries to do a thing that people wish they would do, but the bean counters say isn’t worth it. It least that’s how the fanciful narrative goes. The problem with Twitter (or any social network/super app) is that it is not clear what that “go big, go beyond, dream big” trajectory is. For me personally, it’d be about open source, open walls, federation, and above all no fricking advertisement/surveillance economy. I don’t see how Musk’s acquisition here achieves that or any other “dream for the stars” aspiration one has for Twitter.

theonething 4y ago
He has talked about open sourcing Twitter's algorithms. And His dream for the stars aspiration for Twitter is a public square where people exchange communication and ideas freely, civilly and honestly. Some might argue that is a crazier dream than autonomous rockets, Mars and electric cars!

pclmulqdq 4y ago

He has done a fantastic job at fundraising for SpaceX. Most other companies can't get past Series G as a private company. I think SpaceX is on series N, or around there. The talent pool available to SpaceX and Tesla is also very smart and motivated, and will put up with a lot of BS from the companies because they are so mission-driven. That is his really great talent: getting smart people to put their resources behind ambitious projects. That was also Elizabeth Holmes's talent, and Adam Neumann's. So far, he has done well at pivoting that inspiring message to real results, unlike the other two.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
Is SpaceX the most valuable privately held company in the world now?
- shasts 4y ago
  There are privately held companies that has 100B+ revenue per year. Cargill to Ikea
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Sure, but that is revenue, not valuation, which can be lower (or higher). For example, Walmart has 560B+ revenue per year and a market cap of 380B.
    - protomyth 4y ago
      Cargill would have an amazingly high valuation just due to all the assets owned.
      - s1artibartfast 4y ago
        You may very well be right! I didn't mean to come off saying you are wrong, just that Revenue isn't a proxy. IKEA on the other hand I very highly doubt has a higher market cap. Retail typically has high Revenue and low margin, like Walmart

the_cat_kittles 4y ago

"It’s just batshit crazy, moon shot type of ideas and then the brilliant people that he’s been able to recruit are able to make it happen" you can read this sentence and come away with the conclusion that he doesn't do anything, or that he is responsible for everything. To me, it mostly seems like he has a bunch of money / financing so he can pay people to try lots of often very dumb ideas and some might work. His core "skill" being an accumulation of immense wealth. you might say "you need both ideas and execution, and he is an ideas guy", which is correct, but i think the level of credit (and compensation) is wildly skewed towards the "ideas guy" in this case

googlryas 4y ago
It's not all ideas, but an ideas guy is a necessary but insufficient condition for the ultra talented "do-ers" to do their amazing things. Elon could have bought a big chunk of Google or apple if he wanted to with all his wealth and just generated nice returns, but t we probably wouldn't have boosters that return to land and can be reused if he did.
- edwardotis 4y ago
  Funny, how a Series A investor in someone else' pre-existing company got people to think that he was the "ideas guy". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#Founding_(2003%E2%80%932004) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#Founding_(2003%E2%...
  - googlryas 4y ago
    You can still do that. Just "electric battery car" was not a novel idea in 2003. Jobs was viewed as the idea guy when he went back to apple, and it wouldn't have been really different if that was his first time there instead of returning.
  - somenameforme 4y ago
    Musk essentially was the A series, which led to him becoming the chairman and majority owner of the 7 month old company, which at that point just had a handful of guys. He ended up dismissing the original founders of the company before production began on their first product. Their impact on the Roadster is debatable. Their impact on Tesla, as a whole, is effectively zero.

bink 4y ago

SpaceX is unique because there are a whole lot of people who want to work on space exploration and very few big companies that are making serious progress in the field. Many people will put up with lower pay and extreme working conditions just for the chance to be a part of something like that. I don't think we can say the same for Twitter.

MetaWhirledPeas 4y ago

> From what I can tell he’s ruining the good parts of the Twitter culture and he doesn’t have a vision. Maybe? But I think he and others would argue that Twitter was gradually losing popularity and had no direction. So I'm not sure "slow death" is such a great culture to hold onto.