6 ms·

His management style is not the worst thing about the guy. If all the legends about him were true (superhuman BS detector, genius level IQ, laser sharp focus)

His management style is not the worst thing about the guy. If all the legends about him were true (superhuman BS detector, genius level IQ, laser sharp focus) I'd be happy to be part of the team. Unfortunately, I think his main talent is the uncanny ability to overhype himself. He is lucky that a side effect of this ability helped him hire and motivate really good engineers. Thay might not be sufficient in the long run, the vaporware bubble will pop at some point. https://elonmusk.today/ https://elonmusk.today/

arcticfox 4y ago
It’s sad because I want the legends to be true and I thought they were for a long time. Now that he’s showing his true colors, it’s clear that they are not.
- stephc_int13 4y ago
  Same. That would be fun to have a real Tony Stark on earth. The guy think he is Tony Stark. The sad news is that nobody is going to Mars yet.
rtpg 4y ago
One thing that can be said about Twitter, is it is really revealing of how people are, rather than how their PR teams try to view people. Maybe he’s playing 4D chess, but I don’t know if there’s a lot of superhuman chess behind signing a binding agreement waiving due diligence at a meme price. The man is a walking unforced error. Given the downturn of access to free money I wonder what happens next for him (and other “innovators” in general , see SoftBank funds)
- lostmsu 4y ago
  > One thing that can be said about Twitter, is it is really revealing of how people are, rather than how their PR teams try to view people. This is extremely naive. Most people likely use their inner "PR team" when posting.
  - rtpg 4y ago
    I agree! Most people have this. I think the simplest idea here is that before twitter people would talk through interviews, or press releases, and there you would have other people also participating in the filtering process. There's a reason PR people exist, after all. But with Twitter, there are less checks going on, and... well... some people are good at filtering, some people are less good at it (they might be totally great at other parts of their jobs!).
whiddershins 4y ago
Rocket stages that land and are reused is the opposite of vaporware.
- stephc_int13 4y ago
  Agreed, and this is good. Elon legend is not 100% BS like SBF. But what about all the undelivered promises?
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
  > Rocket stages that land and are reused is the opposite of vaporware. Just because it looks cool doesn't mean they provide quality of life. Saturn V rockets were way cooler and way bigger and sane people had to pull the plug because they were a money sinkhole. As the global population becomes increasingly urbanised the whole demand for sat-internet will drop even more, as they'll all be using fiber or 5g. Then what? Sat-TV is already dead, what's left? How many GPS satellites are really needed? The whole space race is something that caused a huge hole in US and USSR budgets without any ROI to show for, and will bankrupt Musk for sure. Maybe Bezos and Branson will avoid the same destiny, ironically thanks to their vices and passion for trophy assets such as private islands, yachts and football teams which at least hold their value, matter of fact they appreciate and produce revenues.
wittycardio 4y ago
Yeah I'm very down for a hard working mission driven environment. I have never once needed to be coddled. But I'm not down to work for a shameless self promoter who fires all who disagree. I wouldn't work for Elon for the same reason I wouldn't work for Trump or Hugo Chavez.
FredPret 4y ago
I don’t get what people mean by this. I have mixed feelings about the guy, but vaporware? Are the rockets not real? Are the cars and solar panels and tunnels and Paypal not real? Of course he didn’t single-handedly do this. Of course other engineers were invaluable in the process. But he forced Tesla and SpaceX into existence when everyone thought it was guaranteed to fail. We saw people trying with electric cars and new kinds of rockets before him. From General Motors to Burt Rutan, none succeeded. Elon had a viable vision and pushed it like a maniac and now it’s real, and mainstream. It’s incredible. If I can do this with a single project, I’d consider my life a smashing success.
- dale_glass 4y ago
  > I don’t get what people mean by this. I have mixed feelings about the guy, but vaporware? Are the rockets not real? Are the cars and solar panels and tunnels and Paypal not real? Rockets are real. Cars are real, but aren't particularly good given the reports, so he'll likely run into trouble with the competition soon. Solar panels seem to be doing very so-so, the reports I've heard is that their solar roof stuff is very troublesome. The tunnels suck. He dug extremely narrow deathtraps that for some reason are driven through in a car, and that will kill people as soon as there's an accident.
- Retric 4y ago
  SpaceX is a major success for him. Musk’s introduction to Tesla was being amazed by a working prototype with awesome acceleration. He took over Tesla when it already had a viable product and business strategy. The company started July 1 2003 and Musk’s early contribution was an early funding round and a board seat. He get’s to call himself a founder based on a lawsuit in 2009 and kicking the actual founders out.
  - FredPret 4y ago
    OK, and then he proceeded to turn that fledgling entity into a massive industry-launching company. This is enough to be considered a business genius. Even if Tesla fails, which seems unlikely given their pile of cash and very popular cars, he has already succeeded in his stated goal of getting the switch to electric cars started.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
I was listening to Andrej Karpathy's interview on the Lex Friedman podcast. Karpathy said that Elon's superpower is "human engineering" and limiting "entropy" in large organizations. If you trust Karpathy as a source, it seems like working for Elon would be the opposite of working for a bureaucracy.
- kaba0 4y ago
  Surely seems like such a smart guy, randomly turning off prod microservices and driving Twitter to the ground in record speed. Honestly, I can’t even imagine running that company worse than what he does right now.
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    I don’t understand how he has driven Twitter into the ground? It only feels even more active than before
    - kaba0 4y ago
      Plenty advertiser pulled out due to ultra right wingers, then due to this whole twitter badge controversy (which did at least result in many genuinely funny posts, r/realtwitteraccounts ). Also, one can only imagine the lost business knowledge of all the fired people that will soon creep up on the remaining team.
      - spaceman_2020 4y ago
        Advertisers will come back if Twitter still has users and engagement. Imo, if you're running a social media business, a key metric to optimize for is traffic and engagement. Elon seems to be doing that well enough at least.
- mudrockbestgirl 4y ago
  You realize nobody like that would ever publicly say anything bad about Elon, right? It's all driven by incentives. Just like would publicly say anything bad about FTX's SBF because they need to stay on his good side. Statements like that from people who have a horse in the race are totally meaningless.

arcticfox 4y ago

It’s sad because I want the legends to be true and I thought they were for a long time. Now that he’s showing his true colors, it’s clear that they are not.

stephc_int13 4y ago
Same. That would be fun to have a real Tony Stark on earth. The guy think he is Tony Stark. The sad news is that nobody is going to Mars yet.

rtpg 4y ago

One thing that can be said about Twitter, is it is really revealing of how people are, rather than how their PR teams try to view people. Maybe he’s playing 4D chess, but I don’t know if there’s a lot of superhuman chess behind signing a binding agreement waiving due diligence at a meme price. The man is a walking unforced error. Given the downturn of access to free money I wonder what happens next for him (and other “innovators” in general , see SoftBank funds)

lostmsu 4y ago
> One thing that can be said about Twitter, is it is really revealing of how people are, rather than how their PR teams try to view people. This is extremely naive. Most people likely use their inner "PR team" when posting.
- rtpg 4y ago
  I agree! Most people have this. I think the simplest idea here is that before twitter people would talk through interviews, or press releases, and there you would have other people also participating in the filtering process. There's a reason PR people exist, after all. But with Twitter, there are less checks going on, and... well... some people are good at filtering, some people are less good at it (they might be totally great at other parts of their jobs!).

whiddershins 4y ago

Rocket stages that land and are reused is the opposite of vaporware.

stephc_int13 4y ago
Agreed, and this is good. Elon legend is not 100% BS like SBF. But what about all the undelivered promises?
Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
> Rocket stages that land and are reused is the opposite of vaporware. Just because it looks cool doesn't mean they provide quality of life. Saturn V rockets were way cooler and way bigger and sane people had to pull the plug because they were a money sinkhole. As the global population becomes increasingly urbanised the whole demand for sat-internet will drop even more, as they'll all be using fiber or 5g. Then what? Sat-TV is already dead, what's left? How many GPS satellites are really needed? The whole space race is something that caused a huge hole in US and USSR budgets without any ROI to show for, and will bankrupt Musk for sure. Maybe Bezos and Branson will avoid the same destiny, ironically thanks to their vices and passion for trophy assets such as private islands, yachts and football teams which at least hold their value, matter of fact they appreciate and produce revenues.

wittycardio 4y ago

Yeah I'm very down for a hard working mission driven environment. I have never once needed to be coddled. But I'm not down to work for a shameless self promoter who fires all who disagree. I wouldn't work for Elon for the same reason I wouldn't work for Trump or Hugo Chavez.

FredPret 4y ago

I don’t get what people mean by this. I have mixed feelings about the guy, but vaporware? Are the rockets not real? Are the cars and solar panels and tunnels and Paypal not real? Of course he didn’t single-handedly do this. Of course other engineers were invaluable in the process. But he forced Tesla and SpaceX into existence when everyone thought it was guaranteed to fail. We saw people trying with electric cars and new kinds of rockets before him. From General Motors to Burt Rutan, none succeeded. Elon had a viable vision and pushed it like a maniac and now it’s real, and mainstream. It’s incredible. If I can do this with a single project, I’d consider my life a smashing success.

dale_glass 4y ago
> I don’t get what people mean by this. I have mixed feelings about the guy, but vaporware? Are the rockets not real? Are the cars and solar panels and tunnels and Paypal not real? Rockets are real. Cars are real, but aren't particularly good given the reports, so he'll likely run into trouble with the competition soon. Solar panels seem to be doing very so-so, the reports I've heard is that their solar roof stuff is very troublesome. The tunnels suck. He dug extremely narrow deathtraps that for some reason are driven through in a car, and that will kill people as soon as there's an accident.
Retric 4y ago
SpaceX is a major success for him. Musk’s introduction to Tesla was being amazed by a working prototype with awesome acceleration. He took over Tesla when it already had a viable product and business strategy. The company started July 1 2003 and Musk’s early contribution was an early funding round and a board seat. He get’s to call himself a founder based on a lawsuit in 2009 and kicking the actual founders out.
- FredPret 4y ago
  OK, and then he proceeded to turn that fledgling entity into a massive industry-launching company. This is enough to be considered a business genius. Even if Tesla fails, which seems unlikely given their pile of cash and very popular cars, he has already succeeded in his stated goal of getting the switch to electric cars started.

spaceman_2020 4y ago

I was listening to Andrej Karpathy's interview on the Lex Friedman podcast. Karpathy said that Elon's superpower is "human engineering" and limiting "entropy" in large organizations. If you trust Karpathy as a source, it seems like working for Elon would be the opposite of working for a bureaucracy.

kaba0 4y ago
Surely seems like such a smart guy, randomly turning off prod microservices and driving Twitter to the ground in record speed. Honestly, I can’t even imagine running that company worse than what he does right now.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  I don’t understand how he has driven Twitter into the ground? It only feels even more active than before
  - kaba0 4y ago
    Plenty advertiser pulled out due to ultra right wingers, then due to this whole twitter badge controversy (which did at least result in many genuinely funny posts, r/realtwitteraccounts ). Also, one can only imagine the lost business knowledge of all the fired people that will soon creep up on the remaining team.
    - spaceman_2020 4y ago
      Advertisers will come back if Twitter still has users and engagement. Imo, if you're running a social media business, a key metric to optimize for is traffic and engagement. Elon seems to be doing that well enough at least.
mudrockbestgirl 4y ago
You realize nobody like that would ever publicly say anything bad about Elon, right? It's all driven by incentives. Just like would publicly say anything bad about FTX's SBF because they need to stay on his good side. Statements like that from people who have a horse in the race are totally meaningless.