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Indeed. For example, Musk fancies himself a champion of "hard work" but what he fails to realize is that humans have not actually merged with robots yet, and we

Indeed. For example, Musk fancies himself a champion of "hard work" but what he fails to realize is that humans have not actually merged with robots yet, and we still have human needs. If innovation and brilliant thinking are part of your brand, you actually get higher quality work, sustained over a longer period of time, if you actually back off on the whip-cracking and just give people what they need to produce great work. You get slightly slower growth, but more area under the curve in the long run.

jjtheblunt 4y ago
Maybe he realizes that, and is just a jackass.
- whatwherewhy 4y ago
  Where are the nice bosses of top tech companies? Maybe that's how you build a big tech company.
  - Goronmon 4y ago
    I think there is a middle area between being a "nice boss" and being a boss who calls out internal engineering implementation concerns (rightly or not) on Twitter. And then fire people who disagree in a response.
    - whatwherewhy 4y ago
      Well, Gates is an asshole, Jobs was an asshole - where's the middleground? Maybe niceness leads to [business] mediocrity.
      - lake_vincent 4y ago
        Just because the Great Pyramids were built with slavery doesn't mean that slavery is okay, or that there is not a better way to build a pyramid.
        bckr 4y ago
        The pyramids were not built with slavery
        jjtheblunt 4y ago
        how were they built?
        nvr219 4y ago
        Aliens.
        artificial 4y ago
        By teams of people stacking enormous stones on top of one another. Fun fact, there's inscriptions by the teams.
        bckr 4y ago
        "... labourers were recruited from farms, perhaps from a region much further down the Nile, near Luxor. The labourers would have been enticed by the mix of high-quality food and the opportunity to work on such a prestigious project." https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/were-the-egyptian-pyramids-built-by-slaves/ https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/were-the-egyptian-pyram...
        whatwherewhy 4y ago
        Don't be absurd, we are not talking about anything comparable to slavery. I am asking - show me the person who found the better way.
        q-big 4y ago
        > Just because the Great Pyramids were built with slavery They weren't build by aliens with alien technology? ;-) SCNR because we are talking about Elon Musk with his space obsession.
      - eesmith 4y ago
        Hewlett and Packard were relatively low on the asshole scale, at least for their employees. [1] Early support for company health insurance, flextime, work-from-home, free coffee breaks, decentralized decision making, etc. See the HP Memory Project at https://www.hpmemoryproject.org https://www.hpmemoryproject.org for some of the stories. ("Jim Catlin's Packard Story" and Packard's 11 rules, "Bill Hewlett and the HP Medical Plan" for their anonymous payment for medical bills for an employee's premature baby, etc.) The padlock story at https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/timeline/john_minck/inside_hp_03.htm https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/timeline/john_minck/inside_h... is also pretty well-known, and used as an example of promoting institutional trust. Packard's support for apartheid profits keeps him definitely on the scale. [1] Probably better if you were a white male not as subject to the "mixture of machismo and misogyny" of early HP - https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/timeline/barbara_waugh/barbara_waugh_memoir.htm https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/timeline/barbara_waugh/barba... .
  - gavindean90 4y ago
    I don’t think it’s nice or not thing but more a management strategy thing. Hard-driving can be great at extracting value from an organization but it isn’t as effective at exploring potential as other management styles.
  - kevinventullo 4y ago
    Were Larry and Sergey not considered nice?
rapsey 4y ago
To produce great work you also need some pressure. Otherwise people will get real lazy very quickly.
- htgb 4y ago
  Counterpoint: open source software, of which there are many great works without anyone being forced or pressured into making it. There are many more ways of getting motivation than applying "some pressure". Indeed, people are inherently curious and motivated, but it can easily be suppressed by environmental factors. In particular "stick and carrot"-type reward systems. For a (much more) elaborate expansion on this, see the book Drive by Daniel H. Pink.
  - rapsey 4y ago
    The vast majority of open source done in peoples free time is unfinished and at best of limited use. The serious projects very often have payed developers. The good ones done by unpaid developers have some pressure in terms of expectations by their community or the developers put pressure on themselves to achieve some self goal.
    - systemvoltage 4y ago
      OSS projects are also prone to leadership issues and tend to have "good ol boys" clubs. It's utlimately human nature, OSS or not. See Linus Torvals or some of the things that went on in Rust community. Also, StackOverflow mods that volunteer their free time have so many issues. Wikipedia editors and Reddit moderators. Same. Putting a OSS lipstick isn't doing any favors to understanding the human nature and how to create a good governance model to keep people happy. I suspect this is never going to be "solved", only solved in one person's views or ideological bias.
    - mfuzzey 4y ago
      You are quite right that open source done purely in free time usually takes much longer to be "finished" but that is more a question of the time available to spend on it than absence of pressure. OSS projects that have paid developers often manage to avoid much of the pressure that occurs in closed source. Some OSS projects like the kernel manage to harness companies as way of funding full time developers without giving them too much say in details or deadlines. A feature ships in Linux when it is ready and accepted by the maintainers and Linus not when some manager says it has to ship. Of course this works far better for large projects that are essentially a "commons" like the kernel, less so for open source projects where most of the developers work for a single company.
Consultant32452 4y ago
I suspect the world's wealthiest man knows how to grow a business better than either of us.
- youngtaff 4y ago
  And farm government subsidies better than the rest of us
  - ben_w 4y ago
    At that scale, isn't that a required part of it? (Thinking of how much the Artemis cost vs. total SpaceX subsidy here, but subsidies are everywhere and look suspiciously like legalised corruption and/or voter manipulation to me even when I like the thing being subsidised).
ohgodplsno 4y ago
>For example, Musk fancies himself a champion of "hard work" And Musk is the perfect example of "do as I say, not as I do", as he sends teams into a death march of insane hours, wherever he is, while he's shitposting on Twitter from his multi million dollar house paid for by company funds and pretending he's doing 120 hour work weeks

jjtheblunt 4y ago

Maybe he realizes that, and is just a jackass.

whatwherewhy 4y ago
Where are the nice bosses of top tech companies? Maybe that's how you build a big tech company.
- Goronmon 4y ago
  I think there is a middle area between being a "nice boss" and being a boss who calls out internal engineering implementation concerns (rightly or not) on Twitter. And then fire people who disagree in a response.
  - whatwherewhy 4y ago
    Well, Gates is an asshole, Jobs was an asshole - where's the middleground? Maybe niceness leads to [business] mediocrity.
    - lake_vincent 4y ago
      Just because the Great Pyramids were built with slavery doesn't mean that slavery is okay, or that there is not a better way to build a pyramid.
      - bckr 4y ago
        The pyramids were not built with slavery
        jjtheblunt 4y ago
        how were they built?
        nvr219 4y ago
        Aliens.
        artificial 4y ago
        By teams of people stacking enormous stones on top of one another. Fun fact, there's inscriptions by the teams.
        bckr 4y ago
        "... labourers were recruited from farms, perhaps from a region much further down the Nile, near Luxor. The labourers would have been enticed by the mix of high-quality food and the opportunity to work on such a prestigious project." https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/were-the-egyptian-pyramids-built-by-slaves/ https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/were-the-egyptian-pyram...
      - whatwherewhy 4y ago
        Don't be absurd, we are not talking about anything comparable to slavery. I am asking - show me the person who found the better way.
      - q-big 4y ago
        > Just because the Great Pyramids were built with slavery They weren't build by aliens with alien technology? ;-) SCNR because we are talking about Elon Musk with his space obsession.
    - eesmith 4y ago
      Hewlett and Packard were relatively low on the asshole scale, at least for their employees. [1] Early support for company health insurance, flextime, work-from-home, free coffee breaks, decentralized decision making, etc. See the HP Memory Project at https://www.hpmemoryproject.org https://www.hpmemoryproject.org for some of the stories. ("Jim Catlin's Packard Story" and Packard's 11 rules, "Bill Hewlett and the HP Medical Plan" for their anonymous payment for medical bills for an employee's premature baby, etc.) The padlock story at https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/timeline/john_minck/inside_hp_03.htm https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/timeline/john_minck/inside_h... is also pretty well-known, and used as an example of promoting institutional trust. Packard's support for apartheid profits keeps him definitely on the scale. [1] Probably better if you were a white male not as subject to the "mixture of machismo and misogyny" of early HP - https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/timeline/barbara_waugh/barbara_waugh_memoir.htm https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/timeline/barbara_waugh/barba... .
- gavindean90 4y ago
  I don’t think it’s nice or not thing but more a management strategy thing. Hard-driving can be great at extracting value from an organization but it isn’t as effective at exploring potential as other management styles.
- kevinventullo 4y ago
  Were Larry and Sergey not considered nice?

rapsey 4y ago

To produce great work you also need some pressure. Otherwise people will get real lazy very quickly.

htgb 4y ago
Counterpoint: open source software, of which there are many great works without anyone being forced or pressured into making it. There are many more ways of getting motivation than applying "some pressure". Indeed, people are inherently curious and motivated, but it can easily be suppressed by environmental factors. In particular "stick and carrot"-type reward systems. For a (much more) elaborate expansion on this, see the book Drive by Daniel H. Pink.
- rapsey 4y ago
  The vast majority of open source done in peoples free time is unfinished and at best of limited use. The serious projects very often have payed developers. The good ones done by unpaid developers have some pressure in terms of expectations by their community or the developers put pressure on themselves to achieve some self goal.
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    OSS projects are also prone to leadership issues and tend to have "good ol boys" clubs. It's utlimately human nature, OSS or not. See Linus Torvals or some of the things that went on in Rust community. Also, StackOverflow mods that volunteer their free time have so many issues. Wikipedia editors and Reddit moderators. Same. Putting a OSS lipstick isn't doing any favors to understanding the human nature and how to create a good governance model to keep people happy. I suspect this is never going to be "solved", only solved in one person's views or ideological bias.
  - mfuzzey 4y ago
    You are quite right that open source done purely in free time usually takes much longer to be "finished" but that is more a question of the time available to spend on it than absence of pressure. OSS projects that have paid developers often manage to avoid much of the pressure that occurs in closed source. Some OSS projects like the kernel manage to harness companies as way of funding full time developers without giving them too much say in details or deadlines. A feature ships in Linux when it is ready and accepted by the maintainers and Linus not when some manager says it has to ship. Of course this works far better for large projects that are essentially a "commons" like the kernel, less so for open source projects where most of the developers work for a single company.

Consultant32452 4y ago

I suspect the world's wealthiest man knows how to grow a business better than either of us.

youngtaff 4y ago
And farm government subsidies better than the rest of us
- ben_w 4y ago
  At that scale, isn't that a required part of it? (Thinking of how much the Artemis cost vs. total SpaceX subsidy here, but subsidies are everywhere and look suspiciously like legalised corruption and/or voter manipulation to me even when I like the thing being subsidised).

ohgodplsno 4y ago

>For example, Musk fancies himself a champion of "hard work" And Musk is the perfect example of "do as I say, not as I do", as he sends teams into a death march of insane hours, wherever he is, while he's shitposting on Twitter from his multi million dollar house paid for by company funds and pretending he's doing 120 hour work weeks