9 ms·

But Elon was fired from PayPal. He failed at Boring Company and Neuralink. He faked his educational credentials and was in the country illegally. He failed at F

by 7e 4y ago

But Elon was fired from PayPal. He failed at Boring Company and Neuralink. He faked his educational credentials and was in the country illegally. He failed at Full Self Driving, the Roadster is nowhere to be seen, the Cybertruck is MIA and the Tesla Semi is years late. 95% of predictions he has made has failed to pass. As far as I can tell, he lucked out during the .com boom, then invested in Tesla and almost drove it into the ground—-saved only by government subsidies, cheap money, and fortuitous timing. SpaceX has raised $10B and is currently looking to raise more. Elon's MO is burning a ton of cash that his competitors aren't willing to do in order to be first in some space. That doesn't take talent.

chadash 4y ago
> Elon's MO is burning a ton of cash that his competitors aren't willing to do in order to be first in some space. That doesn't take talent. He's had failures before. But this line seems unfair. He was neither the first person in electric cars (a few notable failures before him) nor in rockets (e.g. Boeing)... but he was able to lead a team that figured out some of the key tech and the business models to make these things viable. Even with a lot of money, this is no small feat.
- wilsonnb3 4y ago
  > Even with a lot of money, this is no small feat. Unfortunately we will never know how much Musk contributed to any of these companies. It is in his best interest to act like he was vital but unless you were there, there isn’t any way to know.
  - nverno 4y ago
    If you want to get an idea, why not listen to some engineers that have worked with him? There are plenty of those around, for example, Andrej Karpathy talked a bit about working with Elon recently - https://youtu.be/cdiD-9MMpb0?t=5668 https://youtu.be/cdiD-9MMpb0?t=5668
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      Unless it was off the record, I wouldn't. There are all kinds of potential conflicts of interests. These include ownership in companies where valuation is directly connected to Musk'a perceived competence and his ability to help/hinder their career.
      - nverno 4y ago
        Andrej doesn't work at Tesla anymore, but it sounded like he would want to leave the option to return open, so presumably he wouldn't want to burn bridges. I think most people prefer not to criticize people they know well publicly, anyhow.
  - Stupulous 4y ago
    Why not ask the people who were there?
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      For one thing, there are two groups, those who went there and eventually left, and those who are still there. I bet they give very different answers.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  He also started both Tesla and SpaceX with a "fortune" of about $300 million. $300 million is of course a lot of money. The reason I put fortune in quotes is because he was looking to get into aerospace. An industry where NASA, and their near century of experience, ended up paying an aggregated cost of more than $1.6 billion per flight, over 134 flights. A guy with a vision and a few hundred million, in this context, has what many would have said would be a 0% chance of success. Many people somehow seem to have this view that if you just have enough money you can solve any problem in existence. It's probably just the consumerist mindset taken to its [not so] logical extremes - where literally anything is for sale, even that which doesn't exist.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    He didn't start Tesla at all. He bought a majority stake for $6.5 million and then drove the founders out.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - somenameforme 4y ago
      Tesla at the time Musk took over was literally three guys, a cool name, and some big ideas. He then took over on design, direction, and development - as well as starting to bleed money trying to make it all happen. And ultimately the others would be out of the company before their first product hit production. They deserve a footnote, but their ultimate role in the company was effectively zero.
      - nikau 4y ago
        So why didn't Elon just start a new company - sorry story doesn't add up.
        somenameforme 4y ago
        He effectively did start a new company. Their entire series A funding round was $7.5 million in total, of which $6.5 was Elon. So he became the near exclusive owner of a new company with a few like-minded guys of a similar background. I don't think he had some nefarious plan to kick them out from the get go. Sometimes personalities and ideas just clash, as theirs obviously did.
throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
one could pickle cucumbers in your post
alsodumb 4y ago
I love how the goalposts keep shifting all the time - "Tesla can never manufacture a mass production car", "Elon cannot run a hardware company", "Electric cars can only sell when subsidized". The truth is Tesla and Elon pushed an entire market forward. Tesla paid back their loans while other car manufacturers didn't. SpaceX was not the first in the launch business - they were in fact the only one who attempted to break into a monopolized market that no one dared to touch. It's remarkable that they not only fight their way in, but also did it so well that they became the largest launch provider in the country, and in some cases the only one in the United States - SpaceX saved the tax payers a ton of money by reducing launch costs. You don't have to either hate or love a guy - Elon fucked up multiple times, often talks shit, but give the man credit where credit is due.
- rodgerd 4y ago
  > I love how the goalposts keep shifting all the time Which ones? The ones where cars would self-deliver five years ago? That Mars colonisation would have begun this year? That Cybertruck would deliver three years ago? The goalposts are Elons.
  - FormerBandmate 4y ago
    Every big tech company misses their targets the same way, because they’re way too ambitious. Look at Waymo and Prime Air.
- hintymad 4y ago
  I can contribute one more data point: Space X invented a new alloy steel to drive down the cost of the surface material of Space X rockets to $4/kg. That's some serious science and engineering. And this improvement is probably a very small one compared with thousands of innovations made by Space X.
  - steve_adams_86 4y ago
    Do you know what prices per kg looked like before this new alloy?
jasmer 4y ago
It takes talent to fail in many of those ways, notably, it's mostly papered over by the success of Tesla and Space X, which will probably be just fine on thew whole. His antics were 'sufferable' in the context of Tesla/Space X, but for a variety of reasons, not at all with Twitter whereupon he's essentially going to be perceived a toxic entity - rightly or wrongly. He needs to find an excuse to get out of there, find someone he can get along with to take over. Put some nice terms in there, probably including that he has to 'not talk about Twitter publicly' and get back to his more tolerable shenanigans. If Twitter was his only gig, I can see him digging himself out of this hole over the long run, but with other things to do I think it's going melt him. He's doing 'Operation Market Garden' for no reason; time for an 'orderly withdrawal'.
- randycupertino 4y ago
  Man, the top comment is about Waterloo and now we have Operation Market Garden this thread is a history nerd's feast of Vitellius.
- user_named 4y ago
  Some people suggested selling to Automattic like Tumblr did and with an implied price of 1M. I don't think Matt would be a bad choice for a ceo.
zarzavat 4y ago
That may be true. But the guy also landed rockets from orbit (on ships!). And then flew them again. The implications of having easy access to space to our civilization really cannot be overstated. SpaceX is the real deal, and will probably be worth more than Tesla eventually. Musk clearly isn’t successful in everything he does, but he’s not a failure either.
- gonzo41 4y ago
  Just like Jobs built the iphone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew6fv9UUlQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew6fv9UUlQ8
- Maursault 4y ago
  > The implications of having easy access to space to our civilization really cannot be overstated. I think that counts.
- wilsonnb3 4y ago
  > the guy also landed rockets from orbit We all know that he didn’t do that though, right? At best his skill set includes hiring smart people, raising money, and being a good manager. Which is exactly what you want from a good CEO and nothing to sneeze at. But people give him way too much credit for Tesla and spacex imo
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    People act like this asshole out there wrenching on Raptor engines or something. No. He sits at the top and commands, like a king. And yet he is apparently solely responsible for engineering achievements? The guy who gave "cold gas jet thrusters" on a tesla a legitimate idea for more speed, or using rockets for fast travel on earth, or "humans drive with just two eyes (and a millennia of evolution and experience) so we will replicate that with just two shitty off the shelf CCDs that don't even compare to eyeballs, and oh btw we are removing ultrasonic sensors and I promise it's not because we are cheapskates trying to balloon profit margins to meet our absurd overhyped valuation". Has he ever said anything of actual engineering value? Like come on. He doesn't even technically run things at SpaceX, they literally had to hire someone whose job is to stand between Elon and any semblance of control of the company. It would be like if you went to mcdonalds, got a burger, and thanked the statue of Ronald Mcdonald on the way out. That's not how the world works, ronald didn't make your burger.
GaylordTuring 4y ago
> He failed at Full Self Driving His time plan might have failed, but that doesn’t mean that full self driving has failed. That’s like if I said: “I’m going to make 10 million dollars by the end of next week”, and then people would call me a failure for only making 5 million in a week. Or do you mean that full self driving actually has failed, not taking into account any time plans? I think the full self driving capabilities of Teslas are downright incredible. Not fully ready for robotaxi territory, but extremely impressing.
- system16 4y ago
  That's not really a comparable analogy. More like "Here is this cool feature I'm going to make by the end of the year, pay me $5,000 for it now." and you never actually get it. It's fraud.
- scheme271 4y ago
  I think it's closer to saying you'll build a bridge in a week but you build a bridge where the roadway ends part of the way across. You can still get to the other side using the steel girders but it's really not useful. FSD sort of works but fails in unexpected ways and at random times so you have to pay just as much attention as if you were driving.
lumenwrites 4y ago
Doesn't it get exhausting to jump through so many mental hoops to minimize someone's accomplishments? I don't understand what people get out of this, is it really that painful to admit that some guy has done some pretty cool things with his life? All the effort it takes to research all the negative things about someone could've been spent doing something productive. Being willing to admit that someone did something awesome could've been exciting or inspiring. And yet people work so hard to think around all the good things, and take the most negative view possible. Ugh, I don't like this part of human nature.
- rjh29 4y ago
  It is the opposite. It is exhausting to hold a nuanced, balanced view of things. It is much easier to think "I don't like this person, therefore everything about this person is bad". The brain does it for you. I agree btw, I have watched people go from worshipping Elon to suddenly deciding he's a fraud and a talentless hack and every one of his accomplishments were some kind of fluke. It's so strange.
  - runarberg 4y ago
    In light of new evidence, some people actually alter their beliefs.
    - rjh29 4y ago
      Maybe the majority are flexible, but they don't post their opinions on the internet because they're not extreme enough to warrant posting?
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  If it was someone other than Elon, this entire community would be flagging this kind of stuff with a resounding unity. Everytime, someone comes up with these arguments, I cannot help but to think "Wow, you must be really bent ideologically to come up with this". We're in a massive ideological warfare and people who perpetuate hate like this needs to be condemned from all sides. It is making a rather normal forum like this into a vile, toxic and unwelcoming place. I don't know what it is about certain topics here that brings the worst of people.
FormerBandmate 4y ago
Tesla was a dream before he came in. It’s now the biggest car company in the world by market cap. Give the man credit where it’s due
- wesleywt 4y ago
  The price of Tesla is artificially inflated due to easy money. That BWM I7 looks like a work of art compared to a Tesla.
memish 4y ago
If you think the CEO of Tesla and Founder, CEO, Chief Engineer of SpaceX is a failure, I'm dying to know: What have you accomplished?
- threeseed 4y ago
  Based on what we've seen with Twitter, Musk is one of the worst CEOs around. And you don't need to be an accomplished CEO in order to see that.
  - memish 4y ago
    You're ignoring 20 years of Tesla and SpaceX? And the only thing that we've seen with Twitter is that it's at an all time high DAU at a fraction of the cost. So far so good. All of the doomsayers are just making predictions that haven't happened.
    - threeseed 4y ago
      I am saying that perhaps those companies succeeded in spite of him. And what we have seen is >75% of the staff leave including NOC, SREs etc. That attrition rate is really unprecedented and completely unsustainable. Update: Payroll and Tax teams have resigned. Cue the lawsuits.
      - dmak 4y ago
        > I am saying that perhaps those companies succeeded in spite of him. Wow really? You would really prefer to entertain speculative realities instead of just give credit where it's due? That's impressive.
        threeseed 4y ago
        Based on how incompetent Twitter is being run right now it's not an unreasonable proposition.
  - runarberg 4y ago
randycupertino 4y ago
Since those failures he's aged, become more entrenched in his ways, no longer as scrappy or nimble as he once was, surrounded himself by yes-men and blasted off on an ego-trip from his success at Tesla and his shoehorning himself into every global drama. He's gotten addicted to the attention and now his primary pastime and way to blow off steam is trolling the media. No longer focused on the daily grind of building a business.
bergenty 4y ago
Neuralink hasn’t failed. FSD is pretty solid outside of major cities and it keeps improving. Honestly it will probably get there in less than 5 years.
notatoad 4y ago
The Boring Company didn't fail. The boring company was a scam to delay and distract the california high-speed rail project. and it continues to delay and distract other public transit projects around the country to this day. it's been a resounding success. https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-california-high-spee-1849402460 https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-cali...
- jcranmer 4y ago
  Minor note: The Boring Company is a completely separate idea from the hyperloop. They instead proposed what's essentially a Personal Rapid Transit concept ("The Loop"), which has been shopped around a couple of times, but has seen no takers other than the Las Vegas Convention Center. The only public transit project it seriously competed for was one iteration of the O'Hare/Loop express transit system, but that was a zombie project that had already died a decade earlier. The main arguments being used to militate against urban rapid transit (i.e., metro systems, regional rail; not inter-city HSR) these days tend to be "automated taxis will make all of this imminently obsolete," although that may have died down in the past several years given that a decade has passed since it was first trotted out.
  - __m 4y ago
    https://www.boringcompany.com/hyperloop https://www.boringcompany.com/hyperloop
    - yreg 4y ago
      That's just a student competition the company organized that one time and it had no followup. Relatively disconnected to their business.
m3kw9 4y ago
“Failed at self driving” how about give some credit as well?
- ModernMech 4y ago
  I’ll give Musk credit for the two decapitations caused by his involvement in self driving technologies. We developed technology and research protocols on how to make self driving safe all the way back in 2007, and Musk thinking he knows better has predictably lead to deaths. That’s on him.
dereg 4y ago
> then invested in Tesla and almost drove it into the ground—-saved only by government subsidies, cheap money, and fortuitous timing Tesla and Chrysler both!
ajross 4y ago
> He failed at Full Self Driving, the Roadster is nowhere to be seen, the Cybertruck is MIA and the Tesla Semi is years late No, stop it, that's ridiculous. Tesla is an immensely successful company. It just is. Multiple things can be true: Musk can be a chaos bully driving Twitter into the ground and the CEO of the most successful heavy industry startup since the end of the second world war. I'm no doubt as horrified as you are at what is happening at the bird site, but I still know my car is great.
moralestapia 4y ago
>He failed at Boring Company and Neuralink. How?
systemvoltage 4y ago
I think this comment is fueling me to go work at Twitter and give a helping hand to some of the work that needs to happen there.
- meheleventyone 4y ago
  Let us know how it goes!
- RavingGoat 4y ago
  Maybe he'll give you a horse
wreath 4y ago
Failure is never an issue. Don't shame people for failing, especially when they fail royally. Because we ALL benefit from it in the long run. Don't shame people for failing.

by 7e 4y ago

chadash 4y ago

> Elon's MO is burning a ton of cash that his competitors aren't willing to do in order to be first in some space. That doesn't take talent. He's had failures before. But this line seems unfair. He was neither the first person in electric cars (a few notable failures before him) nor in rockets (e.g. Boeing)... but he was able to lead a team that figured out some of the key tech and the business models to make these things viable. Even with a lot of money, this is no small feat.

wilsonnb3 4y ago
> Even with a lot of money, this is no small feat. Unfortunately we will never know how much Musk contributed to any of these companies. It is in his best interest to act like he was vital but unless you were there, there isn’t any way to know.
- nverno 4y ago
  If you want to get an idea, why not listen to some engineers that have worked with him? There are plenty of those around, for example, Andrej Karpathy talked a bit about working with Elon recently - https://youtu.be/cdiD-9MMpb0?t=5668 https://youtu.be/cdiD-9MMpb0?t=5668
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    Unless it was off the record, I wouldn't. There are all kinds of potential conflicts of interests. These include ownership in companies where valuation is directly connected to Musk'a perceived competence and his ability to help/hinder their career.
    - nverno 4y ago
      Andrej doesn't work at Tesla anymore, but it sounded like he would want to leave the option to return open, so presumably he wouldn't want to burn bridges. I think most people prefer not to criticize people they know well publicly, anyhow.
- Stupulous 4y ago
  Why not ask the people who were there?
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    For one thing, there are two groups, those who went there and eventually left, and those who are still there. I bet they give very different answers.
somenameforme 4y ago
He also started both Tesla and SpaceX with a "fortune" of about $300 million. $300 million is of course a lot of money. The reason I put fortune in quotes is because he was looking to get into aerospace. An industry where NASA, and their near century of experience, ended up paying an aggregated cost of more than $1.6 billion per flight, over 134 flights. A guy with a vision and a few hundred million, in this context, has what many would have said would be a 0% chance of success. Many people somehow seem to have this view that if you just have enough money you can solve any problem in existence. It's probably just the consumerist mindset taken to its [not so] logical extremes - where literally anything is for sale, even that which doesn't exist.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  He didn't start Tesla at all. He bought a majority stake for $6.5 million and then drove the founders out.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - somenameforme 4y ago
    Tesla at the time Musk took over was literally three guys, a cool name, and some big ideas. He then took over on design, direction, and development - as well as starting to bleed money trying to make it all happen. And ultimately the others would be out of the company before their first product hit production. They deserve a footnote, but their ultimate role in the company was effectively zero.
    - nikau 4y ago
      So why didn't Elon just start a new company - sorry story doesn't add up.
      - somenameforme 4y ago
        He effectively did start a new company. Their entire series A funding round was $7.5 million in total, of which $6.5 was Elon. So he became the near exclusive owner of a new company with a few like-minded guys of a similar background. I don't think he had some nefarious plan to kick them out from the get go. Sometimes personalities and ideas just clash, as theirs obviously did.

throwaway0x7E6 4y ago

one could pickle cucumbers in your post

alsodumb 4y ago

I love how the goalposts keep shifting all the time - "Tesla can never manufacture a mass production car", "Elon cannot run a hardware company", "Electric cars can only sell when subsidized". The truth is Tesla and Elon pushed an entire market forward. Tesla paid back their loans while other car manufacturers didn't. SpaceX was not the first in the launch business - they were in fact the only one who attempted to break into a monopolized market that no one dared to touch. It's remarkable that they not only fight their way in, but also did it so well that they became the largest launch provider in the country, and in some cases the only one in the United States - SpaceX saved the tax payers a ton of money by reducing launch costs. You don't have to either hate or love a guy - Elon fucked up multiple times, often talks shit, but give the man credit where credit is due.

rodgerd 4y ago
> I love how the goalposts keep shifting all the time Which ones? The ones where cars would self-deliver five years ago? That Mars colonisation would have begun this year? That Cybertruck would deliver three years ago? The goalposts are Elons.
- FormerBandmate 4y ago
  Every big tech company misses their targets the same way, because they’re way too ambitious. Look at Waymo and Prime Air.
hintymad 4y ago
I can contribute one more data point: Space X invented a new alloy steel to drive down the cost of the surface material of Space X rockets to $4/kg. That's some serious science and engineering. And this improvement is probably a very small one compared with thousands of innovations made by Space X.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  Do you know what prices per kg looked like before this new alloy?

jasmer 4y ago

It takes talent to fail in many of those ways, notably, it's mostly papered over by the success of Tesla and Space X, which will probably be just fine on thew whole. His antics were 'sufferable' in the context of Tesla/Space X, but for a variety of reasons, not at all with Twitter whereupon he's essentially going to be perceived a toxic entity - rightly or wrongly. He needs to find an excuse to get out of there, find someone he can get along with to take over. Put some nice terms in there, probably including that he has to 'not talk about Twitter publicly' and get back to his more tolerable shenanigans. If Twitter was his only gig, I can see him digging himself out of this hole over the long run, but with other things to do I think it's going melt him. He's doing 'Operation Market Garden' for no reason; time for an 'orderly withdrawal'.

randycupertino 4y ago
Man, the top comment is about Waterloo and now we have Operation Market Garden this thread is a history nerd's feast of Vitellius.
user_named 4y ago
Some people suggested selling to Automattic like Tumblr did and with an implied price of 1M. I don't think Matt would be a bad choice for a ceo.

zarzavat 4y ago

That may be true. But the guy also landed rockets from orbit (on ships!). And then flew them again. The implications of having easy access to space to our civilization really cannot be overstated. SpaceX is the real deal, and will probably be worth more than Tesla eventually. Musk clearly isn’t successful in everything he does, but he’s not a failure either.

gonzo41 4y ago
Just like Jobs built the iphone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew6fv9UUlQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew6fv9UUlQ8
Maursault 4y ago
> The implications of having easy access to space to our civilization really cannot be overstated. I think that counts.
wilsonnb3 4y ago
> the guy also landed rockets from orbit We all know that he didn’t do that though, right? At best his skill set includes hiring smart people, raising money, and being a good manager. Which is exactly what you want from a good CEO and nothing to sneeze at. But people give him way too much credit for Tesla and spacex imo
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  People act like this asshole out there wrenching on Raptor engines or something. No. He sits at the top and commands, like a king. And yet he is apparently solely responsible for engineering achievements? The guy who gave "cold gas jet thrusters" on a tesla a legitimate idea for more speed, or using rockets for fast travel on earth, or "humans drive with just two eyes (and a millennia of evolution and experience) so we will replicate that with just two shitty off the shelf CCDs that don't even compare to eyeballs, and oh btw we are removing ultrasonic sensors and I promise it's not because we are cheapskates trying to balloon profit margins to meet our absurd overhyped valuation". Has he ever said anything of actual engineering value? Like come on. He doesn't even technically run things at SpaceX, they literally had to hire someone whose job is to stand between Elon and any semblance of control of the company. It would be like if you went to mcdonalds, got a burger, and thanked the statue of Ronald Mcdonald on the way out. That's not how the world works, ronald didn't make your burger.

GaylordTuring 4y ago

> He failed at Full Self Driving His time plan might have failed, but that doesn’t mean that full self driving has failed. That’s like if I said: “I’m going to make 10 million dollars by the end of next week”, and then people would call me a failure for only making 5 million in a week. Or do you mean that full self driving actually has failed, not taking into account any time plans? I think the full self driving capabilities of Teslas are downright incredible. Not fully ready for robotaxi territory, but extremely impressing.

system16 4y ago
That's not really a comparable analogy. More like "Here is this cool feature I'm going to make by the end of the year, pay me $5,000 for it now." and you never actually get it. It's fraud.
scheme271 4y ago
I think it's closer to saying you'll build a bridge in a week but you build a bridge where the roadway ends part of the way across. You can still get to the other side using the steel girders but it's really not useful. FSD sort of works but fails in unexpected ways and at random times so you have to pay just as much attention as if you were driving.

lumenwrites 4y ago

Doesn't it get exhausting to jump through so many mental hoops to minimize someone's accomplishments? I don't understand what people get out of this, is it really that painful to admit that some guy has done some pretty cool things with his life? All the effort it takes to research all the negative things about someone could've been spent doing something productive. Being willing to admit that someone did something awesome could've been exciting or inspiring. And yet people work so hard to think around all the good things, and take the most negative view possible. Ugh, I don't like this part of human nature.

rjh29 4y ago
It is the opposite. It is exhausting to hold a nuanced, balanced view of things. It is much easier to think "I don't like this person, therefore everything about this person is bad". The brain does it for you. I agree btw, I have watched people go from worshipping Elon to suddenly deciding he's a fraud and a talentless hack and every one of his accomplishments were some kind of fluke. It's so strange.
- runarberg 4y ago
  In light of new evidence, some people actually alter their beliefs.
  - rjh29 4y ago
    Maybe the majority are flexible, but they don't post their opinions on the internet because they're not extreme enough to warrant posting?
systemvoltage 4y ago
If it was someone other than Elon, this entire community would be flagging this kind of stuff with a resounding unity. Everytime, someone comes up with these arguments, I cannot help but to think "Wow, you must be really bent ideologically to come up with this". We're in a massive ideological warfare and people who perpetuate hate like this needs to be condemned from all sides. It is making a rather normal forum like this into a vile, toxic and unwelcoming place. I don't know what it is about certain topics here that brings the worst of people.

FormerBandmate 4y ago

Tesla was a dream before he came in. It’s now the biggest car company in the world by market cap. Give the man credit where it’s due

wesleywt 4y ago
The price of Tesla is artificially inflated due to easy money. That BWM I7 looks like a work of art compared to a Tesla.

memish 4y ago

If you think the CEO of Tesla and Founder, CEO, Chief Engineer of SpaceX is a failure, I'm dying to know: What have you accomplished?

threeseed 4y ago
Based on what we've seen with Twitter, Musk is one of the worst CEOs around. And you don't need to be an accomplished CEO in order to see that.
- memish 4y ago
  You're ignoring 20 years of Tesla and SpaceX? And the only thing that we've seen with Twitter is that it's at an all time high DAU at a fraction of the cost. So far so good. All of the doomsayers are just making predictions that haven't happened.
  - threeseed 4y ago
    I am saying that perhaps those companies succeeded in spite of him. And what we have seen is >75% of the staff leave including NOC, SREs etc. That attrition rate is really unprecedented and completely unsustainable. Update: Payroll and Tax teams have resigned. Cue the lawsuits.
    - dmak 4y ago
      > I am saying that perhaps those companies succeeded in spite of him. Wow really? You would really prefer to entertain speculative realities instead of just give credit where it's due? That's impressive.
      - threeseed 4y ago
        Based on how incompetent Twitter is being run right now it's not an unreasonable proposition.
- runarberg 4y ago

randycupertino 4y ago

Since those failures he's aged, become more entrenched in his ways, no longer as scrappy or nimble as he once was, surrounded himself by yes-men and blasted off on an ego-trip from his success at Tesla and his shoehorning himself into every global drama. He's gotten addicted to the attention and now his primary pastime and way to blow off steam is trolling the media. No longer focused on the daily grind of building a business.

bergenty 4y ago

Neuralink hasn’t failed. FSD is pretty solid outside of major cities and it keeps improving. Honestly it will probably get there in less than 5 years.

notatoad 4y ago

The Boring Company didn't fail. The boring company was a scam to delay and distract the california high-speed rail project. and it continues to delay and distract other public transit projects around the country to this day. it's been a resounding success. https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-california-high-spee-1849402460 https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-cali...

jcranmer 4y ago
Minor note: The Boring Company is a completely separate idea from the hyperloop. They instead proposed what's essentially a Personal Rapid Transit concept ("The Loop"), which has been shopped around a couple of times, but has seen no takers other than the Las Vegas Convention Center. The only public transit project it seriously competed for was one iteration of the O'Hare/Loop express transit system, but that was a zombie project that had already died a decade earlier. The main arguments being used to militate against urban rapid transit (i.e., metro systems, regional rail; not inter-city HSR) these days tend to be "automated taxis will make all of this imminently obsolete," although that may have died down in the past several years given that a decade has passed since it was first trotted out.
- __m 4y ago
  https://www.boringcompany.com/hyperloop https://www.boringcompany.com/hyperloop
  - yreg 4y ago
    That's just a student competition the company organized that one time and it had no followup. Relatively disconnected to their business.

m3kw9 4y ago

“Failed at self driving” how about give some credit as well?

ModernMech 4y ago
I’ll give Musk credit for the two decapitations caused by his involvement in self driving technologies. We developed technology and research protocols on how to make self driving safe all the way back in 2007, and Musk thinking he knows better has predictably lead to deaths. That’s on him.

dereg 4y ago

> then invested in Tesla and almost drove it into the ground—-saved only by government subsidies, cheap money, and fortuitous timing Tesla and Chrysler both!

ajross 4y ago

> He failed at Full Self Driving, the Roadster is nowhere to be seen, the Cybertruck is MIA and the Tesla Semi is years late No, stop it, that's ridiculous. Tesla is an immensely successful company. It just is. Multiple things can be true: Musk can be a chaos bully driving Twitter into the ground and the CEO of the most successful heavy industry startup since the end of the second world war. I'm no doubt as horrified as you are at what is happening at the bird site, but I still know my car is great.

moralestapia 4y ago

>He failed at Boring Company and Neuralink. How?

systemvoltage 4y ago

I think this comment is fueling me to go work at Twitter and give a helping hand to some of the work that needs to happen there.

meheleventyone 4y ago
Let us know how it goes!
RavingGoat 4y ago
Maybe he'll give you a horse

wreath 4y ago

Failure is never an issue. Don't shame people for failing, especially when they fail royally. Because we ALL benefit from it in the long run. Don't shame people for failing.