3 ms·

Elon Musk’s brutally honest management style

9 points by frereubu 4y ago

clouddrover 4y ago
> Give me one honest Elon over a thousand tech unicorns waxing pious about saving the world. But Elon also waxes pious about saving the world: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585619322239561728 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585619322239561728 Regarding Twitter he said, "The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence" And he said, "I didn't do it to make money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love." It's not even bullshit artistry. It's just bullshit.
LarsDu88 4y ago
It's interesting to now see Musk's playbook since he's started SO MANY (rather successful) companies at this point (with SpaceX and Tesla being huge gambles). 1. Hire passionate experts who do their jobs on the weekend as their personal hobbies (Tom Mueller, Straubel, Karpathy) 2. Give a "we're burning our ships" speech (similar to Hernan Cortez and Tariq al Jabal, who both destroyed ships for the return voyage so their men had to engage in conquest). This is typically usually a lie. Witness Musk's statements about SpaceX bankruptcy with Raptor2. When he started off, this was not a lie as he gambled his entire personal fortune and investors money on SpaceX and Tesla multiple times. 3. Create a culture of 110% hardship. No waiting in line for coffee. Everyone should be ready to go to the office at 3 am on a whim whether it's necessary or not. Perhaps in the early years this build camaraderie, but eventually this will lead to burnout. No matter. Labor is replaceable. Filtering out the naval gazers and dead weight middle management is good not bad. And squeezing more units of labor out of each employee has worked since the days of the Babylonian Empire. 4. Only engineering matters. UX? Forget about it. DEI? Well Elon was always a closet republican. Marketing? Well, Musk-daddy controls Twitter now. Interestingly I tend to notice these jobs that are cut tend to have disproportionately greater percentages of women. 5. Simpler is better than complicated. This is the thing I respect most about Elon. The hard fought struggle to productionize Model 3 resulted in great simplification of the design and manufacturing process which is now being applied to mass production of rocketry. Instead of 20 wiring harnesses why not 1? Instead of 20 chips why not 1? Every manufacturing company should adopt this mentality. In a few months we will see if Elon prefers microservice versus monolith with Twitter. I'm going to guess the latter! 6. Sci-fi bullshit. Elon doesn't actually have the capacity to deep dive into the science and engineering of the now 6-7 companies he operates. Witness his borderline idiotic anti-vaccination stance. Other than SpaceX and Tesla manufacturing, his talks on things like autopilot tends to veer into Star Trek references. 6. Dictator dictates. No committees. No long winded meetings. No waffling around hard decisions. Dictator Elon will decide. 7. Self promote. People forget this, but Musk goes out of his way to be on TV. Dude has made guest appearances on The Big Bang Theory, Rick and Morty, SNL, Colbert Show, South Park, and more. The celebrity of Musk is no accident even if he tries to play the role of "an engineer who sleeps in the office and lives in a 50,000 dollar house" I think this playbook (particularly 1,2,3, and 5) would actually work for most startups while simultaneously creating unsustainable levels of toxicity. Ultimately all dictatorships (even the good ones) grow old and out of touch, and society will reorient it's gaze and praise on some other eccentric billionaire...
- saurik 4y ago
  > Only engineering matters. UX? Forget about it. I am not sure where this one comes from; I have been driving a Tesla as my main car recently (which I say in a weird way as I don't own my own car) and, as someone who has driven a bazillion cars, the end-to-end UX of the Tesla is competent in a way I feel no other car manufacturer has ever even attempted. Hell: the maps app on the Tesla console is also the best maps app I have ever used, and I've spent the requisite 12-14 years or so (ever since this was a featured you could get on a mobile phone) heavily reliant on random apps from Google, Apple, and even the occasional third party... the Tesla one simply seems to have been built by someone who actually knows how to use a map, and so like, it doesn't randomly rotate or insist on zooming in constantly. The one UX complaint I have had with the Tesla involved the lack of a way to unlock other doors if I disable the automatic unlock of all doors (for safety), and they seriously fixed that a few days ago in a software update.
  - yourapostasy 4y ago
    The UX is serviceable but could be improved. I’ve noticed elderly most of the time cannot figure out the UX beyond the surface details. Discover-ability like hinting on-screen the tire pressure was last read at X units and not to trust it until the car has rolled the tires a bit, level of polish. Where Tesla is really badly fallen down is the servicing experience and ecosystem. I’ve seen with friends and acquaintances how bad both are that I’m put off of buying a Tesla; I want an ownership experience closer to being able to maintain a Toyota Hilux than a slow decay into the landfill the instant the warranty expires. I can somewhat overlook supply chain originated issues with parts, but the lack of decent serviceability outside Tesla has me wondering if I could feasibly own one for 25-30+ years with assiduous maintenance and care.
- fzzzy 4y ago
  Musk didn't start tesla.
strikelaserclaw 4y ago
Elon Musk isn't honest, every dishonest person knows that the best play to run is to be "bluntly honest" part time to basically hide their dishonesty, even people like andrew tate rely on this playbook, it establishes credibility for their other views.
- sidibe 4y ago
  For some people terms like "Brutally honest", "telling it like it is", "no BS" don't seem to have much to do with truth at all. It's more about not being kind or tiptoeing around anyone's feelings when you say whatever BS comes to your mind.

9 points by frereubu 4y ago

> Give me one honest Elon over a thousand tech unicorns waxing pious about saving the world. But Elon also waxes pious about saving the world: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585619322239561728 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585619322239561728 Regarding Twitter he said, "The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence" And he said, "I didn't do it to make money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love." It's not even bullshit artistry. It's just bullshit.

LarsDu88 4y ago

It's interesting to now see Musk's playbook since he's started SO MANY (rather successful) companies at this point (with SpaceX and Tesla being huge gambles). 1. Hire passionate experts who do their jobs on the weekend as their personal hobbies (Tom Mueller, Straubel, Karpathy) 2. Give a "we're burning our ships" speech (similar to Hernan Cortez and Tariq al Jabal, who both destroyed ships for the return voyage so their men had to engage in conquest). This is typically usually a lie. Witness Musk's statements about SpaceX bankruptcy with Raptor2. When he started off, this was not a lie as he gambled his entire personal fortune and investors money on SpaceX and Tesla multiple times. 3. Create a culture of 110% hardship. No waiting in line for coffee. Everyone should be ready to go to the office at 3 am on a whim whether it's necessary or not. Perhaps in the early years this build camaraderie, but eventually this will lead to burnout. No matter. Labor is replaceable. Filtering out the naval gazers and dead weight middle management is good not bad. And squeezing more units of labor out of each employee has worked since the days of the Babylonian Empire. 4. Only engineering matters. UX? Forget about it. DEI? Well Elon was always a closet republican. Marketing? Well, Musk-daddy controls Twitter now. Interestingly I tend to notice these jobs that are cut tend to have disproportionately greater percentages of women. 5. Simpler is better than complicated. This is the thing I respect most about Elon. The hard fought struggle to productionize Model 3 resulted in great simplification of the design and manufacturing process which is now being applied to mass production of rocketry. Instead of 20 wiring harnesses why not 1? Instead of 20 chips why not 1? Every manufacturing company should adopt this mentality. In a few months we will see if Elon prefers microservice versus monolith with Twitter. I'm going to guess the latter! 6. Sci-fi bullshit. Elon doesn't actually have the capacity to deep dive into the science and engineering of the now 6-7 companies he operates. Witness his borderline idiotic anti-vaccination stance. Other than SpaceX and Tesla manufacturing, his talks on things like autopilot tends to veer into Star Trek references. 6. Dictator dictates. No committees. No long winded meetings. No waffling around hard decisions. Dictator Elon will decide. 7. Self promote. People forget this, but Musk goes out of his way to be on TV. Dude has made guest appearances on The Big Bang Theory, Rick and Morty, SNL, Colbert Show, South Park, and more. The celebrity of Musk is no accident even if he tries to play the role of "an engineer who sleeps in the office and lives in a 50,000 dollar house" I think this playbook (particularly 1,2,3, and 5) would actually work for most startups while simultaneously creating unsustainable levels of toxicity. Ultimately all dictatorships (even the good ones) grow old and out of touch, and society will reorient it's gaze and praise on some other eccentric billionaire...

saurik 4y ago
> Only engineering matters. UX? Forget about it. I am not sure where this one comes from; I have been driving a Tesla as my main car recently (which I say in a weird way as I don't own my own car) and, as someone who has driven a bazillion cars, the end-to-end UX of the Tesla is competent in a way I feel no other car manufacturer has ever even attempted. Hell: the maps app on the Tesla console is also the best maps app I have ever used, and I've spent the requisite 12-14 years or so (ever since this was a featured you could get on a mobile phone) heavily reliant on random apps from Google, Apple, and even the occasional third party... the Tesla one simply seems to have been built by someone who actually knows how to use a map, and so like, it doesn't randomly rotate or insist on zooming in constantly. The one UX complaint I have had with the Tesla involved the lack of a way to unlock other doors if I disable the automatic unlock of all doors (for safety), and they seriously fixed that a few days ago in a software update.
- yourapostasy 4y ago
  The UX is serviceable but could be improved. I’ve noticed elderly most of the time cannot figure out the UX beyond the surface details. Discover-ability like hinting on-screen the tire pressure was last read at X units and not to trust it until the car has rolled the tires a bit, level of polish. Where Tesla is really badly fallen down is the servicing experience and ecosystem. I’ve seen with friends and acquaintances how bad both are that I’m put off of buying a Tesla; I want an ownership experience closer to being able to maintain a Toyota Hilux than a slow decay into the landfill the instant the warranty expires. I can somewhat overlook supply chain originated issues with parts, but the lack of decent serviceability outside Tesla has me wondering if I could feasibly own one for 25-30+ years with assiduous maintenance and care.
fzzzy 4y ago
Musk didn't start tesla.

strikelaserclaw 4y ago

Elon Musk isn't honest, every dishonest person knows that the best play to run is to be "bluntly honest" part time to basically hide their dishonesty, even people like andrew tate rely on this playbook, it establishes credibility for their other views.

sidibe 4y ago
For some people terms like "Brutally honest", "telling it like it is", "no BS" don't seem to have much to do with truth at all. It's more about not being kind or tiptoeing around anyone's feelings when you say whatever BS comes to your mind.