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Ok, I understand Elon wanting to reduce the staff and focus on engineering on some level. I don’t agree with his decisions, but I can of understand the motivati

by steego 4y ago

Ok, I understand Elon wanting to reduce the staff and focus on engineering on some level. I don’t agree with his decisions, but I can of understand the motivation on some level. He wants to focus on a few very important things and discard everything else. What I don’t understand is: Don’t you want your people to be able to focus on their jobs and not deal with nonsense like this? This is why you have good HR people. This is why you have a good communications department. How does he expect to recruit talented people when it looks like a shit-show from the outside? I don’t know the typical demographic of Ars Technica readers, but there’s not a lot of people on the comment board rushing to defend him. The Elon fans I know seem to hold out that he may pull something out of his back pocket, but they also seem to qualify it with being disappointed with his current performance. To be honest, I would love to hear someone tell me why I am completely wrong in my assessment. What do you think I’m missing?

SilverBirch 4y ago
He's not running a company, he's running a cult of personality. The suffering is the point. Every inconvience or ridiculous demand further cements the people who are left as true believers, and in return they get to tell their war stories of the 90 hour weeks and incredible all nighters. Why's he doing that? Well, over the last 15 years he's been cultivating a public persona as real life Iron man and over the last few years he's started to believe it. When he tells a story of the child he held in his hands as it died, he really means it. He's lying, as his wife of the time will tell you, but he believes it. He's genuinely forgotten which parts of his life really happened.
rsynnott 4y ago
I mean, Occam's, and Hanlon's, razors say that there's no evil masterplan here, he's just incompetent. There may not be that much point searching for _meaning_ in it.

by steego 4y ago

SilverBirch 4y ago

He's not running a company, he's running a cult of personality. The suffering is the point. Every inconvience or ridiculous demand further cements the people who are left as true believers, and in return they get to tell their war stories of the 90 hour weeks and incredible all nighters. Why's he doing that? Well, over the last 15 years he's been cultivating a public persona as real life Iron man and over the last few years he's started to believe it. When he tells a story of the child he held in his hands as it died, he really means it. He's lying, as his wife of the time will tell you, but he believes it. He's genuinely forgotten which parts of his life really happened.

rsynnott 4y ago

I mean, Occam's, and Hanlon's, razors say that there's no evil masterplan here, he's just incompetent. There may not be that much point searching for _meaning_ in it.