8 ms·

I have so much trouble squaring the "genius" narrative with the "alienating the core constituency that buys electric vehicles by making my personal brand into a

by ericb 4y ago

I have so much trouble squaring the "genius" narrative with the "alienating the core constituency that buys electric vehicles by making my personal brand into a MAGA hat" reality. Isn't moving humanity to mars the ultimate in cautious, long-term thinking while burning your personal and company brand value the ultimate in reckless short term thinking? The apparent rationality and irrationality blows my mind.

Veedrac 4y ago
You're probably having trouble because neither Musk's narrative nor edge have come from being a cunning salesperson. This is “Tesla stock price is too high imo” Musk, robotaxi next year Musk, other person is a pedophile Musk, yell at legal authorities Musk. Musk's edge has come from tackling hard, technical problems, and doing so successfully, for long enough, on enticing enough problems, that people started to buy the dream. Contrast, leftist flamebait is just Musk being impolitic on Twitter, and an increasingly-hostile anti-left Musk is just what you get when the left runs campaigns specifically attacking him. It's not a smart business move because it's not a business move, merely a reflection of the increasing polarization of America.
- MrMan 4y ago
  You are dead wrong about a lot of things here. Musk may not seem like a salesman to you, but he is actually one of the best salesmen and marketers we have seen, and created the major brands which have enriched him basically entirely using media coverage of him and his companies, and massive social media reach using his personal twitter account. In my opinion the one thing he is truly good at is sales and marketing. Selling the dream, and a very good design team, is what made Tesla what it is. I have no comment on whether technical solutions requiring the coordination of hundreds and thousands of people can be credited to one non-technical person, nor the political stuff.
  - Veedrac 4y ago
    It's political to say it now, but Musk is technical. Here's some evidence to that effect[1]. I know of more accounts, but really, just watch the Starbase tour videos and make up your own mind. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      I don't think testimonials from core SpaceX employees is evidence. They all have very strong incentives to publicly fluff Musk.
      - harpiaharpyja 4y ago
        It's possible to have a leader who was technical at one point but no longer has any meaningful technical contribution. I worked for a company where the founder and CEO built the first several iterations of the flagship product essentially by himself. Now the company has more than 100 employees, and he did earnestly try to keep a pulse on technical matters in the R&D department (where I worked) and sometimes gave input but honestly it was usually better when he didn't. Too many things pulling his attention in different directions.
    - random314 4y ago
      Musk demands that employees fluff him. So folks invested in SpaceX like employees can't be trusted. There are enough blind and Twitter accounts of Elon being a dunce at SpaceX with the execs coddling him and feeding him ideas that he can regurgitate as his own. Musk has some software engineering experience from zip2 and from fan boy Ashlee Vances book he was really bad. His Twitter shenanigans further demonstrated his poor CS skills. He has no background in aerospace at all. Yet he appointed himself as the chief engineer of SpaceX on day 1. He also published neuralink white paper with himself as the sole author in what is a rip off of a Duke professors lab work. He was solo author of hyperloop white paper which is laughed at by the physics community. In short, he pretends to be a world expert in 1. Software engineering 2. Aerospace engineering 3. Neuro physical bionic research 4. Underground tunnel boring, way way ahead of (10X) the most cutting edge current technology 5. Vacuum tunnel transport 6. AI, beyond just self driving- including AGI paraphrasing-"Zuckerberg and LeCunn don't understand AI". To top it off, he has a generic BA in 1997 from UPenn and no STEM degree. His PhD admit to Stanford physics in 1995 has to be his most bald faced lie. He desperately wants to be seen as a scientist/engineer, which he is not. All of his classmates recall him from his econ classes, not physics. Though I did find some unverified quora story about a professor recalling Musk scoring a B grade in a physics class. If you look at his history his only major success was scaling the production of a car someone else designed and built to millions per year. He is more of a business exec than an engineer in any sense. He definitely has an above average IQ, hampered by an extreme case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. All of his shenanigans can be explained by the search of Narcissistic supply and deeply internalized feelings of inadequacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_supply
  - hedora 4y ago
    I'd argue spacex and tesla have terrrible terrible design teams. Their stuff is pretty, sure. However, that is only half of good industrial design. Their products frequently have severe issues with usability, manufacturability, etc.
  - kennedywm 4y ago
    I would have said the same thing before the twitter fiasco. I'm curious what information and assumptions he's operating on.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > Musk's edge has come from tackling hard, technical problems, and doing so successfully What hard technical problems has he ever successfully tackled? Serious question. His two successes, Tesla and SpaceX, are companies he purchased. He hired people to tackle hard problems, yes, but what has he done personally?
  - oarsinsync 4y ago
    Wozniak made the Apple II, what did Jobs do personally? Not a fan of Musk (or marketers generally), but it doesn’t seem fair to be dismissing strong leaders who understand how to market their products effectively. Life doesn’t usually work out like Field of Dreams. It doesn’t matter how good you build it, they won’t come if they don’t know about it.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - peterashford 4y ago
      Yeah but the claim being discussed wasn't "Is Elon good at hype" it was "Musk's edge has come from tackling hard, technical problems"
  - skissane 4y ago
    > His two successes, Tesla and SpaceX, are companies he purchased. Musk himself founded SpaceX, rocket engineer Tom Mueller was his first employee. He did not "purchase" SpaceX from anybody. Tesla was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003. In early 2004, they brought Musk on as an investor, who provided such a large share of the early investment (Series A onwards), he soon owned the majority of the company. Eberhard and Tarpenning would continue as CEO and CFO until they had a falling-out with Musk around 2007/2008, and Musk used his majority ownership to fire them. Under the terms of 2009 lawsuit settlement, Eberhard, Tarpenning, Musk, Ian Wright and J. B. Straubel agreed among themselves that all five can be described as "co-founders" of Tesla. If someone pitches a startup to a venture capitalist–which is the role Musk was playing at the beginning of his involvement in Tesla–who through providing the bulk of the Series A funding (and subsequent funding rounds), ends up with majority control, is that accurately described as a "purchase"? For anyone other Elon Musk, I doubt people would use that word. > He hired people to tackle hard problems, yes, but what has he done personally? Doesn't that describe many founders? For a founder/CEO, a very big chunk of their work, is making sure they pick the right leaders beneath them, and making the right picks vs the wrong ones can be the difference between a runaway success and bankruptcy.
brnt 4y ago
When you consider that his PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel is deeply embedded in the American extreme right, openly advocates abolishing democracy and worse, it starts to make some sense. Musk in solidly in that orbit and always has been.
- claytongulick 4y ago
  Do you have a citation for Thiel openly advocating for abolishing democracy?
  - clouddrover 4y ago
    Thiel thinks democracy is incompatible with freedom: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/15/peter-thiel-who-is-he-republican-donor-tech-entrepreneur https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/15/peter-thi... https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/ https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
    - claytongulick 4y ago
      Did you actually read the 2009 article? No where in it did he advocate for abolishing democracy. His argument, simplified, is that it isn't possible to maximize freedom in a democracy. The simplified reason is because everyone can vote themselves bread and circuses until other people's money runs out. He doesn't propose a better solution, instead he seems to be in the camp of "democracy is the worst form of government... Except for everything else" and thinks that freedom is maximized by living in frontiers (cyberspace, outer space, and seasteading). I'm hard pressed to find anything particularly controversial about what he wrote in that article. It's really strange how much people like to demonize those who aren't in their tribe...
      - clouddrover 4y ago
        > Did you actually read the 2009 article? Did you actually read about his 2022 behavior? He busily supported election deniers. Thiel says, “We’re close to a Toto moment, a little dog pulling aside the curtain on the holy of holies only to find there’s nobody there”. And “We always think of democracy as a good thing. But … where do you shift from the wisdom of crowds to the madness of crowds? When does it become a mob, a racket, a totalitarian lie?” His position is that democracy is illegitimate and when he is king everything will be better: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/05/peter-thiel-bankrolling-jd-vance-reactionary-nationalism/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/05/peter-thi...
V__ 4y ago
I had this same thought for a while, but I think the answer is simpler in reality. In my opinion, he has an ego problem, and his companies are his best way to feel important (or whatever emotion he craves). I don't know whether that was always the case, but to me it seems apparent that is what he has been doing for the past few years. I think it started happening when he realized there was no next big-idea which his companies could actually solve. After Tesla made electric cars trendy and influenced the market (actual accomplishments), his next idea was self-driving. Maybe he didn't know enough at the time or thought he could make it happen quickly, he promised big and failed but can't admit it. So he tried to pull the next shiny thing out of the hat, Cybertruck, semi, solar-roof, roadster, smart-summon, boring-tunnels, Hyperloop etc. They also kept failing or are coming soon TM. For some time SpaceX delivered, but right now they also don't have anything new shiny to show. He's trying to desperately stay relevant, but all his ideas are staring to crumble or are a lot harder to solve than he cares to admit. He started to become edgy, and it spiraled from there. Him being forced to buy Twitter because he couldn't get out of the joke he made, is probably his worst nightmare. His 'coming soon'-excuse isn't working on Twitter, and it's a very public humiliation should he fail. I actually think he is very similar in this regard to Trump. A big sense of self-importance and a need for affirmation which can't handle rejection is what I personally thought his presence at Chappell stand-up showed. I also think that is the reason he is appeasing the right so much. They give him a lot of attention and don't criticize him.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  You forgot frying monkeys' brains in an attempt to create a brain-machine interface (turns out that elevating brain temperature more than 2 degrees starts to cause issues). But I have to take issue with some of your selections too. It seems like the semi is in fact shipping, and I don't know if it's actually useful, but perhaps it has some niche in the transport industry. I'm not sure what's up with the Cybertruck, but it doesn't seem infeasible like self-driving might be. And the SpaceX Starship has been making pretty solid incremental progress over the last few years and really does have some potential to further upend the economics of getting tons of material into orbit. But he's clearly been consumed by ego whatever the cause.
- mindslight 4y ago
Spooky23 4y ago
The electric car market is getting crowded and Tesla offerings are aging. Doubling down on a consumer segment that tends to listen closely to influential figures and do things not their self interest may be effective.
sxyuan 4y ago
It's not so hard to reconcile. Moving humanity to Mars is clever marketing; real long-term thinking would focus on keeping Spaceship Earth livable and biodiverse. Stirring up Twitter controversy is similarly about marketing: learning (whether rightly or wrongly) from Trump 2016 that there's no such thing as bad publicity.

by ericb 4y ago

Veedrac 4y ago

You're probably having trouble because neither Musk's narrative nor edge have come from being a cunning salesperson. This is “Tesla stock price is too high imo” Musk, robotaxi next year Musk, other person is a pedophile Musk, yell at legal authorities Musk. Musk's edge has come from tackling hard, technical problems, and doing so successfully, for long enough, on enticing enough problems, that people started to buy the dream. Contrast, leftist flamebait is just Musk being impolitic on Twitter, and an increasingly-hostile anti-left Musk is just what you get when the left runs campaigns specifically attacking him. It's not a smart business move because it's not a business move, merely a reflection of the increasing polarization of America.

MrMan 4y ago
You are dead wrong about a lot of things here. Musk may not seem like a salesman to you, but he is actually one of the best salesmen and marketers we have seen, and created the major brands which have enriched him basically entirely using media coverage of him and his companies, and massive social media reach using his personal twitter account. In my opinion the one thing he is truly good at is sales and marketing. Selling the dream, and a very good design team, is what made Tesla what it is. I have no comment on whether technical solutions requiring the coordination of hundreds and thousands of people can be credited to one non-technical person, nor the political stuff.
- Veedrac 4y ago
  It's political to say it now, but Musk is technical. Here's some evidence to that effect[1]. I know of more accounts, but really, just watch the Starbase tour videos and make up your own mind. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    I don't think testimonials from core SpaceX employees is evidence. They all have very strong incentives to publicly fluff Musk.
    - harpiaharpyja 4y ago
      It's possible to have a leader who was technical at one point but no longer has any meaningful technical contribution. I worked for a company where the founder and CEO built the first several iterations of the flagship product essentially by himself. Now the company has more than 100 employees, and he did earnestly try to keep a pulse on technical matters in the R&D department (where I worked) and sometimes gave input but honestly it was usually better when he didn't. Too many things pulling his attention in different directions.
  - random314 4y ago
    Musk demands that employees fluff him. So folks invested in SpaceX like employees can't be trusted. There are enough blind and Twitter accounts of Elon being a dunce at SpaceX with the execs coddling him and feeding him ideas that he can regurgitate as his own. Musk has some software engineering experience from zip2 and from fan boy Ashlee Vances book he was really bad. His Twitter shenanigans further demonstrated his poor CS skills. He has no background in aerospace at all. Yet he appointed himself as the chief engineer of SpaceX on day 1. He also published neuralink white paper with himself as the sole author in what is a rip off of a Duke professors lab work. He was solo author of hyperloop white paper which is laughed at by the physics community. In short, he pretends to be a world expert in 1. Software engineering 2. Aerospace engineering 3. Neuro physical bionic research 4. Underground tunnel boring, way way ahead of (10X) the most cutting edge current technology 5. Vacuum tunnel transport 6. AI, beyond just self driving- including AGI paraphrasing-"Zuckerberg and LeCunn don't understand AI". To top it off, he has a generic BA in 1997 from UPenn and no STEM degree. His PhD admit to Stanford physics in 1995 has to be his most bald faced lie. He desperately wants to be seen as a scientist/engineer, which he is not. All of his classmates recall him from his econ classes, not physics. Though I did find some unverified quora story about a professor recalling Musk scoring a B grade in a physics class. If you look at his history his only major success was scaling the production of a car someone else designed and built to millions per year. He is more of a business exec than an engineer in any sense. He definitely has an above average IQ, hampered by an extreme case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. All of his shenanigans can be explained by the search of Narcissistic supply and deeply internalized feelings of inadequacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_supply
- hedora 4y ago
  I'd argue spacex and tesla have terrrible terrible design teams. Their stuff is pretty, sure. However, that is only half of good industrial design. Their products frequently have severe issues with usability, manufacturability, etc.
- kennedywm 4y ago
  I would have said the same thing before the twitter fiasco. I'm curious what information and assumptions he's operating on.
JohnFen 4y ago
> Musk's edge has come from tackling hard, technical problems, and doing so successfully What hard technical problems has he ever successfully tackled? Serious question. His two successes, Tesla and SpaceX, are companies he purchased. He hired people to tackle hard problems, yes, but what has he done personally?
- oarsinsync 4y ago
  Wozniak made the Apple II, what did Jobs do personally? Not a fan of Musk (or marketers generally), but it doesn’t seem fair to be dismissing strong leaders who understand how to market their products effectively. Life doesn’t usually work out like Field of Dreams. It doesn’t matter how good you build it, they won’t come if they don’t know about it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - peterashford 4y ago
    Yeah but the claim being discussed wasn't "Is Elon good at hype" it was "Musk's edge has come from tackling hard, technical problems"
- skissane 4y ago
  > His two successes, Tesla and SpaceX, are companies he purchased. Musk himself founded SpaceX, rocket engineer Tom Mueller was his first employee. He did not "purchase" SpaceX from anybody. Tesla was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003. In early 2004, they brought Musk on as an investor, who provided such a large share of the early investment (Series A onwards), he soon owned the majority of the company. Eberhard and Tarpenning would continue as CEO and CFO until they had a falling-out with Musk around 2007/2008, and Musk used his majority ownership to fire them. Under the terms of 2009 lawsuit settlement, Eberhard, Tarpenning, Musk, Ian Wright and J. B. Straubel agreed among themselves that all five can be described as "co-founders" of Tesla. If someone pitches a startup to a venture capitalist–which is the role Musk was playing at the beginning of his involvement in Tesla–who through providing the bulk of the Series A funding (and subsequent funding rounds), ends up with majority control, is that accurately described as a "purchase"? For anyone other Elon Musk, I doubt people would use that word. > He hired people to tackle hard problems, yes, but what has he done personally? Doesn't that describe many founders? For a founder/CEO, a very big chunk of their work, is making sure they pick the right leaders beneath them, and making the right picks vs the wrong ones can be the difference between a runaway success and bankruptcy.

brnt 4y ago

When you consider that his PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel is deeply embedded in the American extreme right, openly advocates abolishing democracy and worse, it starts to make some sense. Musk in solidly in that orbit and always has been.

claytongulick 4y ago
Do you have a citation for Thiel openly advocating for abolishing democracy?
- clouddrover 4y ago
  Thiel thinks democracy is incompatible with freedom: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/15/peter-thiel-who-is-he-republican-donor-tech-entrepreneur https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/15/peter-thi... https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/ https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
  - claytongulick 4y ago
    Did you actually read the 2009 article? No where in it did he advocate for abolishing democracy. His argument, simplified, is that it isn't possible to maximize freedom in a democracy. The simplified reason is because everyone can vote themselves bread and circuses until other people's money runs out. He doesn't propose a better solution, instead he seems to be in the camp of "democracy is the worst form of government... Except for everything else" and thinks that freedom is maximized by living in frontiers (cyberspace, outer space, and seasteading). I'm hard pressed to find anything particularly controversial about what he wrote in that article. It's really strange how much people like to demonize those who aren't in their tribe...
    - clouddrover 4y ago
      > Did you actually read the 2009 article? Did you actually read about his 2022 behavior? He busily supported election deniers. Thiel says, “We’re close to a Toto moment, a little dog pulling aside the curtain on the holy of holies only to find there’s nobody there”. And “We always think of democracy as a good thing. But … where do you shift from the wisdom of crowds to the madness of crowds? When does it become a mob, a racket, a totalitarian lie?” His position is that democracy is illegitimate and when he is king everything will be better: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/05/peter-thiel-bankrolling-jd-vance-reactionary-nationalism/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/05/peter-thi...

V__ 4y ago

I had this same thought for a while, but I think the answer is simpler in reality. In my opinion, he has an ego problem, and his companies are his best way to feel important (or whatever emotion he craves). I don't know whether that was always the case, but to me it seems apparent that is what he has been doing for the past few years. I think it started happening when he realized there was no next big-idea which his companies could actually solve. After Tesla made electric cars trendy and influenced the market (actual accomplishments), his next idea was self-driving. Maybe he didn't know enough at the time or thought he could make it happen quickly, he promised big and failed but can't admit it. So he tried to pull the next shiny thing out of the hat, Cybertruck, semi, solar-roof, roadster, smart-summon, boring-tunnels, Hyperloop etc. They also kept failing or are coming soon TM. For some time SpaceX delivered, but right now they also don't have anything new shiny to show. He's trying to desperately stay relevant, but all his ideas are staring to crumble or are a lot harder to solve than he cares to admit. He started to become edgy, and it spiraled from there. Him being forced to buy Twitter because he couldn't get out of the joke he made, is probably his worst nightmare. His 'coming soon'-excuse isn't working on Twitter, and it's a very public humiliation should he fail. I actually think he is very similar in this regard to Trump. A big sense of self-importance and a need for affirmation which can't handle rejection is what I personally thought his presence at Chappell stand-up showed. I also think that is the reason he is appeasing the right so much. They give him a lot of attention and don't criticize him.

hotpotamus 4y ago
You forgot frying monkeys' brains in an attempt to create a brain-machine interface (turns out that elevating brain temperature more than 2 degrees starts to cause issues). But I have to take issue with some of your selections too. It seems like the semi is in fact shipping, and I don't know if it's actually useful, but perhaps it has some niche in the transport industry. I'm not sure what's up with the Cybertruck, but it doesn't seem infeasible like self-driving might be. And the SpaceX Starship has been making pretty solid incremental progress over the last few years and really does have some potential to further upend the economics of getting tons of material into orbit. But he's clearly been consumed by ego whatever the cause.
mindslight 4y ago

Spooky23 4y ago

The electric car market is getting crowded and Tesla offerings are aging. Doubling down on a consumer segment that tends to listen closely to influential figures and do things not their self interest may be effective.

sxyuan 4y ago

It's not so hard to reconcile. Moving humanity to Mars is clever marketing; real long-term thinking would focus on keeping Spaceship Earth livable and biodiverse. Stirring up Twitter controversy is similarly about marketing: learning (whether rightly or wrongly) from Trump 2016 that there's no such thing as bad publicity.