7 ms·

Elon is not a savior because no one is purely a savior. He is a genius at hardware who badly needs to shut the fuck up and have people rein him in sometimes. Tw

Elon is not a savior because no one is purely a savior. He is a genius at hardware who badly needs to shut the fuck up and have people rein him in sometimes. Twitter has always been his weakness, and he needs to have emotional maturity and hire a new CEO, then stay off of it entirely for two weeks

woodruffw 4y ago
"No one is purely a savior" is a truism. Elon Musk is not a savior for simpler reasons, like all the lying, cheating, and general mishegas he's responsible for.
nkozyra 4y ago
> He is a genius I realize this is part of his narrative but I struggle to find the genius. As best i can tell he's a generally successful businessman.
- PenguinCoder 4y ago
  Way more being born lucky, and abusing lucky timing to abuse positions with enough money. No where near a genius level anything.
- FormerBandmate 4y ago
  It's hyperbole. Tesla and SpaceX were insane accomplishments in moribund industries (the first successful auto startup in 80 years, and pretty much singlehanfedly revitalizing space travel which was basically dead, people with way more resources tried and failed at both of them). That being said, the Twitter acquisition is the work of a petulant child
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    Do Kia (reborn in 1986), Tata, and Saleen not count as successful? Tesla has had an impressive rise, but it's not like nothing happened between 1923 and 2003 in the automotive industry.
    - rnk 4y ago
      Good point, but I'm sure the point was no new american automobile companies succeeded until tesla
      - prmoustache 4y ago
        I think most people do not consider enough the importance of timing. EV cars have existed for more than a century and been tried out by many companies. They all failed to mark a significant dent in the market because batteries technologies weren't as advanced as now, and because regulations weren't as strict as they are now. Tesla was founded right when at a crossing point when California and European Union emissions regulations started to be more and more stringent and efficient batteries affordable enough. Being an EV-only company it was granted a very generous loan from the US government. This is a kick start no small automotive company ever got. Not saying Musk hasn't any part in how the development, manufacturing and sale process was done. He certainly is one of the first to make people accept and even pay to be beta testers of an unfinished product/vehicle.
  - BeefWellington 4y ago
    The ball was already rolling on Tesla before Elon came along though. He was the majority of their first funding round but their company structure and development of a concept car was already underway. He just saw the opportunity that others were already working on and funded it, then stepped in, pushed the original founders out, and claimed it was his idea in the first place until he and the company settled a lawsuit in 2009. SpaceX was truly his and he found great people to lead the company judging by their results. Contrary to your statement though, space travel wasn't dead at all. During the early SpaceX era when they launched zero rockets there were still a number of successful missions from organizations around the globe as well as routine commercial satellite launches. The key thing SpaceX did was cheapen launch costs to the point where existing launch companies had to start competing. This is down to the engineering achievements at SpaceX. Musk is a face for businesses but if I were an investor in those other two ventures I'd definitely be concerned that this focus on Twitter is distracting him from his actual important work at those other companies, and I'd probably be pissed about what he's done to the share price of Telsa.
    - hnhg 4y ago
      Musk had some pretty influential backing before he even founded SpaceX. From Wikipedia: "In 2002, Griffin was President and COO of In-Q-Tel, a private enterprise funded by the CIA to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve national security interests. During this time, he met entrepreneur Elon Musk and accompanied him on a trip to Russia where they attempted to purchase ICBMs. The unsuccessful trip is credited as directly leading to the formation of SpaceX.[11] Griffin was an early advocate for Musk calling him a potential “Henry Ford for the rocket industry".[12]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin
    - chris222 4y ago
      This is false. You should check the records as to what Tesla was before Musk and JB Straubel came on board, it wasn’t much. I highly doubt the company would have survived past the Roadster.
    - hoseja 4y ago
      There were dime a dozen garage companies hand-crafting electric cars. None of them challenged the industry, none of them would.
- wpietri 4y ago
  I am a big Musk critic, but I think his rise demonstrates a genius for hype and PR. The amount of free media and cheap capital that Tesla got was extraordinary, and I think that was down to Musk. But I think Musk is also a good example of the reason that I would probably not work for a company whose head is a sales guy. Salespeople are great at hype, but they often do it by living in a fantasy land, and someone insufficiently connected to reality is in charge, things can get wacky. I knew of one place where the CEO was absolutely great at closing deals, but he would do it by promising more new features than the company could build. The well-meaning tech people did their best, but rushing to meet the CEO's promises meant a worse and worse code base, with bug counts skyrocketing and feature velocity slowing. At Tesla and SpaceX, he apparently had competent people in charge to buffer his impulses and direct him toward what he's good at. But here we see that fantasy dynamic play out as he absolutely flails around trying to run a business that he doesn't really understand after firing most of the people who did and terrifying the remainder. If anything, I think the Twitter saga demonstrates that on his own, he's actually bad at a bunch of core business skills.
  - maegul 4y ago
    > I am a big Musk critic, but I think his rise demonstrates a genius for hype and PR. The amount of free media and cheap capital that Tesla got was extraordinary, and I think that was down to Musk. A big falsifying hypothesis from this would be to predict that there are NOT any high-up PR staff of notable quality that have been around him for a long time. If the PR people around him evince no particular talent for it and have been in constant flux for the duration of Musk's career such that he is the only constant, then yea, there'd probably be something to this. Otherwise, if there is at least one person that was in his inner circle for a critical period of time that can also be said to have strong PR talent, then it's questionable ... sometimes success is having, on top of other things, the right team.
    - Sebb767 4y ago
      But choosing the right team is part of being a successful business man. I still think it's fair to credit him for SpaceX despite Gwynne Shotwell and his engineers running the company; he founded it, he brought the vision and he hired the right people. Elon had a lot of luck, no doubt, but his track record is simply impressive and for that, I think it's fair to say that he has extraordinary talent.

woodruffw 4y ago

"No one is purely a savior" is a truism. Elon Musk is not a savior for simpler reasons, like all the lying, cheating, and general mishegas he's responsible for.

nkozyra 4y ago

> He is a genius I realize this is part of his narrative but I struggle to find the genius. As best i can tell he's a generally successful businessman.

PenguinCoder 4y ago
Way more being born lucky, and abusing lucky timing to abuse positions with enough money. No where near a genius level anything.
FormerBandmate 4y ago
It's hyperbole. Tesla and SpaceX were insane accomplishments in moribund industries (the first successful auto startup in 80 years, and pretty much singlehanfedly revitalizing space travel which was basically dead, people with way more resources tried and failed at both of them). That being said, the Twitter acquisition is the work of a petulant child
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  Do Kia (reborn in 1986), Tata, and Saleen not count as successful? Tesla has had an impressive rise, but it's not like nothing happened between 1923 and 2003 in the automotive industry.
  - rnk 4y ago
    Good point, but I'm sure the point was no new american automobile companies succeeded until tesla
    - prmoustache 4y ago
      I think most people do not consider enough the importance of timing. EV cars have existed for more than a century and been tried out by many companies. They all failed to mark a significant dent in the market because batteries technologies weren't as advanced as now, and because regulations weren't as strict as they are now. Tesla was founded right when at a crossing point when California and European Union emissions regulations started to be more and more stringent and efficient batteries affordable enough. Being an EV-only company it was granted a very generous loan from the US government. This is a kick start no small automotive company ever got. Not saying Musk hasn't any part in how the development, manufacturing and sale process was done. He certainly is one of the first to make people accept and even pay to be beta testers of an unfinished product/vehicle.
- BeefWellington 4y ago
  The ball was already rolling on Tesla before Elon came along though. He was the majority of their first funding round but their company structure and development of a concept car was already underway. He just saw the opportunity that others were already working on and funded it, then stepped in, pushed the original founders out, and claimed it was his idea in the first place until he and the company settled a lawsuit in 2009. SpaceX was truly his and he found great people to lead the company judging by their results. Contrary to your statement though, space travel wasn't dead at all. During the early SpaceX era when they launched zero rockets there were still a number of successful missions from organizations around the globe as well as routine commercial satellite launches. The key thing SpaceX did was cheapen launch costs to the point where existing launch companies had to start competing. This is down to the engineering achievements at SpaceX. Musk is a face for businesses but if I were an investor in those other two ventures I'd definitely be concerned that this focus on Twitter is distracting him from his actual important work at those other companies, and I'd probably be pissed about what he's done to the share price of Telsa.
  - hnhg 4y ago
    Musk had some pretty influential backing before he even founded SpaceX. From Wikipedia: "In 2002, Griffin was President and COO of In-Q-Tel, a private enterprise funded by the CIA to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve national security interests. During this time, he met entrepreneur Elon Musk and accompanied him on a trip to Russia where they attempted to purchase ICBMs. The unsuccessful trip is credited as directly leading to the formation of SpaceX.[11] Griffin was an early advocate for Musk calling him a potential “Henry Ford for the rocket industry".[12]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin
  - chris222 4y ago
    This is false. You should check the records as to what Tesla was before Musk and JB Straubel came on board, it wasn’t much. I highly doubt the company would have survived past the Roadster.
  - hoseja 4y ago
    There were dime a dozen garage companies hand-crafting electric cars. None of them challenged the industry, none of them would.
wpietri 4y ago
I am a big Musk critic, but I think his rise demonstrates a genius for hype and PR. The amount of free media and cheap capital that Tesla got was extraordinary, and I think that was down to Musk. But I think Musk is also a good example of the reason that I would probably not work for a company whose head is a sales guy. Salespeople are great at hype, but they often do it by living in a fantasy land, and someone insufficiently connected to reality is in charge, things can get wacky. I knew of one place where the CEO was absolutely great at closing deals, but he would do it by promising more new features than the company could build. The well-meaning tech people did their best, but rushing to meet the CEO's promises meant a worse and worse code base, with bug counts skyrocketing and feature velocity slowing. At Tesla and SpaceX, he apparently had competent people in charge to buffer his impulses and direct him toward what he's good at. But here we see that fantasy dynamic play out as he absolutely flails around trying to run a business that he doesn't really understand after firing most of the people who did and terrifying the remainder. If anything, I think the Twitter saga demonstrates that on his own, he's actually bad at a bunch of core business skills.
- maegul 4y ago
  > I am a big Musk critic, but I think his rise demonstrates a genius for hype and PR. The amount of free media and cheap capital that Tesla got was extraordinary, and I think that was down to Musk. A big falsifying hypothesis from this would be to predict that there are NOT any high-up PR staff of notable quality that have been around him for a long time. If the PR people around him evince no particular talent for it and have been in constant flux for the duration of Musk's career such that he is the only constant, then yea, there'd probably be something to this. Otherwise, if there is at least one person that was in his inner circle for a critical period of time that can also be said to have strong PR talent, then it's questionable ... sometimes success is having, on top of other things, the right team.
  - Sebb767 4y ago
    But choosing the right team is part of being a successful business man. I still think it's fair to credit him for SpaceX despite Gwynne Shotwell and his engineers running the company; he founded it, he brought the vision and he hired the right people. Elon had a lot of luck, no doubt, but his track record is simply impressive and for that, I think it's fair to say that he has extraordinary talent.