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The idea that HN commenters who have never met the guy have opinions that contradict the statements of John Carmack, Jim Keller, Tom Mueller, Andrej Karpathy, e

by darawk 3y ago

The idea that HN commenters who have never met the guy have opinions that contradict the statements of John Carmack, Jim Keller, Tom Mueller, Andrej Karpathy, etc. These people are not sycophants. These people do not need Musk. They have plenty of their own money. They are not speaking highly of him because they want a promotion, or they want to be in his good graces, or they're afraid of being fired. You can still hate him for the way he behaves. You can still think he's a bad guy. But if you think your opinion of his talent or engineering depth is better than these people's who've worked with him, you should seriously reconsider your epistemic blind spots. It's ok for him to be a good engineer and a bad person. Von Braun designed rockets for the Nazis and later the US space program. Nobody doubts his engineering brilliance.

TheAlchemist 3y ago
I share your point of view, 100%. As much as I don't like Musk behaviour lately, or how he try to picture himself as the founder of Tesla, it's really ridiculous to deny his achievements. And the money argument - "oh he just paid good engineers to create the companies" - is pretty dumb too - he wasn't that rich until 2 years ago, so why other billionaires didn't do the same thing ? Or all those other more talented engineers.
- epgui 3y ago
  I'm with you, but: > or how he try to picture himself as the founder of Tesla I think this can actually be reasonably argued both ways.
  - TheAlchemist 3y ago
    Tesla as we know it wouldn't exist without him. IE, the company that almost single handedly (yes, with governments subsides etc etc - they were available to everybody) changed the car industry. But, the way Musk tells the story or tries to push the narrative is very fishy. I remember reading Ashlee Vance biography of Musk, without knowing too much of him at the time, and while I was in awe about the achievements and boldness, it was also pretty obvious that the guy is childish and a dick.
    - panick21_ 3y ago
      The reality is Musk wanted to create an EV company. And somebody told him, there are some guys who started doing that, and instead of cutting them out he said, ok, let me and my guy join and ill finance the company. Tesla was dead in the water before Musk, they couldn't raise money, they had so far only invested a minimal amount from founders themselves and were going nowhere. Musk brought the money and the chief engineer that actually made Tesla car initially go. The founder CEO then over the next 6 years drove the company straight into the ground. Musk then took over invested more money and 10 years later its the dominate car company in the EV transition. I don't give a shit if he is the founder by some definition 'founder' where 'founder' means the guy who created the initial business plan (a business plan that kind of sucked btw). He is what made Tesla actually a real company rather then a joke for Detroit to laugh at.
tootie 3y ago
I can believe he's very smart, but he's also wildly irrational. He's also been caught out since taking over Twitter of broadcasting very inaccurate things about the state of Twitters software stack. Hyperfocus on the software is also definitely the wrong thing to be worrying about when it comes to running a content company and he's only made the product worse in his time there and has shown close to zero understanding what makes the site valuable.
- darawk 3y ago
  > I can believe he's very smart, but he's also wildly irrational. Yes, this is more or less what I believe. Or to be more precise, I think over the past 5-7 years his fame, attention, and power have corrupted him. > He's also been caught out since taking over Twitter of broadcasting very inaccurate things about the state of Twitters software stack. I don't remember ever seeing a valid example of this. I do remember people dunking on things he said at various times, but those people were wrong, and he was right. Nearly all the Musk haters predicted Twitter would collapse after he fired half the staff, that it would fall apart. Former engineers wrote op eds about how it would happen. None of it did. The particular instance to which I think you're referring was some front-end enginee attempting to falsify Musks's claims about how content was loaded, but the frontend engineer clearly didn't understand that Musk was talking about the micro-services that stitch together the feeds loaded by the front end code. Now, Musk may have been wrong - I don't know what Twitter's architecture looks like inside, but the guy who was criticizing him didn't either. > Hyperfocus on the software is also definitely the wrong thing to be worrying about when it comes to running a content company and he's only made the product worse in his time there and has shown close to zero understanding what makes the site valuable. I'm not sure I agree. I did think that at first, but I think he actually does understand what makes the site valuable - the users, and diversified revenue streams. He hasn't fully achieved that, but he has time. A social media site where you actually buy the product instead of being the product is what people have claimed to want here for quite a while. Twitter is still humming along, and it's still growing: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/7/23445476/elon-musk-twitter-user-growth-all-time-high-advertisers https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/7/23445476/elon-musk-twitte... He could certainly be lying. He no longer has the kind of obligations not to that a public company does. But the idea that Twitter is dying or dead is just not the case. He certainly overpaid for it, and I don't think every move he's made has been good, but he's iterated rapidly, and been willing to revert unpopular changes quickly.
asveikau 3y ago
> The idea that HN commenters who have never met the guy have opinions that contradict the statements of John Carmack, Jim Keller, Tom Mueller, Andrej Karpathy, etc. Those people can also be wrong about stuff. This is just an appeal to the reputation of those names. It doesn't give weight pro se. I don't have an opinion on Musk's skills as an engineer. I know I've seen him be very arrogantly and confidently wrong about things I know pretty well. That's a bit of a red flag trait that probably bleeds into other areas of his life and work. But also, i don't draw this conclusion out of hate or prejudice for the man. I don't care.
- lolinder 3y ago
  But given a conflict between the opinions of a random person on HN and prominent engineers who've worked directly with Musk, I'll place more emphasis on the words of the prominent engineers. It's not that they can't be wrong, it's that they're less likely to be wrong than people whose only interaction with Musk is reading his Twitter.
  - asveikau 3y ago
    > conflict between the opinions of a random person on HN and prominent engineers On HN, i don't think you entirely know who among commentators is a prominent engineer.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      > prominent engineers who've worked directly with Musk The full phrase was important. If someone has worked directly with Musk and is basing their opinion on that, I expect them to say so.
      - asveikau 3y ago
        I just read the comments in the reddit thread. It seems like the sort of vague platitudes people say when they've worked with a person, regardless of their actual competence. Especially in a higher level position, people say this stuff all the time out of BS. I wouldn't take it for much.

by darawk 3y ago

TheAlchemist 3y ago

I share your point of view, 100%. As much as I don't like Musk behaviour lately, or how he try to picture himself as the founder of Tesla, it's really ridiculous to deny his achievements. And the money argument - "oh he just paid good engineers to create the companies" - is pretty dumb too - he wasn't that rich until 2 years ago, so why other billionaires didn't do the same thing ? Or all those other more talented engineers.

epgui 3y ago
I'm with you, but: > or how he try to picture himself as the founder of Tesla I think this can actually be reasonably argued both ways.
- TheAlchemist 3y ago
  Tesla as we know it wouldn't exist without him. IE, the company that almost single handedly (yes, with governments subsides etc etc - they were available to everybody) changed the car industry. But, the way Musk tells the story or tries to push the narrative is very fishy. I remember reading Ashlee Vance biography of Musk, without knowing too much of him at the time, and while I was in awe about the achievements and boldness, it was also pretty obvious that the guy is childish and a dick.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    The reality is Musk wanted to create an EV company. And somebody told him, there are some guys who started doing that, and instead of cutting them out he said, ok, let me and my guy join and ill finance the company. Tesla was dead in the water before Musk, they couldn't raise money, they had so far only invested a minimal amount from founders themselves and were going nowhere. Musk brought the money and the chief engineer that actually made Tesla car initially go. The founder CEO then over the next 6 years drove the company straight into the ground. Musk then took over invested more money and 10 years later its the dominate car company in the EV transition. I don't give a shit if he is the founder by some definition 'founder' where 'founder' means the guy who created the initial business plan (a business plan that kind of sucked btw). He is what made Tesla actually a real company rather then a joke for Detroit to laugh at.

tootie 3y ago

I can believe he's very smart, but he's also wildly irrational. He's also been caught out since taking over Twitter of broadcasting very inaccurate things about the state of Twitters software stack. Hyperfocus on the software is also definitely the wrong thing to be worrying about when it comes to running a content company and he's only made the product worse in his time there and has shown close to zero understanding what makes the site valuable.

darawk 3y ago
> I can believe he's very smart, but he's also wildly irrational. Yes, this is more or less what I believe. Or to be more precise, I think over the past 5-7 years his fame, attention, and power have corrupted him. > He's also been caught out since taking over Twitter of broadcasting very inaccurate things about the state of Twitters software stack. I don't remember ever seeing a valid example of this. I do remember people dunking on things he said at various times, but those people were wrong, and he was right. Nearly all the Musk haters predicted Twitter would collapse after he fired half the staff, that it would fall apart. Former engineers wrote op eds about how it would happen. None of it did. The particular instance to which I think you're referring was some front-end enginee attempting to falsify Musks's claims about how content was loaded, but the frontend engineer clearly didn't understand that Musk was talking about the micro-services that stitch together the feeds loaded by the front end code. Now, Musk may have been wrong - I don't know what Twitter's architecture looks like inside, but the guy who was criticizing him didn't either. > Hyperfocus on the software is also definitely the wrong thing to be worrying about when it comes to running a content company and he's only made the product worse in his time there and has shown close to zero understanding what makes the site valuable. I'm not sure I agree. I did think that at first, but I think he actually does understand what makes the site valuable - the users, and diversified revenue streams. He hasn't fully achieved that, but he has time. A social media site where you actually buy the product instead of being the product is what people have claimed to want here for quite a while. Twitter is still humming along, and it's still growing: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/7/23445476/elon-musk-twitter-user-growth-all-time-high-advertisers https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/7/23445476/elon-musk-twitte... He could certainly be lying. He no longer has the kind of obligations not to that a public company does. But the idea that Twitter is dying or dead is just not the case. He certainly overpaid for it, and I don't think every move he's made has been good, but he's iterated rapidly, and been willing to revert unpopular changes quickly.

asveikau 3y ago

> The idea that HN commenters who have never met the guy have opinions that contradict the statements of John Carmack, Jim Keller, Tom Mueller, Andrej Karpathy, etc. Those people can also be wrong about stuff. This is just an appeal to the reputation of those names. It doesn't give weight pro se. I don't have an opinion on Musk's skills as an engineer. I know I've seen him be very arrogantly and confidently wrong about things I know pretty well. That's a bit of a red flag trait that probably bleeds into other areas of his life and work. But also, i don't draw this conclusion out of hate or prejudice for the man. I don't care.

lolinder 3y ago
But given a conflict between the opinions of a random person on HN and prominent engineers who've worked directly with Musk, I'll place more emphasis on the words of the prominent engineers. It's not that they can't be wrong, it's that they're less likely to be wrong than people whose only interaction with Musk is reading his Twitter.
- asveikau 3y ago
  > conflict between the opinions of a random person on HN and prominent engineers On HN, i don't think you entirely know who among commentators is a prominent engineer.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    > prominent engineers who've worked directly with Musk The full phrase was important. If someone has worked directly with Musk and is basing their opinion on that, I expect them to say so.
    - asveikau 3y ago
      I just read the comments in the reddit thread. It seems like the sort of vague platitudes people say when they've worked with a person, regardless of their actual competence. Especially in a higher level position, people say this stuff all the time out of BS. I wouldn't take it for much.