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Thank you for that. It made me chuckle! Here are some counter-examples: * A new car company making a new kind of vehicle. The first time I heard he wanted to

by cs702 2y ago

Thank you for that. It made me chuckle! Here are some counter-examples: * A new car company making a new kind of vehicle. The first time I heard he wanted to build a new car company that would sell EVs, I dismissed it as crazy. Tesla now sells close to 2M vehicles a year, roughly comparable to BMW. * A new network of EV charging stations. The first time I heard about it I thought the company would never recoup the capital cost. * A new rocket company. The first time I heard about SpaceX's early days I dismissed it as crazy. SpaceX now sends 10x more cargo to orbit than everyone else, public and private, combined. * A new satellite-Internet service. Prior to Starlink, every previous attempt to offer cheap and reliable Internet service via satellite had gone bankrupt. * A new brain-machine interface. The first time I heard about Neuralink I dismissed it as "way too early." The company just showed a disabled man using a computer with his thoughts. * The latest beta version of the self-driving software (FSD Beta >= 12.3.6). I've tested it and I am... impressed. Even though it happened much later than Musk predicted. Here's what it's like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIjOs1Gum2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIjOs1Gum2M * Dojo, which is now online. There's a picture of it on the last quarterly deck: https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/IR/TSLA-Q1-2024-Update.pdf https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/... -- though I don't know if it will be able to keep up with Nvidia's offerings, which are always improving. Some things you mention failed, and the jury is still out on Cybertruck, Roadster, Solar Roof, and X (Twitter). But the track record is there.

sanderjd 2y ago
It is an impressive track record. And something that does frustrate me is people who want to entirely dismiss his track record in order to bolster their current criticisms of him. I think that is motivated reasoning. But I think your benefit of the doubt in his judgement is similarly misguided. What I think is that he has been very adept in having a bold vision, using his showmanship to get the funding, talent, and visibility to get it off the ground, and then leveraging that into a feedback loop that bolsters his credibility for the next bold vision. I think it's very admirable that he has executed that playbook so well for so long! (And I think it's good for society that Tesla and SpaceX and Starlink and Neuralink exist, and I certainly appreciate his role in that.) But I think his track record for things that aren't part of that playbook is pretty bad. Buying Twitter was not a bold vision, it was dumb very-online pettiness. And there's now a history of specific business decisions that seem to come directly from him, which I think have just been bad. Not bold visionary risks that didn't work out, just foreseeable bad outcomes from bad, impulsive, ego-driven decisions. So sure, next time he's spinning up something visionary in AI or biotech or energy or who-knows-what, I'll pay attention and suspend my disbelief. But on the boring day to day executive decision making that every company has to do, I think he has earned less credibility than most (maybe all) leaders of businesses of similar scale.
- cs702 2y ago
  Thank you. I find your comment insightful... but I don't think it gives him proper credit for a lot of "boring day-to-day decisions" he's made at Tesla and SpaceX, particularly in operations and manufacturing, over the past two decades. Tesla's early team gives him all credit for ramping up Fremont's Model 3 production in 2019 to ~2.5x what even his execs had said was physically possible. He proved all of them -- and a lot of smart short-sellers -- wrong.
  - sanderjd 2y ago
    Mostly happy to agree to disagree on this! But I also think that it is mostly in the last few years (after your example) that his judgement has become especially questionable. There are examples from earlier on that I think can now be seen as a through line to where he's ended up today, but I think it is only in the last few years - basically, as his social media involvement has increasingly become a distraction - that he seems (to me) to have lost the plot with respect to managing his companies day to day. And I'm also not saying that every decision he makes is bad, but to me I think the recent track record is bad enough that these kinds of decisions deserve to be evaluated on their own, rather than given the benefit of the doubt.
    - cs702 2y ago
      > but I think it is only in the last few years - basically, as his social media involvement has increasingly become a distraction - that he seems (to me) to have lost the plot with respect to managing his companies day to day. Hmm... That's a reasonable conclusion. You could be right. I'll be a bit more humble and admit that there's a lot I don't know, so for me, the jury is out. Things may implode at Tesla, or maybe the company will grow 10x. I wouldn't be surprised either way!
      - sanderjd 2y ago
        Respectfully, I think you're trying to do the humble thing by taking a neutral position, which I think is laudable, but your position in this thread has not actually been neutral. Your position has been (and my interpretation of this latest comment is that it still is) that this decision is more likely to actually be a good one, because it was made by Musk. But that's not a "humble" position any more than mine is. The humble position might be something like "beats me! what do I know?". I think your position is more like "deferential". Sorry if this turned out to just be a semantic point about word choice. I originally thought that maybe it wasn't, that maybe there's something real here about what it means to have a humble view, but now I think maybe you just did mean something more like "deferential", in which case this was a pointless comment and I apologize :).
dragontamer 2y ago
> Like a new car company making a new kind of vehicle. The first time I heard he wanted to build a new car company that would sell EVs, I dismissed it as crazy. Tesla now sells close to 2M vehicles a year, roughly comparable to BMW. Martin Eberhard and JB Straubel came up with that idea. Elon Musk's contribution was suing them so that he can be called a founder. > Like a new network of EV charging stations. The first time I heard about it I thought the company would never recoup the capital cost. You're literally commenting on an article where the ENTIRE supercharging team was just fired, presumably to save money at Tesla. > Like Dojo, which is now online. There's a picture of it on the last quarterly deck: https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/ https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/... -- though I don't know if it will be able to keep up with Nvidia's offerings, which are always improving. Dojo is a 7nm design while NVidia's is a 3nm design. It won't keep up at all, despite costing Tesla likely a $Billion+ to produce (between $100M mask costs, large software teams working for multiple years, etc. etc. it wouldn't surprise me to see Dojo's total cost be well in excess of a $Billion).
- cs702 2y ago
  > You're literally commenting on an article where the ENTIRE supercharging team was just fired, presumably to save money at Tesla. Oh I'm in shock about that. As I wrote above, "WTF?" Whatever it is Musk is trying to do at Tesla, I don't get it. But given his track record, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

by cs702 2y ago

sanderjd 2y ago

It is an impressive track record. And something that does frustrate me is people who want to entirely dismiss his track record in order to bolster their current criticisms of him. I think that is motivated reasoning. But I think your benefit of the doubt in his judgement is similarly misguided. What I think is that he has been very adept in having a bold vision, using his showmanship to get the funding, talent, and visibility to get it off the ground, and then leveraging that into a feedback loop that bolsters his credibility for the next bold vision. I think it's very admirable that he has executed that playbook so well for so long! (And I think it's good for society that Tesla and SpaceX and Starlink and Neuralink exist, and I certainly appreciate his role in that.) But I think his track record for things that aren't part of that playbook is pretty bad. Buying Twitter was not a bold vision, it was dumb very-online pettiness. And there's now a history of specific business decisions that seem to come directly from him, which I think have just been bad. Not bold visionary risks that didn't work out, just foreseeable bad outcomes from bad, impulsive, ego-driven decisions. So sure, next time he's spinning up something visionary in AI or biotech or energy or who-knows-what, I'll pay attention and suspend my disbelief. But on the boring day to day executive decision making that every company has to do, I think he has earned less credibility than most (maybe all) leaders of businesses of similar scale.

cs702 2y ago
Thank you. I find your comment insightful... but I don't think it gives him proper credit for a lot of "boring day-to-day decisions" he's made at Tesla and SpaceX, particularly in operations and manufacturing, over the past two decades. Tesla's early team gives him all credit for ramping up Fremont's Model 3 production in 2019 to ~2.5x what even his execs had said was physically possible. He proved all of them -- and a lot of smart short-sellers -- wrong.
- sanderjd 2y ago
  Mostly happy to agree to disagree on this! But I also think that it is mostly in the last few years (after your example) that his judgement has become especially questionable. There are examples from earlier on that I think can now be seen as a through line to where he's ended up today, but I think it is only in the last few years - basically, as his social media involvement has increasingly become a distraction - that he seems (to me) to have lost the plot with respect to managing his companies day to day. And I'm also not saying that every decision he makes is bad, but to me I think the recent track record is bad enough that these kinds of decisions deserve to be evaluated on their own, rather than given the benefit of the doubt.
  - cs702 2y ago
    > but I think it is only in the last few years - basically, as his social media involvement has increasingly become a distraction - that he seems (to me) to have lost the plot with respect to managing his companies day to day. Hmm... That's a reasonable conclusion. You could be right. I'll be a bit more humble and admit that there's a lot I don't know, so for me, the jury is out. Things may implode at Tesla, or maybe the company will grow 10x. I wouldn't be surprised either way!
    - sanderjd 2y ago
      Respectfully, I think you're trying to do the humble thing by taking a neutral position, which I think is laudable, but your position in this thread has not actually been neutral. Your position has been (and my interpretation of this latest comment is that it still is) that this decision is more likely to actually be a good one, because it was made by Musk. But that's not a "humble" position any more than mine is. The humble position might be something like "beats me! what do I know?". I think your position is more like "deferential". Sorry if this turned out to just be a semantic point about word choice. I originally thought that maybe it wasn't, that maybe there's something real here about what it means to have a humble view, but now I think maybe you just did mean something more like "deferential", in which case this was a pointless comment and I apologize :).

dragontamer 2y ago

> Like a new car company making a new kind of vehicle. The first time I heard he wanted to build a new car company that would sell EVs, I dismissed it as crazy. Tesla now sells close to 2M vehicles a year, roughly comparable to BMW. Martin Eberhard and JB Straubel came up with that idea. Elon Musk's contribution was suing them so that he can be called a founder. > Like a new network of EV charging stations. The first time I heard about it I thought the company would never recoup the capital cost. You're literally commenting on an article where the ENTIRE supercharging team was just fired, presumably to save money at Tesla. > Like Dojo, which is now online. There's a picture of it on the last quarterly deck: https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/ https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/... -- though I don't know if it will be able to keep up with Nvidia's offerings, which are always improving. Dojo is a 7nm design while NVidia's is a 3nm design. It won't keep up at all, despite costing Tesla likely a $Billion+ to produce (between $100M mask costs, large software teams working for multiple years, etc. etc. it wouldn't surprise me to see Dojo's total cost be well in excess of a $Billion).

cs702 2y ago
> You're literally commenting on an article where the ENTIRE supercharging team was just fired, presumably to save money at Tesla. Oh I'm in shock about that. As I wrote above, "WTF?" Whatever it is Musk is trying to do at Tesla, I don't get it. But given his track record, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.