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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

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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 :).
      - cs702 3y ago
        No. As I wrote in the top comment of this thread[a] and just repeated, the jury is out. That phrase has a precise meaning: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20jury%20is%20out https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20jury%20is%2... -- [a] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40211380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40211380
        sanderjd 3y ago
        You also wrote: > But... I'm going to give Musk the benefit of the doubt, because ... I think we're both agreeing that "the jury is out", but disagreeing about which side of the question that jury is deciding should be the one with the "presumption of innocence" :)
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  If you take his good and bad decisions and order them chronologically, do any patterns emerge?
zachmu 3y ago
You can just say: I don't know. I don't know why Tesla is pursuing layoffs, or this particular layoff strategy. And because I don't know, I don't have a strong opinion about it one way or the other. That's all "benefit of the doubt" means. "I don't know one way or the other, but this guy has a pretty good track record, so until I know more I won't assume anything bad."
- sanderjd 3y ago
  "Benefit of the doubt" is not a neutral "I don't know". The commenter I responded to is giving the claim "this is a good decision" the benefit of the doubt, and I'm giving the opposite claim the benefit of the doubt. Neither of us is saying we know for sure, or even with much confidence, which is the right claim, but our defaults, our "priors", are opposite.

cs702 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 :).
    - cs702 3y ago
      No. As I wrote in the top comment of this thread[a] and just repeated, the jury is out. That phrase has a precise meaning: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20jury%20is%20out https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20jury%20is%2... -- [a] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40211380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40211380
      - sanderjd 3y ago
        You also wrote: > But... I'm going to give Musk the benefit of the doubt, because ... I think we're both agreeing that "the jury is out", but disagreeing about which side of the question that jury is deciding should be the one with the "presumption of innocence" :)
matthewdgreen 3y ago
If you take his good and bad decisions and order them chronologically, do any patterns emerge?

zachmu 3y ago

You can just say: I don't know. I don't know why Tesla is pursuing layoffs, or this particular layoff strategy. And because I don't know, I don't have a strong opinion about it one way or the other. That's all "benefit of the doubt" means. "I don't know one way or the other, but this guy has a pretty good track record, so until I know more I won't assume anything bad."

sanderjd 3y ago
"Benefit of the doubt" is not a neutral "I don't know". The commenter I responded to is giving the claim "this is a good decision" the benefit of the doubt, and I'm giving the opposite claim the benefit of the doubt. Neither of us is saying we know for sure, or even with much confidence, which is the right claim, but our defaults, our "priors", are opposite.