6 ms·

You know, I have to hand it to Elon. We often hear about how successful companies turn "corporate" and stop being able to innovate because they need to preserv

You know, I have to hand it to Elon. We often hear about how successful companies turn "corporate" and stop being able to innovate because they need to preserve their successful product lines; e.g. Google's ad business. And the leadership in those companies often talk about how they want to "be a big company that acts like a startup" but it's usually just lip service. Well, this is what it actually looks like and it's not pretty; even the customers hate it let alone the employees.

atonse 3y ago
I will always remember what one of my previous bosses told me. I had built this whole E-Commerce platform for him and his company (I single-handedly did all the coding, infrastructure, etc. Not taking any credit for their incredible sales team.) that was running in multiple countries, bringing in millions in sales. But I started getting pretty bored once it was stable enough and just running and started seeking greener pastures. And he said (I'm paraphrasing) most people are either builders or maintainers, and rarely both. And he said I was a builder at heart. So I hate maintaining things. Which is why, when I helped hire my replacement, he was VERY much a maintainer, and he flourished in that second phase since it had reached maturity. Using that framework, I think that the ratio of builders to maintainers at Tesla is not healthy right now. It seems VERY healthy at SpaceX, for example. They're innovating on new technology AND on efficiencies of the existing tech and logistics. The builders got them to where they are (I'm still a generally happy Model 3 owner), but the maintainers are the ones who make the maintenance and service experience great, incrementally improve manufacturing, parts availability, all those unsexy things that have more to do with logistics, building superchargers etc. Because they are too lopsided with builders, they keep inventing new stuff instead of continuing to innovate with EVs. For a while there were enough builder type challenges with manufacturing but even those challenges seem to be exhausted. I'm surprised to see that they've gutted the supercharger team because it seems like the ultimate "services" sector where they're in better shape than anyone else to make basically free "services" type money from ALL EVs in coming years with NACS.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  One person’s maintaining is another person’s building. There are definitely many many very competent people with a “builder” mindset that would get a kick out of building a good maintenance / service experience. It’s simply that these things aren’t respected by…someone…or someones, and don’t get the attention they deserve from the people that could provide it.
  - atonse 3y ago
    For the record I wasn’t disparaging the maintainers. In Tesla’s situation, they need more people with a maintenance mindset to sustain their company. SpaceX has a nice mix of both.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    Yes, maintainer deserve respect. However, This is just wordplay redefining the concept building. If the purpose is maintenance, it is maintaining.
  - JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 3y ago
    > One person’s maintaining is another person’s building IMHO, if you have a shitty harassing manager, you can switch from maintaining to being anti-work in a few months. And having a good manager can lift you from being a maintainer to being a tech lead at any company. This is a simple psychological trick that most companies have not figured out yet and it's very sad.
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      Management is hard and ICs often underestimate the difficulty. Employees are diverse, and what works for one, doesn't work for another. Similarly, what ICs say will work and what actually works are usually very different.
      - cm11 3y ago
        To be fair, I think everyone underestimates the difficulty—including managers, the people that hire them, and the people who org companies to "require" a large number of people with these scarce skills. While I agree ICs underestimate the difficulty, I think what ICs are usually responding to is that the managing isn't good. Whether that's because managing is difficult or because their manager is bad is in some sense not what matters. Those problem are the managers' job or the managers' managers' job.
balls187 3y ago
The Innovators Dilemma.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Timshel 3y ago
Don't know for me Tesla Innovations look more like traditional corporate innovation which can continue no matter the cost as long as the correct person support it. And in the context of this news I don't see much innovation just some cost-cutting to continue to prop up some moonshots to the detriment of the automaker portion of Tesla. Would Optimus survive as its own startup ?
api 3y ago
There is a place for maturity. The answer is probably for big companies to let themselves get big but then start investing in the startup ecosystem. New things that aren't a good fit for BigCo should be done in actual startups. I think trying to put everything under one umbrella is actively harmful. In its most extreme it gives you the Soviet politburo. I've speculated before that the real reason that capitalism seems to work better is because of this multiplicity of organizations allowing the system to route around dysfunction. When everything is all one big corporation (as it was in the USSR) dysfunction in any area becomes fatal and cannot be recovered from.
lamontcg 3y ago
No, this is phase 2 of what every SV business[*] looks like these days. Once the initial growth period is over in whatever the business is actually good at, you need to pivot into some new nonsense (AI these days) because the business is chasing infinite growth. That leads to this kind of flailing around trying desperately to hit another bullseye, instead of focusing on what the business already does well. [*] and more and more all the rest of them as well.
mempko 3y ago
What are you talking about? Tesla has been SLOW to ship innovative products after they grew. Musk focused on SCALE not new product development. That's why a 2015 Tesla, now 8 years old practically looks the same as one today. Even the cyber-truck was slow to deliver (other manufactures got to EV trucks first). Tesla is the perfect example of going corporate.
jrflowers 3y ago
This is a good point. Innovation is when you put out press releases about an idea that came to you as you crawled out of a k-hole. Few large corporations have the smarts to promise a vehicle that can cross a small sea and deliver one that goes out of warranty if you take it through a car wash
hehdhdjehehegwv 3y ago
It looks like they are a car company in the rise, taking on huge incumbents with a 100 year lead, are in spitting distance of becoming one of those multigenerational institutions and decided to blow their brains out on stage. They aren’t at the point of disrupting themselves, this is like if Google terminated search in 2004. It’s idiotic, period.
- radium3d 3y ago
  Or in a matter of months they'll be back on track expanding charging infrastructure, nobody knows.
  - hehdhdjehehegwv 3y ago
    I mean, you fire all the people who know how to do the job and it’s gonna take years to get that skill set back. He could reverse it tomorrow and the damage is done. Utterly remarkable.
    - radium3d 3y ago
      He's done this before and it ended in Tesla having increased head count, over double the output of vehicles, so I'm curious how this will turn out in the coming months. I am thinking a repeat of the last time.
dangus 3y ago
This isn’t what “being a big company that acts like a startup” looks like. This is what being a company that has a scatterbrained dictator for a CEO looks like. Tesla isn’t building a robot because a scrappy team in the company discovered an opportunity for innovation. They’re doing it because the CEO suddenly demanded it between doses of amphetamines. Tesla would look like a big company with a startup mentality if they were pumping out new automotive products that made some level of sense. Hyundai and Kia more closely resemble what this would look like in a large company. All their new cars have unique bespoke designs and a laser focus on giving customers a compelling offering in every category.
- berniedurfee 3y ago
  For a time GE referred to itself as a 124 year old startup and acted as such. It didn’t end well.
radium3d 3y ago
I agree, this is how you continuously re-kindle the startup environment. It's kind of like reformatting your computer and installing your OS fresh. You have to do it, it's a pain in the ass, you don't want to do it, but when you're done you have a clean, speedy computer without all the built up logs, junk etc taking up the hard drive bogging things down. Tesla will rehire again shortly and we'll be seeing employee numbers rise back again. I'm seeing a lot of commentary that will be irrelevant in a month or less once the careers page reopens positions listings.
valianteffort 3y ago
I'm sorry but you're bordering on delusional here. The Model Y has been the highest selling car in the world for several months over the last year. The Model 3 and S are also high up there. I will grant you that cybertruck was a colossal waste of time. It's selling but resources would have been better allocated to their low-cost car. Even Elon has admitted the same about CT and Y in hindsight. But car sales are down across the entire market, this isn't exclusive to Tesla or EV's. Interest rates are just too high for your average consumers and discretionary spending continues to drop. It's myopic to think Tesla are doing something wrong without looking at the state of things.

atonse 3y ago

I will always remember what one of my previous bosses told me. I had built this whole E-Commerce platform for him and his company (I single-handedly did all the coding, infrastructure, etc. Not taking any credit for their incredible sales team.) that was running in multiple countries, bringing in millions in sales. But I started getting pretty bored once it was stable enough and just running and started seeking greener pastures. And he said (I'm paraphrasing) most people are either builders or maintainers, and rarely both. And he said I was a builder at heart. So I hate maintaining things. Which is why, when I helped hire my replacement, he was VERY much a maintainer, and he flourished in that second phase since it had reached maturity. Using that framework, I think that the ratio of builders to maintainers at Tesla is not healthy right now. It seems VERY healthy at SpaceX, for example. They're innovating on new technology AND on efficiencies of the existing tech and logistics. The builders got them to where they are (I'm still a generally happy Model 3 owner), but the maintainers are the ones who make the maintenance and service experience great, incrementally improve manufacturing, parts availability, all those unsexy things that have more to do with logistics, building superchargers etc. Because they are too lopsided with builders, they keep inventing new stuff instead of continuing to innovate with EVs. For a while there were enough builder type challenges with manufacturing but even those challenges seem to be exhausted. I'm surprised to see that they've gutted the supercharger team because it seems like the ultimate "services" sector where they're in better shape than anyone else to make basically free "services" type money from ALL EVs in coming years with NACS.

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
One person’s maintaining is another person’s building. There are definitely many many very competent people with a “builder” mindset that would get a kick out of building a good maintenance / service experience. It’s simply that these things aren’t respected by…someone…or someones, and don’t get the attention they deserve from the people that could provide it.
- atonse 3y ago
  For the record I wasn’t disparaging the maintainers. In Tesla’s situation, they need more people with a maintenance mindset to sustain their company. SpaceX has a nice mix of both.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  Yes, maintainer deserve respect. However, This is just wordplay redefining the concept building. If the purpose is maintenance, it is maintaining.
- JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 3y ago
  > One person’s maintaining is another person’s building IMHO, if you have a shitty harassing manager, you can switch from maintaining to being anti-work in a few months. And having a good manager can lift you from being a maintainer to being a tech lead at any company. This is a simple psychological trick that most companies have not figured out yet and it's very sad.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    Management is hard and ICs often underestimate the difficulty. Employees are diverse, and what works for one, doesn't work for another. Similarly, what ICs say will work and what actually works are usually very different.
    - cm11 3y ago
      To be fair, I think everyone underestimates the difficulty—including managers, the people that hire them, and the people who org companies to "require" a large number of people with these scarce skills. While I agree ICs underestimate the difficulty, I think what ICs are usually responding to is that the managing isn't good. Whether that's because managing is difficult or because their manager is bad is in some sense not what matters. Those problem are the managers' job or the managers' managers' job.

balls187 3y ago

The Innovators Dilemma.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Timshel 3y ago

Don't know for me Tesla Innovations look more like traditional corporate innovation which can continue no matter the cost as long as the correct person support it. And in the context of this news I don't see much innovation just some cost-cutting to continue to prop up some moonshots to the detriment of the automaker portion of Tesla. Would Optimus survive as its own startup ?

api 3y ago

There is a place for maturity. The answer is probably for big companies to let themselves get big but then start investing in the startup ecosystem. New things that aren't a good fit for BigCo should be done in actual startups. I think trying to put everything under one umbrella is actively harmful. In its most extreme it gives you the Soviet politburo. I've speculated before that the real reason that capitalism seems to work better is because of this multiplicity of organizations allowing the system to route around dysfunction. When everything is all one big corporation (as it was in the USSR) dysfunction in any area becomes fatal and cannot be recovered from.

lamontcg 3y ago

No, this is phase 2 of what every SV business[*] looks like these days. Once the initial growth period is over in whatever the business is actually good at, you need to pivot into some new nonsense (AI these days) because the business is chasing infinite growth. That leads to this kind of flailing around trying desperately to hit another bullseye, instead of focusing on what the business already does well. [*] and more and more all the rest of them as well.

mempko 3y ago

What are you talking about? Tesla has been SLOW to ship innovative products after they grew. Musk focused on SCALE not new product development. That's why a 2015 Tesla, now 8 years old practically looks the same as one today. Even the cyber-truck was slow to deliver (other manufactures got to EV trucks first). Tesla is the perfect example of going corporate.

jrflowers 3y ago

This is a good point. Innovation is when you put out press releases about an idea that came to you as you crawled out of a k-hole. Few large corporations have the smarts to promise a vehicle that can cross a small sea and deliver one that goes out of warranty if you take it through a car wash

hehdhdjehehegwv 3y ago

It looks like they are a car company in the rise, taking on huge incumbents with a 100 year lead, are in spitting distance of becoming one of those multigenerational institutions and decided to blow their brains out on stage. They aren’t at the point of disrupting themselves, this is like if Google terminated search in 2004. It’s idiotic, period.

radium3d 3y ago
Or in a matter of months they'll be back on track expanding charging infrastructure, nobody knows.
- hehdhdjehehegwv 3y ago
  I mean, you fire all the people who know how to do the job and it’s gonna take years to get that skill set back. He could reverse it tomorrow and the damage is done. Utterly remarkable.
  - radium3d 3y ago
    He's done this before and it ended in Tesla having increased head count, over double the output of vehicles, so I'm curious how this will turn out in the coming months. I am thinking a repeat of the last time.

dangus 3y ago

This isn’t what “being a big company that acts like a startup” looks like. This is what being a company that has a scatterbrained dictator for a CEO looks like. Tesla isn’t building a robot because a scrappy team in the company discovered an opportunity for innovation. They’re doing it because the CEO suddenly demanded it between doses of amphetamines. Tesla would look like a big company with a startup mentality if they were pumping out new automotive products that made some level of sense. Hyundai and Kia more closely resemble what this would look like in a large company. All their new cars have unique bespoke designs and a laser focus on giving customers a compelling offering in every category.

berniedurfee 3y ago
For a time GE referred to itself as a 124 year old startup and acted as such. It didn’t end well.

radium3d 3y ago

I agree, this is how you continuously re-kindle the startup environment. It's kind of like reformatting your computer and installing your OS fresh. You have to do it, it's a pain in the ass, you don't want to do it, but when you're done you have a clean, speedy computer without all the built up logs, junk etc taking up the hard drive bogging things down. Tesla will rehire again shortly and we'll be seeing employee numbers rise back again. I'm seeing a lot of commentary that will be irrelevant in a month or less once the careers page reopens positions listings.

valianteffort 3y ago

I'm sorry but you're bordering on delusional here. The Model Y has been the highest selling car in the world for several months over the last year. The Model 3 and S are also high up there. I will grant you that cybertruck was a colossal waste of time. It's selling but resources would have been better allocated to their low-cost car. Even Elon has admitted the same about CT and Y in hindsight. But car sales are down across the entire market, this isn't exclusive to Tesla or EV's. Interest rates are just too high for your average consumers and discretionary spending continues to drop. It's myopic to think Tesla are doing something wrong without looking at the state of things.