5 ms·

Perhaps Tesla needs an activist investor to get shakes things up ... Musk's time is over. He's either spread too thin, got too money hungry (despite having ne

Perhaps Tesla needs an activist investor to get shakes things up ... Musk's time is over. He's either spread too thin, got too money hungry (despite having nearly all of it!), lost his mind, or just hasn't got it anymore ...

gpuhacker 2y ago
All of the above
peutetre 2y ago
Some Tesla employees have been calling Musk a "pigeon CEO" because "he comes in, shits all over us, and then leaves": https://electrek.co/2024/04/22/elon-musk-pigeon-ceo-former-tesla-manager/ https://electrek.co/2024/04/22/elon-musk-pigeon-ceo-former-t...
- slillibri 2y ago
  See also Seagull Management - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagull_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagull_management
- Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - unglaublich 2y ago
    If that's your take, I understand your confusion. Are you supposed to leave your country when you're not happy, or should you vote and try to change it? Sometimes it's better to leave, sometimes it's better to stay.
    - trimethylpurine 2y ago
      1. You typically can't leave your country. Hardly anyone offers open immigration, especially not to blue collar workers. 2. Companies don't care about employees and almost never offer raises. It's not 1920. Even if you love your company, it's almost always best to be looking to make sure you're getting the pay that you deserve. At a company you don't even like, I think it's a disservice to your career. 3. Staying promotes bad behavior as corporations will see that they can under pay you, behave poorly, and not suffer the cost of turnover. Overall, staying seems like a loss for everyone.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
      Not a valid comparison. People are not free to change their countries without an enormous effort almost anywhere in the world. Changing jobs is easy.
      - ben_w 2y ago
        To a degree, both are easy and both are hard. I've moved country. Had to learn German as part of that[0]. Jobs… well, other Space companies do exist, but the old space companies have a reputation for being pork barrel operations. Other car companies exist, I don't know enough about them to make a judgement call there. [0] Fun fact: German is so hard that Germans have a saying which translates as "German is hard".
        Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
        > I've moved country. You are an extremely privileged citizen of a first-world country. Try doing it as a Russian / Lebanon / Afghan, then we'll have something to talk about.
        ben_w 2y ago
        Indeed I am. But I suspect the "can code" privilege beats the "passport" privilege. A previous employer was about 50 people, of whom about 5 were from Germany; from memory, the nationalities of the rest, excluding those from G7 states, included Nigeria, Egypt, Syria, both Israel and Palestine, Iran, both Russia and Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Turkey, both India and Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and South Korea. A British ex girlfriend of mine thought I was ridiculously privileged for having had a Commodore 64 when I was a kid; the (also British) boyfriend before her, got into ham radio because he came from a household too poor for a telephone.
        Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
        > But I suspect the "can code" privilege beats the "passport" privilege. It doesn't and it's not even close. Millions of Russians have left the country in protest of Putin's little victorious war. Many of them are very adept at coding, and no, almost all of them face severe problems of every kind (banking, visas, residency, air flights, etc) because of the wrong color of their passports. And for people from non-European countries it is even worse.
  - menzoic 2y ago
    Or complain so that things can change
    - trimethylpurine 2y ago
      Looks to be going the other way despite the complaints. I'm pretty sure that money makes all the decisions. Investors don't really care what Musk's political stance is. And they care even less if he's annoying to social media consumers, unless they represent a target market larger than the one they already have.
  - dukeyukey 2y ago
    Why shouldn't someone stay and try to make things better? Why do you only see capituation or quitting as options?
    - Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
      Complaining in press about CEO is unlikely to make anything better. Also, said CEO is wildly successful by any sensible business metric, so this boils down to pleasing the crowd of people who are unhappy with CEOs political stance.
  - vincnetas 2y ago
    Does Elon quit when he does not like things as they are?
  - Propelloni 2y ago
    So you are a quitter? That's fine, but obviously that's just one choice of the options available: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. Albert Hirschman wrote a nice book about it. I can recommend it.
  - lnxg33k1 2y ago
    Not everyone has a daddy who owns slaves who can give them hundreds of millions to start their companies btw
cm2187 2y ago
And worst of all, he has different political opinions than the average HN crowd
b112 2y ago
[flagged]
- waihtis 2y ago
  [flagged]
- psini 2y ago
  Sorry but that is such a high-school level "just discovered libertarianism" take. You think Musk cares about liquidity? That most banks in would not issue him an 8 figure loan in a heartbeat? Stock is not simply control, it's leverage, potential collateral etc... It is not about a number in a bank account, billionaires do not even play the same game as you and me. Dude could personally be in billions of debt, and still get to buy a couple yachts on a whim. You can't fathom the inordinate amount of wealth and leverage a billionaire has; and it has never been about liquidity.
  - b112 2y ago
    Yet your entire comment is essentially saying "He can do things I can't do!". So? Who cares? What's your point? Mine was that he doesn't have billions in cash, and by extension movements such as "tax billionaires until they are millionaires" makes zero sense. I've seen people advocate "tax billionaires to pay for UBI!", which of course is another "makes no sense" approach. Why? Well, let's pretend that someone with $50B in worth has $50B in cash. OK. So you take everyone that has >$1B in the US, take everything over that, and apply it to UBI. Guess what? You pay for one year of UBI. One year. Yet.. now.. there are no more billionaires left! Of course the above doesn't track, as my point about "net worth" is that those $50B aren't cash, they're mostly ownerships in companies. Which means that the government is effectively going to have to seize those stocks, and force sell those stocks, but.. um, to who? Remember, there are now no more billionaires left! Who would by all those stocks, now that there are no more billionaires? Certainly the market would crash completely, by offloading trillions in worth overnight. And we'd have moved into an entirely government run corporate economy, as the government now has majority voting rights on a large number of companies. Yay? And still next year, no more money for UBI. You stated that my take is only "high school" level, but it seems to me this communist "take all the money from billionaires" thought process is not even high school level. It's not thought through. And part of that thought process is "What does the net worth of a billionaire mean"? And of course, the above is complete nonsense too, as many companies are owned by other companies. Which eventually end back at investors. So what do you do? If a company is owned by a company, owned by a billionaire, you then .. what, take that company? What if it's a bank investment fund worth billions, but oh no! Some of those investors are rich! Do you take that? What's the goal here? To prevent individuals from steering large companies? Which of course isn't entirely the case, there are boards of directors (see this specific Musk case!). And how do you deal with those horrible foreign billionaires? You can't tax them directly, so do you just take their stocks? The lesson being, "If I invest in US companies, they'll just take my money!". None of this is thought out clearly by anyone I speak to, except "Those dasteredly billionaires have, and I don't, so take take take!".
whamlastxmas 2y ago
Elon: Richest and most successful man in the world running one of the most successful companies in the world. Hacker news: Elon is doing poorly and his time is over
- nunez 2y ago
  It's not just Hacker News. I saw a Mustang Mach-E with the license plate "ELON WHO" or something like that. A friend of mine saw our new Model 3 and said something snarky about supporting Musk. He is definitely not on this site. Anti-Musk sentiment is huge on the socials. Even my wife, who is definitely definitely not on this site, thinks Musk is a huge shithead.
- RestlessMind 2y ago
  TSLA down 55% from its all time high in Nov 2021. Performance of other stocks/indices in the same period: QQQ(+6.5%), S&P(+7.4%), Toyota(+28%). So yeah, Musk is doing poorly these days. It doesn't help his case when people look at his other antics like Twitter and legitimately wonder if he is getting distracted and should be replaced.

gpuhacker 2y ago

All of the above

peutetre 2y ago

Some Tesla employees have been calling Musk a "pigeon CEO" because "he comes in, shits all over us, and then leaves": https://electrek.co/2024/04/22/elon-musk-pigeon-ceo-former-tesla-manager/ https://electrek.co/2024/04/22/elon-musk-pigeon-ceo-former-t...

slillibri 2y ago
See also Seagull Management - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagull_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagull_management
Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
[flagged]
- unglaublich 2y ago
  If that's your take, I understand your confusion. Are you supposed to leave your country when you're not happy, or should you vote and try to change it? Sometimes it's better to leave, sometimes it's better to stay.
  - trimethylpurine 2y ago
    1. You typically can't leave your country. Hardly anyone offers open immigration, especially not to blue collar workers. 2. Companies don't care about employees and almost never offer raises. It's not 1920. Even if you love your company, it's almost always best to be looking to make sure you're getting the pay that you deserve. At a company you don't even like, I think it's a disservice to your career. 3. Staying promotes bad behavior as corporations will see that they can under pay you, behave poorly, and not suffer the cost of turnover. Overall, staying seems like a loss for everyone.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
    Not a valid comparison. People are not free to change their countries without an enormous effort almost anywhere in the world. Changing jobs is easy.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      To a degree, both are easy and both are hard. I've moved country. Had to learn German as part of that[0]. Jobs… well, other Space companies do exist, but the old space companies have a reputation for being pork barrel operations. Other car companies exist, I don't know enough about them to make a judgement call there. [0] Fun fact: German is so hard that Germans have a saying which translates as "German is hard".
      - Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
        > I've moved country. You are an extremely privileged citizen of a first-world country. Try doing it as a Russian / Lebanon / Afghan, then we'll have something to talk about.
        ben_w 2y ago
        Indeed I am. But I suspect the "can code" privilege beats the "passport" privilege. A previous employer was about 50 people, of whom about 5 were from Germany; from memory, the nationalities of the rest, excluding those from G7 states, included Nigeria, Egypt, Syria, both Israel and Palestine, Iran, both Russia and Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Turkey, both India and Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and South Korea. A British ex girlfriend of mine thought I was ridiculously privileged for having had a Commodore 64 when I was a kid; the (also British) boyfriend before her, got into ham radio because he came from a household too poor for a telephone.
        Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
        > But I suspect the "can code" privilege beats the "passport" privilege. It doesn't and it's not even close. Millions of Russians have left the country in protest of Putin's little victorious war. Many of them are very adept at coding, and no, almost all of them face severe problems of every kind (banking, visas, residency, air flights, etc) because of the wrong color of their passports. And for people from non-European countries it is even worse.
- menzoic 2y ago
  Or complain so that things can change
  - trimethylpurine 2y ago
    Looks to be going the other way despite the complaints. I'm pretty sure that money makes all the decisions. Investors don't really care what Musk's political stance is. And they care even less if he's annoying to social media consumers, unless they represent a target market larger than the one they already have.
- dukeyukey 2y ago
  Why shouldn't someone stay and try to make things better? Why do you only see capituation or quitting as options?
  - Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
    Complaining in press about CEO is unlikely to make anything better. Also, said CEO is wildly successful by any sensible business metric, so this boils down to pleasing the crowd of people who are unhappy with CEOs political stance.
- vincnetas 2y ago
  Does Elon quit when he does not like things as they are?
- Propelloni 2y ago
  So you are a quitter? That's fine, but obviously that's just one choice of the options available: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. Albert Hirschman wrote a nice book about it. I can recommend it.
- lnxg33k1 2y ago
  Not everyone has a daddy who owns slaves who can give them hundreds of millions to start their companies btw

cm2187 2y ago

And worst of all, he has different political opinions than the average HN crowd

b112 2y ago

[flagged]

waihtis 2y ago
[flagged]
psini 2y ago
Sorry but that is such a high-school level "just discovered libertarianism" take. You think Musk cares about liquidity? That most banks in would not issue him an 8 figure loan in a heartbeat? Stock is not simply control, it's leverage, potential collateral etc... It is not about a number in a bank account, billionaires do not even play the same game as you and me. Dude could personally be in billions of debt, and still get to buy a couple yachts on a whim. You can't fathom the inordinate amount of wealth and leverage a billionaire has; and it has never been about liquidity.
- b112 2y ago
  Yet your entire comment is essentially saying "He can do things I can't do!". So? Who cares? What's your point? Mine was that he doesn't have billions in cash, and by extension movements such as "tax billionaires until they are millionaires" makes zero sense. I've seen people advocate "tax billionaires to pay for UBI!", which of course is another "makes no sense" approach. Why? Well, let's pretend that someone with $50B in worth has $50B in cash. OK. So you take everyone that has >$1B in the US, take everything over that, and apply it to UBI. Guess what? You pay for one year of UBI. One year. Yet.. now.. there are no more billionaires left! Of course the above doesn't track, as my point about "net worth" is that those $50B aren't cash, they're mostly ownerships in companies. Which means that the government is effectively going to have to seize those stocks, and force sell those stocks, but.. um, to who? Remember, there are now no more billionaires left! Who would by all those stocks, now that there are no more billionaires? Certainly the market would crash completely, by offloading trillions in worth overnight. And we'd have moved into an entirely government run corporate economy, as the government now has majority voting rights on a large number of companies. Yay? And still next year, no more money for UBI. You stated that my take is only "high school" level, but it seems to me this communist "take all the money from billionaires" thought process is not even high school level. It's not thought through. And part of that thought process is "What does the net worth of a billionaire mean"? And of course, the above is complete nonsense too, as many companies are owned by other companies. Which eventually end back at investors. So what do you do? If a company is owned by a company, owned by a billionaire, you then .. what, take that company? What if it's a bank investment fund worth billions, but oh no! Some of those investors are rich! Do you take that? What's the goal here? To prevent individuals from steering large companies? Which of course isn't entirely the case, there are boards of directors (see this specific Musk case!). And how do you deal with those horrible foreign billionaires? You can't tax them directly, so do you just take their stocks? The lesson being, "If I invest in US companies, they'll just take my money!". None of this is thought out clearly by anyone I speak to, except "Those dasteredly billionaires have, and I don't, so take take take!".

whamlastxmas 2y ago

Elon: Richest and most successful man in the world running one of the most successful companies in the world. Hacker news: Elon is doing poorly and his time is over

nunez 2y ago
It's not just Hacker News. I saw a Mustang Mach-E with the license plate "ELON WHO" or something like that. A friend of mine saw our new Model 3 and said something snarky about supporting Musk. He is definitely not on this site. Anti-Musk sentiment is huge on the socials. Even my wife, who is definitely definitely not on this site, thinks Musk is a huge shithead.
RestlessMind 2y ago
TSLA down 55% from its all time high in Nov 2021. Performance of other stocks/indices in the same period: QQQ(+6.5%), S&P(+7.4%), Toyota(+28%). So yeah, Musk is doing poorly these days. It doesn't help his case when people look at his other antics like Twitter and legitimately wonder if he is getting distracted and should be replaced.