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I would say that the one redeeming quality of Elon Musk (in a sea of otherwise awful personality traits) is that for at least Tesla and SpaceX, that he was inte
by deciplex 2y ago
I would say that the one redeeming quality of Elon Musk (in a sea of otherwise awful personality traits) is that for at least Tesla and SpaceX, that he was interested in running those companies primarily to produce a product. Like that was the primary focus and raison d'être of both of those companies, especially SpaceX I think. This is in opposition to the usual "the only point of a business is to make money" ethos that so permeates neoliberal capitalism that we hardly even notice it anymore. The latter is dysfunctional, inhuman, and ultimately bad for business.
I don't know if he still takes that approach. In fact, I kind of doubt he ever really did, but he certainly projected that image publicly, and most importantly to workers of those companies - whether he "really believed" it I guess is a moot point.
When you take the "businesses exist to return a profit to shareholders" approach you're always going to focus on leadership that has a track record of doing that, even if that excludes building a good product or for that matter even the long-term viability of the business. Thus, you see these CEO hires that don't seem to make sense - most of us unconsciously still think of businesses as things created to make a thing or do a specific thing, because that's a natural thing to believe.
Anyway I think you can attribute some of the success of both to this, as well as Musk's public image at least ca 2008-2018 or so.
- gibolt 2y agoMost people who have worked close to him generally note that he has intimate knowledge up and down the entire product side (at minimum) of the company. This can lead to micro-management, but leads to far better results than most companies could ever hope to achieve. Communication and agreement are what add cost and misdirection to development. When a tiny set of people with one clear goal pull the strings, it is much more efficient to reach the north star product.
- deciplex 2y agoThis seems like an argument for a command economy.
- dsco 2y agoWhy do people always have to preface Elon praise with some initial criticism. The man has objectively created some incredible businesses.
- Wherecombinator 2y agoBecause he’s the worlds oldest 14 year old boy
- eitally 2y ago[flagged]
- azinman2 2y agoWith exceptionally more impact, both good (I’d say net good) and bad.
- WalterBright 2y agoWhat "exceptionally bad" things has he done? Has he killed anybody? Stolen candy from a baby? Framed somebody for a crime?
- ctack 2y agoAm sure you could make the argument that misleading FSD have killed a bunch of people.
- WalterBright 2y agoTesla's instructions say to keep one's hands on the wheel. (I don't have a Tesla so haven't read them myself.)
- azinman2 2y agoExceptional modified the quantity of impact, not the quality of good or bad.
- cletus 2y agoI don't want to go deep down this rabbit hole but IMHO there has been a whole lot of historical revisionism and propaganda regarding the history of both Tesla and SpaceX. Tesla lists Elon Musk as a founder but he didn't found it. He was an early investor who essentially took over the company. Tesla only exists through government largesse, specifically carbon tax credits. Also, it arguably only survived thanks to a 2009 Department of Energy loan (for $465 million). If you look at the history here, this loan is under a cloud. This is particularly funny given Elon's self-made propaganda. SpaceX succeeded (IMHO) in spite of Elon not because of him. I've read (admittedly unverified) accounts where someone in SpaceX's leadership essentially built a wall around Elon to insulate the rest of the company from him. SpaceX engineers themselves are a byproduct of NASA to a large degree. Also, SpaceX could not have succeeded without government loans, grants and contracts. Even today, it's completely reliant on the government purse. Both Tesla and SpaceX have made huge promises and under-delivered on them or delivered late. People forget how delayed the Falcon timeline was. It just didn't matter because there was no competition: the ULA, for example, is a jobs program with no interest in competing on price or features. And self-driving Telsas, anyone? Anyone?
- geocrasher 2y agoYou have good points, but I really feel like most of those things could be said about any successful company in the aerospace business.
- vl 2y agoI own a Tesla, for practical purposes it is self-driving.
- justinclift 2y agoIncluding into the back of emergency vehicles?
- toss1 2y agoSeriously? Your definition of "self-driving" must be different from normal. Any proper understanding of the term "self driving", including the way Musk advertises it, is 'tell car through the UI where you want it to go, sit back and it reliably gets you there with zero further input, better than the average human driver'. Please post a video of it doing this for any route on real roads, with no driver input. Seriously. I'd love to see it, because I never have. I've seen Tesla videos with few required driver interventions. But not none. And from the accidents I've read about, I sure as shirt would not give it a destination and recline reading a book. Especially on left-turns and near emergency vehicles, turning trucks, or construction barriers. So, what is your definition of self-driving, and what performance can you show? And in what road conditions?
- pknomad 2y agoI think you really put this well: This is in opposition to the usual "the only point of a business is to make money" ethos that so permeates neoliberal capitalism that we hardly even notice it anymore. The latter is dysfunctional, inhuman, and ultimately bad for business. Call it cynicism, but decision calculus from upstairs always work in that direction (i.e. gotta hit arbitrary financial goals for this quarter because that's how bonuses and comp gets dictated) so I think in that mindset so I don't setup myself for disappointment or surprise if a decision that doesn't appeal to that shorted-sighted thinking doesn't gain traction.
- dennis_jeeves2 2y ago>This is in opposition to the usual "the only point of a business is to make money" ethos that so permeates neoliberal capitalism that we hardly even notice it anymore. >The latter is dysfunctional, inhuman, and ultimately bad for business. Thanks for putting it words that I could not normally articulate. On HN, I find people are quick to label capitalism=only for profit,hence bad for people and the supposed opposite i.e socialism=good for people. The lack of nuance among cranial challenged is annoying, without realizing that the later embodies the quintessential the-road-to-hell-is-paved-with-good-intentions.
- deciplex 2y agoI mean, for what it's worth I'm a Marxist and that fact definitely influenced my choice of words there and how I think about this stuff. That said, while I'm also a communist (because I can't think of anything else that describes me better), I do think that Marx's critique of capitalism is his most enduring body of work that remains relevant to this day, while his contributions to how to build socialism are important for historical purposes but have been mostly superseded by later theorists. I don't think he would have found that particularly surprising, either. Capitalism is about the accumulation of capital goods into private hands and centralization and socialization of production. To my mind, that's what it does and what drives it forward - most everything else is secondary. That's not quite the same as "only for profit" but it's close. People under capitalism don't all think of it that way, but unfortunately the humans aren't in charge. The logic of capitalism, is.
- dennis_jeeves2 2y ago>People under capitalism don't all think of it that way, but unfortunately the humans aren't in charge. The logic of capitalism, is. What you are saying is that if people are told that meaning of life = make money, then they will do so, with little or no compassion for their fellow humans? ( it's not a rhetorical question, so please answer)
- deciplex 2y agoNo, I'm not saying that at all. People have agency and will act according to various factors including what they perceive as their material interest but also cultural factors such as morality and upbringing, etc. I do think that the incentives established by the relations of production on the economic side of things, will tend to dominate over cultural values most (but not all) of the time. Base and superstructure stuff, in other words. But all I was getting at with my comment is that we can't even be said to be ruled by capitalists, I don't think. Our government acts at the behest of capital not capitalists, and our society is shaped by that as well. All our institutions are bent toward it. It may seem like a trivial distinction but it means that people - even capitalists - who for whatever reason act against the interests of capital accumulation, will find their influence wane and eventually wink out of existence. They'll be pushed out. As such we're ruled by capital i.e. "the humans aren't in charge."
- kortilla 2y agoElon absolutely focuses on making money, which is why it was successful. I don’t know why your conclusion is completely backwards. Do you think blue origin is focused on making money? They haven’t done anything that would indicate that. SpaceX on the other hand focused on landing rockets completely to make money. There is no other reason to do it and it’s why NASA never focused on it. Starlink is entirely to make money to feed the mars mission long term. You might say that his visions aren’t focused on money, but the execution is ruthlessly so. It’s why both companies are famous for squeezing their suppliers so hard and inhousing when they can.
- mbostleman 2y agoYea I have a hard time distinguishing focusing on return vs focusing on product. They’re complimentary, not mutually exclusive. I hope those implementing my investments are focused on both.
- infotainment 2y agoDisagree; consider enshittification; that process embodies the essence of focusing on return vs product.
- dudeinjapan 2y agoIn context it is too early in the cycle for SpaceX to begin enshittification. Wait until they start cutting Mars passenger’s legroom…
- bboygravity 2y agoIMO he is the main design engineer of all products in all his companies. This is why I admire him greatly and don't get the MSM parotting about him being a terrible person because -insert random half true MSM story about some emerald mine or being born into a rich family- or whatever other clickbait bs. His companies where all founded based on his own engineering idea about how an important (existing) product/service could be fundamentally !at least an order of magnitude! better in multiple areas by designing it with a different approach or even different goal (going to space as a country vs commercially building a precense on mars for example). His vision about the future, substantiated by (simple) physics calculations + drive to actually do it make him outright unique in the world right now. There would be no SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, etc without Elon Musk. Period. I don't get why people must insist on what a terrible personality he has (often based on gossip and outright lies).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- esskay 2y agoI cant say I'm a fan of Elon but he got it right with SpaceX. Space is expensive, stupidly expensive. There was zero chance SpaceX would've been able to survive this long if they'd not focused on profits. Reusable rockets brought general launch costs down by millions, reusable farings even more (people underestimate how much they cost. $6 million a pair. At ~$62 million a launch thats a fairly sizable chunk of money to be throwing away). Starlink was a fantastic way to ensure long term high profitability, and is set to bring them $6.6bn this year alone. For some context the Falcon 9 development costs were estimated by Nasa to be around $300 million, and Starship's development is estimated to going to have cost anywhere from $5-$10 billion by the time its fully operational. Starlink's profitability is what's going to make it possible for some monumentally huge projects once Starship is in full swing. In terms of Elons involvement in SpaceX it does seem to be a bit more than just a money making venture for him.
- refulgentis 2y agoThis comment is misleading, unintentionally of course. The comment starts out with "long term high profitability", then offers "bring them 6.6B", and the central proposition of the comment is extremely high Starlink profits allows for free moonshots. 6.6B is a recent revenue projection, not profit.[1] Their finance people say it's unprofitable, still. (off the record) [2] Rooting for them and it will be profitable IMHO, but I've never heard any reporting it's profitable. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1co60j0/starlink_soars_spacexs_satellite_internet/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1co60j0/starl... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-04-10/is-elon-musk-s-starlink-profitable-spacex-satellites-are-money-losers?sref=1uqnIA7D&embedded-checkout=true https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-04-10/is-elon-m...
- boringg 2y agoSpacex still burning investor cash hence the capital raise recently on the backs of another capital raise. Building rockets is a great way to burn capital and also the end product, when working, is a great goal for humanity.
- WalterBright 2y ago> in a sea of otherwise awful personality traits This popular meme is all a gross exaggeration.
- dang 2y ago"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Your comment wouldn't be so bad if you had taken out the obvious provocations ("awful personality traits" etc.), but in any case it flew too close to the planet Musk and the whole thread got sucked in. We don't want to die that way. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20black%20hole&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... (We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40589501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40589501.)
- deciplex 2y agoI did that more in a "let's take this as read and focus on the other things" way i.e. I knew I was going to give Musk a sort of backhanded compliment, and didn't want a bunch of replies from people who hate him, explaining to me carefully and in great detail why they hate him (even though I probably agree with them, it doesn't seem like an interesting discussion to have). Alas, my efforts were in vain.
- dang 2y agoI did get that (more or less), and yes that kind of thing is in vain. It just adds complications, e.g. spawning meta levels of offtopicness (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40590135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40590135). Ultimately there's no way to win with these.