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Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

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Re: Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

#71

Post by eclipxe »

rchaud wrote: post #64
jackmott42 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been this kind of rhetoric around Elon things a lot. "Wheres the reusuable booster?" "Where is the model 3?" "Haha the model 3 is in a tent". Meanwhile the model 3 and Y dominate world EV sales, and the reusable boosters have become a boring part of weekly life. I'm not sure I would interpret Elons aspirational predictions as lack of involvement. It isn't unusual to publicly push for the impossible in the h…

Coaches and managers probably do not have the Mythical Man-Month on their bookshelf. Musk and his advisors almost definitely do. In any case, coaches that make these kinds of announcements several times and fail to achieve them, do not stay in the job very long. In Musk's case, this is immaterial as he has rigged the Tesla board with loyalists and family members.

Most managers I know have the mythical man month in their bookshelf.

Re: Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

#72

Post by mkl95 »

yamtaddle wrote: post #70
mkl95 wrote: post #20

Each of those companies probably has an actual CEO that goes by "VP of operations" or some similar title. And Musk mostly approves some of their decisions and gives his take.

See also smaller-time founder-CEO sorts with multiple businesses going at once, a couple board seats, another on a nonprofit, an advisory role at yet another company, and periodic self-congratulatory Linkin posts about how despite being so busy and successful they manage to find time for family. Well wouldn't you know, one of the employees at one of their 25-person companies is an executive assistant! Guess which one…

That would be my guess as well. If they were micromanaged with some ticketing system like their employees, a typical roadmap would be something like fly 1st class -> eat ice cream -> have sex with your 4th girlfriend -> swim -> eat ice cream. No blockers!

Re: Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

#73

Post by Chirag »

I think being CEO for X number of places is more of a directions setting and "visionary" thinking if you have a strong execution layer beneath you.

Twitter just seems to be getting some attention as a recent project and will be hands-on till the actual doers are in the right places.

If you are not tasked with raising capital and hiring people, I am guessing you can be CEO in many more places. :)

Re: Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

#74

Post by robenkleene »

yks wrote: post #50
aantix wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Carmack considers him a true engineer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQro0rkg2DE I think Carmack would call him out (Elon) if he thought less of him. Carmack seems honest to a fault. I don't think "smoke and mirrors" is justified.

Musk’s thing is an ability to say things that are kinda common sense and evident to most low-level techies but which the modern corporate culture prohibits to say aloud, e.g. “lots of managers is actually bad”. Musk says that and everyone is “wow what a maverick”, some L4 eng says that and people comment how it is a loser mindset. He may be a “true engineer” but I don’t think a particularly genius one at that.

Curious what you think of Google's experiment getting rid of managers in the early 2000s?

I think I originally read about this in Measure What Matters:

https://www.amazon.com/Measure-What-Matters-Google-Foundatio...

Here's a blog post that seems to summarize:

https://medium.com/illumination/google-once-fired-all-manage...

(Personally, I came away from reading about this incident thinking most organizations have an appropriate amount of managers.)

Re: Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

#75

Post by whoknew1122 »

aantix wrote: post #31
whoknew1122 wrote: post #11

You buy or found them and make yourself CEO. The real question is whether someone can be CEO of 5 companies and do a good job. Personally, I think Musk is much better at being a brand than a CEO. But you can hide a lot behind smoke and mirrors if you're the richest person in the world and other rich people will throw money at you just to be your friend.

John Carmack considers him a true engineer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQro0rkg2DE I think Carmack would call him out (Elon) if he thought less of him. Carmack seems honest to a fault. I don't think "smoke and mirrors" is justified.

I'm not an engineer, so I can't really comment on whether someone is a good engineer or not. But he's not engineering here. He's leading 5 companies.

In corporate culture there's this thought that being good at something makes you good at managing people who do that thing. But that's not true. Being an engineer and a manager of engineers requires different skill sets. And being a CEO is many levels divorced from a manager of engineers.

Elon as an engineer or coder stopped being relevant after Paypal. Now it's about Elon the executive. Which, as an outside observer, seems more to be about Elon's brand than any actual managerial genius.

Re: Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

#76

Post by yamtaddle »

mkl95 wrote: post #72
yamtaddle wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See also smaller-time founder-CEO sorts with multiple businesses going at once, a couple board seats, another on a nonprofit, an advisory role at yet another company, and periodic self-congratulatory Linkin posts about how despite being so busy and successful they manage to find time for family. Well wouldn't you know, one of the employees at one of their 25-person companies is an executive assistant! Guess which one…

That would be my guess as well. If they were micromanaged with some ticketing system like their employees, a typical roadmap would be something like fly 1st class -> eat ice cream -> have sex with your 4th girlfriend -> swim -> eat ice cream. No blockers!

I reckon it's something like the end state of that thing where the better paid you are the better treated you are and, not infrequently, the easier the work is.

Re: Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

#77

Post by yks »

robenkleene wrote: post #74
yks wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk’s thing is an ability to say things that are kinda common sense and evident to most low-level techies but which the modern corporate culture prohibits to say aloud, e.g. “lots of managers is actually bad”. Musk says that and everyone is “wow what a maverick”, some L4 eng says that and people comment how it is a loser mindset. He may be a “true engineer” but I don’t think a particularly genius one at that.

Curious what you think of Google's experiment getting rid of managers in the early 2000s? I think I originally read about this in Measure What Matters : https://www.amazon.com/Measure-What-Matters-Google-Foundatio... Here's a blog post that seems to summarize: https://medium.com/illumination/google-once-fired-all-manage... (Personally, I came away from reading about this incident thinking most organizations have an a…

I think "no managers" approach can work only for tiny organizations. Rigorously hiring self-motivated people might delay the need for managers somewhat but at some point they are inevitable. Once managerial layer is in place, it is looking to grow itself and eventually that growth becomes detrimental by slowing down the project delivery. Different corporate cultures and initial trajectories affect the speed of this evolution, but it seems like every org more or less follows this path if we're looking at the span of decades.

> most organizations have an appropriate amount of managers.

technically true, but what would be the measure? if only we could check the alternative timeline with less managers.

I would not be surprised if quantity of managers in any org is asymptotically approaching the maximum number possible while the org is still able to produce any output.

Re: Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

#78

Post by eloff »

eloff wrote: post #17
whoknew1122 wrote: post #11

You buy or found them and make yourself CEO. The real question is whether someone can be CEO of 5 companies and do a good job. Personally, I think Musk is much better at being a brand than a CEO. But you can hide a lot behind smoke and mirrors if you're the richest person in the world and other rich people will throw money at you just to be your friend.

Except he was also doing a phenomenal job early in his career too. It's not all smoke and mirrors or connections.

Everyone downvoting me did worse in their career. It's easy to be a critic. But like him or hate him, you can't argue with the results that man achieved. None of us have done as much.

Re: Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

#79

Post by cameldrv »

whoknew1122 wrote: post #75
aantix wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Carmack considers him a true engineer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQro0rkg2DE I think Carmack would call him out (Elon) if he thought less of him. Carmack seems honest to a fault. I don't think "smoke and mirrors" is justified.

I'm not an engineer, so I can't really comment on whether someone is a good engineer or not. But he's not engineering here. He's leading 5 companies. In corporate culture there's this thought that being good at something makes you good at managing people who do that thing. But that's not true. Being an engineer and a manager of engineers requires different skill sets. And being a CEO is many levels divorced from a ma…

The flip side to this is that there's a thought that you can be a good manager without being at least adequate at the task that is being managed. I've found this to be untrue, and overwhelmingly the best managers are also good at the job they're managing.

The problem for managers that don't have the domain knowledge is that they're completely reliant on others for technical judgement. If they don't have the ability to see whether what someone is proposing is reasonable technically, they also don't really have the ability to independently determine whether they should trust someone's technical judgment. This can lead to an excessive reliance on credentials, and a highly political workplace, since that becomes the main way to influence the manager's decisions from below.

Re: Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

#80

Post by eloff »

msbarnett wrote: post #25
eloff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except he was also doing a phenomenal job early in his career too. It's not all smoke and mirrors or connections.

Like when they had to force him out of PayPal before he destroyed the company with his “rewrite the entire backend for Windows Server” mandate?

Because successful people never make mistakes? I'm not sure what your point is.
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