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Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

nytimes.com

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Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#101

Post by PinguTS »

tomhoward wrote: post #37

But, he added, “if you have anyone who can do a better job, please let me know. They can have the job. Is there someone who can do the job better? They can have the reins right now.” I think this hits at the crux of the issue around the performance/behaviour of Musk and other leaders of hugely ambitious companies. And I think it highlights the importance of thinking about what kinds of people it will take to lead the…

I just want to emphasis that Elon Musk was never and never will be the founder of Tesla. Instead, Elon Musk booted to 3 original founders out of Tesla.

The original Tesla Roadster was no idea of Elon Musk and also not developed by Elon Musk. It was 3 engineers from the Valley who had the idea of the Tesla Roadster. Elon Musk was a Series A VC at Tesla at the time being. The founders had the idea of developing a hybrid as a following to the Roadster like the Fisker done at the time. At time it happend, I don't know how, that Elon Musk booted those original founders out, because Elon wanted an electric only car.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#102

Post by isostatic »

_bxg1 wrote: post #22
archagon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it's almost absurd to argue that Musk is the only billionaire alive whose work is a net positive on society.

Name another billionaire, other than maybe Bill Gates, who's presently doing anything good, at all.

Bezos. Amazon has revolutionised the way we buy things, meaning land is no longer needed for strip malls, oil isn't burnt driving to them, people aren't having inferior things pushed on them by dodgy salesmen, or wasting an hour to buy a single item, or buying the wrong item because the right one is out of stock.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#103

Post by apatters »

tomhoward wrote: post #37

But, he added, “if you have anyone who can do a better job, please let me know. They can have the job. Is there someone who can do the job better? They can have the reins right now.” I think this hits at the crux of the issue around the performance/behaviour of Musk and other leaders of hugely ambitious companies. And I think it highlights the importance of thinking about what kinds of people it will take to lead the…

This is a very old story. Musk has become a celebrity. Everyone knows who he is. He dates famous singers, models etc. He has a drug dependency. He increasingly is making bizarre statements.

Dude needs a handler. His continued success probably depends on him getting one and being able to hand over the reins a bit, at least in terms of what he says in public. And he needs to work on the Ambien issue.

None of this means Tesla and SpaceX, which have deep benches of smart people, need to fail. None of it has much to do with those businesses at all. Fame takes a toll on a man.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#105

Post by lolive »

Fnoord wrote: post #39
tomhoward wrote: post #37

But, he added, “if you have anyone who can do a better job, please let me know. They can have the job. Is there someone who can do the job better? They can have the reins right now.” I think this hits at the crux of the issue around the performance/behaviour of Musk and other leaders of hugely ambitious companies. And I think it highlights the importance of thinking about what kinds of people it will take to lead the…

Its easy to say that because the chance of it happening is slim, and it allows for him to bail out if that's occurring short-term. For me, Musk's major failure was with the children who were lost in a cave and his pedophile tweet. Everyone has flaws and makes mistakes, but that mistake showed me how flawed his personality is. It was classic narcissism behaviour, right from textbook.

His apologies tweet is indeed quite good. And shows that he is learning everyday:"His actions against me do not justify my actions against him, and for that I apologise". Cf https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44870303 for the details.

[I let you decide if this is pure PR, or real apologies.]

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#106

Post by davej »

matrixagent wrote: post #98
tomhoward wrote: post #37

But, he added, “if you have anyone who can do a better job, please let me know. They can have the job. Is there someone who can do the job better? They can have the reins right now.” I think this hits at the crux of the issue around the performance/behaviour of Musk and other leaders of hugely ambitious companies. And I think it highlights the importance of thinking about what kinds of people it will take to lead the…

"and they will inevitably have extreme personality traits" – I find that a pretty bold claim and don't believe it to be true. And I'd much rather settle Mars a few hundred years later if that in turn means that Mars will be settled by not-so-big-assholes than if it happened sooner.

> And I'd much rather settle Mars a few hundred years later if that in turn means that Mars will be settled by not-so-big-assholes than if it happened sooner.

I haven't seen a lot of evidence to suggest that Musk is an asshole. He deeply cares about what he is doing but he also seems to care about people. He is sometimes impulsive and perhaps volatile when he's running low on sleep. I have never heard of him subjecting others to something he would not subject onto himself.

Even if he is a complete asshole. If he advanced the advent of electric cars and space travel by a hundred years then I'd take it.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#107

Post by shriver »

> Efforts are underway to find a No. 2 executive to help take some of the pressure off Mr. Musk, people briefed on the search said.

I don't know how anyone could read this and not realise that's a direct search for a replacement CEO. With the best will in the world, Musk has a dozen people at Tesla who COULD pick up some of the slack, the issue isn't not having the right people, the issue is that he won't hand anything off. I don't see that changing.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#108

Post by wklauss »

sudhirj wrote: post #81
Animats wrote: post #11

"Then he got in a Tesla Model S and drove himself to the airport. En route, Mr. Musk typed his fateful message." Don't text while driving. This going private thing is a strange idea. Sell Tesla to the Saudi sovereign wealth fund? The one dedicated to keeping oil a viable industry? Does he want Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud as a boss? That makes no sense. Softbank might make sense. Part of Musk's problem seems to be "O…

Isn’t the Saudi fund a hedge fund? Thought they had other orgs to promote oil, I assumed this fund is to get ready for a post-oil world.

You are right. They invest in various alternative projects (real state, construction... even Uber!) to protect the country economy from future oil decline.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#109

Post by watwut »

tomhoward wrote: post #37

But, he added, “if you have anyone who can do a better job, please let me know. They can have the job. Is there someone who can do the job better? They can have the reins right now.” I think this hits at the crux of the issue around the performance/behaviour of Musk and other leaders of hugely ambitious companies. And I think it highlights the importance of thinking about what kinds of people it will take to lead the…

> Do we actually want Tesla and SpaceX to fail?

That should be market thing, really. Is the business sound or just cool? The difference matters.

> My concern is not for Musk's feelings, but for the way society goes about choosing, developing and critiquing the next generation of ambitious leaders, of whom we'll need plenty more if the world's increasingly complex problems are to be solved.

The question is also, if you build something large and ambitious, does it cancel out the bad things that you done in the process of building it? Do we want to celebrate large and ambitious in expense of ethical?

If another guy builds smaller company and resist pressure to be cool, but there is less price on employees, less lies to investors and public, the business side actually works, is that other guy really lesser?

> I should add that this applies whether we're talking about corporate leaders or political/community leaders.

Absolutely. Which is why it matters whether who we praise as role model is has ethical limits and considerations too. It matters very practically whether he/she is able/willing to foresee whether the dream business can work out - or whether he/she goes purely by own "I want it to be true" feelings.

Re: Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’ Year

#110

Post by PeterisP »

Fnoord wrote: post #42
mdorazio wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but it's fairly common for people on Ambien to have stories about crazy things their SO found them doing in the middle of the night. These stories often pop up in conversation similar to how drunk stories do. There's even an entire subreddit dedicated to the topic [1]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ambien/

Is that solely on Ambien or in combination with other drugs?

No combination is needed, Ambien by itself causes such effects.
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