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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

#361

Post by [deleted] »

tomhoward wrote: post #120
skrebbel wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a hidden false dichotomy there: That Tesla and Space X couldn't exist / succeed without Musk working his employees and himself into a burnout. I'm not sure that that is true. The same Musk with the same employees could've perfectly well done these companies at a sane pace - maybe even without losing speed in the grand scheme of things given that less stuff would've gone wrong.

The same Musk with the same employees I think I agree with everything except that. What I'm saying is we can't have everything that's positive about Telsa, but completely discard Musk. What we _should_ hope for is for the current version of Musk to become a better version of Musk - say, one that can build a viable EV company and help bring about a global transition away from combustion-powered transport, but without…

[deleted]

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

#362

Post by speedplane »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #272
mikekchar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work those kinds of hours when I was young. 16 hours a day during the week and 8 hours a day on the weekend. No days off. I enjoyed it. It's tiring, though. As I get older (50 now), I can't do it any more. I still over work -- because I really like working. A while ago I ended up in the hospital from what seems to have been a panic attack (that lasted a week...) It appears that panic attacks can really feel…

What do you like about working? I'm really struggling to find something in life that I consider productive that I enjoy doing.

The first step is to figure out what you like doing, regardless of whether it’s productive. The second step is to just do it all the time. Over time opportunities will pop up.

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

#363

Post by speedplane »

simion314 wrote: post #198
speedplane wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they didn’t have hype, they wouldn’t be funded and they wouldn’t get off the ground. Hype is now an unfortunate requirement of any successful company.

But the big disadvantage is when the hype will work against you, there are many examples like the No Man Sky game that was a decent game but because of the hype it will be forever remembered on how not to hype the product, in the present the game has the promissed features but very few will take a look at it. I understand that a company wants good PR, but I think you need to keep it real, like if a dude posts a video…

The balance between making promises and delivering on them is always and difficult to navigate. Today, society leans more towards making promises than delivering. It used to be different, and maybe one day it will be again.

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

#364

Post by Hurtak »

mdorazio wrote: post #32
danso wrote: post #28

I haven't been the biggest Musk fan but this profile did evoke sympathy from me, and felt far more honest than the persona he conveys via Twitter. I don't get how the board could for so long be OK knowing that Musk is as he is, and not putting a much higher priority in finding a second-in-command. What Tesla is trying to achieve is part personal genius/drive from Musk, but I would expect a huge part of it is good log…

> Is there something particularly hard about finding a qualified COO for Tesla? From talking to a few former execs at Tesla, yes: working directly for Elon.

Go on. These are the random insights that we love hn for.

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

#365

Post by isostatic »

bopbop wrote: post #337
isostatic wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has Telsa really popularised it? Or is this looking at things from an SV perspective? Certainly in the UK it's a minor player compared with the Nissan Leaf, and plugin hybrids are even more popular

Well, anecdotally, I'm from the UK, and hadn't heard of the Nissan Leaf until you mentioned it. Tesla, on the other hand... Although yes, actually that's very impressive. With regards to Hybrids, my (limited) understanding is that they are part of the problem - they're better, but only better by half. From what I'm reading about global warming, we need to push as far as possible towards a fully electric, mostly renew…

Plug in hybrids mean you get to pootle around on battery power for local trips to the shop/school/etc, but have a car for long trips

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

#366

Post by marchenko »

_bxg1 wrote: post #233
dingaling wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that it was mass-production hybrids in the late 90s that moved us towards the renewables-based future. People could buy them without fear of running out of charge, yet they gamified energy-effiency for drivers who had never really considered that beyond the price of petrol at the pump. Without hybrids having shouldered the door open, I doubt that pure EVs would have fared much better than in previous decade…

Before Tesla, electric and especially hybrid cars were (needlessly) seen by society as dorky and lame. In a culture like America's, for a category of cars, that's a death knell condemning them to living in a niche forever. Silly as that barrier was, Tesla managed to change it.

I would credit the Prius with this shift in attitude. The Prius wasn't cool, but it was cool enough, and more affordable with a reputation for reasonable resale value.

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

#367

Post by 3pt14159 »

cellis wrote: post #347
3pt14159 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've said similar things about Amazon, but I never had the balls to bet against Bezos and I'm glad I didn't. Even at 10x the earnings Amazon would still be a tenuous bet at its current market cap. I know the whole "ecommerce is a bear" and all that, but let's be real here; it isn't that much of a bear and Amazon is selling cheap Chinese shit. They're going to go the way that Ebay did. With AI and cheap energy logisti…

I think the problem is you’re severely underestimating the role of Amazon as a market maker / provider of liquidity. By buying in bulk, they underwrite the risk of not having enough direct-to-consumer customers and allow the manufacturer to produce more. Kind of like a bank, or a factor, only tremendously more influential in the process. The manufacturer cannot easily sell to end users, as it requires fine tuned deli…

Fined tune delivery is on a steady march to commodization. AI and API standards are going to interface with flexible logistics chains made up of autonomous systems.

Now, you're 100% right about discoverability. But Amazon is misplaying here if that's the long game. They should be a quality filter, not a cheap marketplace of knock-off Harry Potter toys.

You're also right that Google isn't nailing it. Really, I would argue that tastemakers are still leading the way for physical goods; with rating systems coming in a distant second. Ultimately I think a web of trust is going to develop to solve many of these problems, but that is largely a task of user interface, since enumerating trust and context is too onerous to push on a user. Besides, making it explicit is provably gamed as much as possible, see LinkedIn's "skills" for example.

Or Google could get its act in gear and cut amazon out of it. Hard to tell what will happen.

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

#368

Post by that_jojo »

billylindeman wrote: post #267
that_jojo wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely just to play devil's advocate, here: When has a major innovative company ever done better after ousting a visionary but perhaps somewhat toxic founder? Maybe we could look at Uber, but it's too soon to tell. And The new management there seems earnest, but I'm not sure they're looking so hot from an actual business perspective.

General Motors. William durant vs Alfred Sloan. But better is relative.

Oh shit, I like this one. Nice work.

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

#369

Post by leot »

fullshark wrote: post #269
leot wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name a time when a genuinely ambitious and innovative company booted its visionary founders, and it went well.

Tesla

They weren't the kind of visionary founders that we know the names of.

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

#370

Post by tim333 »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #345
tim333 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it for jetlag. It's pretty good really. I guess people put up with the risk of odd side effects as it normally works ok.

Just out of curiosity, why would one take a prescription sleeping pill for jet lag when there's over the counter ones for occasional use? I've taken OTC sleeping pills to recover from jet lag with great success.

I got them in Vietnam where you can get them over the counter. By the way if anyone's using them for that I've found you can often use a half or quarter and it's less side effecty that way.
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