In my eyes, Larry Ellison on the Tesla BoD just damaged the brand of Tesla by an order of magnitude.
Most people (and most of prospective Tesla buyers) have no idea who he is. Doubt the reputation gets tainted at all by this.
Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors
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Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the person is valuable because it’s own independent thoughts leadership and vision etc. It has little to do with gender. Please do not pay attention to gender and potentially downplay woman’s own intellectual power.
Please do not pay attention to gender and potentially downplay woman’s own intellectual power. Right. Valuing people more or less depending on what chromosomes they have or how the flesh they have under their clothes is formed is wrong and dehumanizing. People should be valued by what they do and make, not by how they are born and raised. This is how you separate real social justice from embittered identitarians posi…
> Valuing people more or less depending on what chromosomes they have or how the flesh they have under their clothes is formed is wrong and dehumanizing. People should be valued by what they do and make, not by how they are born and raised.
This depends on context though, right? We all have our blind spots and our areas of unusual insight, and these are shaped partly by our life experience, which is shaped partly by our gender, race, economic background, etc. So if a group consists almost entirely of men (or women, or people who grew up rich, or whatever), it might genuinely have some avoidable blind spots and biases.
Treating women as superior or inferior to men is dumb, but caring about gender balance can make good sense.
[edit: the key point, which I didn't make explicit, is that this holds even if there was no significant bias in the hiring process that produced the imbalance. People who are great choices individually might not make the best team, if their strengths and weaknesses are correlated rather than complementary.]
Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does this mean that a company should use somebody who owns a lot of shares during bad times (when some drastic measure is needed to bring the company back into profitability), and normal paycheck-people during normal times (to ensure that no big risk is taken without reason)? (genuinely asking)
confused as to why someone who owns a lot of shares would want to take a "big risk" "without reason" during "normal times." Wouldn't a person with a lot of stock not want to take a big risk without reason at any time?
> confused as to why someone who owns a lot of shares would want to take a "big risk" "without reason" during "normal times."
I wrote "normal paycheck-people during normal times (to ensure that no big risk is taken without reason)"
> Wouldn't a person with a lot of stock not want to take a big risk without reason at any time?
(honestly, I'm not sure if I understand the double negation correctly) If you got the stock (or options) for the price of "1" while becoming CEO or similar, you'll probably desperately try to raise that stock price above 1 while your "empire" lasts.
Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors
#234my guess is that elon musk will leave sooner or later, having to listen to someone with an ego like larry ellison will drive elon insane.
Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors
#235Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors
#236Bruce Scott, the co-founder of Oracle says, “I remember Larry very distinctly telling me one time: Bruce, we can’t be successful unless we lie to customers.” And adds: “All the things that you would read in books of somebody being a leader, he wasn’t. But he was tenacious; he would never give up on anything.” [0] Elon stretches the truth constantly. Should be a good fit. [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/01/larry-e…
> But he was tenacious; he would never give up on anything. To be fair, in my mind this is the one most common trait I find in successful entrepreneurs and leaders. I've seen leaders who I didn't think were particularly bright, or extroverted, or empathic, but man, did they not get stressed out by obstacles that came in their way. They either sidestepped them or overcame them, but they did not dwell on them and let t…
I think there's a driver there that "the rest" of us just don't have. I enjoy an easy life. I don't want to work hard; that's not my driver in life. Therefore by this measure I will never be "successful".
Fortunately for me I'm happy with my own definition of "success".
Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors
#237Bruce Scott, the co-founder of Oracle says, “I remember Larry very distinctly telling me one time: Bruce, we can’t be successful unless we lie to customers.” And adds: “All the things that you would read in books of somebody being a leader, he wasn’t. But he was tenacious; he would never give up on anything.” [0] Elon stretches the truth constantly. Should be a good fit. [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/01/larry-e…
> But he was tenacious; he would never give up on anything. To be fair, in my mind this is the one most common trait I find in successful entrepreneurs and leaders. I've seen leaders who I didn't think were particularly bright, or extroverted, or empathic, but man, did they not get stressed out by obstacles that came in their way. They either sidestepped them or overcame them, but they did not dwell on them and let t…
Is it that they don't get stressed, or that they are great at hiding it to project an air of confidence at all times. And how would you tell the difference?
Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
This guy built a company that services most of the data infrastructure of the world and pumps 15 billion of cash every year- but you remember him by what advice he gave to one person ; that just seems unfair.
Oracle does not serve most of the data infrastructure anymore. That is a thing of the past. They are struggling terribly and it probably will get worse considering how the big 3 cloud providers move successfully forward and Oracle loses ground daily.
Larry Ellison thought the cloud was a "fashion driven" software buzzword fad in 2008 [1][2], a miss as big as Ballmer with the iPhone. The cloud will ultimately probably kill off Oracle.
> The Oracle chief executive told shareholders at the company's annual meeting Friday that the technology is a fad that doesn't have a clear business model, despite the fact that Google , Microsoft and practically every other tech company is singing its praises.
> "I think it's ludicrous that cloud computing is taking over the world," Ellison told about 100 shareholders who attended the meeting at the software maker's headquarters. "We think it's very hard to make money in this thing."
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FacYAI6DY0 [2] https://www.forbes.com/2008/10/10/ellison-cloud-computing-te...
Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors
#239Bruce Scott, the co-founder of Oracle says, “I remember Larry very distinctly telling me one time: Bruce, we can’t be successful unless we lie to customers.” And adds: “All the things that you would read in books of somebody being a leader, he wasn’t. But he was tenacious; he would never give up on anything.” [0] Elon stretches the truth constantly. Should be a good fit. [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/01/larry-e…
> "Elon stretches the truth constantly."
That's putting it gently. Putting aside his twitter spats, Tesla is still prominently advertising "Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars"[0] even though their cars do not contain LIDAR, which essentially every expert in the field unconnected to Tesla seems to agree is necessary to implement Level 5 self driving cars[1][2].
[0] https://www.tesla.com/autopilot
[1] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/mobileye-ceo-tesla-self-d...
[2]https://www.wired.com/story/lidar-self-driving-cars-luminar-...
Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors
#240Fascinating. Kathleen Wilson-Thompson is a senior manager at a huge American company, still there doesn't seem to be a Wikipedia article about her.
Only three of the nine execs of Walgreen Boots Alliance have wikipedia pages.
http://www.walgreensbootsalliance.com/about/senior-managemen...