Somewhat of topic but:
> Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk
Why do people keep thinking Elon founded Tesla? Pretty sure he wasn't one of the founders, so I don't get why people think so.
Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures
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Re: Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Elon said it many times over the years that he rather spend his time on engineering and design over management. I'm always thrown when public figures who have an obvious incentive to lie are taken at their word in public statements. It happens all the time with politicians and CEOs. If you look at where Musk seems to add value, it's 100% in the management zone. Well, that and the other CEO duties of representing th…
In recent interviews - Sandy Munro and Andrej Karpathy vouched his technical capability. But it appears you have made up your mind as it seems to be the simplest answer.
Not sure if you're an Engineer or not.
But it's very common to have people involved in the engineering process e.g. Business Analysts, Project Managers, Testers who have a deep understanding of how things work. And by all accounts have excellent technical capability.
That doesn't mean they have the ability to design or build the thing though.
Re: Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures
#63I've always found the reports of his behind the scenes behavior and its stark contrast with his public persona to be incredibly disturbing, because it paints a picture of someone with psychopathic tendencies. I suspect there's something really dark with him that originates in his childhood (suffered through horrific bullying and a hellishly awful father).
> stark contrast with his public persona I don't really follow Musk, so pretty much everything I hear about him comes from whatever antics bubbles up to a tech-y press (such as Ars Technica or posts here). As a result, the mental image of him that I have is that he's an arrogant, egotistical smartass with a selfish streak that sometimes can be seen as altruistic. Which is basically the kind of behavior that this arti…
The public persona is that he's good at engineering.
When in actuality, all of these stories seem to indicate that he's incompetent at it. People were willing to put up with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (other egotistical jackasses) because they made good engineering decisions.
But Elon Musk's decisions are "Lets have an automated factory line, and I'm planning the factory will only have 30,000 workers". Then suddenly 40,000 need to be hired instead (because there's no automation technology to do the things he wanted), and now his financials are a mess and he has to build a Tent in the parking lot to house all of the extra production lines. And now people wonder why their Model 3 / Model Y have paint issues or other quality-control defects (Wompy Wheels)
Re: Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures
#64I guess there are some true facts in this book but I am overall very skeptic of the picture the author is trying to paint or the conclusions he is drawing from those facts. For example, the book says Elon wanted to be Apple's CEO post Tesla acquisition on a phone call. But Elon said it many times over the years that he rather spend his time on engineering and design over management. Edit: Also Tim Cook mentioned in a…
The waterfall of misinformation: 1) Author fabricates "facts" for his book 2) Tabloids copy those "facts" and add filler to fabricate outrage 3) Twitter outrage specialists pick these "facts" up and retweet 4) Other people form their opinion based on 1), 2), 3)
An alternative, more direct route for spreading misinformation:
1) Be infamous
2) Have a Twitter account
3) Lie
Re: Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures
#65Musk said he was going to automate the factory and he is going to automate the factory, no matter what.
Musk is a visionary, he lives in the future. For him the future is as real as the present, and has a clear pathway for it. He is going to make mistakes and some pathways are impossible to transit, but the goal remains the same and he will find a new way to go there. No matter if it takes five years and it is not possible now, but he will do it.
Field is a different kind of person. Things are the way they are, if nobody has done something before, it is impossible. For him not being able to automate things at first is a proof that he is right and Musk is wrong and things are impossible to automate further, forever.
Obviously both personalities are going to clash, only one can prevail. It happens in every single company out there. If two co founders have different values and ideas of what the company should do, there is a clash.
Being the most shorted company in Human history, there has always been a huge economic interest in portraying Musk badly and making shares go down.
If what the article says is the most serious thing they could find, I don't see the problems.
I have worked in the industry as an engineer in Europe and we had way more serious problems every single week.
Re: Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures
#66While I'm sure Elon was abusive (like almost every fast growing tech giant except maybe Zuckerberg?), I learned that the author of this book fabricated an entire exchange between Elon and Tim Cook, in which Elon only agreed to sell Tesla to Apple if Elon became the CEO of Apple. Both Elon and Tim Cook say that they have never ever spoken to each other as Tim Cook denied the request to meet with Elon.
Many facts that cannot be proven or documented are most likely fabricated to fit in a biography that sounds too artificial to be real.
Re: Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
The waterfall of misinformation: 1) Author fabricates "facts" for his book 2) Tabloids copy those "facts" and add filler to fabricate outrage 3) Twitter outrage specialists pick these "facts" up and retweet 4) Other people form their opinion based on 1), 2), 3)
You don’t need to read fabricated facts if you simply can follow Elon on Twitter. If you put down the rose-tinted glasses, you see that he puts out a lot of dumb stuff and many lies.
if you think missing self-imposed deadlines is "many lies"
Re: Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures
#68I've always found the reports of his behind the scenes behavior and its stark contrast with his public persona to be incredibly disturbing, because it paints a picture of someone with psychopathic tendencies. I suspect there's something really dark with him that originates in his childhood (suffered through horrific bullying and a hellishly awful father).
> and its stark contrast with his public persona
Isn't that just... human?
Do you "act" like shit in public? Don't most of us put on a show in public (social media, etc)?
Re: Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anger is a natural human emotion. There's a time and a place for it. If you're in the NFL, on the field. If you're in the NFL of car making, on the factory floor. Tom Brady isn't so polite for 60 minutes on Sundays. Never once in my life have I met a world class performer who doesn't have some "field" where anger and profanity are permitted. If you want to be the best you can be I don't see how you can hit that witho…
This is something I think about every now and then. The problem is that the Jobs/Gates/Musks are the shining exceptions. Survivorship bias basically. For every one of them, there's probably 100 other people in leadership positions that have similarly nasty temperaments, but nowhere near as successful as they are.
There are also plenty of people with relatively calm demeanors that achieved similar success leading companies. Google's founders, Buffett, etc.
Re: Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
The waterfall of misinformation: 1) Author fabricates "facts" for his book 2) Tabloids copy those "facts" and add filler to fabricate outrage 3) Twitter outrage specialists pick these "facts" up and retweet 4) Other people form their opinion based on 1), 2), 3)
You don’t need to read fabricated facts if you simply can follow Elon on Twitter. If you put down the rose-tinted glasses, you see that he puts out a lot of dumb stuff and many lies.
I read his tweets. He posts memes and technical stuff (Tesla, SpaceX news). Most of his tweets about crypto are uninformed. You've got to cherry-pick to find actual lies