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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

#71

Post by mdbug »

iamcreasy wrote: post #15
HWR_14 wrote: post #9

Earlier 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.

Sandy Munro, by now, is a Tesla shill who can't be taken seriously. Andrej works at Tesla and understandably says nothing bad about his boss.

If I thought my boss was technically clueless and needed to say something nice about him, I would probably phrase it the same way: "He's obviously a pretty incredible person in many ways. I'm still trying to really map out his superpowers. He has incredibly well developed intuition in many aspects where he makes the right judgement calls in what I perceive to be a lack of information. Because he's not in detail about all the things but his judgement is extremely good. I still haven't fully understood how that happens."

Re: Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures

#72

Post by threeseed »

nemothekid wrote: post #37

While 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.

> like almost every fast growing tech giant

This is rubbish and actually offensive.

Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Jack Dorsey, Patrick Collison, Brian Chesky etc. are not abusive. And in fact if you look at all of the fastest growing companies the pattern is for them to be moved out if they are abusive or have troubling behaviour.

Stop perpetuating this myth that the industry tolerates behaviours that other companies don't because by doing so it actually encourages it.

Re: Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures

#73

Post by joshuahedlund »

JohnWhigham wrote: post #50
breck wrote: post #20

Earlier 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.

I'm halfway through Bad Blood (after having already read Musk's and Jobs's iconic biographies) and have been thinking about such comparisons.

Were there specific differences that made Musk and Jobs successful compared to Holmes in spite of their flaws, or is it just random dice outcomes that explain why the former managed to turn the impossible into possible and the latter didn't?

Re: Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures

#74

Post by tluyben2 »

tinco wrote: post #58
peakaboo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may sound a bit weird but haven't you noticed they all are psychopaths? Although high functioning ones. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezoz... These are not healthy people mentally. But they are rich and powerful.

They're not psychopaths, they're just disconnected from your perspective. They've got other stuff on their mind and it's hard for them to put themselves in your shoes. Are you a psychopath for driving your car for a holiday trip, even though there's people dying in 49 degrees heat in Greece? It's really not that different from Jeff Bezos flying his spacecraft. Not that I'm saying it's ok, obviously Bezos's company is…

Don't think they are generally psychopaths, but they need to have some (most of them as I see the 'rules' on Google that make you a psychopath) tendencies that would rank high on the list. You explain it with having a lot on their minds and that's a positive spin; the other explanation is that they are just humans and they just do whatever they are driven to by their vision trampling over whatever in their way in any way possible because they work that way and they have the money to do so.

Re: Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures

#75

Post by peakaboo »

bostonsre wrote: post #56
peakaboo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anger is the ego being upset that people and the world didn't do what you expected. It's natural, but it's absolutely not a good leadership quality to be angry.

> Anger is the ego being upset that people and the world didn't do what you expected Why does ego play a role? Couldn't one be mad because of what they believe is wrong is being done? It's not right to be angry at someone that didn't know any better but there are individuals that I've worked with that aren't aligned with the company well, are lazy and do selfish things. Why am I not allowed to be angry at a person li…

You are allowed but there is a reason old people are not very angry anymore. They have learned to be humble though life, realizing people tend to do their best. If someone is not performing at work, it's usually because of motivation, and that's the job of a good manager to create.

But I think the American culture is quite different from what I'm used to so maybe I sound weird in this context. :)

Re: Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures

#76

Post by lazide »

bostonsre wrote: post #56
peakaboo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anger is the ego being upset that people and the world didn't do what you expected. It's natural, but it's absolutely not a good leadership quality to be angry.

> Anger is the ego being upset that people and the world didn't do what you expected Why does ego play a role? Couldn't one be mad because of what they believe is wrong is being done? It's not right to be angry at someone that didn't know any better but there are individuals that I've worked with that aren't aligned with the company well, are lazy and do selfish things. Why am I not allowed to be angry at a person li…

Anger generally is anchored to something that is being threatened - it is a defense mechanism.

Sometimes, like if you’re angry at an opposing tribesman for attacking your village, it can be helpful. Other times, it can lead to acting out in ways that hurt you (like being so angry you don’t pay attention to your surroundings and get ambushed while trying to counter attack said enemy).

There are many possible scenarios - anger at the threat to his stock valuations, or anger at the threat to his public image, or anger at the threat to the illusion he personally held that everything was going ok, or anger and frustration at his inability to get control of the situation in a productive way, which is a threat to many of these things.

Most abuse is when a person is unable to properly manage and avoid painful emotions (such as anger), and projects fault and bad intent onto others - to scapegoat for instance as a maladaptive behavior they haven’t learned an alternative to, among other reasons.

What is being described in the article is classic abusive behavior, no matter the venue. It is not ok, in any environment, and it causes destruction and missed opportunities anywhere it is deployed.

The reason I think you don’t see that in his public persona because he knows it isn’t ok - but can’t control it sometimes, or even worse, thinks it’s a good thing when he can do it in ‘private’. He ‘knows how to treat his woman so he gets dinner on time’, as it were, and she’d better put her makeup on better so he doesn’t look bad in front of his friends

I expect there are many internal witch hunts ongoing for leakers after this, and have been for other leaks too. Since after all, in his eyes it is not the behavior that is wrong, it’s being embarrassed in public that is.

Re: Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures

#77

Post by rendall »

I don't know why anyone would take that book seriously. The author made up the story about Musk demanding to be CEO of Apple, then doubled down when both Musk and Cook denied it. An astonishing example of journalistic malpractice. In any other time this would be career-ending

https://twitter.com/timkhiggins/status/1421156081041088512?s...

Re: Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures

#78

Post by forgotmysn »

NorwegianDude wrote: post #61

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.

when he invested, he was granted the title of both ceo and co-founder, even though the company was already 4 or 5 years old iirc

Re: Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures

#79

Post by fallingknife »

rvz wrote: post #39
rebelos wrote: post #8

I'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).

> I'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. That is a reality distortion field. The Tesla CEO is good at that and it reflects on the deceptive advertisement of FSD and the actual reality of it being unfinished and still unsafe and it puts the lives of m…

No it doesn't put lives at risk. Everyone knows it's not actually full self driving. One of the following must be true:

1) Tesla FSD actually is L5 full self driving

2) Tesla FSD is just driver assist and everyone knows it

3) People are dying in Tesla crashes at a massive rate

I doubt that it's 1 and I know it's not 3 because this would have been noticed immediately by the agencies that track this sort of thing and would be a huge news story. So it has to be 2. Nobody is actually stupid enough to be fooled by the name.

Re: Tesla CEO berated employees, investors and tried to get rid of safety measures

#80

Post by Pyramus »

peakaboo wrote: post #16
rebelos wrote: post #8

I'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).

This may sound a bit weird but haven't you noticed they all are psychopaths? Although high functioning ones. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezoz... These are not healthy people mentally. But they are rich and powerful.

Let me add that you can be both a genius, super smart and creative person - and also be a sociopath/psychopath.

Also add Jobs and many successful surgeons (or so I am told) to the list.

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