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Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

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Re: Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

#51

Post by IgorPartola »

joenot443 wrote: post #23
bobkazamakis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah yes, he famously had no connections before his career, and his parents were poor immigrants with only a few emerald mines.

Are you suggesting most wealthy immigrants end up founding a litany of companies? This is a bit like attributing Wayne Gretzky's success to the fact Walter was a seasoned coach and a huge hockey fan. Obviously it helps having parents to enable your talents, but it's ignorant to pretend that rich parents alone will allow you to rise to the top.

Necessary but not sufficient is a phrase that comes to mind.

Re: Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

#52

Post by lapcat »

Jack Dorsey was CEO of both Twitter and Block (formerly Square), but it became pretty obvious to everyone that he was mostly a mascot at Twitter while focusing on Block, and used his Twitter account mainly to promote Bitcoin.

Steve Jobs owned Pixar while CEO of Apple, but Jobs did not participate much in the day to day operations of Pixar, leaving that to people like Edwin Catmull. He was fully focused on Apple.

Re: Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

#53

Post by dwater »

IgorPartola wrote: post #46
dwater wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the issue being discussed. His engineering capabilities are irrelevant to him running the day-to-day operations of 5 of the biggest companies in the world at once.

In what universe are these the biggest companies?

They're not FAANG or JPMorgan, but he's not the CEO of Elon's Cheese Emporium on Main either. SpaceX has a market cap of $100B, Tesla $700B. That's bigger than any company I'm CEO of.

Actually, due to the downturn Netflix's market cap is only $125B, and Meta is $250B. So although they aren't all monstrously huge, I'd say Elon's companies are pretty big and require work to keep running.

Re: Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

#54

Post by falcolas »

aantix wrote: post #49
rocgf wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP did not say he is not an engineer or a fake engineer.

> But you can hide a lot behind smoke and mirrors You're a fake engineer if you hide behind smoke and mirrors.

This thread is about his ability to be a CEO. Which can also utilize smoke and mirrors.

Re: Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

#55

Post by jackmott42 »

rchaud wrote: post #30

Musk is a figurehead at both Tesla and SpaceX. He is too far out of the salt mines (or too impatient) to reconcile his wildly optimistic release estimates with actual engineeering reality. Where is the Hyperloop? Where is the Cybertruck? Where's full self driving? Every single one of these is years behind the CEO's own formally stated launch dates. So who's really in charge? It's not at all surprising that he'd insta…

There has been this kind of rhetoric around Elon things a lot. "Wheres the reusuable booster?" "Where is the model 3?" "Haha the model 3 is in a tent".

Meanwhile the model 3 and Y dominate world EV sales, and the reusable boosters have become a boring part of weekly life.

I'm not sure I would interpret Elons aspirational predictions as lack of involvement. It isn't unusual to publicly push for the impossible in the hopes you get close to it. Coaches and managers all do this.

Re: Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

#56

Post by daniel-cussen »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #26

Is Wikipedia's Neuralink article out-of-date? It lists Jared Birchall as CEO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuralink Your point stands of course - Musk's attention must be growing increasingly divided with all of these ventures, you'd think he'd run out of cycles even to delegate work.

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

#58

Post by jakemoshenko »

IgorPartola wrote: post #46
dwater wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the issue being discussed. His engineering capabilities are irrelevant to him running the day-to-day operations of 5 of the biggest companies in the world at once.

In what universe are these the biggest companies?

Tesla is 65 on the Fortune 500, and Twitter was ~600 before the acquisition. SpaceX is also huge, but it's hard to say just how huge without it being public. The amount of commitment and work to become CEO at a company that's even 600 on the Fortune 1000 is insane. A quick google says there are 213 million companies in the world, I think having at least two in the top 1000 counts, no?

Re: Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

#59

Post by fuckelonmusk »

joenot443 wrote: post #23
bobkazamakis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah yes, he famously had no connections before his career, and his parents were poor immigrants with only a few emerald mines.

Are you suggesting most wealthy immigrants end up founding a litany of companies? This is a bit like attributing Wayne Gretzky's success to the fact Walter was a seasoned coach and a huge hockey fan. Obviously it helps having parents to enable your talents, but it's ignorant to pretend that rich parents alone will allow you to rise to the top.

No post body was provided.
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