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SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

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Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#161

Post by HopenHeyHi »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #108
throwawaymaths wrote: post #96

Anecdotal, but: Startup I worked at hired a bunch of SpaceX and other musk company employees as middle management, during the hyper growth phase and every single one of them was simply awful. Some were just abusive managers, many were just not that effective. The worst one was a manager that would swoop down with heroics, take credit for other people's work, not support reports on ideas you had, played the blame game…

> Some were just abusive managers, many were just not that effective. The worst one was a manager that would swoop down with heroics, take credit for other people's work, not support reports on ideas you had, played the blame game, etc. Also anecdotal, but this is identical to my experience with a handful of ex-employees of some Elon companies. They were basically office politics machines, optimized to promote themse…

[flagged]

Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#162

Post by robomartin »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #96

Anecdotal, but: Startup I worked at hired a bunch of SpaceX and other musk company employees as middle management, during the hyper growth phase and every single one of them was simply awful. Some were just abusive managers, many were just not that effective. The worst one was a manager that would swoop down with heroics, take credit for other people's work, not support reports on ideas you had, played the blame game…

Well, at a place like SpaceX you have many layers of people. First, you have people like Elon and the managers who learned from him. Elon is famous for ripping people to shreds in meetings. Yelling and screaming at them. Telling them just how stupid they are in front of the entire room.

Layers of managers emulate this and treat people like shit in meetings. Not everyone, of course. You then have thousands of young freshly-graduated people who are in a range between not having a clue to believing they are hot shit because they come from a top university and work at SpaceX.

In the middle of all of this, you have a —-relatively speaking— small group of older, experienced people who make it all work. They work around folks who can’t create a decent Excel spreadsheet to save their lives and the “I have a Masters degree from MIT” crowd who truly need to be humbled.

Somehow the entire thing works. A reflection of society in some ways? It seems every company and society is, in some form, carried on the shoulders of a select few who actually get it and are capable enough to make it happen.

Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#163

Post by simonh »

fhe wrote: post #120
throwawaymaths wrote: post #96

Anecdotal, but: Startup I worked at hired a bunch of SpaceX and other musk company employees as middle management, during the hyper growth phase and every single one of them was simply awful. Some were just abusive managers, many were just not that effective. The worst one was a manager that would swoop down with heroics, take credit for other people's work, not support reports on ideas you had, played the blame game…

selection bias? in that the people who were let go from or decided to leave SpaceX were the worse performing ones to begin with?

Indeed, it seems premature to conclude that a set of people who all left SpaceX must be representative of employees who stayed at SpaceX.

Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#164

Post by Yoric »

datadeft wrote: post #150
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some were just abusive managers, many were just not that effective. The worst one was a manager that would swoop down with heroics, take credit for other people's work, not support reports on ideas you had, played the blame game, etc. Also anecdotal, but this is identical to my experience with a handful of ex-employees of some Elon companies. They were basically office politics machines, optimized to promote themse…

> Some were just abusive managers > They were basically office politics machines, optimized to promote themselves at the expense of everyone else > Obviously this isn’t unique Most middle management is like that. You must be extremely lucky to work people who are not like these. During my 20 years I had maybe 3 people out of the 100 I have worked with who were decent and looked out for the people who they managed.

Still anecdotal but most of the managers I've worked with were very much decent people. Not all of them extremely efficient, but definitely decent.

Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#165

Post by Yoric »

SilverBirch wrote: post #155
nebula8804 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man These Elon companies are really the biggest split personality companies I have seen. I have heard stories like what you describe from some people but then you have people like Astronaut Garrett Reisman, Chip Designer Jim Keller, and AI Research Andrej Karpathy all give amazing praise to Elon and his companies. And when the cars are torn down we see top tier engineering execution and innovation while at the same t…

I've learned to be super careful about what senior people say about other senior people. Because it actually reflects well on you to say nice things about already respected people, it's a free PR boost. It makes them sound generous and also knowledgeable. But, I've seen this happen a lot in big companies, someone will say "Well X is a fantastic engineer" or "X does great work" and my first thought is "Well that's int…

My experience, too.

As a younger self, when I heard a C-ranked executive talk about X who's a "fantastic engineer", I assumed that I'd have to work hard to reach their level, without realizing that they may actually not have a clue.

Now, when I hear a C-ranked executive talk about X who's a "fantastic engineer", I realize it's just name-dropping.

Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#166

Post by Yoric »

echelon wrote: post #3

I wish it was more like this at existing companies. Why everyone isn't leaving Adobe, Meta, and Google to found their own AI / generative media startups astounds me. If you work in our incredibly lucrative field, you may be able to afford a few quarters of leaning into risk. Startups are like a brush fire. Old incumbents have so much legacy code and cruft that nimble upstarts killing them is healthy . The "SpaceX dia…

I've had several opportunities to found/join very early stage startups. I've taken three of them, including a weird hybrid nonprofit startup.

* The nonprofit was a nice experience but burnt me out more than once. At some point, you need to have some time off. Being in an early stage startup discourages you from ever taking a break. Being in a nonprofit discourages you from ever taking a break. Being in both... well, eventually, I had to leave to preserve my sanity.

* One startup turned out to largely be a con against VCs and one of the founders pulled the rug, vanishing on his cofounder and all the employees. Needless to say... that was a disappointment.

* The last one burnt me out pretty deeply. 15 years later, I still can't use the technology stack we were using at the time, despite the fact that I was one of the most notable names in that community.

Since then, I've said no to such offers. That is, I'm happy to join a startup, but I will not be a very early employee. I will keep myself in a position where I can afford to take a break if I feel a burnout coming, something I could not do as a cofounder.

So yeah, I very much understand why not everybody creates a startup. That and the fact that once you have created the startup, you need to work on so many things that are not what you wanted to do in the first place, from gathering fundings to paying taxes to securing parking spaces for your employees.

YMMV

Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#167

Post by permalac »

Yoric wrote: post #164
datadeft wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some were just abusive managers > They were basically office politics machines, optimized to promote themselves at the expense of everyone else > Obviously this isn’t unique Most middle management is like that. You must be extremely lucky to work people who are not like these. During my 20 years I had maybe 3 people out of the 100 I have worked with who were decent and looked out for the people who they managed.

Still anecdotal but most of the managers I've worked with were very much decent people. Not all of them extremely efficient, but definitely decent.

Same for me. I worked with managers who mostly tried to do a decent job, some failed some succeeded, some were incapable others were good even when working at 50% of their capacity.

I've only had to deal with one bullshit machine and he quickly moved to another location, my guess is he is moving every time his bullshit has grown to difficult to keep up.

Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#168

Post by ben_w »

adastra22 wrote: post #124
ben_w wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI is roughly 375 people, I don't know how big Anthropic is but I assume similar. I think the person you're replying to is wondering why the other 25 million of us aren't doing the same.

25 million? Where are you pulling this ginormous number from?

By the up-thread quotation "existing companies" leading to googling the global software development workforce.

Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#169

Post by Yoric »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #71
echelon wrote: post #3

I wish it was more like this at existing companies. Why everyone isn't leaving Adobe, Meta, and Google to found their own AI / generative media startups astounds me. If you work in our incredibly lucrative field, you may be able to afford a few quarters of leaning into risk. Startups are like a brush fire. Old incumbents have so much legacy code and cruft that nimble upstarts killing them is healthy . The "SpaceX dia…

Ex-Netflixer here. I've come to appreciate that equity for your time !== equity for your money. Take cash in excess of your burn rate in-hand over equity any day. Then take that excess cash and buy equity. Compared to taking a $250k base and $250k equity offer from a startup, it's substantially better to take a $500k cash in-hand offer from FAANG and use your extra $250k to cut angel checks. Some early-stage startups…

How do you end up in position to become an investor/buy equity?

Re: SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy

#170

Post by agumonkey »

nebula8804 wrote: post #117
throwawaymaths wrote: post #96

Anecdotal, but: Startup I worked at hired a bunch of SpaceX and other musk company employees as middle management, during the hyper growth phase and every single one of them was simply awful. Some were just abusive managers, many were just not that effective. The worst one was a manager that would swoop down with heroics, take credit for other people's work, not support reports on ideas you had, played the blame game…

Man These Elon companies are really the biggest split personality companies I have seen. I have heard stories like what you describe from some people but then you have people like Astronaut Garrett Reisman, Chip Designer Jim Keller, and AI Research Andrej Karpathy all give amazing praise to Elon and his companies. And when the cars are torn down we see top tier engineering execution and innovation while at the same t…

Musk himself is somehow schizoid .. he can be wise at times and then .. he tweets the most retarded thing possible.
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