Is it me or is this post disappearing off the front page rather quickly?
Elon Musk email to Tesla employee about missing an event to witness the birth
121–130 of 168 posts
Re: Elon Musk email to Tesla employee about missing an event to witness the birth
#122> That is no excuse. I am extremely disappointed. You need to figure out where your priorities are. We're changing the world and changing history, and you either commit or you don’t.
What an idiot - he became rich - so what ...
Re: Elon Musk email to Tesla employee about missing an event to witness the birth
#123I'm a fan of Musk and his companies. I own one of his cars (as far as they can be called "his," obviously there are tons of people involved) and it's even better than all the "best car in the world!" people say. I follow every SpaceX launch and am eager to see them pull off their stage recovery attempts soon. That said, this doesn't surprise me at all. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy I'd want to work for. My adm…
Jobs made fancy white electronic devices - he just sold a lot of them - to justify rude behavior with something that trivial simply doesn't seem right to me.
Re: Elon Musk email to Tesla employee about missing an event to witness the birth
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
My uncle did that. Spent his life on eliminating malaria. Good work. Now he's dead and there are no kids in his line that might carry his intellectual legacy or create their own. Human life is short term. Good genes and culture are long term. If everyone capable burned through their 50 or so years attempting to create a better world in such a hurry there'd be few with the capacity to perpetuate that vision or create…
I'm sorry that your uncle passed away. I wish I could thank him while he was alive for the work he did. You have an interesting point about passing on legacy, but then again there are so many people born every day, that there will be more than enough people to perpetuate the vision if they can learn about it. Having a child furthers memory only temporary. I myself don't know much about my grand-grandparents and have…
Some people sacrifice themselves for a probability that many people will have better lives.
Some people sacrifice themselves for a probability that specific people around them will have better lives.
It's disingenuous to say that only those who work for some greater good are making sacrifices.
Which sacrifice is more "noble"? Unless you know the parameters (magnitude of sacrifice, probabilities of change, incremental impact from your involvement, number of people affected, degree to which lives are bettered), you have no way to evaluate this.
(Not that there's anything wrong with making personal value judgments in the matter; they just don't make particularly good arguments.)
Re: Elon Musk email to Tesla employee about missing an event to witness the birth
#125Re: Elon Musk email to Tesla employee about missing an event to witness the birth
#126I'm a fan of Musk and his companies. I own one of his cars (as far as they can be called "his," obviously there are tons of people involved) and it's even better than all the "best car in the world!" people say. I follow every SpaceX launch and am eager to see them pull off their stage recovery attempts soon. That said, this doesn't surprise me at all. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy I'd want to work for. My adm…
Jobs made fancy white electronic devices - he just sold a lot of them - to justify rude behavior with something that trivial simply doesn't seem right to me.
I'm not saying that anything justifies rude behavior. I'm just commenting on a case where rude behavior and success occurred together.
Re: Elon Musk email to Tesla employee about missing an event to witness the birth
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Neither of those things will matter to people who love you but I suppose it would help a selfish person rationalize loving their jobs more than their family.
That's kind of the point I'm making. Given a choice, why should I promote few people in my inner circle over hundreds, thousands or more other people? This really bothers me. There's a common mentality that says it's OK to harm countless of strangers in order to support yourself and your family. I think that is selfish.
I disagree. The best thing we, as individuals, can do for future society is to guide and nurture our kids. If you don't have that responsibility (you don't have kids), by all means go all out. If you do have kids, take care of them first. I actually feel very bad for Elon's kids. Money and accomplishment isn't everything. Hopefully, they at least have a good mom. BTW, you can still accomplish other great things while doing this, but you certainly can't work 23 hour days.
Re: Elon Musk email to Tesla employee about missing an event to witness the birth
#128All the negative press and comments about this miss the point. The guy has very specific, very ambitious goals that he has a track record of achieving. He prioritizes those literally above everything and expects the same from key employees. Working at Tesla, which has already done a ton to change the entire car industry is a huge privilege, and no one's making you do it. If you can get a job there, you can get a job…
Working at Tesla is not a huge privilege. It's a job, maybe even a great one, but it doesn't make you a better person, it doesn't even guarantee that you'll be employable after working there. Having worked for a couple of very popular places, I realized pretty quickly its a job. You know what these places have in common? You're an employee, which means they can and will cut you loose when it suits them. "Reshaping th…
So, don't work there. We're talking about really smart people that can get jobs wherever else if they don't like the culture at Tesla. All the replies on my comment share the same issue that for them seeing the birth of their child is more important than being a part of Tesla. That's fine. Don't work at Tesla. That's why I wouldn't work there either. I wouldn't work in the army either, which has the same setbacks when you're on a deployment. Elon Musk consistently delivers on actually changing the world, so yeah, he's allowed to have rules to work with him.
Also, to the people that downvoted: it's really disheartening to see you'd rather downvote out of existence than have a dialogue with a contrasting opinion. Enjoy your echo chamber.
Re: Elon Musk email to Tesla employee about missing an event to witness the birth
#129All the negative press and comments about this miss the point. The guy has very specific, very ambitious goals that he has a track record of achieving. He prioritizes those literally above everything and expects the same from key employees. Working at Tesla, which has already done a ton to change the entire car industry is a huge privilege, and no one's making you do it. If you can get a job there, you can get a job…
"All the negative press and comments about this miss the point." What, that working at Tesla is more important than being at the birth of your child, to both see them come into the world and support the mother during a physically and emotionally trying event? Because that is the alleged point. And the criticism is spot-on.
No, it's not. It's not that working at Tesla is more important for everyone. It's that if you do work at Tesla in that employee's role (which was key because he's getting direct emails from Elon Musk), then that's a sacrifice you need to make. For me, I'd much rather witness my child's birth, which is why I wouldn't take a job where I might have to miss that. The solution is not to take the job, not to criticize a guy literally changing the world for his process.
Re: Elon Musk email to Tesla employee about missing an event to witness the birth
#130My first day at SpaceX I ran into a friend. I asked him how he was doing and he said he just had a kid. "How old is she now?" "Oh no, like, my wife just gave birth an hour ago." The guy was working through the birth of his first born. The story continued for months afterwards and it's not a good one. That and many other stories are what led me to quit. I took the summer off and didn't work. I hung out with my dog and…
Yea, I really enjoy programming but I have yet to be able to come to terms with this idea that if I'd like to be a professional software engineer I have to want to be the world's saving grace rockstar ninja programmer. Isn't it enough to want to wake up refreshed every day, put in a good solid 6-7 hours of professional quality engineering work, and then have the time and energy to want to perform all of the other dut…
That's enough for lots of jobs. It's just not enough for all jobs, and the ones it's not enough for tend to get more publicity (and, with good reason, higher salaries).