Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 258 posts

Re: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?

#151

Post by boardwaalk »

Heck no.

I actually looked up to him before he started going downhill in the last few years. I thought, “Maybe I would work for SpaceX for a few year as long as I had a plan to get out.” I knew it would be hard but possibly rewarding enough. But after it seems like he sort of crystallized (at least publicly) on work culture (no WFH, people must be hardcore), frankly toxic personality (lashing out on Twitter, etc), and seemingly not knowing what the hell he is doing (incredibly naive views on running a social media platform and moderation, managing Twitter via fear and his own paranoia — firing people who disagree), I would not touch a job with him anywhere in chain or close to it.

I have to wonder if something happened to the guy or if he was always like this. Like, we’ve seen a few famous people go from themselves to essentially an evil caricature of themselves recently. Not that they weren’t somewhat objectionable (to me) before, but the objectionable bits got cranked up 100x. Trump, Kanye come to mind. Kanye obviously has some health issues. Is it mental health? Just getting older? Some sort of conservative/paranoia-fueled “mind virus”? That sounds silly, but there’s such a pattern and resemblance to “having your parents get stuck on conservative news” which is so common.

Re: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?

#152

Post by bArray »

> Watching Elon gaslight current and former Twitter employees in the public square, I couldn’t help but wonder if any engineers would actually work for this guy going forward and why?

There are _far_ worse people to work for. These people normally don't get any publicity, but there really are some absolutely terrible places to work. The worst people don't fire you, they make it impossible for you to leave and punish you every day.

People are looking at the Twitter employees and judging him by this, but it's not a secret that Twitter employees (old and current) are actively trying to sabotage him. Imagine shit-talking your own CEO on the platform you develop. I would fire these people on the spot too, and I wouldn't hire those people elsewhere. The proper way to correct your boss is through internal channels, politely, through management.

The people I would like to speak to is the Tesla or SpaceX engineers. He clearly has built out the teams he wants to see there that he trusts, and I would be interested to hear how they rate their work culture.

Twitter will continue to be an awful place to work for a while anyway, Musk is quickly trying to spin it to stop the extreme bleeding of cash. Twitter employees scaring advertisers signed their own firing. He is not lying that Twitter will die unless they can at least break even ASAP.

Re: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?

#153

Post by jakelazaroff »

bheadmaster wrote: post #136
wordyskeleton wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you characterize Twitter's current modus operandi under Musk as anything but "let's just ship it, we'll fix it later"? They're on iteration 5 or 6 of the checkmarks within the last week.

I have no reliable information about the current modus operandi under Musk, nor about modus operandi of any of his companies. I just have a vague feeling derived from the random information about his companies and employees I've read over the years. It's very possible that it's just smoke and mirrors, but if I were given an offer, I'd at least try it for a while. If it's true, I gain a lot - if it's false, I gain a u…

Frankly, if I were evaluating a job candidate and I saw that they joined Twitter after Elon, I’d see it as huge red flag.

Re: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?

#154

Post by kamaal »

The public face is just theatre. I'm sure the internal situation is a whole lot more different.

Honestly speaking lots of bosses you would meet, are far worse than Elon Musk can even be. I've worked under all sorts. The kind of bosses who keep office pets(and give all the rewards/money to them), the kind of ones that run political cartels, the kind of ones that are bigoted and discriminate, the kind of one's that harass employees for all sorts of reasons, the kind of one's that are narcissistic, that kind one's that bully you, the kind of one's that resent your success, the kind of one's that hire-to-fire etc etc.

Working for somebody like Musk, who have a public face of zealousness towards their life's work, but can also be a little eccentric is really least of my worries and would be a best case scenario given the garden variety boss I could randomly work for.

Re: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?

#155

Post by nashashmi »

People are ugly when unrestrained. Elon is super rich right now and totally off the hinge. We are going to see things now we have never seen before anywhere else.

But get back to his Tesla days when he was small and meaningless. The guy hustled and had everyone else hustle like they were still in college trying to make a big name for themselves.

I think back then he actually listened to his employees and they listened to him. That is not so much the case now. He fires first and asks questions later.

Re: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?

#156

Post by nemo44x »

SimianSci wrote: post #138
nemo44x wrote: post #54

If I believed in the product we were building and that it was going to be a great product, then of course. Elon Musk actually makes people excited for the future. He hasn't delivered on everything but he has delivered some pretty massive things that I don't think anyone else alive today could have. Or even would have. He's an extreme optimist and working for a better future.

I can’t help but feel this is just a form of propaganda or self hype now. Elon’s latest interest always becomes “incredibly important for humanity” and using that to justify poor working conditions and lower pay is horribly convenient to his bottom line.

Like I said, I'd have to believe in the product/mission. I think what he will certainly deliver is a team of talented and hard working people with similar goals and ambitions.

I think this is what is going on at Twitter right now. He wants to rebuild the organization into his vision which is very different than the way Twitter was built when he acquired it. I'm guessing now that he's been there a few weeks he has a decent understanding of who the performers are and who really wants to be there and who doesn't. And I respect him for letting those that don't want to be there know that things are going to change, and it might not be for you, so here is 3 months severance - good luck.

This sends 2 messages. Firstly to those that do want to be there, they can trust that their teammates are equally driven and culturally compatible. Secondly, the culture is changing from one that was management heavy, fluffy, and focused on mission-uncritical tasks to one that is focused on building a great product and company.

To be fair, if they do get it right and the company IPOs again in a couple years, then everyone there will be paid handsomly.

Re: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?

#157

Post by lb4r »

mcphage wrote: post #64
bheadmaster wrote: post #19

Considering that Elon puts a lot of focus on ability and skill over formalities and organizations, and that he believes that small team of highly-skilled highly-motivated people can often (always?) out-perform large teams of moderately-skilled moderately-motivated people, I'd say yes. I find a lot of joy in working on challenging problems without having to deal with bureaucracy bullshit. I have a feeling that Elon li…

> Elon puts a lot of focus on ability and skill over formalities and organizations I'm curious what this means to you, because when I see people from inside Twitter correct him on Twitter, with specific technical statements describing what's going on—and then he fires them—that seems like formalities way outranking ability and skill.

If that is the case, it sounds like companies then should put a lot more focus on formalities than ability and skill, considering how successful Elon's companies are and have been; success which turns very peculiar under those circumstances when you consider how engineering-oriented they are.

There is, of course, another possibility, which is that Elon does in fact put a lot of focus on ability and skill over formalities, but not in literally every single situation.

Which one do you think is more likely?

Re: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?

#159

Post by emptyparadise »

clauderoux wrote: post #116

I'm always fascinated by these Billionaires who expect employees to work 24/7 for their company. Basically as an employee you give your company your work force against a salary, you don't sell your life to it . As an employee you are not a samouraï ready to die for your daimyo. If you don't have a life beyond your job, you are basically ready for your next burn out. These Billionaires might commit 100% of their time…

samurai at least got a cool sword

Re: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?

#160

Post by drcongo »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #149
ehnto wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what could potentially be vapor is the money in the valuations. In two years, Tesla went from 75billion market cap to 1 trillion, in the middle of a pandemic. How can a car company, of any kind, suddenly be delivering 925 billion dollars more value to the world. Tesla is one of the biggest car manufacturers by market cap, yet almost every other car company is out-producing them by a landslide, and even as ind…

Tesla seems to be a moderately successful but enormously overvalued car company. Why? Because Elon himself is seen as a super-genius and a savior of humanity by a lot of people, including smart dudes like Geohot or Lex Fridman. Also, Telsa valuation is tied to L5 (full autonomy), and the TelsaBot and the impressive giga factories and the AI hype, and the Solar panels etc. But most of that will flop...

I'm really not sure we can class anyone who thinks Musk is a genius as being "smart dudes".
Post reply on HN