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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

#211

Post by lifeisstillgood »

lordnacho wrote: post #204
jagged-chisel wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if his primary school teacher could get a lien on future earnings? It’s not the primary school teacher that made the investment. It’s whomever was bankrolling salaries and expenses for teachers, cafeteria workers, buildings to house the activity … The “lien” on future income would likely be “taxes” (assuming public school here.)

This poses a bit if an interesting quandary for society. Which society paid for Musk to be educated? He grew up in South Africa. How much tax does he pay there relative to where he built his stuff? Where should he pay his taxes? What about other people who grow up elsewhere and move? Is it ok to hire a load of doctors from other countries?

There is the glimmer of a movement here - the Yelland led move to 15% minimum corporation tax is part of the move to solve this very problem. The EU is trying to solve this. But it's reaching the point of dealing with cross border fiscal policy and that's really hard without become a real federation.

And Inthink that is the ultimate global goal here. Which is ... science fiction

Imagine how immigration would look different if South Africa had a lien on ex-citizens taxation - if a slice of every sales tax paid in Nevada by a Mexican citizen went back to Mexico City.

I am not sure how it plays out - but it's possible that countries that benefit from immigration have to pay for it.

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

#212

Post by nostrademons »

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…

Twogler and ex-founder here - I ping-ponged from entrepreneurship to Google to entrepreneurship back to Google again.

I take the opposite approach, but with some caveats. Your financial success in any market is going to come down to information advantage - you need to have better data and better insights on the success of your investment than your competing investors. In general, you have much better data and insight into the risk factors and success probability of your own startup than you do into any startups you angel invest in. You also have better data on your own startup than you do on startups you work for, but probably have better data on how a startup you're employed at is doing than the investors in that startup do. Therefore you can make better choices about where to spend your equity (either sweat or monetary) when you're working for the company.

The major caveat - and one that took a lot of hard lessons for me to learn - is that you have to actually pay attention to that data. If your gut tells you it's not going to work out, cut your losses and find some other opportunity, regardless of sunk costs, how much you might be emotionally attached to the company, how much you love your coworkers, your fear of letting them down, etc.

But similarly, you also end up with a much higher-resolution model of the business world from actually experiencing work at several different startups than you would get from angel-investing in startups. So unless you've previously experienced worked at or founded startups, your angel-investing is basically going to be spray-and-pray, and do a lot worse than investing in your own company stock or even index funds.

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

#213

Post by Yoric »

brandall10 wrote: post #198
Yoric wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Curious, but what kind of companies were these? I have a similar experience but haven’t worked for any big tech or name brand companies. The vast majority were in the health tech space with a smattering doing things that would be considered ethically sound (ie. Solar energy marketplace). I have had a couple nightmare supervisors who were obvious sociopaths, and have several who were incompetent, but for the most part…

(I'm not going to count my time in academia)

1. One nightmare CEO in an early stage tech startup.

2. A dozen managers at Mozilla, which ranked from "should have remained a dev" to "great managers". One of them was politically-minded, everybody else was truly attempting to make the team and the project work.

3. A few managers in a more recent tech startup, all of them good (albeit over-worked).

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

#214

Post by MikeDelta »

mkolodny wrote: post #114
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…

I'm the founder of a 1 person company. If the company ever grows to 2+ people, I hope to give my teammates the freedom I wish I had as an employee.

Remember: it is all up to you to set the company culture. If you find the right people who can thrive under the freedom and responsibility that comes with it, I am sure you will have created a great place to work!

All the best with that!

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

#215

Post by NeuroCoder »

agumonkey wrote: post #170
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…

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

He's got a lot of good business knowledge around certain industries but is way overconfident in how this translates to other areas

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

#216

Post by Glawen »

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…

I work in a industry with around 1000 engineers in that field in my location. There must be like 10 big companies where I can work in the area. Basically everyone knows each other and when you interview someone, it's easy to get the person's reputation.

I just got a new guy in January (didn't do the interview myself, I was away), I know his ex boss very well and of course I phoned him to know how he's like. He depicted me a kind of bad picture of him.

After 3 months I agree that he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But unlike my friend, I'm not asking for perfect code, I'm asking for throughput and bold moves in the wilderness. With that consideration, the guy is actually ok compared to others!

I've come to learn to not rely a lot on outside advice on people, and I prefer to judge it myself in situ. The team, the company, the project or simply personal life can greatly affect someone's performances, and it is not because someone is great at company A that he will be great at company B.

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

#217

Post by tekkk »

hikawaii wrote: post #132
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…

Then that means that office politics optimizers were able to make Boeing, Lockheed, and NASA look like jokers at something they'd been doing for decades. If I thought this about SpaceX management and ex employees was representative of the culture as a whole,I would throw out all the modern books on managing tech organizations and go all Taylor immediately.

From what I understood SpaceX was founded by some brilliant engineers and Elon just became the poster boy with no actual engineering credentials. Undoubtedly he is business-savvy but it seems not that surprising managers who take credit for the engineers' work might thrive there.

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

#218

Post by rsynnott »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #173
HopenHeyHi wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"anti-Elon companies"

Companies which have committed thought-crime against Dear Leader, one assumes.

(Nah, I've no idea what they're talking about. Companies which _compete_ with Musk's companies, possibly?)

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

#219

Post by rsynnott »

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…

> 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.

I mean, only one of these stayed more than five years; one only stayed _two_ years. And, frankly, if you're in a leadership position in a company, you say nice things when you leave after two years. It is What is Done. I don't think you can really read much into these sorts of statements either way; they're pretty much following a formula.

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

#220

Post by Clent »

moffkalast wrote: post #172
hikawaii wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then that means that office politics optimizers were able to make Boeing, Lockheed, and NASA look like jokers at something they'd been doing for decades. If I thought this about SpaceX management and ex employees was representative of the culture as a whole,I would throw out all the modern books on managing tech organizations and go all Taylor immediately.

Or maybe SpaceX did that despite being held back by those people. NASA's management is rather infamous too so it's not like they're competing against much there. Every time NASA's managers gained too much influence over the engineers people actually died.

Engineers are pragamtic as profession. Managers are glorified sales, their primary product is selling their team and move the goal post forward.

As as a software engineer, I'd rather buy my next car from an engineer who designed it rather than anyone else in the chain. Not because we speak similar languages but because I know that engineer will happily list ever bit of that makes them feel uncomfortable.

Engineers main task is to physically make something.

Even in software engineering something is being physically built up to run the software. We decided to call this the cloud because we let sales people define it. It ain't a cloud, you cannot fly a plane through it.

Construction is the one step that cannot be easily cheated. The machinery we build today is massive and complex so while the bureaucracy prevents a single engineer from addressing the issues, they are position to see see it.

My first question for a rocket company isn't the CEO's confidence. It is, would engineer #134 use this product with their families? Would you entrust the lives of our children to what you've built?

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