SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by paulryanrogers » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 1:33 PM UTC

nebula8804 wrote: post #126

jjulius wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hot take: The people you mentioned are hired to bring big-name cred to the organization. None of them stuck around (correct me if I'm wrong, I've only done a cursory glance just now), they all left. Eg, they're the "top tier engineering" part of the companies, and other employees (and I've dealt with these employees at Tesla in a past life, so I can attest to their terrible attitude) are the "mediocre build quality".

Astronaut Garrett Reisman worked for 7 years there and is on record stating that is all the stress he could handle.[1]: Jim Keller has a history of joining a company to start a project and then leaving once it is complete. He did this multiple times in his career and was with Tesla until they completed the self driving computer. He has also left behind a team of stellar well known people. I am not too sure about Andr…

I had no idea Tesla self driving hardware was done. Judging by the lawsuits and performance I'd say it's barely even started.

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

#222

Post by Clent » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 1:49 PM UTC

mlindner wrote: post #187

SilverBirch wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the reporting on the takeover attempt[1], it also mentions he didn't provide anything like the amount of funding that was initially expected. Sam has been quite open about what is going on with OpenAI - namely that what they needed to develop the tech was billions of dollars, and the only way they would get that money is a private venture, which they've negotiated with terms that actually limit the upside with…

Do you have a source that's not the Verge? I've learned to not trust them for anything Musk related as they have a history of incorrect and biased reporting. > it also mentions he didn't provide anything like the amount of funding that was initially expected Elon provided $100M, were they expecting more than that? That's quite a lot of money for an early company. > Also, OpenAI was never a partnership between just Mu…

Occam's razor is in effect. Elon is not good and smart. The onus is on your to proof otherwise.

I was going to comment on how this article is a Musk PR move. It's quite clear why the first thing he guts in a company is PR. He has simp's that will do it for free and because there is no official PR channel, a literal reality distortion field is created because only fanbois get access to the man, the myth, the legend.

Elon Fucking Musk!

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

#223

Post by concordDance » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 1:55 PM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #146

zizee wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> My company immediately sues anyone who leave to join a competitor > So do Elon's companies Sorry to be pedantic, but there is a big difference between "sues anyone", and Tesla suing what must be a small percentage of leavers. And your links describe lawsuits not for "leaving and joining a competitor", but for sabotage and trying to walk out with trade secrets, schematics and code.

> And your links describe lawsuits not for "leaving and joining a competitor", but for sabotage and trying to walk out with trade secrets, schematics and code. To be pedantic, those are just claims Tesla made, and the articles even mention other IP-related suits by Elon's companies that were dropped because they were nonsense. Even the first link about a $1 million lawsuit over "stolen trade secrets" was actually the…

> tried to have him murdered by the cops by calling 911 and accusing Tripp of being a mass shooter.

I bet £100 to the charity of your choice that this is false.

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

#224

Post by abudabi123 » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 1:57 PM UTC

nebula8804 wrote: post #205

SilverBirch wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don't know man. What breaks that argument is that multiple people make the same positive claims about Elon: That he can handle unimaginable amounts of stress that would break others, that he seems to have a breath of deep knowledge in various different engineering disciplines and that he is committed to his vision. Your theory would make more sense if everyone was making up random praise about him but the interview…

Elon M fried his braincells over at Tesla in an unwinnable situation which was saved by angel investors at the last moment. From that point in time to the present compare the advanced chips made at Tesla to Ford, GM for proof of Elon M and the vision thing. The Elon M companies fit together to tell a story that feels futuristic.

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

#225

Post by themanmaran » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 2:13 PM UTC

preommr wrote: post #5

Makes sense, not a lot of space companies to begin with, much less with people that have a startup mentality. Feel like the culture at Boeing or NASA is going to be very different from the one needed for a pioneering startup. And even then it's only a handful of investements, with how much liquidity is/was in the market not surprising that people got a few million for moonshots given how the potential for a whole new…

Conversely- I put together a list of all the Space industry startups that YC funded over the last few years[1], thinking it would be entirely "ex-SpaceX" founders. But it turned out to have a pretty distributed mix:

[1] https://havewelanded.com/yc-space-sector-investments#:~:text...

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

#226

Post by xedeon » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 2:22 PM UTC

tekkk wrote: post #217

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.

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.

Patently false.

1. https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929

2.https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1099411086711746560

3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Mueller

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

#227

Post by throwawaymaths » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 2:31 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #219

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 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…

Even if we give them the benefit of doubt that it's not a PR thing, when you're in a leadership/distinguished/emeritus position, the org often looks very different than how it looks when you're a foot soldier.

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

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Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 2:36 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #163

fhe wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

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Post by throwawaymaths » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 2:37 PM UTC

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?

Well the op article is specifically about people who left SpaceX and are seeding into startups, so in this thread we very much care about this selection bias.

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

#230

Post by throwawaymaths » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 2:42 PM UTC

zpeti wrote: post #194

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…

Anecdotal, but I’ve found many people who complain about abusive managers are doing a terrible job and are looking for any excuse to be a victim or explain why their crap work is not appreciated. Misunderstood genius syndrome.

Well in this case more than one of the managers was not someone I reported to (only one was my boss) and a bunch of them were actively let go because of their awfulness. I don't actually care about the perception of my work. I care specifically about the startup community and am trying to get other people to not bring in middle managers from musk companies without carefully vetting them, because it will mean pain for their employees.