Elon Musk sucks | Stavros Halkias https://youtu.be/09txSUWgCbA
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Stavros is a pretty solid stand-up comic.
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Musk has laid off about 20% of his equity commitment to buy Twitter:
This long article about Musk’s management style is pretty interesting as well:
If you ignore the editorial frame (“What kind of man starts a company without a business plan? He’s operating solely on whim!”), there’s a lot of great detail about how he runs things:
While Mr. Musk has successfully bet on electric cars, space travel and artificial intelligence, he often wings it in the biggest moments, eschews experts and relies almost solely on his own counsel, they said.
To operate this way, Mr. Musk has constructed an insular world of about 10 confidants who mostly agree with him and carry out his bidding. They include his younger brother, Kimbal Musk; Mr. Birchall; Mr. Spiro; and various chiefs of staff. To manage his many ideas, Mr. Musk continuously creates new companies, most of which are structured so that he remains in charge. His trusted lieutenants often work across his far-flung empire of businesses.
Once Mr. Musk has identified each company’s key project — what he calls its “critical path” — he takes over to ensure that his vision is met, controlling the smallest aspects of how the technologies are built and deployed. His brilliance has spawned the world’s most valuable automaker and an innovative rocket company, and it has earned the respect — and fear — of his engineers.
That same year, Mr. Musk hired Gwynne Shotwell as SpaceX’s seventh employee. As the rocket maker’s president and chief operating officer, Ms. Shotwell has overseen the company’s growth, becoming one of Mr. Musk’s longest-lasting employees.
At a conference in 2018, Ms. Shotwell explained how she managed Mr. Musk.
“When Elon says something, you have to pause and not immediately blurt out, ‘Well, that’s impossible,’ or, ‘There’s no way we’re going to do that. I don’t know how,’” she said. “So you zip it, and you think about it. And you find ways to get that done.”
Right. He’s Donald Trump. A narcissistic gasbag held afloat by a cult following of terrible people.
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Shocked to learn that there wasn’t any plan behind the Boring Company and none of Musk’s toadies will tell him when things are impossible.
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Like, “Elon Musk business genius” is simply not a thing. He’s exceptional at marketing himself to idiots. Which yes, is a skill that can be very valuable, especially if you’re selling a complete scam like dogecoin or Mexico building the wall. The guy is only where he is because he convinced investors to buy stock. He’s a terrible manager and promoting this kind of asshattery is going to further degrade the American workplace as his dumb fuck cult members perpetuate this behavior.
“Kimbal Musk”
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I suspect that, if pressed, you’d have to concede that Musk’s talent at flim-flam extends to duping talented subordinates into working for him and bilking customers into wanting to buy his products at inflated prices. And his narcissistic personality and insane management practices keep his key yes-man lieutenants jumping to do whatever he demands. But if he’s good at:
- raising capital,
- deploying that capital under talented management that he keeps aligned with his own strategic goals, and
- selling the enterprise’s product at a healthy margin.
How exactly is that interlocking series of elaborate facades distinguishable from “real” business skill? What makes him such an interesting case study is that he’s so obviously good at starting and growing businesses, but he’s also so obviously terrible at lots of things that ought to be really important to that skill.
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It isn’t. You and Riverman just believe wild myths about “real” business skills and how those are helpful to society
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I think that even the business-oriented people on this forum would concede that most business skills are far more helpful to shareholders than to “society”.
Come on guys this ain’t rocket science, he’s just a lucky fuck.
Teslas have maintenance issues, but people seem to love them. Space X seems to be doing some pretty cool things. PayPal was a good idea.
He can be both a visionary idea man who knows how to push his visions to reality, and a pompous ass with the worldview of a middle schooler.
Frank Lloyd Wright was a terrible father and husband. But it doesn’t mean he wasn’t a visionary architect.
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FLW actually created something. I’m not sure Musk has done anything but stand on the shoulders of giants as they say. That’s not to say what he has done is worthless by any means more than you should pick a better comparison. I’m sure there are plenty.
Frank Lloyd Wright was lucky to be in the business.
Does he, though? I mean, how’s that Hyperloop doing these days?
Clearly not every venture has been a success. You wouldn’t expect it to be when trying things that have never been done before. Also he put zero money into the hyperloop - just threw it out there for others to flail at.
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Steve Jobs then. Guy was a prick, didn’t donate to charity, died because he believed some holistic nonsense over medical science.