Well, you dug deep. A pity you didn’t actually read further:
That SpaceX has enjoyed the success that it has is entirely due to the efforts of the many skilled and talented engineers working there, and almost not at all from any supposed expertise or ‘leadership’ brought by Elon Musk.
Stranger
Search engines make it fun and easy to dig up past predictions. I may post others later (not from you; I want to spread the joy).
The thing is, you were entirely correct to call them clueless. They were. It’s just that none of that mattered in the long run, because Musk assembled a great team of people that eventually worked the kinks out. By the time the Falcon 9 launched, they apparently had enough expertise that your concerns about resonant vibration or flow control problems were anticipated and accounted for in the design.
And likewise, the cluelessness on display now is almost certainly not relevant in the long run. This story came up recently:
To summarize: Twitter has a robust, fault-tolerant, redundant system that is not likely to go down in the short term.
It is possible that they are accruing technical debt, but they nevertheless have quite a bit of runway ahead of them.
Elon is doing his level best to destroy every bit of “runway” left, all in service of elevating Trump, Greene, and other would-be demagogues promoting hateful rhetoric. How does that factor into your ‘genius entrepreneur’ narrative?
Stramger
I think I’ll take Tom Mueller’s opinion over your’s. https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929?s=20&t=GGFDjWoch9iMSq1kTTol1Q
I’m not going to ascribe this to any genius on the part of Musk, but I could not have hoped for a better outcome with Trump. He is not coming back to Twitter, especially not after Musk’s goading. And so now we have a situation where Trump remains on his stupid Mastodon shard, because if Musk has paper-thin skin, then Trump is as of graphene; but the right can no longer claim that he is being oppressed by the cancel-culture libruls. It’s absolutely perfect.
To answer the thread’s question, you don’t. Elon has or at the very least had business acumen, and trying to justify otherwise always ends up exposing the poster’s hatred for the man. It’s ok to hate the guy, to think he’s a piece of shit that shouldn’t have anything good attributed to him, but you absolutely can not deny that he has built two companies that have completely changed the auto and space markets, something that can’t be said of anyone in the last 100 years. The excuse that he came from money, got a $30k investment in his first company from his dad, so this was just inevitable and predictable is just asinine. It’s so bewildering to me that otherwise smart people let personal feelings get in the way of just stating that this guy has had more sucess than any amount of luck would provide.
Well here, I’ll make a simple one to search for later:
PREDICTION: Twitter may continue to exist in some form if Musk gets rid of it before he completely destroys the value of the brand itself, but it will be a shadow of its former self at best (which lets keep in mind, Twitter is a pretty small social media outlet compared to the big boys). However, I do think it likely that it will die as a direct result of Musk ineptitude. Musk is doing everything he can to turn it into a cesspool that will drive away all advertisers except the like of Lindell’s MyPillow. His other attempts to monetize Twitter will broadly fail, especially if he decides to make it PayPal 2 and turn it into a bank.
So there you go, you can search for that one later on and we’ll see what happens.
Both Tesla and SpaceX would have died an early death if not for outside intervention. Any articles written about Musk would be saying “Musk: The Man Who Thought He Could be Iron Man But Failed.” There precious little evidence that Tesla and SpaceX succeeded because of anything Musk did. There’s ample evidence that Musk routinely makes bizarrely bad choices of many kinds including engineering. There’s ample evidence that he cannot lead companies, and that companies sometimes succeed despite him. I’m not saying he definitely didn’t contribute anything to Tesla and SpaceX ever (other than money), but it seems to be precious little. So maybe, if we’re being generous, we can say that some small percentage of Tesla and SpaceX success is due to Musk. This is so vastly different than some high quality (but still scummy in many cases, which I mention because it is possible to recognize somebody as not a good person but still a business succcess) CEOs that definitely led their companies to great success.
Bezos is a great example. He treats his employees like dirt. I don’t like him. But he unquestionably built Amazon. Not singlehandedly of course, nobody ever does. But he was integral to their success.
I’m curious, where is all of this ample evidence hiding?
I ask the question after seeing what he’s doing at Twitter, not as a result of a survey of his other companies. It seems that what he has done at Twitter is 100% shooting from the hip, out of emotion or ego, without an analysis of how the business works, or projection of the consequences of his decisions.
“Whoops! My advertisers are pulling out! Didn’t see that one coming!”
“Whoops! Employees are quitting because they don’t want to work 100 hours a week to make more profit for me! Didn’t see that one coming!”
Let’s say he showed up on Shark Tank because he needed funding for Twitter. He would not be able to articulate a business plan, just some vague shit about free speech and reinstating Donald Trump. Those guys would eat him alive.
That’s what I mean by no business acumen.
Don’t fall for the bait, anyone. Whatever evidence and citations you provide will be brushed away by the poster’s bare-assed assertion that they don’t actually mean what is plainly written.
Stranger
It’s called hubris and I would guess it comes from having built two or three insanely successful companies in the past. It seems to me if he ran his other companies the same way he is running twitter, well, we probably would’ve never heard the name Elon Musk. But I also believe he’s earned the benefit of the doubt and so I don’t count him out.
Have you read this and the other Musk threads? Like at all?
Modnotes: This is pretty close to attack the poster. Please keep that to the pit.
However, @nate, the complaint seems to have merit that you’re ignoring cites in multiple threads and posts like this resemble sealioning.
sorry, this was meant to be a PM to What_Exit.
Just as a counterpoint, here’s a story about successful electric automaker Rivian. The founder and CEO is Robert Scaringe. Unlike Musk, he has an actual Master’s degree (from MIT, no less) in mechanical engineering, and also a Ph.D. from MIT in mechanical engineering specializing in automotive technology. Unlike Musk, he hasn’t lied about his degrees. And unlike Musk, by all accounts he’s not an asshole and seems like a pretty nice guy. So apparently being an unqualified asshole is NOT a prerequisite to success in a high-tech industry.
On the other hand…
https://www.autonews.com/manufacturing/rivian-workers-complain-about-safety-conditions
At least a dozen employees at Rivian Automotive Inc. have accused the electric-vehicle maker of safety violations at its Illinois plant, according to complaints filed with federal regulators.
The complaints allege the company ignored known hazards and deprioritized safety resources, leaving some workers to share respirators needed during the manufacturing process. They also detail a range of injuries, including a crushed hand, a broken foot, a sliced ear and broken ribs. One Rivian employee said management fished damaged electrical cables out of the garbage and told employees to use them.
Together, the filings depict an automaker that cut corners as it scaled rapidly to keep pace in the competitive EV space. Some employees described safety protocols that faded as production pressures grew on its trademark plug-in pickup.
On the third hand …
That’s not very concrete. Here, let me propose one: Twitter will not in the next year fall out of the top-10 ranking by this list:
https://www.similarweb.com/top-websites/
Twitter is currently #4 by the October stats. I’m willing to acknowledge the possibility of a drop, but staying within the top 10 would hardly reflect “destroying” the brand.
I didn’t say anything about Musk. You said that the Rivian CEO “seems like a pretty nice guy”, but apparently being nice doesn’t trickle down to workforce safety.
I don’t actually think being an asshole is a prerequisite to leading a high-tech company. It just doesn’t seem like the Rivian guy is a counterexample.