People at Tesla and SpaceX have achieved great things, not Musk.
All he's demonstrating is that CEO pay and comp should never have got as high as it has and taxes on rich people needs to go way higher, they are just going to waste it any way.
And he never did anything at all, because these people saying that where part of every meeting and decision happening at his companies. It's mindblowing
Both tesla and spaceX are famously structured internally specifically to handle musk and his ideas, in the sense that they will have a team dedicated to listening to him then basically doing the minimum viable thing to make him think his ideas have been implemented. When management has an adversarial relationship with the CEO, it's hard to see what contributions musk could have made to the products directly. I will however concede that he has been a valuable viral marketing tool, but obviously that is changing rapidly.
The reason the twitter fiasco is happening is that twitter doesn't have such a team dedicated to cushioning musk, and so he goes around dictating whatever thoughts he has on an already major platform, even if these thoughts are directly contradictory with earlier ones, as was visible publicly on twitter.
Other than PR, which he is becoming worthless for (unless you count appealing to the historically not-believing-in-climate-change right as good PR for an EV company), i don't think musk has achieved much personally beyond having capital (with questionable legitimacy re its acquisition).
> Both tesla and spaceX are famously structured internally specifically to handle musk and his ideas, in the sense that they will have a team dedicated to listening to him then basically doing the minimum viable thing to make him think his ideas have been implemented.
Elon didn't design Starship – SpaceX engineering teams did. Why don't ULA's engineers do something like Starship, is it because they aren't capable? I don't think that's fair; I think many engineers at ULA would love to do something like Starship, but Tory Bruno won't let them. And why is that? Well, I think Tory would love it if ULA could do something like Starship too, but he only has as much money as Boeing and Lockheed Martin are willing to give him, and he can only spend it on what they feel comfortable spending it on. And as far as Boeing and Lockmart go, why risk billions on some high-risk commercial space venture, when there are plenty of far safer big juicy defense contracts to chase instead?
That's the thing that Elon brings to SpaceX – expansive requirements, but also a willingness to risk billions in pursuing them. Gwynne Shotwell and Elon Musk make a good team, because she balances that out with pragmatism, organisation, management efficiency, customer focus. But, imagine if Elon had died suddenly 10 years ago – would Starship still be where it is today? As excellent an executive as Gwynne is, if it was all up to her, she might not have been wiling to make as big and risky bets as Elon has.
So I think this idea that all that Elon brings to the table is capital and PR is very mistaken. The other thing he takes to the table, is a willingness to take big risks which few others would, and the direction he gives to his teams to chase the limits of what is currently possible rather than settling for what is more obviously feasible. Sometimes, it all blows up in his face; other times, it has been a recipe for immense success. But, in that regard, both the success and the failure are coming from the same place.
I think looking at Blue Origin and comparing the achievements since founding is a clear difference in the leading between both? Bezos has not less capital or PR. But Blue Origin is almost forgetten to irrelevance at this point.
SpaceX was founded by Musk, he is the CEO, CTO, chairman of the board, owns 47% of the stock and has voting control of the board.
You seriously believe he allows a team of people to act as an intermediary between him and the company, yesman and nod to him, then go and do their own thing?
Step back for a second and consider how incredibly unlikely this scenario is. Try and put another successful billionaire and the company they founded into a hypothetical, and tell me it's realistic.
Well if they exist it’s unlikely he would allow them, which makes it somewhat plausible (idk) and it’s certainly not generally unheard of.
Another scenario to think about here is how does he spend any amount of quality time focusing on SpaceX or SpaceX projects when he’s running day-to-day ops at Twitter for sure and supposedly Tesla too. Something has to give.
If he’s mostly spending his time on Twitter I don’t see how it’s all that implausible that for SpaceX he does randomly show up and toss around ideas and people tell him yes so he goes away and they can go back to their normal ops. I don’t know either way, but I wouldn’t really dismiss it so offhandedly.
It's a good question, and I suspect he doesn't spend as much time on SpaceX as he used to.
However, he did found SpaceX 20 years ago in 2002. And their first successful launch was in 2008, 14 years ago.
It's entirely likely he puts less effort and impact into the daily running of SpaceX now, however I don't believe his last 6 months running Twitter invalidate his last 20 years running SpaceX.
I don't think it invalidates it, but it's impossible to run 3 companies the size of SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter so I'm sympathetic to the idea that he might drop by one day to a Tesla and they give him high-fives and tell him what he wants to hear and then once he leaves they get back to whatever they were doing.
Have to imagine investors in Tesla are not happy right now with such divisive activities from Elon Musk in the public sphere and the lack of focus on the company (yes I can say factually he is not focusing enough on Tesla).
What makes you believe he effectively does not run the company, despite his entitlements? There appears to be strongly evidence for him running it (his entitlements primarily) and no evidence I've seen against it.
Given the number of news stories I’ve read like that, from a range of news outlets, and given that Musk is also CEO of Tesla, I’ve decided that I find these stories plausible.
You have certainly never worked with someone like this, or you’d know that this is almost 100% how it works. You are being naive in your assumption Elon does shit all, but run his mouth.
I’m not sure why you’re so obsessed with a fantasy version of a man.
I'm unsure where I indicated any obsession? Before replying I didn't actually know all of his roles there, I looked them up.
No, I have never worked with a billionaire CEO, founder and chairman of a space company. I have however worked with many founders and CEOs, and the ones who are dead weight quickly get moved on.
Why you do believe it's likely for this one to hold all the decision making power in a successful company with effectively no input?
Surely the default assumption is the founder/CEO of a successful company plays a part in it? So what do you have to indicate this is untrue, aside from your obvious dislike of a person you don't know.
Not deserving any credit and not giving him more than is actually due are two different things.
Musk is not talentless. His abilities allowed him to make the best of his opportunities of the time and his own circumstances. But this is a story of a fortunate business person, not some inspiring role model in any professional field or just as a person.
On the whole he isn't even unique, just very public and the richest one.
>It’s important not to make any issue an “I align with X so you’re against me” conflict.
Ethics aren't some opinion you may or should just keep to yourself while lack of reason in public discourse does not need to be tolerated either.
Of course, that applies to the rest of us as well. There is definitely a subconscious wish within the hivemind of the public to see a bad guy fail, so a lot of people are willing stretch the truth a little bit.
I think that position confuses ethics with condemnation of an individual.
You can be ethically against stealing, but still see the positive elements in the life of a thief.
It is absolutely not necessary to turn the discussion around Musk into a trial. It is possible he is neither guilty or innocent, but rather a mixture of good and bad - like everyone on here, even those condemning him as a terrible human.
>You can be ethically against stealing, but still see the positive elements in the life of a thief.
Translated: You can use ethics to judge an action or just look at its risk/reward ratio? Yeah, that's what Musk does but that's also why plenty of people consider him a (near) sociopath.
All he's demonstrating is that CEO pay and comp should never have got as high as it has and taxes on rich people needs to go way higher, they are just going to waste it any way.
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