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Comment by calinet6 | Hacker News Reader

One cannot will anything one wants into existence.

At some point, he'll need to understand how to design an effective large-scale manufacturing system, and not simply yell for one.

Specifically, he should actually learn some things about managing people, and the place that has in producing quality at volume at speed. It's sad, because that's exactly the lesson Toyota was trying to teach at NUMMI, and their legacy has been totally forgotten by its new owner—at great cost. It's simply a shame.

> "According to this, they're using 7 times as many employees and still making less than a 1/5 of the cars NUMMI did when they had the factory." https://insideevs.com/teslas-fremont-factory/ -- via https://twitter.com/Benshooter/status/1012113642689519617

(albeit they're earlier in their maturity, for sure, but still)

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> One cannot will anything one wants into existence

Let's just see now.

Musk wanted to grow a plant on Mars, and when the Russians pulled out of a deal to sell him a couple of ICBMs he decided he would will his own rocket into existence.

Then he decided he wanted it to be reusable, so he willed that into existence when everyone said it was impossible.

Then he wanted to strap three of them together, so he willed that into existence.

Then we wanted electric cars, so he willed into existence not only the best electric car ever, but one of the best cars ever, period (Model S)

etc. etc.

I think it unwise to underestimate Musk.

First, large-scale manufacturing is a different thing from rocket engineering. It ceases to be about building something, and begins to be about understanding and managing people. That's what I challenge Musk is still learning, and far too slowly. He may never be able to learn at all—beliefs about people and management are far more hard-set than those about physics and engineering.

That said, I think he'll get it done, but it's still arrogant (and inefficient) to take all of the learnings of manufacturing and management of the past 30 years and try to "start fresh."

It's a waste. It's a waste of money, a waste of time, a waste of human capital and life and happiness. He's expending energy to learn things we've already learned.

That's the sad part. I'm sure he'll get it done, but at what cost? At what despair and unnecessary strife? And at what level of waste and inefficiency.

Sure, you'll say, necessity is the mother of invention, and new knowledge and innovation will come out of this struggle—but how can we know even more could not be done in a better process? We can't, and this naysaying will go by the wayside. As perhaps it should.

I think the reason he does it this way is to avoid reaching the same local maximum competitors are already stuck in - you can’t out-compete incumbents with more of the same but a little better. It is arrogant in many ways but there is a reason behind it, it’s not just hubris, and crucially it requires finding the right frustrated talented people and listening to them, it would be a mistake to think he comes up with all the ideas.

I disagree that he’s not good at managing people, he just has very different success criteria, which do not highly rate the welfare of his workers. I think like Jobs, Bezos and many other successful business leaders he’s good at finding talented people, selling them a dream, and wringing every last ounce of life out of them in service of his dreams, then finding someone else to keep it going. A lot of people will be broken along the way, a lot of people will produce their best work.

It's possibly(?) tangential to the discussion, but I would say that if he does not "highly rate the welfare of his workers" then, he is by definition not good at managing people.

I mostly agree; I wouldn't want to work for someone like that, there is some ambiguity though as usually they are themselves driven to excel at all costs, and sometimes they encourage people to excel in ways they would not without the pressure (even if at great personal cost). I think he is highly skilled at manipulating and motivating people to do what he wants, whether you want to call that 'good at managing' is another discussion, mostly centred around the moral connotations of 'good'.

> It ceases to be about building something, and begins to be about understanding and managing people. That's what I challenge Musk is still learning, and far too slowly.

Hmm. This strikes me as somewhat implausible or at least uncharitable.

Are there other example of doing something as complex, in a 'new' field, at a scale to compete with incumbent operators AND vertically integrating both design and manufacture?

If one zooms out a little to place what Tesla is doing in context, or Musks 'performance', it doesn't seem they've been particularly bad per se, more that they've faced difficulties that are inevitable. It's somewhat of a testament to them 'doing well' and learning to do it pretty damn quickly that we here can continue to talk about how bad they continue to be - namely because they're still around and not dead and disbanded.

I may, of course, be talking rubbish seeing as I don't know much about this subject nor do I have a horse in the race. But it just strikes me that Tesla is doing something extraordinarily hard (I know about the logistics of supply chain management and that's hard enough in the auto industry) and being played out in public view with intense competition.

Yes, you're correct. And in fact I had a bet with a friend ten years ago that Tesla would in fact still be around today. He didn't think they would. I just won that bet in January. :)

The shame is that the parts that are innovative, like the engineering of an electric car, the design, the interface, and the battery technology, are all going so well, all things considered.

Whereas the parts that don't necessarily require innovation on a major scale, such as management of people, the operation of a manufacturing line at scale, systemic quality control, and safety and health—are being done (by all accounts) not so well. These are the things that are far more difficult than the technology and innovation precisely because they are so much more complex, and require a different mindset. For the same reason Musk is so good at engineering, it is not totally surprising he is not so spectacular at leading the human systems required for this new pursuit. Again, by all accounts.

And the sad part: these are the parts that have been done before, in similar situations, at similar scales, with similarly new technologies, without drastically different requirements or problems. Having that experience available to you and not using it is not exactly wise.

All that said, I think he'll learn what he needs to learn, get it done anyway, and will not fail. Making this point of efficiency at this stage pretty moot. I realize that.

Ah yes, I forgot that running a company doing rocket science with ~5000 employees (as of late 2015) clearly proves no abilities in management or people skills whatsoever.

Until Tesla goes bankrupt (which I believe is sooner rather than later - Tesla is sitting on a Wells Notice), the charade continues.

I would argue that the number of companies who have gone bankrupt sitting on this dollar volume of preorders is and will continue to be, 0. Worst case scenario, they can issue stock or sell a chunk of the company. Even easier is to dial back R&D.

Pre-orders are overstated. Check Twitter - people who were quoted November delivery for AWD Performance are now being told they can take delivery in July.

They'll burn through supposed 450K before the end of Q3, and then the order book is dry/cash crunch time for Tesla.

That means they are managing cash flows and taking high margin orders first, not running out of demand.

Further, I expect the number of people who can put down 1k and wait with no new car for a long time is but a small fraction of those who can buy without those substantial barriers.

It's always the next thing that Musk won't achieve. It's funny how people are constantly moving the goalpost after every success he has. He is building a car manufacturer from scratch and people are making 6 months worth of delays such a big deal...( I mean as a personal failure not as far as the importance of the milestone for the company).

Then he willed it to land standing up. On a barge. In the ocean.

And an assembly line. In a tent. From a bunch of scraps.

It's starting to sound like the first chapter in the old testament haha

I was thinking more the first Iron Man movie

I don't think anyone said you couldn't land a rocket. Folks have been looking in to doing that for a long time, we just didn't have the technology or enough investment in space to make it happen. He was just one of the first ones to come along and bring enough capital and technology to bear on the problem.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely admire what Elon Musk is capable of. But it's worth being realistic when we draw opinions of leaders lest we fall victim to hero worship.

Yep. He delivers. People are too obsessed about when. Shits’s complicated.

For shareholders and customers that makes sense. For everyone else not so much. There are a lot of people in the everyone else column who are happy to see an entrepreneur take risks.

> who are happy to see an entrepreneur take risks.

Are there really? I feel like a massive percentage of people are against Musk and Tesla precisely because he's trying to do something new, and take some risks.

It's like a majority of Americans don't want anyone to do anything radical anymore, like they're happy to stagnate.

You're overthinking this. What's going on is simply that when you say you're going to do something, people (especially the ones who've lent/invested money) expect you to do it. If you don't then you rapidly lose credibility.

Not so worried about when, there's no rush. It's just a shame to see the chaos where there doesn't have to be, that's all.

That's just the thing, Tesla isn't creating the chaos, everybody else is. Tesla setting huge goals and trying their best to reach them, no doubt exceeding Musk's true expectations. Companies fail to meet goals all the time, most of the time because the goals have been set intentionally unreachable.

When does matter a bit, there was a probability that other manufacturers might swipe the market under Musk feet

...and generally speaking, human. Musk might be able to work longer hours without having a stroke, but ultimately he's not magic, and lots of other people can do this, too. Let's see more people try. (But I’d suggest just one major company at a time, spend more time with your spouse and kids.)

Oh good, the cult of Elon is in full force.

I didn't mean it this way. I believe Musk has enough self confidence and college education to think he can crack through things like he did with SpaceX (remember they almost died and now vertical reusable landing is almost the new normal). So if he manages to keep Tesla growing, he'll fix things on the way. Maybe he'll have time to read about Toyota :)

I do think he'll learn, and I trust that he's a pretty decent person all things considered. Hope it goes well for them!

One can judge from the distance and think he has better understanding of the problem, than a person who is immersed in it most of his waking hours and surrounded by people specialized at solving it.

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