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"makes huge and sometimes unreasonable demands on his workforce"

Weird way to spell serial labor law violator

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/02/tesla-factory-is...

IMO - my theory is that 5 years ago Musk was successful enough that regular people in the tech industry admired him, but not so successful that most people who admired him realised he was substantially more successful than they were ever going to be.

These days though, it’s quite clear to the 250k a year tech-guy that, even though they’re making bank, they’re never going to be “Elon rich”, and so the jealousy disguised as virtue has come out in full swing.

Is he perfect? Of course he fucking isn’t… we work in tech, we all work with atleast one “brilliant ass-hole”… they’re the ones that make our days a little bit more painful but also write the fucking insane code that makes most of our workplaces profitable.

Elon is just the end of that bell-curve.

Alternatively, 5 years ago the reaction was "oh, the tesla/spacex guy? those are cool companies, guess he must be pretty cool", but since then he's made himself more of a celebrity which comes with much more visibility on those actions. As a result people are now judging based on actions they've heard about rather than the top line of a bio summary

Five years ago was also before he showed his ass throwing around the term pedophile to describe people working on the Tham Luang cave rescue

I don’t think it’s jealousy. I think his politics are clearly making him “the bad guy”.

It’s pretty clear he leans right so that makes him an enemy of a lot of people automatically.

If he leaned left, nobody would care. Hell, they’d probably encourage it.

There are a lot of people here very clearly articulating the issues they have with Musk - usually related to some bad tweets, but also more serious things like the sexual harassment - so there's no need to speculate that it's in any way related to his political leaning. Besides, it was only recently that he declared himself to be a supporter of the GOP, long after the tide of public opinion started to turn on him (and even perhaps because of it)

> he was substantially more successful than they were ever going to be.

Yeah, no. He was that much richer even at birth, whose father owns an emerald mine?!

Are you suggesting that being born into wealth negates a person from being successful in their own right?

Doesn’t negate, but it is such a huge boost that it is basically playing the tutorial vs on hard mode.

And regardless of wealth, Elon’s only actual contribution was paypal, which is.. well, paypal (I quite literally left some money in that because it was so scammy I couldn’t even rescue it by donation..), and funding tesla (not inventing anything!). The latter is pretty much impossible without some form of privilege.

Whose father _claims_ to own an emerald mine, for which there is no actual proof. Not to mention that it is well established that Musk does not have a good relationship with this father, so whatever wealth Musk Sr. may or may not have, doesn't help Elon. So what's your point other than trying to spread misinformation?

Yep, sure. We all know how humble Elon is and is absolutely not the type of person who would sell this “self-made men” image of himself to the public to look better? “He came to the US with a few hundreds dollars and everything is his accomplishment”…

Even if family wealth only helped him through insanely good relations to other people in the top 1%, it is still all that much more than you will likely ever achieve/get. And I frankly don’t buy this “daddy doesn’t love me” BS.

> they’re the ones that make our days a little bit more painful but also write the fucking insane code that makes most of our workplaces profitable.

People like to think that but in my experience there are far more brilliant nice people than brilliant assholes. This is the mythos antisocial engineers tell themselves to justify their poor social skills.

> People like to think that but in my experience there are far more brilliant nice people than brilliant assholes

Yep 100%, this has been my experience too

And it takes some emotional evolution to realize that. I too once upon a time was the former, until I realized that such a person is the most annoying and unremarkable personality ever. I wouldn’t hang out with me 8 years ago, was kind of a grade A douche, and my code wasn’t great. But I made money, so I always thought the ends justified the means.

> the end of that bell-curve

A "bell end", if you will.

So the 250k tech guy thought he could level up to the 20B elon musk, but once musk crossed over the 200B mark they got jealous?

Personally, I thought he was a cool guy building a revolutionary car.

But once I saw his hour long talk on how he was going to build a Mars colony, the fact that he was actually a Tesla investor - not a founder(the super fast LI ion lotus had already been demonstrated to him when he invested) and his absurd claims about AGI - I realized he was completely out of his mind. I have been skeptical of his personality since 2014, even as I held TSLA shares.

Yes he is able to manage and productionize probably the best car on the road right now and maximize Tesla shareholder value, but he is a shell of a person beyond that.

This is preposterous, a tech worker is never going to be as wealthy as Elon in 2010, unless they starter thinking of themselves as a founder instead of a worker.

I will admit to having a few feelings of jealousy of the founders I know who have done far far better than o have on the game of building big companies, but that is also mixed with happiness for them.

With Musk, it's different. It's sadness and disappointment, to see someone throw away so much goodwill and be such a horrible person. Some of this is the media becoming adversarial with tech, while at the same time profiting off the hype bubble that the media itself created for Musk. But I view him as a lost man that needs a better support network and a slightly better filter so that he stops looking so foolish all the time.

You missed his recent pro-Russian plan for Ukraine and subsequent blackmailing over Starlink.

I don't like Musk, but he's done more for Ukraine than you can dream of. But he also sent a few stupid tweets that he took back, so that's a good enough excuse for virtue signalers to feel superior.

Ukrainians literally pay for the internet access.. what did he do?

According to Musk, Starlink has spent $80-120 million to subsidize Ukraine. He could be making this up, but this is supported by a letter SpaceX sent to the Pentagon even before Musk's infamous Ukraine tweets.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-sta...

Poland bought for Ukraine more than half of the starlink terminals.

https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/ukraine-uses-over-11000...

From your source:

> SpaceX has said it pays for about 70 percent of the services used by Ukraine, offering all the terminals in that country the best possible option, valued at USD 4,500 per month even though most have contracts signed only for the USD 500-per-month service option.

I don’t think his proposal was pro-Russia as much as it was anti-more-dead-people.

There’s no way Russia loses this war if it doesn’t escalate beyond local conflict. The objective now is (or should be) minimizing casualties and human suffering, not lines on maps from 2015.

Stopping recurring monthly donations of something very expensive is also not “blackmail”.

If you're a spectacularly famous, influential and anti-more-dead-people the message you should be blasting out to your hundred-million followers is: Russia out. That's it.

> I don’t think his proposal was pro-Russia as much as it was anti-more-dead-people.

I believe this topic has been discussed more than enough since February, by people with way more expertise than Musk. Ukraine has made it very clear that they do not intent to let their country be oppressed by the foreign aggressor. It is their decision to make.

Asking Ukraine to bow to Russia now that they are successful in their defense is a pro Russia stance. Claiming otherwise is just dishonest.

Especially since he was attempting to imply that anything close to a proper voting process would even be possible in that region now.

His statement means he is either incredibly stupid, or malicious. Both possibilities are dangerous. And Musk fans will vehemently disagree with the former.

> I don’t think his proposal was pro-Russia as much as it was anti-more-dead-people.

It was anti Ukrainian lives on occupied territories and pro Russian soldiers lives. It was also pro next invasion once Russia recovers at which point Russia will argue that Ukraine is failed stated due to having destroyed infrastructure.

>The objective now is (or should be) minimizing casualties and human suffering,

The causalities are not minimized by rewarding Russia for invasion and letting it continue with genocide.

> not lines on maps from 2015

The issue is not so much lines on the map as actual consequences of those maps. The torture, genocide, suppression of Ukrainian identity and so on. And obviously favorable position for next invasion again and again, until whole of Ukraine is taken.

I hate almost everything Musk does, but I am aligned on his Russia plan. Biden must negotiate with Putin to end the war. Europe is buying more than enough oil from Russia to sustain the war for a decade.

> I am genuinely fascinated by this hatred.

At a meta level, I consider Musk and Trump both to have the same approach to media: say whatever you want to create publicity. Words mean nothing, in the sense that there are no repercussions large enough to outweigh the created buzz/fame. Outrage works extremely well to that end (look at this thread.)

Because he says things helping both extreme sides (lovers and haters,) all they have to do is latch on to whatever fuels their fire, and ignore the other words. And it is well-know that confirmation bias is a thing among humans. This causes polarization that fuels the debates, creating a spiral of even more debates, buzz and fame. Even sparks meta-debates.

Edit: Another side of this is that it seems that everything must be classified as good or bad. Both on HN and elsewhere, commentors go to extraordinary lengths to argue why something has one abstract label or the opposite. Does everything have to have emotions assigned to it? Does everything have to be categorized in the very coarse good and bad buckets? It would be nice to read comments where the author tries to explain both sides, instead of just arguing for one.

I don't think I made any statement here about whether he is good or bad. I've said that I find his public persona to be annoying, justified why I think that, and have said he's probably not as responsible for everything he's credited for than many of his supporters believe. I think that's a really reasonable comment to make - there are people frothing mad about him and there are people who are rabid supporters of him. But I haven't seen either in this thread.

Edit: ok I just saw someone call him “Elongated Muskrat” so now there is someone who is mad at him in the thread :-)

Yepp, it wasn't a reflection on your comment. I just think the good/bad dichotomy ties in to my argument about polarization. It doesn't happen with every comment, but when it does, it adds fuel to the fire.

Sorry if that wasn't clear.

... I wonder if polarization can be seen as a market spread, and that more polarization causes higher volatility, which leads to more "trading" to close the spread. I.e. discussions follow some version of the efficient market hypothesis? Need to do a PhD on this. :)

> , I consider Musk and Trump both to have the same approach to media:

I think you've hit on more here. I think Musk has become associated with Trump. I think that might be because Trump is the champion of the losers of globalisation, and Musk is also a hero to those people because (a) he has created a lot of manufacturing jobs and (b) is creating a sense of patriotic pride in some of his achievements... just see SpaceX staff chanting "USA USA". I'm not criticising anyone, just drawing a connection.

So I think after reading these posts and talking to others, that Musk is hated because he is part of the war between left and right. To praise Musk is to praise Trumpism, and to hate Musk is to show you are against Trump.

Major world powers invaded Germany, tore the country in two, and Hitler killed himself. Musk is a complete dick in public and people are right to criticize him, but you are being plainly ridiculous when you say "he’s hated as if he is the new Hitler."

That's a fair criticism of me using a lazy shorthand, but it really is quite difficult to capture the level of vitriol against Musk. It's at a level I've never seen against anyone in my lifetime. People certain express strong hatred towards him than, say, Putin or Xi.

Obviously in reality Musk has done nothing to be compared to Hitler, however as far as how much hate he gets in 2022, I would say he easily surpasses Hitler by at least a factor of a thousand. Very few people even talk about Hitler anymore, so it doesn't really capture the sense of hate either.

I think a good comparison in the US would be Trump and I think more people hate Trump than Musk.

Hmm this is excellent analysis and the comparison is not incidental.

Eh, guess I just don't know enough about SpaceX then. If you read my comment and interpreted it as "hatred" then that is odd. I don't think it's possible to hate someone you don't know. I mean, every time he has popped up in the last 5 years or so he's been saying or doing something dumb or annoying so quite a lot of people have gradually gotten tired of that. But it’s not hatred at all.

He's not treated like the next Hitler by any stretch of the imagination. He's more like a village drunk who just keeps showing up doing stupid things like peeing on your doorstep or passing out in your garden. You don't hate that person, you're just like "[sigh] ok I guess we have to deal with him again..."

He’s also built rockets that land themselves, scaled electric car manufacturing, launched a world-wide low-latency satellite internet service, and made more progress on self-driving vehicles than literally any other company in that same time.

If your town drunk is doing that much good for the world, I think you’d forgive them for pissing on your doorstep once or twice a year.

Well this is the other side of the public opinion on Elon Musk. His companies have done a bunch of things, ranging from impressive to bad. As outsiders all we know is that his involvement with, say, a rocket that can land itself is somewhere between "Elon single-handedly designed, constructed and assembled every part of it" and "Elon told someone the rockets re-usable". There's no way to know, but you and a legion of people seem to be portraying his involvement as closer to the former (literally "He’s also built rockets that land themselves..." - come on)

Honestly this discourse has played out a thousand times over. Some people love him, attribute all his companies' wins to him and memory-hole any of the fuck-ups or gaffes. Some people acknowledge his business acumen, don't quite believe the hype on the company-level achievements that get attributed to him personally and find his personality as portrayed on traditional and social media to be grating.

I'm clearly in the latter group and I think that's a pretty uncontroversial position to take.

Edit: would the drive-by downvoters care to explain?

He does seem to be a lot more hands-on with the technical stuff than most C level execs, and for SpaceX there are reports that he is actually doing the work that comes with his role as Chief Engineer:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...

>"Elon single-handedly designed, constructed and assembled every part of it" and "Elon told someone the rockets re-usable". There's no way to know, but you and a legion of people

I think that's missing the point, which is the question of whether these innovations (the re usable rockets, scaling e cars) would have happened without his involvement. If the answer is no, then the question of whether 'someone else did it and he took credit' seems irrelevant. That's what leadership is, driving results, not pulling up your sleeves and doing it yourself.

If someone says those words - that he helmed a company and pushed them to deliver re-usable rockets then ok. Saying he built that is an absurd fantasy.

Elongated Muskrat never built a rocket in his life. Engineers at a company he owns built rockets that land themselves.

He did none of that? Companies listed under his name that employ smart people for a shitton of money did.

At Tesla, Elon is a manager like any other CEO. At Space X, he clearly is not and Gwynne Shotwell with decades of experience in Aerospace engineering runs the show.

As much as people would like to believe that Elon musk, a materials science graduate with his only career experience being online payments with PayPal, is actually responsible for the core founding engineering of SpaceX and Tesla is crazy.

Musk made bank with PayPal and has been an investor in many companies including failures like Neuralink, boring company etc. He has both invested and managed Tesla.

He sexually harassed employees and then paid them off to stay quiet: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-sexual-misconduct-...

His factories have a history of complaints about racial abuse: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...

Elon Musk hates the color yellow so hazards in the factory aren't properly identified: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/tesla-workers-gettin...

Elon Musk made up the hyperloop just to kill high speed rail and sell more cars: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/editorials/article26445107...

Thanks for posting links, that's the kind of answer I'm interested in.

(Thanks also to whoever un-downed me, as it is from genuinely wanting to understand).

The last link is paywalled, but I doubt that is really his motive. It sounds silly. There was plenty of outspoken criticism against that highspeed rail link without a Musk conspiracy theory. He gave an interview on the BBC where he was similarly bemused by how poor our high speed efforts were, and his criticism was fair.

I'm not sure we can see incidents in very large organisations as indicative of the character of the CEO. For sure he is ultimately to answer for them, and has a responsibility to sort them out, but Tesla employees about 100 000 people and in any sample of people that large you'll have some horrible ones.

Someone else told me about the harassment suit today, now that is directly attributable to Musk and awful. Are there other such incidents?

Still, doesn't seem to explain the sheer hatred for the man. I do have a different theory about that having spoken to others, which I'll post elsewhere...

The hyperloop article is sourced directly from his own statements in text messages turned over during discovery.

I'm always amazed at the double standard where musk is solely responsible for the success of multiple companies, but any fault is attributable to someone else. He claims to have slept in the factory! He's this hands on car-building ubermensch. How can he be completely oblivious to safety and discrimination issues?

>He has said and posted things he shouldn’t.

According to whom? His internet comments are sci-fi libertarian mainstream with a dash of NWO.

His business accomplishments are impressive, but he's rather boring, no pun intended.

I think the only argument against Musk's success is that he enjoyed unfair regulatory advantages.

PayPal's KYC was non-existent for years, you could send money with little more than an email. Amazon had similar miraculous regulatory exceptions. No State sales tax until it had a near-monopoly network effect.

>>He has said and posted things he shouldn’t.

>According to whom?

I found that time he called a diver who was trying to save those kids a pedophile to be pretty revealing. Also, calling himself "Lorde Edge" was pretty awful. I suppose if you're asking "who has the right to tell him not to say that?" the answer is "no one", but I find it hard to respect the guy when he acts so childishly.

Don’t forget his initial support for Ukraine and then his attempted about face with star link terminals. I’m very curious why all of that intrigue seems to have dried up. How did Musk know the Crimean peninsula was dry and needed water guarantees from Ukraine? It’s weird and i believe the critics, he actually talked to Putin and felt like a big man so he started shilling for russian “peace”.

I thought he was just a lucky cult like futurist before but now I think of him as what he truly is - a billionaire narcissist that craves adulation from the mob.