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Comment by rockostrich | Hacker News Reader

From what I've read the past few weeks, Elon is mostly just a figurehead at SpaceX at this point and it seems like only his cultural presence (read: making everyone work long hours) is still around. Not sure about Tesla but it seems like it's about the same besides very high level business direction decisions.

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I've heard from tesla autopilot engineers that he just comes in and lays everyone off if he doesn't like their approach. The self-driving teams have apparently cycled through engineers like crazy. I'd love to get a current, internal confirmation on this.

Just consider how hard it is to find good people for a startup. What if indeed, most tech workers everywhere are bad? It doesn’t mean you observe lots of turnover. But it makes it possible that a company is really successful because of it, rather than despite it.

I really don't get why corporations in this day and age still make people work long hours.

There have been countless studies showing that long hours lead to more mistakes, worse productivity, decreased motivation, worse health, and burnout. Workers are also more likely to leave for a job with a better work/life balance if given the chance.

It seems many corporate execs haven't gotten the message yet, and I don't know why.

Because they pick and choose the science they want to believe. Teenagers should start school later too. And Open Offices reduce productivity for a large segment of the workforce. Vacations are a good thing, not a weakness.

i suspect because there are so many bad managers.

There's few tests to root out bad managers. The damage bad management is capable of is.. impressive, extensive.

Bad managers will make sure that they themselves stand out at promotion time, using whatever metric they're measured with.

Good managers help their direct reports, helping them succeed and stand out at promotion time.

Guess which will usually get the promotion?

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