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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

I’ve always wondered what it’s like to work for a CEO where you simultaneously 1. can’t say no to him, and 2. can’t implement their hairbrained ideas without killing your product and then being blamed for it.

I heard a rumor (who knows if it’s true) that in the early-ish days of Amazon, they had an entirely separate backend and frontend just for Bezos that would only display if his account was logged in. So when he asked for something crazy they could just implement it in the Bezos-Amazon and not fuck up the main product.

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Not sure how early we are talking with Amazon but I was there in '99 and that was not the case then, nor did I ever hear of such a thing. Not that I have lots of positive things to say about Bezos but he knew what the site was doing and would never have been so easily fooled.

Honestly this is how many of the cultures higher up on the authoritarian scale operate. You say yes to your higher-up no matter what they ask, then depending on whether or not it's actually a good idea you may or may not do it.

Regarding 1st sentence, leave. Or, if you really want to keep working there, you collect what you can for a while, then leave before the product tanks and your name could be associated with it. Musk has his own reality distortion field (tm) protecting him from any PR backlash, his employees don't.

> I’ve always wondered what it’s like to work for a CEO where you simultaneously 1. can’t say no to him, and 2. can’t implement their hairbrained ideas without killing your product and then being blamed for it.

When I try to imagine this, what I do is think about US or British politics after 2015 or so. And then I feel enraged. And I conclude that this is what it would be like, only closer, more immediate, and more sickness-inducing.

Musk, Trump, Boris Johnson: ever-present, narcissistic sociopaths who inject themselves into everything and ruin lives, up close and further afield.

I have no idea whether the Bezos story is true, but the sound engineers working for the Beach Boys apparently really did eventually set up a mixing desk for Murry Wilson (the Wilsons' overbearing, abusive father and interfering manager) so he could make his idiotic changes whenever he wanted, but that only affected what he heard:

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/featu...

Her job is to handle the humans.

Most people cannot take radical ideas and don't understand that Elon Musk does not need to care and foes not care if he fails with Twitter after first trying to construct something with a social impact.

Elon Musk can fuck up every company he has and (as long as he doesn't get sued by angry investors) he will still be able to live a great, amazing life.

Edit: I get down votes but no replies. If you disagree, it would be beneficial to write why.

> Most people cannot take radical ideas...If you disagree, it would be beneficial to write why.

It might help the credibility of the free speech absolutionist if said absolutionist didn't assist a certain Turkish dictator shut down free speech, didn't mute journalists covering his actions against elonmuskjet, didn't censor the blocktheblue campaign, didn't try to erase the existence of substack from twitter, didn't help the Indian gov censor tweets that Gov didn't like ... off the top of my head.

An individual using their position of power to silence unliked speech - and help authoritarians do the same ... it just isn't very radical.

Elon Musk does not have "radical ideas"

He has moronic ones. The only reason any of his companies have done well is because they have people that can manage HIM well enough to do well in spite of his idiotic moronic stupid ideas.

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