Elon Musk is what happens when an 8-year-old boy is the richest man in the world. He builds cars and trains and tunnels and flamethrows and rockets.
Thousands of employees build it. In the case of SpaceX and Tesla, they frequently build it in spite of Musk, dedicating time and effort to preventing him from screwing things up when he breezes in.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
https://youtu.be/t705r8ICkRw?t=378
This lie seems mostly accepted only by non-technical people in technical fields from what I've found out. Leads me to believe Elon actually is one of those great people that will be more appreciated after his passing.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/14/musk_twitter_rpc_spat...
It's like they have a personal investment in Elon not having done the things that Elon has very clearly actually done.
So I have hard time accepting ad hominem arguments as anything but jealous, uninformed, or just plain conformist. Or maybe some people like to just speak untruths with the mindset that the billionaire can take it, but find that anti-intellectual and unnecessarily polarizing.
(This is a comment in general, not an attack on the parent comment but critiquing the generally hateful air I'd expect the HN crowd to be above of)
If you're going to defend him for this, you have to admit his distractions have be a hindrance to the cause. Rather than running Tesla and making sure its the market leader across market segments, he's been off on side quests. And now his side quest is making people not want Teslas.
I think he stated that his underlying big plan was to act in fields that he thinks will have the most impact in the future, being good business while not just profit-driven, after he got the PayPal money (Can't find a source right now though) in which he has succeeded, profiting from making the world better, instead, for example, lobbying against ICE's and then providing "just-good-enough" Environmental(r) ShittyCars(tm)
He also has shifted his focus accordingly when Tesla, and at part, SpaceX, were at dire straits. For his kind of personality, I'm not sure just working more would even transfer as simply to linear benefit on that thing.
someone else posted a howard hughes comparison and i think that is quite apt, including the dating of movie or music stars, and the inevitable mental health issues
One, I was pretty impressed by.
The second? I’ve had less wind noise riding my motorcycle.
Still very hit and miss.
Doesn’t mean I’m not looking to buy one after they refresh them next year, but you definitely don’t get Lexus quality for your Lexus money.
He staged mock naval battles in the lake/canal behind Versailles.
Which, admittedly, sounds pretty awesome.
With-out, France was involved in a lot of wars.
Howard Hughes also had some mental health issues, similar to Elon Musk.
All the adults are clucking their tongues at him but presumably they'd be fine with him being a quiet entry in the Panama Papers and the Epstein flight logs with the other billionaires.
It would be "fun" if it only affected him. But there are real people who get caught in the blast radius of his "fun."
Who are these "real people" you talk of? I find it interesting in this age of diversity and acceptance of differences, that a "Musk character" can't exist without a constant deluge of backlash, ridicule and grumpiness!
Seriously?
OK, I'll give you an easy one: Google "Twitter layoffs."
Would you have preferred every employee, including the most loyal and hard-working, to lose their jobs too?
That doesn't mean that people's lives weren't upended. You're arguing a completely different point.
No one has a right to have a particular job, if it's no longer deemed necessary.
One might be lucky enough to have such a job.
But if it goes *poof* overnight then the appropriate take should probably be "It was nice while it lasted."
PS: And we can lament the gutting of their moderation team, but that comprised a small proportion of the total headcount cut.
Musk paid billions too much for Twitter. So at least a few of those real people you're worried about, are now very rich.
Companies have layoffs. Are you saying the thousands of layoffs at Meta, or any other tech businesses in recent times, are "good layoffs", but Twitter layoffs were "bad layoffs"? I don't understand your position here. You seem to have an emotional response about the welfare of tech sector people you don't know.
If you have Twitter on your resume, I'd expect it would open a few doors when job hunting. Your concern for their welfare is odd to say the least.
If Musk were doing all of the same things, and much worse, without the culture war stuff attached we would never hear his name.
"I take full responsibility for this difficult decision..."
And the people in my world who are upset about Twitter do not give anyone a pass on the Epstein flight logs and Panama Papers.
[1] mostly. there is the matter of the habitat destruction because SpaceX failed to listen to experts.
edit: formatting
Regarding your complaints about twitter:
> In response to a 2017 request from the Pentagon, Twitter kept online a network of accounts that the U.S. military used to advance its interests in the Middle East
It’s not so much fun when it’s directed against you, is it?
the fact that one single app has that much influence means it ought to be destroyed. I was hoping Musk would walk into Twitter, pull the plug, and go home. Now I hope, maybe, he'll just grind it to dust.
Musk has multiple Epstein connections including having gone to his house, he’s exactly like the other billionaires.
Elon Musk is what happens when a 17-year-old stoner is the richest man in the world. He builds cars and trains and tunnels and flamethrows and rockets.
Everyone tries to blame his money or his childishness, when the obvious answer is right there lighting up in public and blowing smoke on podcasts.
As a seasoned stoner it doesn't look like Musk has much experience smoking weed if the Rogan video is anything to go by.