Making a bunch of money does not give you ethical credits you can spend later. He can probably get away with it though.

Many shareholders would offer their firstborn if Elon asked. He's a strange and unique character among the billionaires.

Proven track record gives you a really, really long leash. Only Steve Jobs has attained the rarefied air of being able to do whatever the fuck you want that Musk has.

> Only Steve Jobs has attained the rarefied air of being able to do whatever the fuck you want that Musk has

I don't remember Jobs promoting DogeCoin. Or sinking his company's stock by tweeting bullshit. Or yanking senior engineers away doing superficial code reviews at his latest private acquisition.

I recall Steve Jobs was known to blow up at his staff, sometimes seemingly randomly. He arguably created a hostile work environment. He also denied and estranged his own daughter. Let's not put CEOs on a scale.

@kcplate

Site isn't allowing me to reply, but I guess I can edit here?

What I meant by scale was weighing CEOs or their behavior against each other. It sounded to me, and maybe I read it wrong, from the comment I replied to that Musk's issues were being levied against Musk with the implication (Their first sentence) Jobs didn't have issues like that. A better example of Jobs tanking Apple stock price was the partnership with Microsoft. At the time that was seen as Apple marrying the evil Jobs regularly criticized. So much for thinking different. But my point was the other things carried some form of risk and certainly didn't paint Jobs as not having character flaws.

So I'm in agreement with you, he's human, Musk is human, mistakes are allowed to be made without, I don't know, "cancelling" someone I guess. Maybe it's just fashionable to pick on Musk right now? I don't know some people are so judgmental. I mean honestly, what does the average HackerNews user know about the nature of the Tesla engineers reviewing Twitter code? While it could be a problem, it could also be legal and considered above board. No one here seems to know the contractual agreements and why would they? Companies don't publish every thing that runs across executives desks.

Exactly what is the point here? I’ve seen fast food shift supervisors blow up at their staff and know at least one person who is estranged from a child. Are CEOs (including famous ones) not allowed to be human. I have never met a human that wasn’t to some degree or another a shithead at various points of time.

I think their point is exactly that, they're human. The whole Twitter acquisition seems impulsive, petty, and obviously was poorly thought out.

I think personal flaws can taint professional accomplishments. And the worship of these strong/genius people only reinforces bad behavior.

Of course there should be some slack given for indiscretions of youth. No one is born perfect. For adults though, let's keep our eyes wide open and praise the good works--not the flawed people who do them.

billionaires aren't smart, they just had an easier spawn point and loadout

Musk's, Gate's, Zuckerberg, other-tech-billionaires spawn point was about as good as any other upper middle class American kid's. If you exclude genes were they probably got a bit luckier than average.

I can sort of see how that may be the case with Musk and Zuckerberg, but Gates? Is it normal in US for upper middle class fathers to be partners at multi-national law corporations?

… and specifically to have a company-defining early deal go to someone who shared a board membership with their mother? Microsoft didn’t even have a product when the deal went through (they bought a CP/M knockoff from a smaller company). Gates certainly executed well but most people wouldn’t have had the opportunity to even attempt something like that.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/how-bill-gates-mother-influe...

Do you remember why he got kicked? He could miss big too.

Because Jobs spent 70% of his career without any sort of social media or globally interconnected world around.

Musk's track record is more hype than substance.

True. Watching him shoot rockets into space from my backyard 3-4x a month and seeing a half dozen Teslas on the road every time I drive a few miles isn’t very substantive at all.

I think SpaceX and Tesla succeeds despite Musk actions.

What about FSD? Boring Company? Robo Taxies? Solar? Cybertruck? Neurolink? Mars colonies? Elon has had some amazing successes, that's just a fact, but judging what he will accomplish based on what he says is almost always a losing bet.

You forgot roadster 2.0 and the mannequin robot

And hyperloop.

Boring Company is right up with Tesla and SpaceX on the success trajectory by lots of measures. This is a company that just started from nothing a few years ago, and it’s already building a massive transit project, and is in final bidding in several other major projects.

They’re already building their own tunnel boring equipment.

The company raised $675 million at a $5.65 billion valuation, putting it ahead of several S&P 500 stocks in market cap, closest to Alaska Airlines.

To say this is unusual is an understatement.

At this point in SpaceX history, the company had yet to launch Falcon 1.

I think a whole lot of people are going to be mightily shocked at how successful this company will turn out. In ten years, when it’s clear how successful it is, everyone will pretend the idea was stunningly obvious and was only successful through public financing, or something like that.

Getting a project to use typical tunnel boring machines via renting tunnel boring machines is not anything special.

Raising money is just a con man thing, the boring company has achieved nothing new at all, like, nothing.

We're still waiting on all the other promises that just keep not coming, so no, I don't think we'll be surprised.

Boring Company is all hype, it's current trajectory is failure.

> it’s already building a massive transit project

It's only massive in terms of wasted taxpayer funds. The Vegas tunnel is a boondogle, and per Elon's signature style, completely unlike anything that he promised, their next tunnel will be the same.

> In ten years, when it’s clear how successful it is, everyone will pretend the idea was stunningly obvious and was only successful through public financing, or something like that.

I won't. If boring company has built any noteworthy tunnels within the next ten years, feel free to come back and have yourself a dropbox moment with my comment.

> It's only massive in terms of wasted taxpayer funds

I'm confused, because you called-out the Vegas tunnel, but are you claiming a 30-mile, 55-station tunnel is not a massive project?

Beyond that, there are no taxpayer dollars used in the project. It's entirely privately financed. In fact, the system pays a concession fee to Las Vegas.

> If boring company has built any noteworthy tunnels within the next ten years

Well, TBC is already constructing the 55-station Las Vegas Loop as we speak. It's scheduled to open in 2 years, at least partially by Super Bowl LVIII in Vegas in February 2024. The entire system will not be done, but enough of it will be to be noteworthy.

> feel free to come back and have yourself a dropbox moment with my comment.

I will try to remember to do that! Don't worry, you won't be the only one who got this wrong.

I would love to agree but it's simply not correct. They are buying existing tunneling machines and there is nothing yet to suggest a step change.

The radical proposals in terms of stripping out safety equipment for operational tunnels may prod some development, but ultimately any gains here are not going to be captive and will just result in revised client expectations (outside Boring funding & delivering projects worth $10bn+ individually themselves, with no public involvement).

> They are buying existing tunneling machines and there is nothing yet to suggest a step change.

That is incorrect. That is how they started, but they are now using Prufrock 2, which is both designed and built by The Boring Company, though I agree there has yet to be much of a step change in technology. Prufrock 2 is not the fastest tunnel boring machine in the world, and its porpoising feature has had some setbacks, needing to be dug out.

But all of this kind of misses the point. It ultimately doesn't matter if the tunnel boring machine is extraordinarily better. The Boring Company is applying the exact same philosophies that has made Tesla and SpaceX successful: extreme vertical integration and rapid iteration.

What matters is that TBC controls the boring machine. They control the design, they control the manufacturing process, and they have a willingness to experiment and iterate. The company is 5 years old and is now on its fourth tunnel boring machine.

And given the design of TBC transportation systems, there's no reason you can't have a dozen tunnel boring machines running simultaneously.

There was nothing remarkable about Falcon 9 when it launched. It was old tech, with a few good ideas, and one killer feature: extraordinary cost savings.

Ultimately what matters in tunneling is the cost.

This is absolutely despicable. There is no way Musk doesn't know that what he posted is a lie.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/30/elon-musk...

All excellent examples of how much hot air Musk spews.

And the cybertruck and the electric semi that was announced 5 freaking years ago.

What about Sun King? Dig It? Don't Bother Me? Boys? Flying? (all terrible Beatles songs)

When you have successes like Tesla and SpaceX and PayPal it doesn't really matter how many failures you have. This isn't like being an airline pilot where you're judged by your worst outing.

"it doesn't really matter how many failures you have"

The thing is that they are just honest failures, they are just outright lies.

You want to make the accusation that the business failures of someone who has had legitimate successes on the scale of Elon Musk are con jobs then the burden of proof is on you. And I don't see an proof. Not from you, and not from anyone else who says it.

Hyperloop is very much a con job. "Full Self Driving is just a year away" is very much a con job. The cybertruck is a con job. The Tesla Semi is a con job. The tesla robot is a con job.

https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/elon-musk-is-pathologically...

https://insideevs.com/news/580787/elon-musk-tesla-private-tw...

https://usishield.com/36376/news/steve-wozniak-accuses-elon-...

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/elon-musk-twitter-te...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-11-12/carson-bloc...

Mark Spiegel: Elon Musk is ‘a pathological liar’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msxq2OkCXnE

The Fake Futurism of Elon Musk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OtKEetGy2Y

DEBUNKING ELON MUSK Pt1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-FGwDDc-s8

The HYPERLOOP Will Never Work, And Here's Why https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQJgFh_e01g

- I can beat Vias and MasterCard at their own game.

- Electric cars only will build a more valuable company.

- I can launch more rockets then everyone else combined.

Were also lies at the time.

This is absolutely despicable. There is no way Musk doesn't know that what he posted is a lie.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/30/elon-musk...

> When you have successes like Tesla and SpaceX and PayPal it doesn't really matter how many failures you have

It matters if you care about evaluating whether or not you should believe what Elon says.

Do I believe him when he says "Teslas will be full self driving in six months" like he has for the last 10 years? No. He's definitely a PT Barnumesque figure.

Do I believe that Tesla will get to full self driving eventually? Yes.

This is absolutely despicable. There is no way Musk doesn't know that what he posted is a lie.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/30/elon-musk...

> but judging what he will accomplish based on what he says is almost always a losing bet.

He is literally the richest man in the world. Do you think he isn’t a successful gambler because of a few $1 bets that haven’t paid off (yet on many) vs the several $1000 bets that have?

"He is literally the richest man in the world. "

Only because Telsa stock is insanely overvalued. Due in large part to Musk's overhype of FSD.

He had help from the government, specifically Mike Griffin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career

The rocket landing stuff largely borrow from DC-X and the spinoff work at NASA (+Lars Blackmore), all originally Strategic Defense Initiative development.

He used all that money from Mike as collateral for loans to Tesla

Rome wasn't built in a day and were all standing on the shoulders of giants. However you need trailblazers to cut through and push the threshold. Elon is a hacker and disruptor and entrenched interests would like to just keep things they way they were, thereby pumping money into PR firms to talk down disruption and innovation. You're either a paid talk downer or a victim of that.

All that is true and yet nobody else got EVs on the road and reusable rockets in the sky at scale.

You do realize that everyone had those benefits? In particular dinosaur rocket companies.

Yet Elon's the only person/company who put those privileges to good use

There’s Ford F150s on the road every time I drive but I just don’t know who to worship in this case. What’s a fanboi to do?

You're not familiar with Henry Ford and his reputation? People whose personality solely consists of embarrassingly irrational hatred of Musk are as cringeworthy as those who worship him.

It's not typical for hackers to not acknowledge the achievments of musk

It isn't irrational to hate Elon Musk.

Hate is a very strong feeling. The threshold for hating a co-human should be quite high. Most people "hating" Musk have not met him and have not been assaulted, wronged or harmed by him, and he has only had minor impact on their lives (depending on how much credit you give him personally for products such as Tesla)

I find it difficult to understand the level of aggressiveness he awakes in some people. Are they actually feeling hate or just camouflaging some other feelings? Envy? Injustice? Are they hating him on the behalf of others?

I hate anyone who lies as much as Musk does.

He's mostly not lying, he's just delusionally optimistic.

It is.

By definition. (Look up what "hate" means and what "rational" vs. "irrational" mean).

It is just as irrational to love him.

I hate anyone who lies as much as Musk does.

It really is. There are thousands of more hateable public figures who have done far less good and far more bad who get only a tiny fraction of the hate I see on hackernews and reddit. Heck, pick a billionaire that's not Bill Gates...

Musk has an actual hatedom of people who try and downplay every good thing he's done and every good trait he has while spreading bad rumours about him, both well founded (impulsive, stubborn, optimistic to delusional levels and not good with peoples feelings) and not (Musk knows nothing about rockets, paypal money came entirely from superrich daddy's slave labour emerald mines and no one wanted the mini submarine).

This is exactly what I mean. Musk had very little to do with actually designing rockets. Much like Thomas Edison his main skill is getting credited for the work of other people.

I keep seeing people say that Musk had little to do with SpaceX's technical side, and I wonder where this meme (in the original Dawkins sense of the word) is coming from.

If you watch the EverydayAstronaut interviews with Musk it shows that he has a deep understanding of the engineering tradeoffs and design reasons for many components of the rocket, and in fact is being quite careful with what he can share due to not wanting to leak company secrets. In fact, some of the questions that were asked in the earlier interview were re-referenced in a later interview as having been considered and leading to design changes.

I think Musk is a smart engineering type who sees finance, PR, politics etc as just another engineering problem, with all the pros and cons that creates. He's had a ton of success in hard-tech fields just by not being an idiotic pointy-haired-boss in a world where finance and political people are repeatedly being put in charge of projects and companies whose tech they don't understand. This doesn't mean he is likeable, or someone you'd want to have a beer with, or moral, or anything else. But it does mean he is capable of managing a tech company better than most, if we use the success of the company as our capable-of-managing-a-company metric.

Musk sounding smart in a friendly interview is not the same as actually designing rockets.

I'm happy to see information to the contrary, but so far this is the closest I've seen to actual human/work style interactions with him. What would you suggest as alternative data sources which could be used to build a more accurate opinion?

Engineering optimism, even egregious optimism, is not the same as a con job.

Musk is smart enough to know those were lies.

This is absolutely despicable. There is no way Musk doesn't know that what he posted is a lie.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/30/elon-musk...

No, but it is very close to creating an intellectually friendly atmosphere for smart people who want to design rockets.

> If you watch the EverydayAstronaut interviews with Musk it shows that he has a deep understanding of the engineering tradeoffs and design reasons

Which interview specifically? from https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Everyday+Astron...

The Starbase Tour videos are excellent, and there is a more recent follow-up.

No, his main skill is believing that big things are possible, and then being willing to commit resources and to be patient to let those possibilities come to reality when many others are will not.

Go out and see the world. You are living in a biased bubble.

Well I have seen the world, and I am not biased or frankly even a Musk fan, despite finding myself defending him as of late here on HN. I don’t own a Tesla (find them ugly vehicles), don’t use or care about Twitter, but I’ll admit that I think the SpaceX stuff is pretty exciting mainly because I can see it.

I said this on another thread but I will say it here too. Musk’s genius and value is not his engineering skill but his willingness to think about big possibilities and then be fearless and patient enough to make what many others think are risky (and stupid) bets on those possibilities.

We need folks like that. They move the needle far more than the random HN engineers who feel that the Musks and Edison’s of the world aren’t relevant because they “didn’t design or engineer” the technologies they made viable to the masses.

Musk and Edison’s roles—were not as the engineers of technology, but as the facilitators of the engineers.

This is absolutely despicable. There is no way Musk doesn't know that what he posted is a lie.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/30/elon-musk...

That might or might not be true, but it doesn't matter much for the argument about the length of the leash.

Many shareholders would cram his index finger inside his own penis hole at walgreens

Yeah, it does.

Martin Shkreli returned a profit for his investors, and yet...

Winning at the casino with money you stole from the gas station doesn’t make the original theft okay, even if you return more than you stole.

Exactly the point being made. Musk stealing Tesla's resources to buy an asset for himself is not ok, even if it later helps Tesla.

Isn't it the case people on news.ycombinator.com aren't familiar with the nature of the arrangement?

Is there maybe a source that substantiates a perspective of "theft"?

Or am I just missing that a rhetorical discussion is being had here?

Given the timeframe, I think people are skeptical that 1. Elon arranged for twitter to contract with Tesla for code review and 2. Recused himself from the negotiations regarding scope of work and rate charged.

Who cares? The companies in his orbit benefit substantially from the cross pollination between them, and the PR opportunities that generates - much more than any arms-length negotiated rate would. Avoiding the type of fake work that you describe is very helpful for achieving the high iteration speeds his companies have.

It also risks fostering a dangerous culture of ends justifying the means, and trust the 'genius'/'strong' leader.

I never said it was limitless. Borrowing a few engineers, that's very different from a 1500% price hike.

Yeah, investors don't care about ethics

> Making a bunch of money does not give you ethical credits you can spend later.

If this wasn't in the realm of how moral calculations work in society, then you wouldn't need to make this argument. People do accept funny moral trades and it's not clear how the calculus works. Tesla shareholders accept the fact that the guy in charge sometimes plays games like "FUNDING SECURED $420", so the fact that some Tesla engineers were borrowed/contracted/whatever is just a tiny detail in the big picture.

Isn't the counter argument to this that he's also the guy who has lost the stock 43% of its value over the last year?

That guy is actually Jerome Powell.

In case you didn't notice, the whole stock market got hammered this year because the FED started raising interest rates.

Ah, so the good is Elon, the bad is Jerome Powell? Also, the whole stock market isn't down 43% - the S&P is only down 13%.

TSLA has underperformed the S&P 500 over the last year, but vastly outperformed it if you expand your time frame to 5 years - ~1,000% vs 50%.

Perhaps comparing the 43% drop over the last year to other comparable companies would provide a better picture.

1 Year TSLA: -43.28% GM: -29.99% FORD: -26.13% STLA: -33.09%

5 Years TSLA: 1,019% GM: -8.24% FORD: 9.24% STLA: -25.23%

Obviously Musk should go on Twitter and lie that he's taking Tesla private again to juice the stock. Maybe he'll get two slaps on the wrist this time.

You can't compare such a recent company, to others that were well established for decades. It means nothing.

I believe the criticism comes from the volatility of the company.

Who says Jerome Powell is bad? Fighting inflation due to, well, inflated asset values is a good thing, not bad. Just because it makes numbers go down doesn't mean it should be considered a bad thing.

Arguably the increase in the stock was because of the feds monetary policy. Low interest rates are why speculation was rampant in the past.

If you haven’t noticed the whole market got a 10 year rally because the FED poured insane amount of money into economy

TSLA got far more than a proportional share of that.

Can you expand on that? I'm genuinely curious about the stats.

Yeah but would it ever become a hot stock it is without so much dumb money slushing around?

The Fed had been giving corporate handouts via rock-bottom interest rates since 2008. Your reasoning is backwards.

that announcement most certainly did spook the market and news about the Twitter acquisition has been a drag on TSLA all year. You may have noticed the stock trading for slightly more than half of its peak value.

> sort of a loon

I prefer eccentric, which may be an advantage for him.

> Tesla has created more shareholder value over the past few years

Given the PE, seems to me the shareholders have created the shareholder value.