Similar story for pay pal.
The only reason this is even slightly controversial is because people hate Musk too much.
https://twitter.com/rob_sheridan/status/1595319316249186304?...
For example, I definitely always got the sense that pg had a negative assessment of him from some of pg's writings about PayPal's early days.
But I'll say I always admired Musk for his sheer tenacity and ability to work extremely hard (and his ability to convince other people to work extremely hard). I'd say my opinion about him started to change right when he started bizarrely libeling that guy in Thailand as "pedo-guy".
So I guess my question is whether he's always been a collosal asshole, or whether that just grew over time as his wealth and power removed any constraints on his ego.
He has to be good at something, maybe at taking bets and convincing people to give him money, like other HNr suggests. Who knows.
This line of thought always comes across as "ego defending rationalization" to me. That is, we don't like to believe that someone who is such an ass clown can be so successful, so we just chalk it up to his family's wealth or luck or something.
But it's clear to me from Musk's communications that:
1. He is extremely intelligent, at least in his ability to understand topics across a wide range of areas (business, technical, finance).
2. He is extremely driven. He could have easily put his feet up after PayPal but he chose to get involved in immensely difficult, grand projects.
3. He works extremely hard (at least when he isn't tweet trolling). I don't think anyone questions his long work hours and sleeping at the office during the Model 3 production ramp up.
4. At least until recently, he was able to get other extremely smart and driven people to follow his lead.
I guess it's really number 4 that seems like the biggest change in the past couple years in my opinion. I mean, I've got to believe a lot of smart people at Tesla and SpaceX are looking on thinking "WTF is Musk on??"
Combine this with a lot of money and you end up with someone with both the inclination and ability to take risky major actions quickly, as well as the resources necessary to walk away from bad bets intact. Over time I think this would reward and encourage the growth of impulsive tendencies in a person. But what happens if that person takes a wild swing that fails in a way they can't get away from or buy their way out of? (Not to mention the compounding effect of any drugs they might be on.)
There is also the Nobel disease.
The key is #4, I think he managed to have incredible challenges at his other companies that brought it people who knows not only how to perform the job very well but to manage him very well.
*I still have doubts about how much of his smarts is being smart or just sounding smart, he is certainly not dumb by any stretch.
Perhaps in the past? But he seems favourably inclined these days.
Don't get me wrong, lots of people are spouting off against Musk for various unrelated reasons, but pg is not a neutral character in this fight.
> I don't know how to captain a huge container ship but when I see one that has been blocking the Suez Canal for six days I am pretty confident in my ability to conclude that something must have gone very wrong.
A lot of people "work hard" but they do not work smart. Musk in an extreme version of this. Unless he is not working himself and everyone else into the ground, he is not content. Everything has to be a crisis, and if there isn't one, create it.
Same as we were taught in school; keep the numbers you work with day to day by using a simple noticing.
Add 1 to 3.654 x 10^11, another billionaire appears!
Their wealth is mathematical inference. None of them have Scrooge McDuck Vaults full of real money.
Tangentially, Paul G Tweeted a few weeks ago about America being “fake”; American cheese was one thing he called out specifically. No one Tweeted back “billionaire wealth.” I had del’d my Twitter years ago, did not seem worth making a new one.
But of course, Elon thinks it's all him. He's a genius, a savior and nothing can come between his view of reality. Imo, Elon is past his expiry date. Time for capitalism to fix him
Those two together means that the engineers who are similarly early, want to come work for you. In a world with no electric car market, if that's what you really want to work on, Tesla is a beacon to you.
It's served him well in several industries now, but I really don't see how that can apply to this new mission of trying to make something of a relevant-but-kinda-failing social network.
This looks so unprofessional, erratic and unnecessary even if you want to cut down headcount and have a political motivation behind the take over, that it shocks me, honestly.
I guess that when someone is that wealthy you can duck-tape mistakes with money and move on.
I've complained many times about the effects of the so called "woke" ideology has, particularly outside of the US, but I don't think this is the way to do it.
If EM thinks this is a way of helping free speech and turn the volume down on some deranged ideologies, I don't think this is moving towards that goal.