It doesn't matter if it's a trademark nightmare... it's a branding nightmare.
Musk is showing the world that he got lucky with his previous ventures. His management of Twitter has been a display of poor management at every level.
If you were less than a year into your position as CEO of a company with revenue divided by half, ex-employees suing you, banned journalists from your platform in the middle of some half-thought-out free speech debate... would you not be fired?
Everything about this makes me think he's just too rich to be fired... anyone else would have been. He just owns too much to not be given any more chances.
> Everything about this makes me think he's just too rich to be fired... anyone else would have been.
Don't really like this framing of the problem - he owns a majority of voting shares, and he paid (or, rather, overpaid) mightily for that right. You can't really be "fired" from being an owner, and I'll note Musk is no longer CEO (and, sure, you can argue the new CEO was hired to be the fall girl/glass cliff example, but that was still her eyes-wide-open choice).
People wrung their hands about Zuckerberg as well (he also has a majority of voting shares of Facebook), but in retrospect that hand-wringing looked premature, at least from a shareholder perspective - Meta is nearly back at its peak and has tripled its stock price from late 2022.
> Don't really like this framing of the problem - he owns a majority of voting shares, and he paid (or, rather, overpaid) mightily for that right. You can't really be "fired" from being an owner.
This is basically what people mean by "too rich to fire". I don't think anyone is suggesting that if he wasn't a stakeholder, he'd keep his job solely because he had a lot of money. I think it fair to say that, if Twitter was a publicly traded company with a board of directors, Elon likely would have been fired by now. Or, at the very least, significantly reigned in.
In that case we should thank our stars it’s not a public company. Musk taking over twitter has done more to expose corruption and hypocrisy than almost anything else. The Twitter Leaks, balancing the algorithms, and even biasing them against the same people they used to be biased for (all while the same people that defended censorship now whine about it) pulled the masks off many in power.
Sure he might just drive it all into the ground, but the interim piloting has created so much good (whether some acknowledge it or not).
In that case, seems like there's a way to get back our lovably dysfunctional social network. Just gotta outlast their cash on hand.
Edit: Pre-acquisition Twitter bonds are trading at ~70 cents on the dollar. Seems like the acquisition financing isn't being traded yet -- banks trying to avoid facing write downs?
SpaceX and Tesla certainly involve luck, but it's way more than that. A huge element of the success of both companies is Elon managing to hire extremely bright and extremely hard working people for both companies. A huge element of that was the extremely ambitious and cool nature of what they're working on.
SpaceX (at least) was a government venture, funded by DARPA and the CIA to enable a program that isn't too hard to figure out when you look at the people involved.
> In 2002, Griffin was president and COO of In-Q-Tel, a private enterprise funded by the CIA to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve national security interests. During this time, he met entrepreneur Elon Musk and accompanied him on a trip to Russia where they attempted to purchase ICBMs. The unsuccessful trip is credited as directly leading to the formation of SpaceX.[8] Griffin was an early advocate for Musk calling him a potential “Henry Ford for the rocket industry".
In-Q-Tel is basically DARPA but for the CIA, btw. It's private mostly to help obfuscate initiatives and cashflows, as that's been the SOP for a lot of US black ops kinda stuff for a while; see also: Blackwater aka Academi aka whatever-they're-called-now, plus other chunks of the contractor sphere. Wagner, the Russian mercs, were an attempt to duplicate that effort.
Every single thread where he's the topic, without exception, focuses at least in part on attempting to strip Musk of any accomplishment. He is allowed to have accomplished absolutely nothing. There must be zero redeeming value to his existence.
The extreme nature of the focused attacks on him today are fascinating to watch in terms of how angry, irrational mobs form on targets and attack until there's nothing left (and then they keep attacking, because some people are late to the party).
They attack his parenting.
They attack his business successes.
They attack his mental capabilities and rationality.
They attack his character.
They attack his family and background.
They lie about all of the above to whatever extent is necessary.
This goes on here, on Reddit, Twitter, wherever a discussion about Musk arises. The only difference between HN and Reddit on this topic is that HN is slightly more highbrow, although the same general attacks get repeated here as they do on Reddit.
Someone on Reddit yesterday was proclaiming that he "attached" himself to the SpaceX success and deserved zero credit for it. That rather nicely encompasses what's going on.
It's one of the biggest shit shows in the history of the Internet. It's embarrassing - as a human - to watch so many people desperately rolling around in the muck to participate.
I guess it's an explainable reaction given it was the other way around for years.
Go back 2 or 3 years ago and the level of idolization and fanboyism was just incredibly high.
Tons of 'Elon is a genius' or 'Elon could fix [insert global issue]' like comments.
It was just really annoying for a lot of people. And now, with Musk's recent 'reversals', some of these people are becoming very vocal, swinging things at the other extreme.
> This goes on here, on Reddit, Twitter, wherever a discussion about Musk arises. The only difference between HN and Reddit on this topic is that HN is slightly more highbrow, although the same general attacks get repeated here as they do on Reddit.
My casual observation says that HN has become more "Reddit-Like" in terms of low quality and off-topic posting since the whole Reddit API/MOD debacle.
I think the more likely explanation is that the low-quality content has always been here, it's just more or less visible depending on which topics you visit and what's happening in the world.
This place was IMHO pretty toxic during the pandemic. It felt like half of the threads were some covid-related "controversies" and the other half was about whether or not WFH is a fundamental human right.
These events caused major shifts in a very short time. Seems understandable that something so invasive as Covid and life-changing as work from home would be at the front of many people’s minds.
Oh, come on.
The way he went from the fun, bold and ambitious guy most people liked, to the shadow of himself most people now hate is appaling. He used to promote tolerance, diversity and love (mostly), now he’s (mostly) into bullying, hate speech, authoritarianism, dictator ass-licking, parroting Kremlin propaganda, etc.
What a letdown.
Of course you can go the "morality is meaningless, the guy has highly successful businesses so he deserves respect" route.
Or you could figure out that a self-made genius that pushes nonsense like the hyperloop, rocket mass transportation, tunnels for taxis and terraforming mars to save humanity while denying climate change, is probably neither a genius nor self-made.
If you’re honest with yourself I think you’ll fine these are all caricatures you’ve created because he’s no longer politically aligned enough with you.
Regardless of whether you think Elon Musk is talented or not, I can't really agree that people hating on one of the richest and most influential people in the world constitutes one of "the biggest shit shows in the history of the internet".
We're talking about the same internet in which Facebook's algorithms contributed to violence against the Rohingya. What people think about Elon Musk is simply of no significance by comparison.
The counter view is a case of resulting, where people evaluate Musk’s skill based on the results of one or two of his companies. This is also a poor way to evaluate if he is a good decision maker.
I do think his recent decisions have been quite poorly thought through, independent of the results. I suspect X/Twitter are going to get hammered by regulatory bodies worldwide because they are not meeting requirements set by eg FTC consent orders.
> Someone on Reddit yesterday was proclaiming that he "attached" himself to the SpaceX success and deserved zero credit for it.
Stealing credit for achievements that aren't truly yours is a very serious accusation.
> The extreme nature of the focused attacks on him today are fascinating to watch in terms of how angry, irrational mobs form on targets and attack
You seem concerned about discussion quality, but you can't debunk the accusations, all you have to contribute is "everyone I disagree with is irrational!"
The prevailing view was for quite some time that he was some kind of unique genius. Its hardly surprising to see some pushback when he publicly demonstrates that he's not quite a genius, and he attacks segments of society (the media, the left wing, people who like other social media, people who criticise him). There's a certain level of reaping what you sew there.
Musk took over Tesla a few months after the Model S got announced. By that time, one could expect that most of the development teams and roadmaps were well in place.
> Musk is showing the world that he got lucky with his previous ventures.
1 dud
A few successes
It's really hard to tell to what extent it's luck versus skill. It'd be much easier to tell if we'd live for 10K years and he'd have started like 50 companies. If even 10 of those would've become wildly successful, whereas the mean baseline of other people who started 50 companies would be maybe 1 or 2 companies, then I'd argue that he didn't only get lucky. I'd argue there's also a skill component to it.
If I managed to do one Tesla or SpaceX in my entire lifetime, even 10k, I’d be extremely happy and very different from the entire population at large.
I don’t like Musk but I think the leftist vilification and dismissal bears all the sounds of people who have no idea how hard it is to build and maintain a successful company.
The whole discussion is about how much of those companies' success is attributable to Musk. I have no clue where the "leftist vilification" is coming from.
There has been a large cultural shift in how he is discussed in public. And the left has made him into an enemy, while the right has turned him into a hero… ish. He’s now part of the larger cultural wars, and as such it’s almost impossible not to have that creep into any discussion about him. And a big theme on the left is how he’s a fraud and only was able to achieve what he has because of his dads money. They don’t seem to realize that most startups that get lots of money still flop.
This discussion is not about cultural perceptions of Elon Musk. It is about how much of SpaceX and Tesla's success can be attributed to him. If you think cultural perceptions are why I categorized SolarCity, Boring Company, Hyperloop, and X.com as duds, please feel free to give specific criticism. Otherwise, the discussion is best helped by airing cultural grievances elsewhere.
What you’re stating is being discussed ad infinitum everywhere as part of the culture wars as one of the main talking points. You cannot separate it at this point. It’s like saying you’re trying to discuss whether Trump encouraged Jan 6 or not as some independent topic.
In a discussion about whether or not Trump built a wall at US's southern border one does not need to bring up Jan 6th at all.
These are in fact different tangential topics similar to how whether or not AOC likes Musk is tangential to whether or not Solar City was a dud of a company.
You need not like Bill Cosby to objectively state he had a long successful career.
This is hackernews not cable TV. You do not need to regurgitate "talking points".
> In a discussion about whether or not Trump built a wall at US's southern border one does not need to bring up Jan 6th at all.
That's not how that discussion would actually go. Need has nothing to do with it, and the same holds true with Musk. The detached attacks don't need to be brought up in regards to a discussion about Musk & SpaceX, and yet they are guaranteed to come up regardless.
There is no discussion today of any meaningful length that is going to happen on a major public forum (eg Reddit) regarding Trump's border wall where the events of January 6 do not come up as a prominent matter of discussion.
The reason this happens is because the target (Trump, Musk, whatever) triggers people to such an extreme emotional degree they can't control themselves properly, they can no longer think & express rationally. They have basically been trained into a hyper emotional response by the mob they participate with. It's some manner of one-upmanship, virtue signaling as competition: who can most greatly beat this target to death, using any means necessary.
In this context, the fact that he's had numerous dud companies does need to come up because it's actually very much on topic.
Let's reflect on how we got here.
1) xutopia is making the claim [1] (on a thread about how Twitter's rebrand could be a nightmare) that Musk's actions would've costed any other CEO their job.
2) mettamage countered with Musk has only had 1 dud company so far [2]
3) And that leads us to this oversized thread where yes Musk has had many dud companies and "only 1" isn't correct.
Whether or not Musk is correct on the Thai diver being a pedophile would not belong in this oversized thread though and as you may not have yet noticed; wasn't brought up. It is in fact possible to have a discussion on a forum (perhaps not major) without bringing up tangential points. Some people can control themselves and so far in this oversized thread they have; it's been very on point besides this meta discussion.
Both Tesla and SpaceX are successful almost entirely in buying out the work of other people and exploiting government programs. If you already had a bunch of money (thanks to being in the right place at the right time w/r/t PayPal) you too could have done it if you didn't care about anything other than your own aggrandizement
If the only criteria is that you had money from a prior successful company (Paypal in Elon’s case) to create the preeminent electric car company in the world, then why didn’t many thousands of other people achieve it as well? Why was there not more competition? Why did so many attempts to market electric cars fail before Tesla? The reason is that it is hard, and it takes a combination of both skill and luck to accomplish.
The reason is that no one was in a position to exploit the EV credit system because it didn't exist yet. Right place, right time, only made possible by having a bunch of money and zero qualms about exploiting that program.
Yeah. Same reason no-one is emulating Gates or Jobs right now. Their oportunity was related to their historical moment. It has passed. People will be in the right time and place for _other_ opportunities (see Zuckerberg, Bezos)
The argument is that everything was already in place for it to become the preeminent electric car company in the world; Musk simply had to buy it at the right time, which he did.
Now, that may be a skill in and of itself, but that's not a skill for innovation, it's a skill for timing markets.
The Tesla model S was released before Elon arived. I don't doubt that his money helped but it seems fair to question whether that equates to Musk "creat[ing] the preeminent electric car company in the world"
That’s absolutely false. Your comment makes me strongly think you’ve never started a company or run one. Nothing is trivial no matter how much money you start with, ESPECIALLY if you’re doing something new.
I will give him credit in as much that he is an exceptional con man uniquely skilled at fleecing investors and moneyed nerds. Still, though, that hype machine couldn't have been built without his gobs of money and utter lack of scruples.
All the money in the world won’t get you relandable rockets or put EVs on the map unless you have talent.. to set direction/vision, make partnerships, find talent that wants to work with you, etc.
If money alone was enough we’d see more Teslas from places like Saudia Arabia. But we don’t.
I don't think other governments are stupid enough to let their taxpayers float poorly made cars that keep exploding because the guy in charge keeps talking about self-driving functionality that will never arrive
Haven't we learned at this point that Hyerloop was never supposed to be successful? That, technically, it's success was screwing over Californian's by delaying train projects?
One thing to keep in mind is that Tesla and SpaceX were early successes and the rest are later failures. It is quite possible that he has lost his touch as he has gotten older and richer.
Or is suffering from a psychotic break. It is, I believe, pretty well know that he is a heavy user of ADHD medication. A business version of Paul Erdos.
I think you just have to look at the individual decisions he's made. For me, I keep going back to the time he made the Twitter employees literally print out their source code. (Not send a link to github repo, he made them physically print them out.) That is not something a competent leader would have asked for.
I understand you guys hate him because the media basically tells you to and because he doesn't behave like your average tech founder
I was with you until this part. I used to be a Musk fan but he's done a lot of things to make people legitimately dislike him over the last few years. I agree it doesn't make his past accomplishments less impressive, but people don't just hate him "because the media basically tells you to".
Yes he did but it's mostly annoying things he said or did, he's at best an as*hole, meanwhile lots of other billionaires have done evil shit and theydon't even receive 20% of the hate he gets.
And it wasn't always the case, before he started insulting the media on twitter he was hailed as a god everywhere (which is also stupid).
I can pinpoint the exact tweet they turned on him and it's not difficult to find.
Sorry, Musk is a CEO. He's not building the cars. He's not planning the orbital trajectories of SpaceX rockets. He's hired competent people to do that for him. And those competent people have even said that Musk basically needs a full-time babysitter at SpaceX so he doesn't mess up anything.
He got lucky in the 90s and has been riding that high ever since, buying Founder titles, and paying people to do the hard work for him.
Outside of that, I personally cannot support someone who named their children like Xbox usernames.
Exactly. SpaceX is just a public defense contractor a la Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman. Yeah, SpaceX may one day send you to Mars or fly you across the world in 30 minutes. But it's main revenue generator will always be the US government, whether that's sending astronauts to space stations or launching military satellites.
Elon is not here to save humanity or whatever BS he's trying to peddle to the world this time around. He's here to make enough money to become the 21st century equivalent of a god.
It’s always projection with that sort. They assume that, if their opinions are formed based on their preferred media lionizing Musk, anyone who dislikes him must be brainwashed by the “wrong” media.
ah yes, i still remember that in 2001, what a golden year for Tesla company, silly little musk was only leeching off the success of our beloved pre-owned tesla company in 2001.
He is successful but there has been questionable decisions made at both SpaceX and Tesla, such as the recent launchpad destruction or the issues with self driving. In both of these examples, Musk has decided to move fast and break things despite objections. The media started exposing these issues when their feud with Musk started, IMO.
Musk is showing himself to be, well, kind of stupid. We've seen him make moves that are obviously bad and didn't pay off. If you look a little bit deeper, you can see that he has a pattern of making bad decisions. He may also make some good ones, but isn't it more likely that "his" other companies (which he did not create) are succeeding despite him, not because of him? After all, many other smart and ambitious people work with him.
Many other smart and ambitious people work for many people. At the least, you are giving him credit for attracting very smart and ambitious people. Not very many people can do that.
> At the least, you are giving him credit for attracting very smart and ambitious people. Not very many people can do that.
Er... fine. But ... much stupider people have had similar success. I don't think attracting ambition is a worthwhile trait on its own and it's not something I'm going to praise him for.
Actually, if I step back, I don't even think that's true. Again, he didn't create any of these companies, nor did he run them alone when he was CEO. Many very intelligent engineers joined companies he was running because they believed in the product. They may or may not have even heard of him when they joined a given company.
> Er... fine. But ... much stupider people have had similar success.
Have they? The number of people who have built a Tesla-size company is very small. The ones who have built a SpaceX-size and a Tesla-size one is minuscule.
He was credited with "attracting very smart and ambitious people", not building those companies, and that's what I was referring to. I think it's debatable that he "built" those companies, but we should be specific when we're analyzing a person's qualities.
From a financial point of view, the most consequential thing ever to happen to me was joining the right company at the right time. More or less total chance. Lots of people could say the same. (Though, some will give themselves an inappropriate amount of credit for it after the fact)
Luck (in a random chance context rather than a supernatural context) is real.
I didn't get conned personally, no, because I am enough of an engineer to see through his garbage, unworkable ideas. A lot of investors (and municipalities!) haven't been so lucky.
Musk is showing the world that he got lucky with his previous ventures. His management of Twitter has been a display of poor management at every level.
If you were less than a year into your position as CEO of a company with revenue divided by half, ex-employees suing you, banned journalists from your platform in the middle of some half-thought-out free speech debate... would you not be fired?
Everything about this makes me think he's just too rich to be fired... anyone else would have been. He just owns too much to not be given any more chances.