Some HN commenters never cease to amaze with their negativity...
replies(7):
Check an archive of this thread, a lot of negative comments got removed.
Yes, people on the internet will be negative. No, that doesn't mean you should respond to them.
- He used Tesla stock to secure loans he used to purchase his stake in Solar City, the decision to purchase Solar City is at least in part driven by the fact that Elon Musk IS Tesla, without him at the helm it would be a problem and if he got margin called it would affect Tesla since he would lose a significant amount of his shares. There is no Tesla boardmember/major shareholder that doesn't have a conflict of interest for this issue.
- His companies buy each other's bonds, they're basically just moving money around and building a larger house of cards - if one company goes down at this point I really don't see how it wouldn't have significant reprecussions for the others. This is especially problematic when it comes to Space X which is privately owned and its deep connection to his public companies.
- It seems that if I took a big pile of money in my yard and lit it on fire, Elon would probably want to compete there (and do it better than me). All of his companies are very capital intensive and he is very leveraged at this point and has a lot of people tied to his fate - him not being focused on any one business makes this a bigger problem.
And here's my biggest Elon problem:
- He is a walking PR campaign. Why do we barely know any of the higher level engineers at Space X or Tesla? He is splitting his time between multiple companies, I find it impossible to believe he is involved in every engineering breakthrough at all of these companies and yet I have honestly never once heard him give credit to any of his management or engineering team.
That last one is the worst for me. I don't think he's a great person and it's annoying seeing everyone fawning over him like he's Elon Kardashian for tech people. The fact an almost universal complaint at his companies is that people are undercompensated and overworked further reinforces my personal opinion he doesn't value the work of other people.
Remind me a great deal of what existed with Steve Jobs. Another example is Jeff Bezos with Amazon. Not saying that in tech circles some of their execs and/or engineers are not well known but certainly not people that your Aunt would have heard about. Also I guess Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook (although Sheryl Sandberg is fairly well known). Another is the "Google Guys" but you don't hear much about them lately probably because the PR has been tamped down. But early on it was every magazine cover and apparently from what I heard later Sergey wasn't even anywhere near as important as Larry was.
This happens also with VC firms. One partner (in a small firm like AVC) is the big cheese, the others you barely hear about.
That said this is not unusual in business or for that matter team sports or even entertainment. For many reason including some people simply want to be behind the scenes.
Google isn't a good example in my opinion though, generally people besides the CEO announce their products, i.e. Google Maps was announced by Bret Taylor. Look at the history of Google and Microsoft and you will see tons of "xxx announces/introduces yyy". Tesla's entire history is "Elon Musk announces ..." (after teasing on Twitter for 5 months to keep the stock price up).
I don't think everything is bad about him. I think the thing he is amazing at is setting the vision for his companies - which is really valuable. It really seems like everyone understands the mission and where things are going and he's very clear about it. So I think he has good qualities, I just think he's also narcissistic, financially impulsive and unfocused.
Here's an example of a negative comment that (rightly) hasn't been downvoted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12509856
Here's an example of a negative comment that (rightly) has been downvoted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12508752
If sama is talking about negativity in general, then it would be a very sad thing to complain about people being negative. Because negativity is important, especially in discussions, especially for the reasons you touched upon. But I assume he knows better than to complain about people disagreeing.
I think he's just complaining about the number of people this topic has attracted that have come here simply to vent. And I agree, it's kind of a pain, but within a couple hours they get sorted out of the discussion. It's great that it's possible to say what they say on HN. And I just don't think it's worth complaining about, especially as someone involved in the production of the linked story. That's just feeding the trolls.
The blog posts are mostly made by the Tesla Team.
In the gigafactory unveiling, some speeches in Norway and the Netherlands, and other press events, a top engineer JT speaks alongside him. He brought his chief designer on stage at the gigafactory unveiling, as well as another engineer aside from JT.
Companies like this need a BDFL. It's crucial that Elon stays in complete control to ensure focus, not to flounder it.