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Comment by remote_phone | Hacker News Reader

Musk continues to make very, very poor decisions, over this last year. If his decision-making for things like this are so poor, I can only imagine how poor his decisions are behind the scenes for things concerning Tesla itself.

I wonder what happened. My guess is that he must be on some sort of medication due to his battle with the Model 3. The tweet in question was inexplicable and I was very tempted to short the stock when I heard, but I didn’t want to bet against Musk. Now he seems mentally so fragile and his ability to lead Tesla is seriously in doubt.

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The "who wears short shorts" music video he linked is where I started to think the shorts were really getting to him. In his defense there was a lot of negative spin likely originating from his short sellers, who had the largest short position of any stock I think.

Most companies CEOs are really careful and always act like nothing is wrong even as the ship sinks. In interviews Musk was refusing to answer certain questions from reporters accusing them of being from his short sellers, it all makes me wonder if the financials aren't so rosy.

How is it spin? The metrics for Tesla were/are not promising and they were already being looked at by the sec for potential fraud regarding those metrics

It becomes spin when several stories are floated in order to erode confidence in the company. Musk's accusations were that much of the negative press was coming from shorts or competitive rivals, wether that be energy companies or car companies. The truth for me lies in between.

Rumor is that he's been on a stimulants / sleep aids cycle working ludicrous hours. You can only sustain that for so long before your brain throws a rod and starts banging and chugging and emitting a lot of smoke.

There are tweets in support of this, like him talking about Ambien.

https://www.cnet.com/news/elon-musks-strange-strange-ambien-...

Ambien is known to produce some weird states of mind. I used it briefly and can attest to this, though I never got a visit from the walrus:

https://ambien.blogspot.com/2010/12/ambien-walrus-collection...

I admire Elon a lot, and I hope he takes a break and gets his head sorted. When I first heard about the tweets causing the SEC to sue I speculated to my wife that his subconscious mind had engineered this event to force him to take a break as some kind of mental self-preservation circuit breaker.

Rosanne blamed Ambien, and I wouldn’t be surprised if more public figures do. It’s a convenient scapegoat that doesn’t injure their reputation like admitting hard drug use or alcohol abuse would.

Musk couldn’t have been thinking straight when he sent that tweet, but we’ll likely never know the real story. I think that’s OK, he’s entitled to some personal privacy too.

I’m not sure medication needs to be involved. I don’t care how superhuman you might think you are, if you work 100+ hour weeks for that long, it’s going to mess with your mental state.

I'm pretty sure the 100+ hour workweek is a fairytale, the kind of marketing for Elon himself.

That's like 14 hours per day.

You will be surprised how many people in developing and under-developed countries put in that kind of effort without breaking a sweat.

40 hour work weeks are the luxury of developed first world countries.

I'm not sure what kind of work and what countries specifically you are referring to, but my guess is that you're talking about a physical work, which is not comparable to mental work, that dominates Elon's day. It's not like he's making decisions 14 hours in a row. He's jumping between companies and various meetings. He eats. He drinks coffee. It all deducts. If you meant something else, feel free to clarify.

I keep thinking he MUST be smart right?

Or did he get a winfall on Paypal and now throws a bunch of money at talented engineers?

I remind myself smart engineers might not be talented leaders.

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