Hacker News Reader

Comment by eloff | Hacker News Reader

Except he was also doing a phenomenal job early in his career too. It's not all smoke and mirrors or connections.

Like when they had to force him out of PayPal before he destroyed the company with his “rewrite the entire backend for Windows Server” mandate?

People evolve.

This isn't a question about evolution. They said he executed very well early in his career, and that's a good example of a colossal early-career fuck up (that coincidentally got him kicked out).

Because successful people never make mistakes? I'm not sure what your point is.

The point is that "he did a phenomenal job early in his career" rather misses that his early career is more "incredibly mixed bag containing disastrous missteps" than universally "phenomenal".

That's missing the forest for the trees, don't you think?

No, I don't think that at all. Clearly. The Windows mandate was a colossal, world-historic fuckup that I think is indicative of his impulsiveness and representative of his capacity for making very very poorly thought through, Company-destroying decisions.

Isn't the kind of the point? Wouldn't he have had less CEO positions at that time?

Everyone downvoting me did worse in their career. It's easy to be a critic. But like him or hate him, you can't argue with the results that man achieved. None of us have done as much.

It's not about what he's "achieved". It's about what he started with, and the means he's used.

Most of us could "achieve" a whole lot if we were born the heirs to a massive fortune, with all the connections that implies.

Yes, I'm sure his estranged relationship with his South African father gave him such an advantage in Canada and California. All those connections! That's a low brow dismissal of his achievements.

But certainly you accept that now it's just about the brand ?

All the FSD-overpromising tomfoolery aside (as well as a few other things that remain to be seen, like the Boring Company tunnels and Neuralink), I would say that making the first viable (and desirable; but I am ready to eat downvotes from people who will, rightfully, point out that it isn't desirable by them due to the interior not being as luxurious as similarly-priced mercedes/audi/bmw) mass-produced EV and the very recent Falcon-9 Heavy launch are kind of impossible to carry out just by the power of the brand. Especially since neither SpaceX nor Tesla had any brand power prior to actually consistently delivering the results.

For someone not on the inside to flippantly dismiss his contribution as brand only is just ignorance. There's a chance you're right, but you have no evidence to back up your assertion.

ah yes, he famously had no connections before his career, and his parents were poor immigrants with only a few emerald mines.

Are you suggesting most wealthy immigrants end up founding a litany of companies?

This is a bit like attributing Wayne Gretzky's success to the fact Walter was a seasoned coach and a huge hockey fan. Obviously it helps having parents to enable your talents, but it's ignorant to pretend that rich parents alone will allow you to rise to the top.

Necessary but not sufficient is a phrase that comes to mind.

Even if we believe his dads stories, he owned less than 1 emerald mine.

And iirc, the overall dollar value of that "less than 1 emerald mine" was barely in mid-high 5 figures. Of course, not adjusted for dollar value at the time, but that adjustment wouldn't balloon it up to 10 times that in 2022 dollars.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com