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Comment by atleastoptimal | Hacker News Reader

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Being successful at business (and in this case: some of his businesses; I wouldn't call the Boring Company successful and Twitter is too early to call) and being a good person are two very different things.

It's very possible to admire his accomplishments while not liking him as a person.

I understand critique of his personality and personal life, but there are people who try to imply he is dumb and all his successes were luck or somehow invalidated by his dad's emerald mine.

People cling to this belief that to improve the world via your enterprises, you must be a good person. It's a strange form of essentialism, borne out of the hard to accept notion that bad people can be a greater net good to the world than good people who don't make a huge contribution. It's an unsettling notion but a very true one.

I don't really equate making lots of money to doing good for the world either.

Tesla does a bit of good for the environment by putting electric cars on the map, but it's still way better not to drive at all.

SpaceX is nice tech but not really something that makes the world a better place.

But for me looking up to a person is much more based on their personality than their standing in society. I don't really look up to celebrities either.

You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

You can do it without insulting the chicken on social media.

As an owner of chickens, they can be plenty insulting and judgemental themselves.

Family Guy - All Chicken Fights

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xzrb0tAQNM

That path leads to where the line between not illegal and not getting caught blurs away.

No but money and success in business aren't the only things that matter in life. Though I guess in America they are.

I would consider musk a good businessman and I admire SpaceX in particular but I wouldn't consider him a role model in life.

Though I'm what right-wing America would consider "a snowflake" :) YMMV of course.

> The only way the haters could say anything against him with any sway at this point is becoming more successful than him.

Do you believe that financial and business success is the only measure of merit?

By most accounts, Putin and the Saudi royals command even more wealth than Musk does, are they worthy of still more praise?

This is just one person's opinion, but I'm pretty sure we've got a developing Howard Hughes situation on our hands. He's only 52 so it's going to get a lot worse.

I mean more in that people say that he's dumb and is just lucking into success. They don't want to admit that he's highly capable.

Well candidly the Compaq acquisition of Zip2 was absolutely lucking into success. He built something, sure, but most people do not get their startups bought out at the height of a ridiculous Internet bubble for $307 million. If the place or time or circumstances had been slightly different it would not have worked out that way.

Lightning struck a second time with X.com, first with a very fortuitous merger and then with his gigantic golden parachute when the board voted to fire him as CEO in favor of Thiel (it's difficult to credit him for landing that giant eBay exit since he had gotten the boot over 2 years prior).

He deserves credit for taking the gamble on SpaceX and seeing the early potential in Tesla though.

Do you think Tesla would have been as successful without his leadership? Or SpaceX? Of course he "picks" things well but what about his day to day influence? Is that fungible to any CEO who devotes a similar amount of time?

We don't know the counterfactual so that's difficult to answer.

I think the truth is that these two companies were a great fit for Musk's style in particular, not that Musk is necessarily a great leader.

What I mean is that Musk is reportedly overbearing and extremely demanding as a leader, and if you don't deliver he will fire you without hesitation. In most organizations that would quickly lead to morale and staffing quality problems, but SpaceX and Tesla worked on really sexy problems, so people were willing to put up with a lot of bullshit and abuse in exchange for getting to work on those problems.

Based on how Elon seems to be running Twitter, it doesn't seem like he ran SpaceX and Twitter in that fashion with intent because he realized he could get away with demanding so much from his employees. Rather it's just how he operates -- meaning that he got lucky, yet again.

But we'll see, right? Twitter is basically the opposite of a sexy problem, so if he turns that around then maybe he really is a talented leader.

> I think the truth is that these two companies were a great fit for Musk's style in particular, not that Musk is necessarily a great leader.

Tesla was barely more than an idea when he joined and he started SpaceX. You are speaking nonesense. His leadership style obviously finds employees who accept or even thrive in it. The success speaks for itself.

> What I mean is that Musk is reportedly overbearing and extremely demanding as a leader, and if you don't deliver he will fire you without hesitation. In most organizations that would quickly lead to morale and staffing quality problems, but SpaceX and Tesla worked on really sexy problems, so people were willing to put up with a lot of bullshit and abuse in exchange for getting to work on those problems.

All that you have said just as much applies to Jobs. Just because you might find that style of leadership unappealing there is a type of person who seeks it out.

The comparison between Musk and Jobs is kind of absurd.

Jobs' greatest strength was probably his way with people. He was a perfectionist, and if you got his way he was merciless, but he was also deeply charismatic and persuasive, and seemed to have an eye for talent. There are many stories about him personally persuading people to come onboard or stay, here is one:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/09/how-steve-jobs-convinced-tim...

And here's a relevant Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field

Elon, by contrast... Uh, Elon is autistic.

> The comparison between Musk and Jobs is kind of absurd.

No it is not. You're just blinded by Musk derangement syndrome and grasping at any straws that might dismiss his accomplishments.

Isn't blue origin a pretty good counter factual? Started at the same time as SpaceX did, had more funds available for r&d than spacex considering Bezos was richer and Elon used to be a lot more broke than he pretended to be (I'm talking about the 2006-2018 era, where Tesla was a massive money pit and his wealth was mostly built on hype). Yet the results are pretty damning, BO hasn't reached orbit yet.

Musk has done good for the environment, more than what people give him credit for. At least if you consider moving people to electric cars and reusable rockets "good for environment" but I'm sure haters will find reasons to deny him even that.

If starship succeeds, it will be because of the hundreds of smart people who work there, despite Mr “bring my sink to work”.

It seems a bit naive, given his list of business successes, to think that the positive things that happen at these companies under his leadership only happen because his employees overcame him as the obstacle to success.

I can understand not liking his politics or what have you, but logically speaking, what you’re suggesting doesn’t make any sense.

Haha its true if you enumerate his business almost all have been extremely successful and in some of the hardest domains possible.

Ebay, Starlink, Tesla, SpaceX

I mean come on.

Elon isn't on his A-game recently, but the fact is no other aerospace CEO would have pushed for, or dedicated as much capital to, as ambitious a vision as Starship. They would have chickened out and milked F9s for profit for 40 years.

Obviously Elon attracted a ton of smart hardworking employees to execute on that vision who were critical. But very few other CEOs could have built the culture and given them the opportunity to do so.

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