The ongoing Elon Twitter saga: "insert demographic" melts down

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cheesyboy said:
Some guy has got a yellow tick account registered as Disney Junior UK. Most tweets would get me a forum ban for swearing, but I think this one is clean:

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It has now been suspended but how the hell that managed to get business/company verified (yellow tick) is mind boggling; i bet someone pooped their pants (given Disney lawyers) when they saw it trending :cry:

I can see another Tony la Russa court case coming on if Twitter don't get account impersonations, especially "verified" accounts, under control.
 
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Roar87 said:
He said the great engineers didn't want to join and there was no point hiring the bad ones.
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Just lol.

Maybe they took one look at the way he runs his businesses, and thought, "No thanks."

Maybe some great engineers *did* apply and Musk thought, "I'm better than this person."

Who knows. Either is quite likely :p

e: That's also going to do great things for the team's morale, to know that Elon doesn't think any of his engineers are actually any good :p
 
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FoxEye said:
Just lol.

Maybe they took one look at the way he runs his businesses, and thought, "No thanks."

Maybe some great engineers *did* apply and Musk thought, "I'm better than this person."

Who knows. Either is quite likely :p

e: That's also going to do great things for the team's morale, to know that Elon doesn't think any of his engineers are actually any good :p
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Aside from Twitter, which of his other businesses do you think are run badly and why?
 
Roar87 said:
Aside from Twitter, which of his other businesses do you think are run badly and why?
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You don't get to say, "Aside from Twitter..."

That's the most recent example of his management style, if you could call it that. As such it's absolutely the go-to example of what the man is like.

But in any case, you don't have to look far for people saying that he created a very toxic working environment in his "gigafactory". Which really shouldn't surprise anyone at this point? Issues with bullying and culture and him being a total jerk to some of his employees. It's like there's a pattern, here.
 
Roar87 said:
Aside from Twitter, which of his other businesses do you think are run badly and why?
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How are you measuring that?

There's certainly plenty of news articles and reports from employees and engineers of shoddy working environments, management and Musk interference with the other big two companies (Tesla and SpaceX).
Whether or not it extents to all the companies he's involved in i don't know; i suspect it depends on how much he is involved (day to day) with them, ie - SolarCity, Neuralink etc.
 
FoxEye said:
You don't get to say, "Aside from Twitter..."

That's the most recent example of his management style, if you could call it that. As such it's absolutely the go-to example of what the man is like.

But in any case, you don't have to look far for people saying that he created a very toxic working environment in his "gigafactory". Which really shouldn't surprise anyone at this point? Issues with bullying and culture and him being a total jerk to some of his employees. It's like there's a pattern, here.
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So you'd say Tesla is badly run, as one of the most valuable companies on Earth? Do you know how difficult it is to set up a car company from scratch and make it more valuable than Ford and General Motors? It's an insane thing to do, you're just some guy on the Internet saying it's "badly run" without having a clue what you're talking about, reading some quick article you've Googled to back up your already made up opinion. it's not like Tesla is being run like even an Amazon warehouse where they're notoriously strict, most people working at Tesla are well paid, decently qualified and work in good modern conditions, you can go watch footage of the Gigafactory on Youtube and the staff who work there. It's difficult to find any issues to do with him bullying people at work or being a total jerk, do you have any sources you can link to? I know that's what you think he's like, but apart from firing people at Twitter without any notice, there really isn't much out there to suggest he's actually a bully at all, why do you think he is?
 
Tesla's value is mainly in share price...

In terms of production it's got a fairly bad rep as Musk refused to take note of any of the lessons that other car companies learned over decades, not stuff that there was a real reason to ignore, but really basic stuff like make sure you're quality is consistent and hire QC.
Telsa's are theoretically good in terms of the technology in them (or were), but pretty bad as an actual product with endless isues due to things that shouldn't have been an problem including a general build quality that Kia would be ashamed of and QC that Lada would mock, and electrical design decisions that the Renault would laugh at*.

Much of it's share price is basically based on the fact it was the first commercial electric car, and Musk's promises that full self drive will be coming next year, a promise that has from memory being going on for nearly as long as Duke Nukem forever was in production, and looks like it's going to be the same sort of quality given he's actively removing sensors from the cars and they've got massive issues with not having the right sensors to begin with.

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Tesla is basically a tech company not really a car company, all it takes is one bad day (see what happens when Musk makes another silly mistake) for it's market value to drop. And I'm old enough to remember what has happened multiple times to massively over valued tech companies (I remember Myspace, Yahoo, AOL).
It doesn't even own much in the way of valuable IP at the moment, let alone actual physical plant etc.
The likes of GM have most of their stock value based on actual profit, IP, previous performance and physical assets but not much based on the charisma of it's spokesman/face and promises of something that is now 10 years behind schedule and not making any actual progress.
Basically Tesla is a couple of bad decisions by Musk, or a stock market adjustment away from losing much of it's value.

*IIRC the 12v battery only charges when the car is actively being used, but discharges monitoring the rest of the car (and it's sensors etc) when it's parked up and charging, with the access to recharge that battery on some versions of the cars (not even every one of a specific model, but apparently it varies depending on when that model was made) requiring fairly major dismantling of bits under the bonnet, because no one at Tesla considered what happens when a car is sat parked up, or considered that maybe you'd want a way to ensure that the 12v battery could be charged so no accessible port to charge it, and no charger that could say take the incoming power for the main battery and use that for a 12v charger (or even just a trickle charger that could pull from the main battery). Basically for want of about £10 in parts the car can become unusable and require an hour or more of time to simply connect up a bog standard car charger.
 
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Teslas market cap right now is a joke. They are valued at probably around the combined value of every other legacy car maker combined.
Tesla have some competitive advantages, not tied to legacy manufacturing, more expertise in some areas, but IMO a lot of their value is people who seem to think Tesla are going to sell the majority of the EVs in the future
The legacy auto makers are in various stages of acceptance of how its going (Toyota being worst it would seem) but they are catching up. They need to fix efficiency (to varying degrees by Marque) and then their history will give them some advantages over Tesla.
Teslas QC and QA suck, their fanboys just hand wave this away, and right now the efficiency and su[er charging network mean for many thats fine and still probably the right decision.
That is not an advantage that is going to remain. IN fact I think you can see signs already with Elon trying to bring the prices down, I think hes trying to make it harder for the legacy automakers to compete. Problem is he is looking as the wrong competitors, his real competitors for the next 5-10 will not be the legacy automakers, but the new Chinese EV manufacturers who have similar competitive advantages ve legacy as Tesla do, but also similar negatives.

Personally I wouldn't hold Tesla stocks unless its with a view to making some short term profit. My guess is in 10 years pretty much all of the surviving legacy automakers will have a higher value than Tesla. I fully expect one or two will fail completely in that time by just not moving fast enough. One of their main issues being there is still a significant portion of the general public who are resistant to change and do not want EVs, they want to pretend petrol and diesel will remain viable, and the legacy automakers are slowly trying to come to terms with nudging this demographic whilst retaining them as customers. Or the more crackpot ones who think we will move to Hydrogen direct combustion, look at how Toyota have tried to wed themselves to this group.
 
Roar87 said:
Cool, interesting. He's admitted in interviews that if he had access to a better Chief Engineer than himself then SpaceX would've had less failures. You of course haven't watched those interviews because you prefer to read articles that reinforce your confirmation bias.
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He didn't design the Merlin engine, he didn't design the Raptor engine, the 2 most engineering heavy things SpaceX has made. I'm honestly staggered you believe he is the best engineer SpaceX has or has ever had.
 
Roar87 said:
So you'd say Tesla is badly run, as one of the most valuable companies on Earth? Do you know how difficult it is to set up a car company from scratch and make it more valuable than Ford and General Motors? It's an insane thing to do, you're just some guy on the Internet saying it's "badly run" without having a clue what you're talking about, reading some quick article you've Googled to back up your already made up opinion. it's not like Tesla is being run like even an Amazon warehouse where they're notoriously strict, most people working at Tesla are well paid, decently qualified and work in good modern conditions, you can go watch footage of the Gigafactory on Youtube and the staff who work there. It's difficult to find any issues to do with him bullying people at work or being a total jerk, do you have any sources you can link to? I know that's what you think he's like, but apart from firing people at Twitter without any notice, there really isn't much out there to suggest he's actually a bully at all, why do you think he is?
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It's been so widely reported that there was even a documentary on TV. And by the time that happens, usually it's old news.

One interesting snippet was that it was suggested that Musk surrounds himself with yes-men, and that some of these people literally worship the man; in the documentary one of his senior managers says, on camera, that she believes Musk is the smartest person who ever lived (probably). Reminds me of Nadine Dorries' unconditional love for BJ... Or, maybe Putin? It honestly seems quite similar to the Scientologists. It was also alleged that they will try to smear anyone who leaves the company with anything bad to say about Musk, or his companies. But those stories do come out, hence the documentary (and again, it's more the sum of all reports rather than just any one story). And the stories that come out (from disgruntled employees, of course!) do not paint a happy picture. Either of the company or the man at the top.

I don't think it matters at all (to you) what stories, reports and documentaries ever get produced, tho. We're all suffering from envy, bitterness and confirmation bias, and you're the only rational, well-informed and factually correct actor here.
 
Colonel_Klinck said:
He didn't design the Merlin engine, he didn't design the Raptor engine, the 2 most engineering heavy things SpaceX has made. I'm honestly staggered you believe he is the best engineer SpaceX has or has ever had.
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Yeah, that's probably because a Chief Engineer wouldn't design an engine lol. Then you've just made up some random thing that I haven't said? I know it's 5pm on a Monday but go have an early night.
 
FoxEye said:
It's been so widely reported that there was even a documentary on TV. And by the time that happens, usually it's old news.

One interesting snippet was that it was suggested that Musk surrounds himself with yes-men, and that some of these people literally worship the man; in the documentary one of his senior managers says, on camera, that she believes Musk is the smartest person who ever lived (probably).
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So I mean, is there any snippets from the TV show where people say he's a bully? Anywhere I look people who work with him basically say he's a work obsessed genius.

FoxEye said:
Reminds me of Nadine Dorries' unconditional love for BJ... Or, maybe Putin? It honestly seems quite similar to the Scientologists.
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I think it's telling you're comparing him to Putin and Scientology but this is just your personal views so we go on.

FoxEye said:
It was also alleged that they will try to smear anyone who leaves the company with anything bad to say about Musk, or his companies. But those stories do come out, hence the documentary (and again, it's more the sum of all reports rather than just any one story). And the stories that come out (from disgruntled employees, of course!) do not paint a happy picture. Either of the company or the man at the top.
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Gonna need some links.

FoxEye said:
I don't think it matters at all (to you) what stories, reports and documentaries ever get produced, tho. We're all suffering from envy, bitterness and confirmation bias, and you're the only rational, well-informed and factually correct actor here.
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This has been a nothing post so yeah it does seem like it.

You said his companies were badly run, yet apart from Tesla being overvalued and perhaps there's some QC issues, it seems they're running rather well. The fact Twitter cut 80% of it's staff and is still running perfectly well, while implementing changes at pace is astounding.
 
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Roar87 said:
You said his companies were badly run, yet apart from Tesla being overvalued and perhaps there's some QC issues, it seems they're running rather well. The fact Twitter cut 80% of it's staff and is still running perfectly well, while implementing changes at pace is astounding.
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You won't even quote people accurately.
FoxEye said:
Maybe they took one look at the way he runs his businesses, and thought, "No thanks."
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You can define "badly run" any way you like, but from the perspective of a potential employee, they are going to have their own set of criteria for what represents a good place to work.

You could argue that a business is "well-run" even if it has the worst staff turnover ever seen in history, because it's profitable? Even if the employees were burned out and hated every minute of their time there...

It also doesn't require me to believe or convince you that *all* his employees have a bad time. Many, many staff at Twitter resigned (or were fired), but some stayed on. Some might even believe Musk is a genius, and commit to working 10+ hours a day for him, singing praises to Musk as they work.

But I don't think it's inconceivable that a "great engineer" might not have passed up on the opportunity to work for Musk/SpaceX, because they just aren't a fan of his work style/management style.

e: To put this another way, Musk says that "no great engineer" has ever applied to work for him. So, why is that? Surely it should be a huge draw to work for a total genius like Musk? Are they afraid he'll just make them look average? Is that it?
 
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Roar87 said:
Yeah, that's probably because a Chief Engineer wouldn't design an engine lol. Then you've just made up some random thing that I haven't said? I know it's 5pm on a Monday but go have an early night.
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Hmm so the chief engineer doesn't oversee the whole project including the design of the engines? He would need to have as good an understanding of the engine design as the engine designer himself. We all know that isn't the case, well most of us do.

You believe what ever comes out of his mouth. The man has lied and exaggerated for years but you just keeping taking him at his word.

Maybe if they had a better chief engineer they would have built a flame diverter and water deluge system so the prototype launch didn't lose engines and take other damage from flying debris as the pad was destroyed. It might have made it to orbit.

Roar87 said:
Cool, interesting. He's admitted in interviews that if he had access to a better Chief Engineer than himself then SpaceX would've had less failures. You of course haven't watched those interviews because you prefer to read articles that reinforce your confirmation bias.
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FoxEye said:
You won't even quote people accurately.

You can define "badly run" any way you like, but from the perspective of a potential employee, they are going to have their own set of criteria for what represents a good place to work.

You could argue that a business is "well-run" even if it has the worst staff turnover ever seen in history, because it's profitable? Even if the employees were burned out and hated every minute of their time there...

It also doesn't require me to believe or convince you that *all* his employees have a bad time. Many, many staff at Twitter resigned (or were fired), but some stayed on. Some might even believe Musk is a genius, and commit to working 10+ hours a day for him, singing praises to Musk as they work.

But I don't think it's inconceivable that a "great engineer" might not have passed up on the opportunity to work for Musk/SpaceX, because they just aren't a fan of his work style/management style.

e: To put this another way, Musk says that "no great engineer" has ever applied to work for him. So, why is that? Surely it should be a huge draw to work for a total genius like Musk? Are they afraid he'll just make them look average? Is that it?
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I'm sure some of the thousands of people at SpaceX are great engineers, but him speaking about finding a chief engineer was from a few years back when SpaceX was more of a startup. I think a lot of people would jump at the chance to work there, but there's only a handful of people who could do the job well enough to replace Musk as Chief Engineer given the responsibility and level of commitment required. Maybe they would join now given how well SpaceX is doing, the BBC could've asked that question and we'd know.
 
Roar87 said:
I'm sure some of the thousands of people at SpaceX are great engineers, but him speaking about finding a chief engineer was from a few years back when SpaceX was more of a startup. I think a lot of people would jump at the chance to work there, but there's only a handful of people who could do the job well enough to replace Musk as Chief Engineer given the responsibility and level of commitment required. Maybe they would join now given how well SpaceX is doing, the BBC could've asked that question and we'd know.
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Level of commitment required? He's spending his days at Twitter and tweeting. Can you imagine Steve Jobs being hundreds of miles from Apple headquarters and reading Twitter all day when they had the launch of a the iphone coming?
 
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