Technically, Musk is no founder of Tesla, since it was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning
Technically, Musk is no founder of Tesla, since it was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning
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Technically, sure. But it was founded in July 2003, Musk bought in on February 2004, and it shipped its first car in 2012. So there wasn't much he wasn't involved with.
Why can't a person be both a successful businessman and a colossal douchebag? Isn't "he's a terrible human being" sufficient? I would think that should be.
It's hard to call him successful when he was born with a golden parachute
Again, a technically true statement. His family was fairly wealthy, on average. But Musk did not start out millionaire wealthy. His father gave Elon (and his brother Kimbal jointly) $28,000 in seed money for his first company. Everything from there was Musk building companies and selling them to climb the wealth rankings.
But none of that matters, clearly. We're in a post-truth period where all that matters is whether I'm hating the right people, and hate doesn't require truth. Indeed, it's usually incompatible with it. I hate Elon Musk personally, I think he's a terrible human being and Trump is the worst president America has ever had, but because I didn't jump right in on the inaccurate "and also Elon didn't even accomplish anything on his own, he just bought everything with his giant piles of inherited apartheid emeralds!" narrative I get the downvotes. I didn't yell loudly enough along with the mob at the five-minutes hate, so I must be a full-blown conservative Nazi too.
So I'll give everyone what they want to hear, I guess. I heard Elon Musk loves to kill kittens. He walks right up to them, grabs them by the tail, and whips their skin right off before they even know what's happening. Puppies, too. Also he doesn't really launch rockets with SpaceX, they're aluminium foil balloons filled with hydrogen. That's why they explode sometimes, hydrogen balloons just do that.
Turns out I was wrong, didn't take your word for it, so I looked it up. Guess he's just a giant tool.
Well, I have to admit to being pleasantly and genuinely surprised. I was ready to just dismiss all my notifications unread on this thread. I'm not used to any Internet arguments going this way, let alone ones about Musk or American politics. Thanks. Although this does mean that now I've been fed a little bit of hope to keep me going in the pursuit of thankless truths, when I could have just quit, so maybe it's a mixed bit of gratitude. :)
Elon Musk is, indeed, a giant tool. Even back in the days before he got overtly political it was clear that he was socially malajusted, and unfortunately it seems like buying Twitter was somewhat of a turning point for him - he fell completely off a cliff after that. I really wish he'd just stuck to building those various companies of his because I really do like the results of his work, in a "von Braun was good for the American space program" sort of way. I don't imagine his current trajectory is going to end well and I hope he at least gets Starship flying routinely before he goes Howard Hughes.
If someone points out that I'm wrong on something factual, I try not to be hard headed about it. Politics is hard enough for people to find common ground, even worse when we can't agree on a set of facts. I find it tiring dealing with a constant stream of lies and misinformation in modern politic, so I try not to add to it.
Emerald parachute?
Why can’t a person be both a successful businessman and a colossal douchebag?
I think a more informative question would be "Why can't a person be both a successful businessman and not a colossal douchebag?"
Historically, it seems that the same characteristics that make people colossal douchebags also help make them successful businessmen. There was a study a few years back that showed a lot of CEOs were psychopaths, for example. Being willing to take advantage of people and having a driven workaholic personality helps people climb that corporate ladder.
When most people talk about involvement, I understand it to be in designing and engineering of the product. Management of personelle, budgets, and securing funding is important, but the core of the product, while contingent on that, isnt the same as that.
I'll let an except from this article sum up the essence of his contribution, but he isn't an innovator, he's an investor and manager. I know this is a highly polarized topic, but understanding the actuality and the mythology of the man is important.
With that said, we need to give credit where credit is due. He recognized it as a good idea and put more money into making it happen than any was willing to do at the time.
Therefore, you could make the argument that Tesla wouldn’t have happened without Musk – making the founder argument moot.
After that, you also have to give some credit to Musk for Tesla’s success. He has been the CEO since 2008 and the company accomplished incredible things under his leadership. They succeeded in making EVs mainstream and pushed the industry to transition to battery-electric vehicles.
To this day, it is Musk’s original ‘Tesla Secret Master Plan’ in 2006 that convinced me Tesla would be the company to bring EVs into the mainstream. The plan made sense, and it was executed under his leadership. He took the original idea, fleshed it out, financed it, and then led the team that made it happen.
The last point is important because that’s where I start to agree with Musk’s naysayers again. Musk’s fans like to claim that he is some sort of engineering genius. Jamie Dimon just called him “our Einstein”. While I can admit that Elon is smart and has an above-average understanding of many physics and engineering principles, comparing him to one of the most impactful theoretical physicists of all time is pure madness.
While Musk has made technical contributions to Tesla, I think they are often overblown by his fanbase and Tesla’s team doesn’t get enough credit. JB Straubel, Tesla’s longtime Chief Technology Officer until 2019, and his teams should get the vast majority of the credit for the technical contributions and advancements to battery technology and power electronics that made Tesla successful.
There are too many to name them all, but I have been reporting on Tesla for more than a decade. Through my reporting, sources have praised people like Straubel, Drew Baglino, Kurt Kelty, Colin Campbell, Peter Rawlinson, Charles Kuehmann, Alan Clarke, Dan Priestley, Lars Moravy, David Zhang, Evan Small, and Franz von Holzhausen for their contributions to Tesla.