this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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It’s so disheartening seeing the manchild keep throwing fits and Dunning-Krugering his way through things. It’s really fun watching these rockets, but it’s hard to be enthusiastic anymore with such a terrible person at the helm.
Does DK apply here? The most comprehensive report & evidence review that I know of says:
Doesn't sound like the author thinks social transition is the kind of thing teachers should normally be making decisions about.
I suppose I’m using DK as a sort of colloquialism here. The guy knows some stuff. But knowing a little gives him unearned confidence about the rest. He has enough smart people around him to succeed, but he’s not a genius. He’s just a rich guy.
I think he's a genius. Not on this issue, of course (though if he's read any of the Cass Review he's way ahead of the people down-voting me for accurately quoting it).
But probably the best engineering manager there's ever been.
There have been tons of reports of his subordinates having to manage him. Like, he comes into a meeting and says they have to change a design because he thinks it doesn’t look cool. So they all have to figure out which meetings he can be left out of so they can just do their jobs.
And, also, Twitter is still a dumpster fire in terms of its tech stack. He swooped in and fired people and stopped paying bills.
Not a genius.
I've seen rumours like that online, but I doubt there are tons of reliable testimonies. (Though if you feel like spending the time digging some up, I'd be happy to go & read them, and update my views accordingly.)
But perhaps there's no smoke without fire, and I do see how his style could lead to rumours like that.
I'll start by mentioning a couple of his edicts.
Something like "try deleting the part or process" [from your design]. He had some rough metric like "if you aren't finding that 10% of the parts you try deleting end up needing to be added back in [to the design], then you haven't been deleting aggressively enough".
Something like "assume the requirements [that you have been asked to meet] are wrong". Talk to the other teams, and the people designing your interface or creating your requirements. Push back.
These both seem plausibly correct to me, and it's these - and perhaps many dozens of other similarly 'weird' aspects of his approach that he has adopted over the years - which are why I suspect his multiple successes are not a fluke.
And then, you can imagine a similar type of thinking applied in a 'meta' way. Basically, if Musk isn't finding that at least 10% of his crazy edicts are getting significant push-back from his teams, and eventually get dropped, then maybe he's not being crazy enough. And that certainly means there'll be examples that could lead, sometimes with some embellishment, sometimes not, to the kinds of rumours you allude to.
Well, yes, he's definitely weird in this way sometimes. Often placing value in aesthetics, and sometimes comedy. (Like with the "make the rocket more pointy" thing.) But seemingly not enough to cause his projects to fail. (So maybe that's ultimately a good thing too; a bit of quirkiness to remind himself and others not to take things TOO seriously.)
This is just the first, easiest thing I found showing he’s a man child manager. There are many, many others.
You seem to be a really big fan of the guy. Despite what you said, it doesn’t seem like you’re really interested in changing your opinion. There’s a lot of evidence that he’s an ass-hat, but you’re dismissing it as rumor. But equally unverifiable evidence that makes him look like a kind of crazy genius is A-OK? Dude. That’s how evidence works in conspiracy theory nonsense world.
Which makes sense, given that the folks that adore him are also into conspiracy theory nonsense.
That's a separate question from the one I thought we were discussing.
It's all unverifiable to us. But at that point you have to remember the elephant in the room: his companies' multiple successes, pushing forwards the state of the art, in multiple domains, in a commercially viable way.
I'll remind you that my previous comment used wording such as "I suspect", and "you can imagine". I'll now, off the top of my head, put a number on it. I'm 85% confident that the primary explanation for his otherwise unlikely run of successes, is that he's a genius of an engineering manager.
What's your primary explanation, and confidence level?
I consider myself anti- conspiracy theory. When I encounter them in various comment sections, I quite often briefly reply, politely correcting people. My guess would be that such people are more likely than average to dislike Musk.
As for me, I don't adore him. And I have multiple criticisms, and things I'd want to learn more about before judging him too positively overall.
And then twitter crashed?