Item — HN Reader

> by a leader that spends time on flamethrowers and cave rescue submarines

You are grossly misinformed by how Elon spends his time and seem to have read a few headlines years ago and assume that’s all he does.

I suggest you listen to some of his interviews where people specifically ask how many hours he works a week, and on what, and you’ll soon realize, no one, even factory workers can match his work ethics and time spent at the company.

He takes his own medicine religiously, that you can count on.

3 comments

You are assuming that everything Musk says is genuine.

I give people the benefit of doubt until I see a contradiction. So far, he's been genuine over the 8 years that I've been following him and his ventures.

> So far, he's been genuine over the 8 years that I've been following him and his ventures.

If that were true we'd have had fully autonomous FSD 5 years ago, to say nothing of "pedo guy". Over the last 8 years I've seen nothing to suggest Elon is a reliable source of information about anything.

> If that were true we'd have had fully autonomous FSD 5 years ago

Genuine doesn’t mean what you think it means. FSD is late because Elon underestimated it while working on it as fast as Tesla can, not because he’s a liar who’s walking his dog around the office instead of running the business and rebranding Siemens machines as his own.

If he had only said it once, sure. But Elon has repeatedly, year after year made the same claim only for it to turn out false. So either he's lying knowing full well it won't come to fruition, or he's incapable of accurately assessing progress. I strongly suspect the former, especially given his relationship with the truth on other things, but the latter makes him just as unreliable source of information.

> he's incapable of accurately assessing progress

He has admitted time and time again, on twitter and in interviews, that FSD has been a series of "local maximas" which each time given him and his team a false sense of reaching the full self driving capability. So yes, when pushing the edge of tech, it's not easy to estimate timelines and he's admitted that. What more do you want? For him to call it quits or get into magic and pull rabbits out of a hat?

A single space telescope, the James Webb's, which is far less involved than FSD (runs in controlled environment, albeit harsh, doesn't interact with anything but well known objects and is produced once with little cost optimization, since it's not sold in mass volumes and need not attract customers) has been delayed time and time again and run over budget by multiple factors, amounting to billions of dollars. No one said along the way that the project leaders were liars who knew they couldn't build the telescope but just wanted to spend tax payers money.

"pedo guy" was him overreacting to a direct attack on his employees and him work after Musk was directly requested to do the work by rescue divers and government officials on the project.

Most of the takes on that event drastically misrepresent the facts in order to make him look worse than any other normal human getting caught up in a flare of emotion after having something important attacked.

You do have to wonder about a company where the CEO says one thing about FSD to the public, and one of their executives involved daily on the regulatory side tells the regulators, in writing, something wildly different.

I don’t, but his success across now four (five?) industries and being one of the wealthiest if not the wealthiest man in the world and being self made didn’t happen by accident.

Please do inform us then. How does he spend his time? How do you know such things?

> How do you know such things?

Elsewhere here, you said you've watched his interviews and yet you missed him mention, more than the dozen times over the past few years, how he split his times between his companies?

> Please do inform us then.

I've pointed you to where you can find that out yourself. If you actually care to learn something, you'll spend the time. But if you're content with your preconceptions and the media's take on Elon, whatever I say here will fall on deaf ears.

Ok, let's take 168 hours in a week. He's got SpaceX, Twitter, Tesla and Boring company. So he's at best working 42 hours a week on each, or there is atleast one company there where he's working less than 42 hours. Oh, and that's assuming he doesn't sleep, and ignores the fact that we can publicly see it's probably 20 hours sleeping 118 hours on twitter and about 10 hours on each of the others right now.

I'm seriously amazed people even discuss this. When the employer and the owner of a business hires someone, the employer sets the terms of employment, not the other way around. If the hired person doesn't like the terms, he/she can just walk away and find a more suitable job.

Imagine hiring a house cleaner, who would insist you be present in the house when the house is being cleaned?

This is of course true, but hiring strong engineers is a very competitive market these days. Especially in hot fields like ML for self-driving cars.

That's really the root of this discussion - can you offer worse terms than other employers you're competing with for talent, while also being kind of a dick about it, without hurting the success of your company?

> can you offer worse terms than other employers you're competing with for talent, while also being kind of a dick about it, without hurting the success of your company?

Yes! When you have leverage, you can. What's the leverage? The amazing opportunity to work on tech that will power the future and all the challenges that come with it. Furthermore, ability to work in an environment where you are not restricted by traditional business hierarchy and practices that inhibit innovation. I know dozens of Tesla employees who've echoed the same sentiment, saying how much of more freedom and autonomy they have at Tesla, compared to their previous employers.

Also what's viewed as "being a dick" is clearly relative. I see a frank and no BS memo which is closed to interpretation and doesn't waste anyone's time. As The Wolf puts it:

> if I'm curt with you it's because time is a factor ... so pretty please with sugar on top, clean the fucking car

He's previously stated that he works over 80 hours a week, and that less than 10% of his time is spent on things that aren't SpaceX and Tesla.

How does he have time to play Eldon Ring?