[frickinLasers]

> His manage-by-trolling technique is demonstrably effective in industry.

Or are his companies successful despite that? The impression I get is that his direct reports are exceptionally good managers and shield the companies from his dumbest moves. Except at Twitter--that's lost, what, 75% of its value? (still works as a political platform for him though)

[Vilian]

Considering that twitter never profited since he took over, nah

[ganoushoreilly]

"Twitter" wasn't profitable when he bought it so I'm not sure this is a fair comparison.

[pizlonator]

That’s exactly what I mean by manage by trolling. He forces his directs to be good by trolling them with idiotic ideas.

I don’t condone manage by trolling; it’s not how I want to manage or be managed. But it seems to have worked out for his industrial complex.

[jhloa2]

So he fosters competence with his incompetence? Seems like it would work just as well without him except for marketing. I'm impressed with Tesla and SpaceX as a whole, but from what I've heard, he hasn't been heavily involved with day to day decisions for more than a decade. From my perspective, his role is to be a hype man that consistently over promises and under delivers.

[CamperBob2]

Musk specializes at succeeding in fields where nobody else is seriously trying. He's never actually faced good old-fashioned market competition.

He's good at identifying ideas whose time has come, I'll give him that much credit. Ransacking the US Treasury wasn't on the radar, though, as far as I could see.

[ModernMech]

"He's never actually faced good old-fashioned market competition."

https://waymo.com/blog/2024/03/scaling-waymo-one-safely-acro...

Note the date. Tesla still doesn't have a taxi.

[CamperBob2]

Waymo is doing good work but it's still very much a science-fair project, just another side hobby of Larry and Sergey.

Self-driving taxis will be a "market" someday, but not yet, and when they are, there is no reason to think Musk will be a force to be reckoned with. (Well, no reason other than the regulatory capture that he's no doubt putting into place now, that is.)

[fragmede]

https://waymo.com/blog/2024/12/year-in-review-2024

from their blog that GP linked to, which says they gave 4 million rides in 2024, which seems like more than a "science faire side project", whatever that's supposed to mean.