[senko]

He can be right 100% of the time, this is no way to run a company.

You hire passionate people who pour their soul and overtime into a thing then you parachute in, override half their decisions, micromanage other half, then leave leaving them to live with the mess.

After a few of these stunts, you end up with disillusioned, cynical, burnt out people who just don't care any more, and either quiet quit or leave for greener pastures, or the kind of folks who crack the game and fail upwards while caring nothing about the company and the products.

And as soon as the word spreads out that this is your modus operandi, smart folks who have neen around the block a few times will avoid you like the plague.

It can work if you're willing to churn people (khm Elon), for some definition of "work".

[phillryu]

You could be right, but in the hypothetical world where he's 100% right, and the current path the project or feature is taking is heading towards a dead end or is broken in some way. I feel there is a real cost that can be more easily ignored, e.g. working on a dead end or slowly failing thing that isn't set on the right trajectory is ultimately demoralizing and ends up in hindsight having been an opportunity cost and waste of your time vs. working on something else. And conversely if he's right about something like this, there should be positive feedback when it is turned around and starts performing better for the team involved?

[senko]

Yeah I don't mean to say founders, CEOs, etc, should ignore problems when they see one (let's assume they correctly identify the problem, ie 100% right): quite the opposite!

But there's a (slower, harder?) way to right the ship and make the team better, and (quicker, easier?) way to swoop in like a Marvel Avenger and break everything (and everyone) in the process.

I feel Founder Mode should in theory be the former, but is in fact excuse for many to do the latter (I've no evidence for this, just what it looks like to me).

[phillryu]

Ah ok yeah I see where you're coming from there. It's kind of like the question of did Steve Jobs need to be an asshole to be as successful as he was. And it can be tempting to think that they are intrinsically linked, but I also like to believe there is a world where he grew more on the empathy side but was still able to lead Apple perhaps even better.

[ethbr1]

There's also the time/focus limitation.

A CEO/founder can be the most brilliant person in a company, and still not be as well informed about a specific aspect as someone else, simply because they don't have time with their other competing responsibilities.

So the allure of parachuting in and fixing a problem also comes with understanding the limitations that your brief on the situation was by summarized Powerpoint.

Which is one thing that's been said about old Microsoft era Gates -- he simply worked that much harder and faster to be able to do it effectively.

[nebula8804]

I fell for this fallacy during the early days of the Tesla Skeptics wave. I thought no way this nonsense management style will keep them going once the competitors catch up. OEMs know how to make good reliable cars. Tesla is a shitshow.

Turns out the incumbents repeated many of the EV specific mistakes Tesla did early on, and Tesla continued to innovate in what they thought matters (electric powertrain, software, infrastructure etc.)

Even today if you watch some of Tesla's old battery day presentations, I am amazed at the level of care they put into their operations. The systems integration goes down to even the little things: https://youtu.be/Hl1zEzVUV7w?t=3761

People really see this with how far ahead SpaceX and Starlink are.

How does Musk keep getting the top people from the best schools to want to come to his companies when it is well known that prior groups get ground down to nothing and then tossed aside?

I tried to figure this out by confronting Starlink employees directly at DEFCON conference a few years back.

Essentially they are so driven they just want to work with A players. They dont tolerate B players or they will leave. Musk is sometimes wrong to the detriment of the team but sometimes he is really right and he pushes the team to perform their best and to think outside the box(or first principles as he would say).

[jimbokun]

> (khm Elon), for some definition of "work".

In that case the definition of "work" being "become the wealthiest person in the world".

[senko]

Bah, that's overrated, I'd be quite happy with just a few $B :D

[geodel]

Not good enough until I get to fire tens of thousands, turn their life upside down and gaslight them on their way out. And I am sad because these laid off people can 't even praise my genius while cleaning out their desk. So I am just leaving.

[flappyeagle]

Shrug? I disagree strongly. If he was 100% right I would just double the estimate of every project and build in the assumption of a pivot