
Boasting about how many hours you work is a sign of failure - eplanit
https://qz.com/work/1486863/boasting-about-how-many-hours-you-work-is-a-sign-of-failure/
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gnulinux
> The massive, obvious counterpoint to Musk’s boasts is that, despite working
> more than 17 hours a day for weeks on end, Musk hasn’t yet changed the
> world. Not in a real, meaningful sense that will be remembered for
> generations to come like, say, biologist Charles Darwin, who worked four
> hours a day, or United States founding father Benjamin Franklin, who was
> strict about calling it a day after eight hours or work. Sure, Tesla was
> ahead of the curve on getting the auto industry to go electric but, as
> Geoffrey James notes in Inc, AltaVista was the first ever search engine and
> no one says “let me AltaVista that for you.” It’ll be pretty good going if
> Tesla manages to make electric cars affordable and replace internal-
> combustion engines entirely, but that hasn’t happened yet. Similarly, SpaceX
> has made rockets cheaper, which opens up a lot of opportunities, but we’ve
> yet to see the consequences. If Musk eventually manages to create a colony
> on Mars then that, of course, would be world-changing—but I suspect we’d
> then hear a lot less about how he skips breakfast or doesn’t get much sleep,
> because Musk would have something far more impressive to boast about.

This paragraph is, I think, very on point, and it summarizes my opinions about
Musk very clearly. Disclaimer: I'm very cynical of most things (even for HN
standards) and all my life had a desire to work 120 hours a week (like Musk
claims) but can never do it due to various reasons (mostly due mental health)
(so, deep inside there is probably some jealousy going on). But if I'm being
very honest, I think Musk is a PR campaign and is not a technology pioneer.
Contrary to what my friends and people who read my submission history would
think, I'm not against technology. But tech industry is completely out of
control. I see myself as a technology purist: when we're making technological
developments, I hate that it comes with a whole PR campaign attached with it
which shadows the _real engineering value_ added to the world. In our world,
this is the "normal" way how tech companies operate. I would want to see Musk
being discussed more about his _technical_ ideas (if he has them) as opposed
to his ideas about how workers should spend their times or how the society
should be changed etc.

