Many brilliant people work for Musk at companies like Tesla and SpaceX. Given the recent controversies surrounding him, I'm genuinely curious—how do they stay motivated to do their best work?
It would be great to hear from actual folks working for one of his companies rather than folks that presume that they can speak on behalf of those people, and, even worse, go so far as to liken them to "people in abusive relationships".
I've always been and remain a big fan of Musk's business acumen and initiatives. Being involved in some small way to help realize the future is tremendously rewarding.
None of the political stuff or "media controversies" bother me. I lean Right myself, am tired of progressive nonsense circa ~2012, and have seen the MSM been caught in lie after lie after lie over the past 20 years (and the lies almost always lean one way). Going after bureaucracy and government efficiency is incredibly important, even if done in a somewhat haphazard manner. These institutions become cancerous and waste tremendous taxpayer resources, they need some chemotherapy.
Well OP, you asked, I answered, I wonder if HN is mature enough to discuss such a topic without excessively downvoting the political minority here.
> have seen the MSM been caught in lie after lie after lie over the past 20 years
You mean like Musk has told lie after lie over the past 20 years?
> Going after bureaucracy and government efficiency is incredibly important
Nothing DOGE is doing is about efficiency. They're not trying to understand or improve any of it. They're just haphazardly throwing it away. Like this with ebola prevention:
What has convinced you that the government bureaucracy is cancerous and wastes tremendous taxpayer resources? Have you talked to civil servants about what they do, what sort of services their agencies provide?
I worked at The Boring Company at a relatively high ranking role. I stayed as long as I did because I loved the challenge - deadlines are crazy, and its a high stress high reward environment. Until the work started impacting my personal life, I didn't really have a problem with it.
Steve Davis is a micromanager to the extreme, which is one of the worst parts of the job. If you perform well in the environment, you're rewarded for it by getting less oversight by Steve. It's an incentive to stick with the company. In addition, my ISO package was very handsome.
I left due to the previously mentioned personal life impacts, and the increasing political bias of the company. I'm relatively left leaning, and prior to the election, Elon visited and stated that it was crucial that Trump won to secure the future of the company for deregulation. Steve Davis also kept leaning onto this in our all hands. All in all, it just became too much for me.
SpaceX is the leading rocket agency in the world. That that might be someone you don't like at the helm is secondary. If you're a world renowned rocket scientist, where else would you want to work? Boeing? Move to China? A theoretical SpaceX that didn't have Elon Musk at the helm? Blue Origin? Not to denigrate the people that work at either of those, but building the Falcon 9 is something I'd be proud to tell my kids, if I was a rocket scientist.
Your answer has two parts. The first part is easy to agree with. The second part is contestable, but you obviously beleive it, and so it is easy to tie it to the first part, but really? They are two points not one.
The reality or otherwise of the press, does unfortunately (for your line of reasoning) affect motivations and outcomes. Tesla leadership will be reflecting on the sales trends. Most of their direction stems from forces outside their control in the classic sense: its market forces. But the other ones stem from politics, and like it or not, the leaders position in world politics IS affecting market views of his associated products.
It's interesting that its in cars, not batteries. The battery control logic and the stacks, the virtual power-plant models, they're too good. No amount of painting this IBM as a collaborator with dictators will prevent the sales there. But in the car space, it's not so clear.
Timing is everything. Starlink has leadership. Europe is reacting because of concerns from being excluded from the LEO marketspace. The news will be used, to influence investment, and attract staff to move. Not all staff who move will be the dumb rejects. People move for all kinds of reasons. It may include, dislike of the leadership.
Looks like the media controversies are driven more largely by false narratives from the "right" than anything that's really liberal or conservative in favor of America itself.
Definitely less basis in reality from that direction than from what's ill-defined as "liberal" today.
I'm not working for Musk, but the way I see it, he's funding a lot of research that someone couldn't get access to if they worked with say, BMW or NASA. So it makes sense that someone could be there to just learn and fail on someone else's dime before they do their own thing.
Little basis in reality? Elon has been lying about Tesla features for years. Tesla is massively overvalued almost exclusively due to his antics and pumping up the stock. And on and on
Reminds me of people in abusive relationships. From outside everyone wonders why they are not getting away from their abusers. But inside, the victims believe there is nowhere else to go.
The cost of employees in the Federal gov is less than 5% of the total Federal budget. There are already agencies with oversight of spending and Congress sets the budget usually in the fall timeframe but it varies per department/agency.
Firing/laying off non-political appointee federal employees, aka civil service employees, will do nearly nothing to save money. The Federal government isn't a software company where one of the most expensive things is the cost of people.
If the budget is about $6,000B per year, 5% of that is $300B and if the target is laying off 10%, you are talking $30B. It sounds like a lot of money to a person but that means your federal budget is now $5,970B.
Basic budgeting concepts - if you wanted to save a lot of money you wouldn't be looking at something which only accounts for 5% of your budget. It would be like if your personal debt keeps increasing each year and you have a $800/mo car payment, $4000/mo mortgage, etc. and think eliminating 1 coffee run per week will save you.
Tell me to exit my echo chamber as you post a liberal source for a liberal narrative, nice! Try finding factual statistics and report back, we will wait.
I ready both sides regularly, in order to keep an open mind. You should try it sometime.
The article contains links to the original research.
Are you lazy, or just afraid of facts?
I provided a reference refuting your assertion that federal workers are lazy. You don't appear to have anything to back up your position, or you world have replied with it. Instead you tried to steer the discussion in another direction. Lame.
This will have major impacts on the deficit. Reducing revenue does not help close the gap when they're not also significantly reducing spending. If we aren't going to raise taxes, then enforcement needs to be maintained. Tariffs do bring in revenue, but at a cost (with the selected tariffs) to industries which will reduce income for companies and individuals so net we're likely to see reduced total revenue, but a shift in where revenue comes from. The deficit will probably go up the next few years with the current scheme between reducing IRS enforcement, reducing economic activity, and insignificant spending cuts.
This leaves only a few "natural" cuts that will be very unpopular, but needed to come close to balancing the budget: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. DOD cuts will reduce military readiness at a time when we'll either need it (Taiwan) or be abandoning our military dominance. But even cutting DOD spending by 100% wouldn't clear the deficit itself so other things have to be cut.
This year's DOD spending is $318 billion so far, and the deficit is $839 billion. Cutting DOD spending by 100% would still have left a $500 billion deficit.
The problem people have with DOGE, is that it's in itself a fraud. Musk empire is based on government contracts and subsides. And somwehow, he's now deciding what's being cut.
As for fraud that DOGE is uncovering, can you point to some real fraud they found ? Not some bullshit tweets or their website riddled with 'mistakes'.
If they found real fraud, there should be indictments. There are 0 for now. 0.
That is true, the debt is rediculous. Doge approach to fix it by firing people without knowing what they do is just stupid. It creates more cost long term.
To cut debt why not say... increase corporation tax. Fix healthcare so it isn't a rip off. Deconstruct the various complexes: military, prison etc. Stop giving money to Israel.
Let illegal immigrants stay because they pay tax without getting social security.
It's not. I worked at a startup with a terrible CEO who was more lucky than smart, had sexual harassment case, put a family member as head of HR, and generally disliked. It definitely demotivated people.
Well your post read more like an Elon grumble, but in that case:
You narrow your work focus to those things you think will play well in next job interview. You put your efforts into doing a good job of them so can show off learnings from those projects.
Now you're not working for that boss, you're working to ditch them.
I worked for a company with truly awful leadership once. Only one person was brave enough to be overt how they would not tolerate it, but the general IT staff were more broadly unhappy, directly because of that leadership. He was a Neuro-Linguistic Programming nutcase, and had an outstanding sexual harrassment case from his prior role. I think about that a lot, in this current situation.
TL;DR people do get motivated or de-motivated by leadership.
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