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Ask HN: Why do HN feel so negatively about Musk?

by jari_mustonen on 11/4/22, 2:25 PM with 95 comments

• by abeisgreat on 11/4/22, 2:43 PM

  Personally, I turned my opinion on him when he tweeted about having approvals from major cities for Hyperloop tracks and then the mayor of one of those cities tweeted that they had never spoken to him.

  It's clear he's willing to lie and manipulate on a mass scale (and we let him). He's either immature, evil, or something in between.

• by karaterobot on 11/4/22, 2:50 PM

  For the longest time, I disliked him because he allowed a myth to be created about him being the inventor of technologies, when in reality he's the CEO, the guy who employs the people who invent things and build them for him. I don't recall him ever actually saying "I single-handedly invented the Tesla and the Falcon rocket", but I never saw him take even a minute to credit the people who actually did that work, either. Maybe he did once, and I didn't catch it, but I've seen enough interviews where he didn't go out of his way to correct the public image of him as Tony Stark.

  Now, I dislike him because I recognize in him the showman who makes a lot of claims that are exciting, but don't pan out. The massive delays in Tesla production, the complete failure of full self driving, the more or less completely nonexistent brain-computer interface he was going to sell, and on and on. For a while, I thought of him as an audacious and exciting douchebag who might, despite being personally distasteful, end up making great things and pushing humanity forward. Now, I still hold out hope, but I suspect that he may be just another asshole with money.

• by pwinnski on 11/4/22, 3:29 PM

  His behavior as a person is not admirable in the slightest[0]. I would be ashamed if one of my children had acted like Musk.

  So you have a man who is personally a train wreck but professionally accomplished, and he has many people who completely ignore the former because of the latter. This seems backward, so you have many people who go the other way instead.

  Then you start getting into questions of how much he's actually done, instead of just financed, and the teeter-totter gets even more unbalanced.

  If he would just shut up and quietly amass his billions, he wouldn't be so reviled. Asshole CEOs are common, and most aren't publicly scorned. But he cherishes the limelight, seeks it out, and seems to care inordinately much about what teenage boys think of him, generally wanting to be the center of attention.

  0. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/elon-musk-twitter-te...

• by shafyy on 11/4/22, 2:45 PM

  It's not only HN, it's many people "out there" bashing him. The problem is that people can't seem to have a nuanced view. He has done some shitty things, but he also has done some objectively impressive and useful things. He is a weirdo, but it doesn't seem like he is an evil person.

  We all can use some more nuance in our discussions (here's my blog post on this topic from a few days ago: https://canolcer.com/post/we-need-more-nuance/). And here's a great article about "Grey Thinking" by Farnam Street: https://fs.blog/value-grey-thinking/

• by erokar on 11/4/22, 2:46 PM

  I started to dislike him after "the pedofile tweet". That kind of behaviour points to dark narcissistic personality traits.

  Apart from that, where to start? He has pressured his employees to work under the risk of contracting covid in the early phases of the pandemic, and now as the latest thing he comes off as a Russia apologist, if not outright sympathiser of their war against Ukraine. Musk has an uncanny ability to fall lower with regards to moral standards when you didn't think it possible.

• by caradine on 11/4/22, 3:00 PM

  Tesla and the electric car industry is a scam. More car-dependency won't save our environment. Instead, we are just digging giant holes in the ground for lithium using slave labor.

  Space X is just the privatization of NASA, and the promise of a Mars colony is nothing more than a marketing tactic, or possibly an unrealistic backup plan for a small number of billionaires (probably not you) when our planet fully combusts.

• by PaulHoule on 11/4/22, 2:29 PM

  My take is he has some good attributes and some bad attributes.

  I like what he's done with Tesla and SpaceX.

  His behavior around Twitter and around politics has been bizzare and erratic and (I think) endangers the good things he's done. It seems like trouble with Twitter could sidetrack Starship which would be a tragedy.

• by dagmx on 11/4/22, 2:45 PM

  Your post focuses on his technical achievements.

  Have you considered his social capital though?

  - made various transphobic, fat shaming, and otherwise derogatory remarks against people

  - spreads conspiracy theories

  - accused rescuers of being pedos

  - plays around with other people’s livelihoods like they don’t matter

  - he’s been accused of sexual harassment

  - he allies himself with other problematic people like Joe Rogan

  - he routinely flouts local ordinances, especially around health care

  - constantly tries to make it appear as if he’s being benevolent but either does nothing on onerous terms (cave rescue submarine, world hunger pledge), comes up drastically short (ventilator support) or renegs as soon as it’s slightly inconvenient (starlink)

  - supports Russia invading and taking land. (Yes he donated starlink to Ukraine, but also overcharged both the US government and the people of Ukraine)

  Then let’s look at the technical side, which provide other areas of criticism:

  - solar roofs are incredibly behind schedule for many people who’ve signed on

  - Tesla routinely fails to ship vehicles on schedule that he’ll still constantly hype up

  - Tesla use full self driving as a sales term but are routinely behind schedule on things for years

  - Tesla keep cutting parts from their vehicles reducing functionality , while raising prices

  There’s a lot of fodder to dislike about him. Maybe people can dismiss one or the other, but they add up and have been adding up at an increasingly large rate recently.

  Also I know this will likely result in a lot of sea-lioning responses. I won’t respond to any non-good faith discussion.

• by orange_joe on 11/4/22, 2:45 PM

  I (mostly) liked him before the twitter saga. Not anymore. I liked him because he was working on serious technology that was going to make us better. But this twitter adventure is a real problem. Twitter is his spruce goose. His purchase of the company was totally ego driven. He's now laying off half the workforce (3700 people), which will likely severly effect around 10,000 people. Families will be deported from the country, people will lose their health insurance, some will miss their mortgages or rent payments. And here's the kicker. Despite doing all that, the company still won't be profitable as he performed a leveraged buyout. Twitter now has to take on 12B in debt, roughly half of its 2019 market cap. In all likelihood this debt load will be way too high for twitter and the company will go bankrupt.

• by georgeecollins on 11/4/22, 2:47 PM

  I have this book, "Steve Jobs and The Next Big Thing." It was written when Steve Jobs was running Next Computers and struggling. It was all about what a terrible manager he was, how he had bad ideas, etc. It is actually a good book and I like to keep it in mind.

  We tend to hero worship really successful people we admire. The trouble is that all humans are flawed. Worse, when people get very successful they lose the people around them that can call them on their bs. I am sure I have a bunch of dumb, poorly thought out opinions in my head. If everything I thought was broadcast before someone could point out the flaws in what I was saying I would sound callous, foolish, maybe even dangerous. Some people are very accomplished but no one is smart about all things all the time.

• by NickC25 on 11/4/22, 3:20 PM

  Just seems like an egotistical nutcase to me. Born into wealth and thought he hit a home run, even though he was already halfway past 3rd base with no chance of not being able to score from day 1.

  Keep in mind he didn't start Tesla, he bought it. His whole "pedo guy" comment about rescue divers really irked me too. While I dislike his political stances, it doesn't cloud my judgement as much as it does for others....The only real thing that bothers me is how much he makes from government subsidies yet people claim he's some sort of business savant. He's not. I don't like anyone with a cult of personality around them.

• by Finnucane on 11/4/22, 2:34 PM

  He's not quite as openly fascist as say, Peter Thiel, but he's clearly a douchebag who cares about nothing beyond himself. He's clearly sympathetic to racists and autocrats. He does not have a desire to make humanity a multi-planet species. He just wants an escape pod from the burning Earth.

• by cardosof on 11/4/22, 2:48 PM

  He's too erratic for his position at the public company he runs and others he's part of. He tends to run away from technical confrontations. He seeks attention, most often in childish ways. He runs business based on hype, guerrilla marketing and raising consumer expectations, not necessarily on technological breakthroughs (although they do exist). Some people think he's an asshole or he's fraudulent and practices market manipulation (that's either subjective or a legal matter).

• by MSFT_Edging on 11/4/22, 2:49 PM

  "I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here: it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you want to sell it!"

  Musk is a sad, spiteful man, with more money than sense. Of course money can make things happen, but Musk isn't his engineers. He's a bad, bad man who is worshiped by legions of equally bad nerds who just go around making everyone's day worse.

  More than that, he sells a story of an imaginary way to get out of the spiral of collapse created by many men, just like him, who came before him. He sells false hope, a road-side prophet. This false hope he sells has convinced enough people to effectively derail any possibility of fundamental societal change that would enable the population at large to live relatively comfortable lives.

  If we just keep consuming, eventually we can consume on Mars!

  Infinite growth is physically impossible, yet the world we live in keeps charging forward assuming infinite growth is mandatory and will never go away.

  It's impossible to work towards stability when the only thing that keeps society running is a lie built on a jenga foundation.

  Musk is simply the annoying talking statue that represents all of that, and he's really. Fucking. Annoying.

• by jrm4 on 11/4/22, 2:43 PM

  The reverse question is far more interesting:

  Why is Elon Musk assumed to be admirable given the true nature of his "accomplishments?" It is quite true that he's been around and a part of many good and big things, Tesla, SpaceX, etc -- but there's increasing evidence that his "contribution" hasn't been much besides being born rich and following hobbies.

  That's not inherently bad, of course. It's no ones fault that they were born rich, and it's great if you can leverage that to do good things.

  But the facade is coming off of Musk, and he appears to be shifting from "hey cool science things" to being greedy for straight up power -- which is an absurdly predictable path. This sort of thing happens all the time in history.

• by sinenomine on 11/4/22, 4:36 PM

  >So, what is behind the attitude?

  Self-censorship of a quiet majority respecting him for his accomplishments, as often is the case.

• by rkangel on 11/4/22, 2:45 PM

  I once read a quote (possibly on here) "just because someone has done important things doesn't make them a nice person". For example, Wikileaks was a societal benefit, but it's possible Julian Assange is a rapist.

  Tesla has dragged the car industry into electric. Space X has made access to space infinitely more affordable and to some extent got progress in space back on track after a big lull. These are good things.

  As a person though, he seems quite out of touch with what the majority of humans on this planet experience. Also more outlets for "free speech" being under the control of the incredibly wealth (see Washington Post as well) is a very bad thing. They already wield too much power and influence enabling them to hold onto incredible wealth while people go hungry, and the need less not more.

• by interdrift on 11/4/22, 2:40 PM

  He just lost his humbleness (if he even ever had it).

• by travisgriggs on 11/4/22, 2:44 PM

  For me personally, I don’t like single point of failures. It’s less about not like Musk personally and more about “no single person or institution” should have that kind of power for an extended period of time. It dehumanizes us when we don’t need to work with others. As I look around the world today, and it’s headliner problems, they all trace to single people/institutions staying in their realm of power/influence too long. Musk has become such a person to me.

• by dns_snek on 11/4/22, 11:10 PM

  Musk can inexplicably get millions of people to buy into his technobabble when he has a long history of not delivering on 95% of the things he promises.

  He's a billionaire selling futuristic dreams to the gullible with a single goal - to enrich himself.

  What's there to like for the average person? He's not a "hacker" in any sense of the word, he's a used car salesman.

• by jwmoz on 11/4/22, 2:39 PM

  Because he's clearly an idiot demonstrated multiple times and also I find his weird obsession with having many children really strange.

• by hdjjhhvvhga on 11/4/22, 3:39 PM

  I was more or less neutral until he posted Russian propaganda - then I realized he is willing to talk about things he has no idea about (he posted election stats from 10 years ago ignoring more recent elections and the fact that even people who were very much pro-Russia completely changed their views once the Russian army started shelling them).

• by kodyo on 11/4/22, 4:22 PM

  He's the most interesting person on the planet and doesn't fit into a simple classification along political lines. Almost everybody is going to be dissatisfied with anything he does.

  HN leans left. Criticism from the left is what you'll see here more than other types of gripes.

• by kahrl on 11/4/22, 2:44 PM

  Enough Musk spam.

• by rvz on 11/4/22, 2:42 PM

  It is because he clearly is the villain of the month according to the entire media.

  But looking at Twitter, this company was chronically losing money in the hundreds of millions and it seems that he knows that a headcount of 7500+, with extremely high operational costs nearing the billions is quite unsustainable as they doubled headcount very quickly recently.

  Either way, the layoffs were going to happen regardless of the Twitter deal, which I don't care, since this is business as usual. I mostly critique Musks plans for FSD, since that is more concerning to the safety of drivers on the road than these layoffs at Twitter.

  I guarantee that Twitter would already be run to the ground much quicker if it stayed as it is and adding more headcount. Now, with this reduction, they can save on costs, make more money and bring back Vine.

• by ben11kehoe on 11/4/22, 2:42 PM

  An article that sums it up well for me is "Surely We Can Do Better Than Elon Musk" in Current Affairs (2021) https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/04/surely-we-can-do-bett...

• by chasing on 11/4/22, 3:10 PM

  I don't know what he's like deep inside, but in public he comes off as an enormously powerful man who is childish, cruel, not nearly as smart as he thinks, and is (frankly) really annoying. If he doesn't want people reacting to him with negativity, he can reflect on his behavior and change. If he's really a super-genius, he would understand this and wouldn't continue to lean into the shitty public behavior. The amount of actual public good he could do with the money he set on fire over this whole Twitter debacle... mind-blowing.

  You're right in that he's involved in a lot of nerdy stuff. A lot of people are! And I might argue that a lot of people are way more deeply and interestingly involved in nerdy stuff than Elon Musk. Go hunt them out if you want to idolize people who are actually doing the hard work to make us a multi-planetary species or whatever.

• by LarsDu88 on 11/4/22, 3:35 PM

  I work in the bay and even met with one of his former direct reports at Tesla. Elon is a brilliant guy in certain areas and has revolutionized the stagnant automobile and rocketry industries by taking immense personal and financial risks.

  However at a personal level, he has a reputation for being a douchebag. People who actually work for him know that he throws tantrums (and objects) like a petulant child.

  In recent years he's also tarnished his own name by flouting bad coronavirus science, accusing cave divers of being pedos, pumping and dumping crypto, disowning his own transgender child, and engaging with right wing conspiracy theories.

  It's like ever since he moved to Texas, the recommender systems on social media started pumping boomer conspiracies into him

• by caradine on 11/4/22, 2:52 PM

  The better question is why are so many weird nerds so quick to jump to the defense of a multi-billionaire con man who has done nothing for any of us?

• by styluss on 11/4/22, 3:58 PM

  Why do you feel like he should be a hero?

• by jfitzpa22 on 11/4/22, 2:47 PM

  I was cautiously optimistic that he might approach the spread of disinformation through social media as an engineering problem until I read his leaked text messages.

• by sidcool on 11/4/22, 2:58 PM

  Any reason this is flagged?

• by ilaksh on 11/4/22, 2:57 PM

  Politics

• by Apreche on 11/4/22, 2:47 PM

  Why does the Daily Planet feel so negatively about Lex Luthor?

• by illuminerdy on 11/4/22, 4:51 PM

  I think the comments here should tell you all you need to know. The reaction to Musk is your typical virtue signaling.

  Mind you, 90% of the people complaining about Musk for things like "spreading conspiracy theories", "misinformation" or being a "sexual harrasser" have almost certainly voted people into political office who have all done the same thing.

• by catapart on 11/4/22, 3:06 PM

  He was born with a silver spoon, used that to purchase great companies, and fund important research, and then assumed that the success of the projects he invested in meant that he had good business acumen, instead of recognizing that all he did was "provide money for projects which had well-known solutions (or paths to them) but lacked funding."

  Then, he used that narcissistic self-aggrandizement to consider himself as "intelligent" and began opining on things, publicly, which proved that he had no comprehension of the things on which he opined. When challenged about that reality, he routinely retreated into mocking, memeing, and general non-engagement with criticism. To that end, he misunderstands free speech (both the humanitarian necessity, and the constitutional protection in the US), economics (beyond smithian / libertarian circle jerks), labor (thinks it's "people that work for me" rather than an engagement with business partners), and various other highly-abstract, low-provability topics, which leave him at the disadvantage of having to use interpretations of statistical trends, rather than empirical, peer-challenged hard science (like physics for rockets/mining/light sensing/etc).

  So, overall, you have a rich narcissist that pretends to be intelligent while employing the instincts and tactics of infantile dissidents, all the while being bad at the business side of running a business, and only ever PROVING that he can be competent at "providing money" (which he has done quite excellently, I think anyone would agree. From PayPal to Tesla to SpaceX; Elon's funding choices have been both profitable and valuable). In that, there's not much for an engineer to appreciate about the man. Not much for a "techie" to admire. There's plenty of surface level self-congratulatory wank for anyone to aspire to (without giving it real consideration). But not a ton of true, appreciable motives, actions, or considerations. Engineers tend to revere those that do incredibly hard, laborious, tedious, or otherwise complicated work for the love of the work being done. That sounds about as far from Elon Musk as I could describe.

  Which, to be clear, I think translates into "distaste", "malaise", "annoyance" or a myriad of other types of negativity that barely rise to the mantle of "inconvenience", much less "hate". But if you give an engineer an inch of real-estate to talk about what's stuck in their craw, you can be prepared to get a mile of answer. So there's a lot of "negativity" for Musk because he's an annoying person and we all commiserate about that to whatever degree we're feeling institutional, that day. Some days, he's a union-busting, selfish douche-bag who managed to launch a rocket. Other days, he's the gutless dickhead who tried to reneg on military communications for a besieged country. And on other days, still, he's just "the guy who bought twitter."

  tl;dr: people are negative about him because he does so much which is collectively recognized as "shitty", and people respond to shittiness with negativity; often in commensurate amounts.

• by draugadrotten on 11/4/22, 2:43 PM

  HN is centered around Silicon Valley where the stereotype politics are extreme liberal [1] Musk is a technocrat more in favour of free-market capitalism and a streak of social conservatism. [2]

  Hence the friction.

  [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/technology/silicon-valley... [2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

• by el_don_almighty on 11/4/22, 3:43 PM

  Because I have really great ideas that will die in the dark, like me, after toiling my useless life away in a cube of obscurity staring at a glowing screen hoping they don't fire me tomorrow. I'm doing what I was told but my life sucks. Elon breaks all the rules and he gets to fly around in a private jet with supermodels.

  The outcomes don't match the 'natural law' story in my head so I'm reflecting the anger and frustration of my own personal tragedy at the biggest outlier I can find. I don't understand politics because the game is filled with criminals and sports is too boring. So, I focus my puerile venom on tech leaders.

  I'm a creep, and my hatred for Elon is based on my own self-loathing for being irresponsible with the talents I have.

  When I win the Powerball this weekend, I am going to buy one of his damned rockets and fly it to the moon, and build my own casino. With blackjack, and hookers.

• by incomingpain on 11/4/22, 2:39 PM

  >Every thread about something relating to him is filled with posts describing him negatively.

  As someone posting positively, this is due to brigading and downvoting of anything positive. They tend to go to your profile and downvote everything you ever said as well. Luckily they can only do a few pages.

  Overall, Musk is brilliant and when he fixes twitter. It will be the place to be.

  >So, what is behind the attitude?

  Politics; there's a dying political movement which will soon no longer be represented in legislature. It's about to become a religion on the otherhand.