https://electrek.co/2024/04/22/elon-musk-pigeon-ceo-former-tesla-manager/
Elon Musk was described as a “pigeon CEO”: “he comes, shits all over us, and goes”, said a former Tesla...
This is what we get for conflating a persons talent and ability with their net worth
His only talent is convincing the wealthy to invest in his schemes. I don't understand how he does it, hearing him speak is painful.
He got lucky with Tesla becoming a meme stock.
SpaceX is being run by a competent engineer while its competitor, Blue Origin is being run by a megalomaniac. This is possibly Musks only competent move in business.
The rest of his ventures have been failures. To any one not blinded by greed, it's clear he long ago peaked. He's playing a shell game now but people will happily invest hoping luck will strike again.
There's an old tweet that explains it well, I'm sure you've seen it.
(Paraphrased) "Elon Musk talked about cars. I don't know anything about cars so when people said he was a genius, I figured he must be a genius"
Investors don't know shit about the stuff they're investing in and Musk sounds really smart when you don't know anything about the thing he's speaking on.
For Tesla and SpaceX, they attracted the top engineers because they were cool bleeding edge problems to solve that actually aligned with idealist goals in the industries.
Musk used that genuine motivation and overworked people into burnout, and took credit for others hard work.
His only talent is convincing the wealthy to invest in his schemes. I don't understand how he does it, hearing him speak is painful.
That's not fair, he's also really good at making promises to the public to secure incentives and public funding and then fucking everyone over
The real trick there is how he didn't get sued.
The SEC has held him more accountable than the share holders
To his credit SpaceX was at least a correct recognition that the dominant space launch companies were just a cartel milking federal funding for as much as possible. That sector is so stagnant that ULA still hasn't blinked at the massive success of first stage reusability.
When you're a government agency, you have to play things super safe. When you're an independent company, you can do whatever you want. And if you fail, no one cares. If the government agency fails, it's hell to pay.
Likewise for prominent contractors. When they start being Musky, you get the current Boeing debacle.
Well with SpaceX, there are now 2 big launch companies for the USA.
and given how the gov likes to spread contracts around there isnt a real existential incentive to do much.
Right right. OK let me amend: I wish I was a deluded narcissist born with a silver spoon in my mouth.
You are saying you wish you had a mental illness. No it's not actually fun to be a narcissist, they are emotionally broken and can't have normal relationships. This is true for both Musk and Trump, Trump has been married 3 times, and none appear to have any actual love. Another proof is when he learned he won the presidency in 2016. There was no joy, because nothing has value to him, and all is an act for appearance to satisfy his narcissism. It's an empty life where you can trust no one, because you think they are as untrustworthy as yourself. You think no body loves you, because you are incapable of love yourself, and all you do is to try to keep up appearances. Even when they succeed and have everything, they really have nothing.
If you are like that, it’s much easier to get capital by lies and scheming. I know a few soulless peers from university who are making much more money than I am, because they have no moral compass
Maybe they mean pigeon to make it sound like he isn't able to be a seagull manager. Like he's trying to be a seagull manager, but only managed pigeon manager. A quiet insult.
Maybe all Tesla managers are as dumb as Musk himself and they did mean Pigeon but in an unironic way.
Seems more like he's combining it with a quote:
"Arguing with idiots is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good you are, the bird is going to shit on the board and strut around like it won anyways."
Steven management?
Edit: I was joking around. Since Seagal sounds very similar to seagull.
Anyone remember when he spent all his time talking about colonising mars? That was his big thing and the future. Whatever happened to that?
Then spacex got government funding. Now AI is the big thing.
I've still yet to see any of his great visions he's actually delivered on.
Whatever happened to that?
He took all the money he was going to use to do that, put it in a duffelbag with X written on the side, and burned it.
Isn't something like that why Elon got in trouble with the Tesla board? Something about using Tesla as a bank to fund space x.
He's one of those people who'll pop around a corner and proclaim his credit of something he had next to no involvement in.
Notice he has never actually volunteered to go up in a SpaceX rocket. I don't think he'll be going to Mars.
Tis a shame, Musk would be perfect to colonize Mars. Send him there. But forget to send women.
Can we send Marjorie Taylor Greene, too? I really think they'd hit it off and I'd really like for her to be marooned, too.
See? I'm sure we can make up a list of women we can also send on the submarine down to the Titanic rocket to Mars.
I sincerely hope this is sarcasm. Either that, or you are completely unaware of how the American justice system favors the wealthy.
SpaceX is a fucking trashfire too. The fact that NASA has contracts with them disturbs me greatly.
Whatever happened to that?
Very much in progress if you follow news on Starship. Actually going too fast in my opinion, I don't think it's safe enough.
On the other hand, Starship is not fast enough, if I recall correctly, SpaceX claimed to Nasa that they'd be landing on the moon by now
The question was "what happened to that?", and the answer is "it's very actively happening". Whether they actually succeed is a whole different question that I can't answer, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Starship is a terrible idea and vehicle. The fact they keep trying to make the thing work is just because Musk is burning government funds. It has no chance of making it to the moon, let alone mars.
It sure is questionable, but so far each test got further than the last one, so while I wouldn't be making any bets on it working, I'm not going to discount it either. People said the same thing about reusable rockets and now it's no big deal. They might have a chance, as long as the president of SpaceX manages to keep Musk away from it.
Anything can make progress if it's within the realm of possibility and you throw enough resources at it.
My issue with Starship is that it's not really good for any of the things Musk has promised it for. It's a heavy lift rocket that has not yet proven capable of surviving flight. Best case it can be used to get materials up to space, but used as a lander or a long distance ship? No way. It's just not designed that way. Too heavy, too unsafe, too inefficient, too complicated.
I always heard it as seagulls. Swoop in, make a bunch of noise, crap all over everything, then leave.
They're dirty, poop everywhere in big cities, and they're loud.
I don't hate them generally, but they're a nuisance in large numbers.
Musk is a nuisance as just one individual.
I'm picturing him walking into Tesla's offices, going over to the engineers, saying, "make the horn make a fart noise," and leaving, thinking he's brilliant.
> be me
> walk into billion dollar company that's slowly tanking
> entire staff gets down on their knees begging for mercy
> look around
> point to the most impressive technological advancement in transportation of the century since the car was invented
> "what the hell is this?"
> lead project manager raises, still trembling
> "it's our brand new zero emission self driving car powered entirely by the air around it and it can be produced for half the cost of our existing line"
> do that obama lip thing
> "not bad, not bad"
> idea pops into my head
> evilgrinchgrin.jpg
> "what if.. you made the horn sound a fart?"
> everybody has a nervous breakdown
> cut half the team and leave without elaborating
> be homeless dude wielding machete
> picture unrelated
I've never heard of pigeon management but I have heard something similar described as playing chess with a pigeon as someone who "knocks all the pieces over, shits on the board then struts aroind like they've won".
Thanks for the list. While there are some that I read about previously, a few of the other patterns are something that I only experienced.
It is nice to know that these have been identified and labelled by others in the industry. :D
Can't we all agree to just ignore him? Like stop posting about him and quit Twitter? He thrives off negative attention.
Problem is that lots of people do not leave Tw(X)tter and are not intending to do so :( And some are on Mastodon sort of pretending to have left the Pigeon sh*t CEO product, but still posting mostly screenshots from the old site. Good thing is that some are pretty clear about having left and encouraging others to follow like here : https://mastodon.social/@dangillmor ->
Journalists, please leave Twitter and join the fediverse.
Here's how to get started:
Even join Bluesky. It's pretty good, I am enjoying, lots of public figures there too.
No people can't because they're addicted to outrage-porn and being degraded (humiliation fetish).
As much as I hate them, I would wager that the majority of CEOs are more educated, smarter and have a better understanding of their business than Elon "Failed Upward" Musk.
CEOs are more educated, smarter and have a better understanding of their business
You haven't met that many of them, have you?
I have - the difference between the ones I met and the likes of Elon is that none of the ones I met had any interest in being celebrities. That's the only difference - their institutionalized incompetence was the exact same.
Yeah, they only want to be well-connected with other CEOs and big investors so they can jump between orgs.
That said, some CEOs are decent. We just got a new CEO, and they seem decent. They have industry experience, not just an MBA from a prestigious school, and they asked the right questions when visiting recently. We're not a huge org though (a few thousand people), but we are publicly traded (not in the US).
There's a picture this makes me think of where a bunch of birds are sitting on a tree in typical pyramid hierarchy diagram positions, and each level of birds starting from the second is covered in more shit than the previous.
I've always heard them described as seagull managers. Screams loudly, shits everywhere, leaves.
We called this the “swoop and poop” in a previous job of mine. Definitely not something encouraged or enjoyed.
As much as I dislike the guy, so did he. He popularized EVs, brought a viable space program back to the west and even neuralink seems promising for people with certain disabilities.
And no, that doesn’t excuse hyperloop, twitter, Tesla‘s broken promises, him being a questionable human to put it mildly, etc. but claiming he contributed nothing is a very black/white thinking.
Viable space program? Starlink is shitting all over our orbit, Artemis is fucked because SpaceX needs 12 or more launches to refuel one flight to the moon. Additionally the whole development is like tesla full self driving, always promise for next year and don't deliver. The moon was to be reached in 2024 and as of now SpaceX is celebrating failed test launches as win.. Years behind schedule..
I didn’t say spacex was perfect. However, we were relying entirely on the Russians to get astronauts to and from the ISS since 2011 until spaceX built the crew dragon.
That musk is exaggerating everything they do is a very different story but that’s also not what I’m talking about.
He really tries hard to outweigh anything good. It seems like a mission of some sort: Let’s do the cool things and smear it all in shit of my personality
Exactly. Without his ability to secure funding, those projects likely wouldn't be as successful as they are today.
I brought it up w/ my team and we all got a laugh. We even shared some war stories about bad bosses.
I'm a boss now, so hopefully I'm not like that. I ask my employees to report me to my boss if I do something stupid.
hey that's insulting. against pigeons. they can at least fly without exploding (space x doesnt really), navigate to places without risking themselves (unlike telsa autopilot) and they don't ruin every corporation they own. fuck musk though
Pigeons know how to always fly home. Always a great feeling of direction. I think you overestimated his brain.