Originally Posted by
donotdespisethesnake
I'm always puzzled by the hate for Elon Musk. Obviously, no one is perfect and can be criticized, but invariably the reasons given for Musk's perceived "lack of success" are quite irrational. As is often the case, it seems jealousy and envy are the main drivers of criticism.
There are two perfectly rational reasons for negative reactions to Musk, both connected with Tesla. He made tweets that would affect the stock price of his company, and when the SEC told him it was illegal to do that, he dissed the SEC. Frankly, Trumpian. When Tesla was having huge production problems, he went and lived in the factory, attending to production line problems himself. This is probably not good practice for a CEO, but what is contemptible is that he expected his wage-earning employees to commit their whole lives to
his company in the same way. It has also been suggested that while some of the technology in the Teslas, especially the electric motors, is good, and the total vision of an electric car system is obviously the way to go, the practical engineering of the cars for profitable production is poor, and it begins to look as though Tesla may never make a profit, which is rather a big problem in a car manufacturer.
The rockets are a different issue, Most of the employees are likely to be the crazy driven types whose jobs are most of their lives, the customers are not especially price sensitive (or at least, the margins can be large), and it's not really a mass production business. It seems to match his abilities well.
The comparison with Nikola Tesla seems apt: one or two killer ideas, and a lot of crazy; genuinely talented, but hugely over-rated by his fans.