[HN Gopher] SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the start...
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SpaceX alums are branching out and shaping the startup economy
Author : Teever
Score : 295 points
Date : 2023-04-01 22:32 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (interactive.satellitetoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (interactive.satellitetoday.com)
| anonyme-honteux wrote:
| Great, love it when shitty work culture super, who doesn't like
| to have a boss that thinks he is a medieval landlord?
| [deleted]
| tzm wrote:
| Is anyone tracking former Telsa employees?
| EZ-Cheeze wrote:
| Does anyone have any tips on getting hired by Elon?
| HPsquared wrote:
| This market should be called the "space space".
| turtleyacht wrote:
| I heard of consumer stuff being "spinoffs from NASA," and it's
| neat we may soon see "spinoffs from SpaceX."
| exogeny wrote:
| This reads like a press release to me.
| _just7_ wrote:
| What is up with that site giving me three seperate popups warning
| me that the site uses cookies
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Thanks GDPR!
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Thanks marketing people that decided to double down despite
| the clear distaste of the general public at their relentless
| tracking.
| EarthLaunch wrote:
| It's a bad system that allows that and popups to be
| incentivized. The worst systems are created with the best
| intentions. Is ignorance an excuse?
| kortilla wrote:
| Is this the clear distaste of the general public or an
| overreaction with bad regulation by a government authority?
|
| It's been how many years now and GDPR has done very little
| to improve anything despite the cookie prompts on websites
| everywhere?
|
| At this point they are as useful as TOS (not) with the
| annoyance of seeing one every website.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| The properly GDPR compliant cookie banners allow you to
| itemize certain items on the website's TOS that you may
| choose to accept or not accept. Website TOS are very
| useful for the company operating the website and the
| cookie rules allow you as a visitor to get some of that
| usefulness back.
| morsch wrote:
| How do you know GDPR has done very little?
| bee_rider wrote:
| I like the banner, it lets me know to turn back.
| dmix wrote:
| Browsers like Firefox could hypothetically kill cookies in
| their browser tomorrow but doesn't. Or at least make a big
| stink about it. Do you think they should? Do you think we'd
| be better off as a society?
| sva_ wrote:
| I think when you click "accept", you also accept to
| things like fingerprinting and storing a fingerprinted
| identity on their server, as well as perhaps
| supercookies, that allow your ISP to track you.
| slimsag wrote:
| Yes we'd be better off if cookies were removed.
|
| But if it was only Firefox, people would simply add
| banners saying "Firefox is not supported." since it's
| only like 3% of marketshare these days.
| [deleted]
| PeterisP wrote:
| Browsers can't tell if a cookie is a generic setting
| ("chose Yes/No on a banner") or a uniquely identifiable
| one; and they can't tell if a cookie is functionally
| required (ID for a logged-in session) or not (ID to track
| random visitors).
|
| The distinction is legal, not technical; so it has to be
| enforced by legal, not technical means.
| mjevans wrote:
| Firefox COULD default to cookies off (with an in menu
| widget to force them on for non-automatic handling), and
| if any forum submission happens _ask_ if the end user
| wants to accept the site's cookies.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Looking at a typical site, a reasonable user might want
| to accept _one_ (or perhaps a couple) of many dozens of
| cookies a site attempts to set. Choosing it manually per
| site per cookie is difficult but perhaps theoretically
| possible, however even that still requires cooperation
| from the site to honestly identify that _this_ one is the
| cookie which is functionally required, and these fifty
| are for ad tracking, and ensuring that cooperation still
| requires legal means and can 't be done with purely
| technical ones.
|
| Furthermore, there is the important distinction about
| multiple uses of the same data. There are uniquely
| identifiable cookies that are functionally required for
| one purpose but the site may want to use it for other
| purposes as well (e.g. share that data with heir "trusted
| partners" for targeted advertising) for which user may
| reasonably want to refuse permission, so a browser
| accepting a cookie doesn't imply such permission and
| something extra is required.
| dpifke wrote:
| What is up with comments that go against the guidelines?
|
| From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:
|
| _Please don 't complain about tangential annoyances--e.g.
| article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button
| breakage. They're too common to be interesting._
| kortilla wrote:
| Guidelines can't prevent people from complaining about
| getting eye fucked by a website.
| bdcravens wrote:
| > In Comments
|
| > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-
| examine. Edit out swipes.
| nier wrote:
| Disabling content blockers, I can see what you're describing.
| Seems like satire.
| iscrewyou wrote:
| way of tangent from this thread but which content blockers do
| you use?
| jdeibele wrote:
| Not the poster but the Hush extension for Safari seems to
| work well on this site because I didn't see any notices.
| And that's what it's supposed to accomplish.
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hush-nag-blocker/id1544743900
|
| I'm sure there are similar things for FireFox or Chromium
| browsers but Hush seems Safari-only.
| raj33krish wrote:
| that's good for overall industry.
| spaceguillotine wrote:
| [flagged]
| abledon wrote:
| ahh yes, the cut, the 'great' publication that brought you
| insightful pieces like this _eye roll_
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFxQkg_Ye60
| foreverobama wrote:
| [dead]
| jsemrau wrote:
| From the opening paragraph "Earlier this week, Elon Musk --
| Grimes's ex-boyfriend, the pancake-haired chief executive of
| Tesla and SpaceX and also the man who joked about starting a
| "TITS" University on Twitter -- was named Time's Person of the
| Year for 2021."
|
| I think it's safe to assume a certain bias.
| onethought wrote:
| Tokyo Institute of Technology is already a thing.
| ben_w wrote:
| Given the language difference, that's a bit like someone in
| Tokyo saying they meant
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Mune instead of Xiong
|
| (Although I may be showing a certain degree of
| misunderstanding of my own given how different languages
| slice up reality in different ways, and Xiong may not mean
| quite what a literal translation suggests...)
| echelon wrote:
| I wish it was more like this at existing companies.
|
| Why everyone isn't leaving Adobe, Meta, and Google to found their
| own AI / generative media startups astounds me. If you work in
| our incredibly lucrative field, you may be able to afford a few
| quarters of leaning into risk.
|
| Startups are like a brush fire. Old incumbents have so much
| legacy code and cruft that nimble upstarts killing them is
| _healthy_.
|
| The "SpaceX diaspora" should be the norm everywhere opportunity
| arises.
| discordance wrote:
| Most people who work at those large companies you mentioned are
| there because they don't want to take any risk. They are happy
| in the comfort of a large salary, occasionally interesting
| work, huge network of people and are afraid of being impacted
| by the industry wide layoffs.
| seadan83 wrote:
| This is a very uncharitable view. Those types would exist at
| any company.
|
| There is pretty high turn-over at the large companies as
| well. People can be there to help build their resume, help
| make connections, learn the ropes at a large company and gain
| technology exposure, etc..
|
| My time at Amazon, I did see some people leave to form
| companies. Generally it was when someone particularly smart
| found a clique of a few other smart people and they then all
| quit and go off and do something else.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| > Startups are like a brush fire. Old incumbents have so much
| legacy code and cruft that nimble upstarts killing them is
| healthy.
|
| Ah yes, "more recent technical debt is newer, therefore better"
| is the way of today!
| Yoric wrote:
| I've had several opportunities to found/join very early stage
| startups. I've taken three of them, including a weird hybrid
| nonprofit startup.
|
| * The nonprofit was a nice experience but burnt me out more
| than once. At some point, you need to have some time off. Being
| in an early stage startup discourages you from ever taking a
| break. Being in a nonprofit discourages you from ever taking a
| break. Being in both... well, eventually, I had to leave to
| preserve my sanity.
|
| * One startup turned out to largely be a con against VCs and
| one of the founders pulled the rug, vanishing on his cofounder
| and all the employees. Needless to say... that was a
| disappointment.
|
| * The last one burnt me out pretty deeply. 15 years later, I
| still can't use the technology stack we were using at the time,
| despite the fact that I was one of the most notable names in
| that community.
|
| Since then, I've said no to such offers. That is, I'm happy to
| join a startup, but I will not be a very early employee. I will
| keep myself in a position where I can afford to take a break if
| I feel a burnout coming, something I could not do as a
| cofounder.
|
| So yeah, I very much understand why not everybody creates a
| startup. That and the fact that once you have created the
| startup, you need to work on so many things that are not what
| you wanted to do in the first place, from gathering fundings to
| paying taxes to securing parking spaces for your employees.
|
| YMMV
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "Why everyone isn 't leaving Adobe, Meta, and Google to
| found their own AI / generative media startups astounds me."_
|
| A nice thing about all the status seekers chasing the latest
| shiny hype object is that it leaves more room for the rest to
| build boring startups.
| elbigbad wrote:
| My company immediately sues anyone who leave to join a
| competitor, and even more viciously attacks I would assume if
| someone were to actually start a competing business.
| [deleted]
| abledon wrote:
| Nexxon?
| outside1234 wrote:
| Move to California, that shit don't fly here
| tenpies wrote:
| So do Elon's companies:
|
| https://www.engadget.com/tesla-sues-engineer-dojo-trade-
| secr...
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-lawsuit-
| supercomputer-...
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/20/tesla-sues-former-
| employee...
|
| ---
|
| I think the key is that these startups aren't competing with
| SpaceX, but are rather SpaceX-adjacent.
|
| There is also a uniqueness to the industry that SpaceX
| operates in, in that everyone is basically the US government,
| or the US government with a layer of paint. SpaceX isn't
| exactly going to sue the hand that feeds it, even if it's
| wearing a Boeing-logo glove.
| jdeibele wrote:
| The first two references are to the same case. An ex-
| employee kept his Tesla laptop with confidential
| information and turned in a personal laptop as his work
| laptop. That seems worth suing over.
| zizee wrote:
| >> My company immediately sues anyone who leave to join a
| competitor
|
| > So do Elon's companies
|
| Sorry to be pedantic, but there is a big difference between
| "sues anyone", and Tesla suing what must be a small
| percentage of leavers.
|
| And your links describe lawsuits not for "leaving and
| joining a competitor", but for sabotage and trying to walk
| out with trade secrets, schematics and code.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _And your links describe lawsuits not for "leaving and
| joining a competitor", but for sabotage and trying to
| walk out with trade secrets, schematics and code._
|
| To be pedantic, those are just claims Tesla made, and the
| articles even mention other IP-related suits by Elon's
| companies that were dropped because they were nonsense.
|
| Even the first link about a $1 million lawsuit over
| "stolen trade secrets" was actually the farce regarding
| Martin Tripp. Musk retaliated against Tripp for
| whistleblowing on safety at Tesla, and then tried to have
| him murdered by the cops by calling 911 and accusing
| Tripp of being a mass shooter.
|
| See also: _When Elon Musk Tried to Destroy a Tesla
| Whistleblower_ [1]:
|
| > _It started with a Twitter meltdown and ended with a
| fake mass shooter. A former security manager says the
| company also spied and spread misinformation._
|
| I'm not going to take Tesla at their word when they have
| an extensive history of using bogus lawsuits to
| intimidate people.
|
| [1]
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-
| elon...
| concordDance wrote:
| > tried to have him murdered by the cops by calling 911
| and accusing Tripp of being a mass shooter.
|
| I bet PS100 to the charity of your choice that this is
| false.
| mlindner wrote:
| > I'm not going to take Tesla at their word when they
| have an extensive history of using bogus lawsuits to
| intimidate people.
|
| The lawsuit wasn't bogus, and Tesla went on to win that
| lawsuit, with a large payout from that former employee to
| Tesla.
|
| I suggest having a more skeptical eye about what you read
| on the internet. There's a tremendous amount of very
| motivated reporters out there wanting to write about
| anything Musk related and will automatically believe any
| source that disparages Musk or a Musk company in some
| way. Your "See also" for example wasn't actually a Tesla
| whistleblower, and Tesla successfully won their case
| against such fake whistleblower.
| https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-lawsuit-
| whistleblow...
|
| These reporters have created a false impression about
| Musk and his companies that's now a sort of shared
| deception held by many such that they believe Musk
| companies are bad in some way and will further believe
| any negative news, causing a self-perpetuating cycle.
| It's been interesting to watch how it works over the
| years.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/tesla-court-tripp/former-
| tes...
|
| > A former Tesla Inc factory employee will pay Elon
| Musk's electric car maker $400,000 after it accused him
| of tipping reporters about alleged production
| inefficiencies and delays, a court filing shows.
|
| ...
|
| > According to the court filing, Tripp did not contest
| Tesla's claims that he stole trade secrets, and
| acknowledged that his counterclaims were funded by a
| short seller of Tesla stock. The filing was signed by
| Tripp and a Tesla lawyer.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| The two big ones, Relativity and Firefly, are definitely
| direct competitors.
|
| As to the lawsuits, generally don't take any of your
| employers code or data with you when you leave, and you'll
| be fine.
| jdhendrickson wrote:
| That has not been my experience. If they have deep
| pockets they draw out the court case in an effort to make
| you quit, and the stress literally kills people.
|
| In the end I agree vindication will come if you can
| afford to defend yourself, hire your own experts and
| retain competent council but your comment is a bit glib.
| quartesixte wrote:
| It helps that rocketry is 1) kind of a solved problem 2)
| a lot of unsolved problems get solved by NASA scientists
| so is open sourced 3) the laws of physics demand that
| certain outcomes.
| schaefer wrote:
| Can you tell us which company so we can collectively
| blackball them?
|
| Please and thank you.
| tru3_power wrote:
| On what grounds do they sue them?
| mlindner wrote:
| Many because they stole company secrets, or actually hacked
| the company's servers and walked out with company
| documents.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Corporate lawsuits against individuals generally don't need
| grounds. The pain is the point.
| bavila wrote:
| What's groundless is this mentality. Please read Rule 11
| of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (a rule that is
| also well-adopted in state courts as well). As fun as it
| is to hate on big tech, one should still be mindful of
| the fact that their attorneys aren't stupid enough to
| file patently frivolous lawsuits that put their own law
| licenses on the line.
| Miraste wrote:
| Has any corporate attorney ever been disbarred for filing
| frivolous lawsuits against individuals on behalf of their
| company? It's certainly not a common occurrence.
| letier wrote:
| I'd guess the contracts have a no compete clause.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Just dont tell them
| eldenring wrote:
| Huh? pretty much every one of the recently successful AI
| startup employees (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.) have had stints at
| Google Brain.
| ben_w wrote:
| OpenAI is roughly 375 people, I don't know how big Anthropic
| is but I assume similar.
|
| I think the person you're replying to is wondering why the
| other _25 million_ of us aren 't doing the same.
| adastra22 wrote:
| 25 million? Where are you pulling this ginormous number
| from?
| ben_w wrote:
| By the up-thread quotation "existing companies" leading
| to googling the global software development workforce.
| outside1234 wrote:
| The money at FAANG is really hard to beat on a risk
| adjusted basis (though that risk factor is increasing with
| the layoff spree).
|
| From a financial perspective it is much more probable to
| become a millionaire through a FAANG than a startup right
| now.
| diceduckmonk wrote:
| It's not probable, it's guaranteed at FAANG.
| usrusr wrote:
| That, and why would a FAANG employee have more "founder
| attitude" than, say, an IBM suit? They've been the career
| choice of the "my car is bigger than yours" salary-
| seekers for more years than they had ever been
| recognizably "startup". One of the "A" hasn't been
| anything remotely related to startup since long before
| they ousted Steve Jobs!
| moneywoes wrote:
| Seems a bit tough with the hiring freeze
| wslh wrote:
| That is the lesson number one in YC Startup School.
| airstrike wrote:
| It is also much more probable to become a _multi_
| millionaire through a startup than a FAANG
| ethanbond wrote:
| It definitely is not. The 99.999% case for startups is
| you walk away with nothing, and that's true even if
| you're good enough to crush it at FAANG.
|
| Crush it at FAANG for a few years and don't spend like
| crazy and you'll be a multimillionaire.
| speakfreely wrote:
| The definition of multimillionaire is a bit vague here,
| but I would assume the OP was referring to being in deca-
| millionaire territory. That is much more rare to
| accomplish at a FAANG company.
| xvector wrote:
| The average SWE at FAANG can become a deca-millionaire
| over the course of 20-25 working years.
|
| Starting from $0, this requires saving $125k a year for
| 21 years to reach $10.06M at an 11.88% interest rate,
| which is the S&P500 average. Well within the capability
| of any senior SWE @ FAANG, and it only takes 4 years to
| get to senior.
|
| But then capital gains taxes hit.
|
| Anyways, yes, a startup employee on the other hand can
| become a deca-millionaire in a year or two.
| blululu wrote:
| Citation needed. Depends on how big of a multi you are
| talking about. I know way more people with $1-10M who did
| it via corporate ladder climbing through FAANG than I do
| people who struck it big with a startup. At a certain
| point the balance is in favor of start ups but I suspect
| the number is somewhere in the 8 figure range which is
| correspondingly rare.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| It remains to be seen if this is true when interest rates
| aren't at nearly 0%.
| eldenring wrote:
| It's hard to blame interest rates for all the wealth in
| tech when you look at all the new products and
| innovations that have happened over the last 10 years.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Can you list some? I see the last ten years as a great
| failure in tech following the decade of real innovation
| and paradigm change that came before it.
| ben_w wrote:
| GPT-1...4, Falcon 9 reusability (+ Starlink being
| possible), most modern VR headsets (Oculus public demo
| was just over ten years ago), 3D printing is a lot better
| on many axes, commercially viable consumer OLED,
| displacement of CFL with LED, vegan "cheese" alternatives
| suck much less than a decade ago, DNA tests so cheap
| multiple different companies spam advertising for them at
| me, vat-grown meat is slowly transitioning from sci-fi to
| panicking Italian farmers into calling for bans, electric
| cars have gone from expensive Tesla Roadsters to the ~
| 20-fold cheaper Wuling Hongguang Mini EV, about 90% of
| all PV happened in the last decade (and following a
| roughly exponential growth rate).
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Right now is also a harder time to start a startup
| because of the interest rate hikes reducing available
| capital. It already impacted SVB's deposits (and caused
| the ensuing bank run)
| bambataa wrote:
| > Why everyone isn't leaving Adobe, Meta, and Google to found
| their own AI / generative media startups astounds me.
|
| Mostly because I think the main value is captured by embedding
| these things into existing programs and workflows. "AI-powered"
| won't really attract anyone to a new app when it's so easy to
| add AI to existing ones. Also basing an idea around an OpenAI
| API seems fragile.
|
| But it could totally just be that I lack innovative ideas.
| mr90210 wrote:
| Some of those folks are locked in golden handcuffs, some are
| expats on green cards, and some simply enjoy a less complex
| life of that comes with being a well-paid employee working for
| a well-known company.
| 8note wrote:
| The green card let's you do what you want, no?
|
| The h1s and tns, etc are locked in
| mr90210 wrote:
| Thanks, I had H1B in mind.
| pasdoy wrote:
| Just to add more details on TNs if anyone read this, the
| visa is locked to the sponsoring company but it's possible
| to hold multiple TNs at the same time. Took me a while to
| figure that out. It can raise an eyebrow when crossing the
| border as it isn't regular to have more than one visa.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Incumbents like Adobe , Meta or Google were allowed to reach
| their size by letting them kill or buy the competition every
| time something else was rising.
|
| As long as regulators won't do anything about that, the next
| startup challenging an incumbent is just poised to be
| bought("congratulation on your exit!") and killed. Figma is the
| latest example of this.
| sangnoir wrote:
| The 7-to-10-digit exits by incumbents is what funds the
| entire[1] startup industry: compare number of startup
| acquisitions vs IPOs in the last 10 years.
|
| If the FTC clamps down on acquisitions, there's going to be
| correction in valuations, and some statups will get killed by
| VCs who view modest successes as not worth their time.
|
| 1. Only being slightly hyperbolic
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I share your view on this, but also think the main reasons
| startup take the exits are the VCs. A founder of a VC
| backed startup will need extraordinary arguments to not
| sell to an incumbent for a high enough price.
|
| So the whole startup game becomes a petri dish for
| incumbents to see the natural selection of ideas and pick
| up the viable ones without paying for the failed
| experiments, and the VCs footing the bill as long as their
| balance sheet works out in the end.
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| Figma's not a great example of "buying to kill" though -- I'd
| guess that Adobe would sooner deprioritize their existing
| products that compete with Figma and redirect their effort.
| And I don't see much wrong with FB buying Instagram or Adobe
| buying Figma or Google buying YouTube because these services
| actually got better to the consumer's benefit (and I guess to
| a limited extent the enriched early employees perpetuate the
| startup ecosystem).
|
| In the case of Google & YouTube, I wonder if YouTube would
| even be able to turn a profit as an independent company
| (maybe today they could, but for most of their life I suspect
| they were unable generate any profit). I love having YouTube
| and would have been sad if they had to close their doors
| because nobody had deep enough pockets to nurture it into
| profitability.
|
| Cruise & GM is another example of a potentially good
| purchase, since self-driving tech is going to require a lot
| of patience.
|
| To be clear, I don't think monopolies are healthy in general
| since they perturb natural supply/demand signals, but there's
| certainly nuance in terms of how some of these deals
| benefit/hurt the general public based on whether the
| monopolist entities have vision and appetite for long term
| investment that would otherwise be tough to swallow.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Google buying Youtube was the only outcome where Youtube
| would survive, at least at it was. The same way Napster
| wouldn't have survived as it was.
|
| We're in agreement here, but it's I think a broader
| discussion on how media companies make money and where we
| stand as consumer, in particular how we feel about
| RIAA/MPAA.
|
| I still think Google is doing a good job, better than most
| of us would have predicted, but I personally would have
| preferred a world where Youtube was viable on its own.
| Looking at Spofify for instance.
|
| > FB buying Instagram
|
| Even the regulating agencies that let the deal pass are
| looking back at it as a wrong decision.
|
| I personally can't find any single meaningful aspect where
| we benefit from FB owning Instagram.
|
| I partially fault Instagram for having a shitty business
| plan aimed at being acquired from the start, and kinda wish
| they had to make the hard decisions at the end instead of
| selling the whole audience to the worst company to handle
| it.
| quags wrote:
| Starting your own thing or being an owner is not for everyone
| and doesn't always live up to expectations. There is more
| stress, you are the person of last resort for fixing problems
| and need to be able to lead a team well if the company does
| well. There is nothing wrong with forgoing that, taking a
| salary and living your life when being an owner or going to a
| start up will bleed into your personal life.
| jasmer wrote:
| "Why everyone isn't leaving Adobe, Meta, and Google to found
| their own "
|
| Yeah, risk. Disruption is considerably harder than you might
| imagine, it's not about 'products' it's about market power.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Old incumbents have so much legacy code and cruft that nimble
| upstarts killing them is healthy.
|
| This is why the company needs patents. They protect everyone.
| /s
| pptr wrote:
| Googler here.
|
| If you work at a big tech company you can improve the products
| used by millions if not billions of people. I find that very
| rewarding.
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| I guess that's one way to delude yourself. I'm just here
| (different big tech company) to get the biggest paycheck for
| the least amount of harm I could inflict on the world.
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| People can have feelings without being deluded; it's okay
| to feel motivated by how many users use the thing you made.
| You do you.
|
| That said, many googlers do _not_ end up impacting millions
| or billions of users. So GP is a lucky one. Google has a
| lot of people working on infra, internal tooling, and
| subfeatures within products that don't / are hard to
| connect to usage.
| pptr wrote:
| You can measure improvements. You don't have to guess.
| However, I understand that a lot of work can't easily be
| evaluated for user impact.
| layer8 wrote:
| As a user of those products, one gets the impression that the
| improvements are more focused on what is in Google's interest
| rather than what is in the users' interest, though.
| alienthrowaway wrote:
| There's nothing quite like shipping (or breaking!) something
| that impacts _billions_ (with a 'b') of people . It was
| unexpectedly exhilarating for me the first time I shipped.
| sawyna wrote:
| Another googler here.
|
| I don't enjoy the work at Google as much due to bureaucracy,
| pace of work and politics. I previously worked at a startup
| and there is a stark difference in the work culture and
| environment. I'm working with the exact same team as that at
| the startup (we got acquired by Google). The same people i
| enjoyed working with, I absolutely hate it now.
|
| Nothing ever gets done, even when it is possible to do so.
| Folks around here call it perf-farming.
| wombatpm wrote:
| Until google gives it the axe.
| leesec wrote:
| What you're describing is extremely common. So many ppl leave
| FAANG et al after a few years and do a riskier startup
| hindsightbias wrote:
| WFH led to the greatest productivity increase in history - by
| leaps and bounds. Surely you've seen all the studies proving
| this? There must be 1000's of WFH startups valued in the
| billions.
| haxton wrote:
| Actually just quit my job at Meta to do just that. So you're
| not far off, I think you'll be surprised at how many ex-FAANG
| startups you'll see in the comings months.
|
| At least in our blind chat it seems there are several other
| like-minded people.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Did you have sales or a mvp before quitting
| haxton wrote:
| Nope. I have a fair bit of buffer / savings, and felt like
| this was an opportunity that I just couldn't pass up, so
| committed to it.
| sidibe wrote:
| If you're only really interested in the problems you're working
| on it's tough to go from somewhere everything else is taken
| care of for you except your problem. No worries about infra or
| business. What you get is the more academic ones staying and
| more entrepreneurial leaving
| Yoric wrote:
| And to clarify, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being
| academic-minded. Based on my experience, most of the
| invention (not "innovation", which is the step after that)
| comes from people who are academic-minded.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| I like my 15 hour workweek anywhere in the world with few
| stakes and little risk.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Ex-Netflixer here.
|
| I've come to appreciate that equity for your time !== equity
| for your money. Take cash in excess of your burn rate in-hand
| over equity any day. Then take that excess cash and buy equity.
|
| Compared to taking a $250k base and $250k equity offer from a
| startup, it's substantially better to take a $500k cash in-hand
| offer from FAANG and use your extra $250k to cut angel checks.
| Some early-stage startups that try to court you will instead
| take a $10k check on the spot as an early investment. So not
| only do you diversify your investments and get a better class
| of equity with cash, you also get the upside of guaranteed
| outcomes on a salary.
| tarr11 wrote:
| How have the returns been?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Some early-stage startups that try to court you will
| instead take a $10k check on the spot as an early investment.
|
| How often are you seeing these deals?
|
| In my experience, any company raising in increments of $10K
| is really only doing so as a way to get people invested
| (literally) so they can continue to hit them up for funding,
| connections, and networking later on. $10K doesn't really go
| very far in terms of paying employees.
|
| Of course that's fine if it works out that way, but I've also
| seen companies who gather $10K from every random person who
| can invest end up with some wacky cap tables, which becomes a
| turnoff to future investors. This creates weird situations
| where they put a lot of pressure on buying people out of
| their investments just to clean up the cap table. Again,
| could be fine for a quick turnaround but it's not quite the
| same as investing for the long term.
|
| And then there's the fact that most angel investments are
| just going to go to zero, but that's the nature of the game.
| chatmasta wrote:
| As a startup founder who doesn't pay himself much, IMO people
| either care about money or they don't. Depends what you're
| optimizing for. But if you're obsessed with cash you
| shouldn't start a company IMO. You're better off working for
| "FAANG" or whatever the cash obsessed optimizers are calling
| it these days.
|
| I mean obviously if you start a company you want to optimize
| for it making profit, but the original goal should be,
| primarily, totally disconnected from money. Any monetary
| benefits should be a side effect of providing value. In the
| most ideal world, your equity turns into cash 10-15 years
| later, but you shouldn't set out with that being your goal.
|
| My perspective on this is coming from someone who made easy
| money on a ridiculous business selling proxies to SEO
| spammers in college, and I didn't know what to do with the
| money (I spent it all on worthless shit). I've learned I'm
| much happier when I'm meeting some minimal survival baseline
| while trying to build a sustainable organization that
| produces a useful product.
| solatic wrote:
| > the original goal should be, primarily, totally
| disconnected from money. Any monetary benefits should be a
| side effect of providing value.
|
| Value is a funny word here. You have a business if you
| create value for both your users/customers _and yourself_.
|
| You don't have to monetize on day one, but how you create
| value for yourself needs to be at least a fuzzy part of
| your vision from inception.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| You should pay your employees their market rate. Your risk
| of going out of business is higher is what warrants the
| bigger equity.
|
| You spend all this time and salary to build a team that
| works like a well-oiled machine. It would be a shame to
| lose them to someone who simply pays the market rate.
|
| Your team is likely going to be working more than overtime
| helping you build your dream. You should match what FAANG's
| paying them, if thats your competition for talent.
|
| As they say, you get what you pay for.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Yeah, I definitely agree. I'd rather pay a premium to get
| the best employee and take a discount myself, rather than
| pay someone below market while paying myself some absurd
| salary. Frankly I don't care what I pay myself as long as
| I can afford an apartment and groceries, and so far this
| has worked out well, as I love the employees we have. If
| I were exfiltrating a bunch of money for my own salary we
| would have been out of business months ago.
| SCUSKU wrote:
| As a spectator to your conversation, I have to say I like
| and agree with your general philosophy. While I can't
| quite put a finger on what I like, I think the gist is
| operating under assumption of how the world, finances,
| and incentives SHOULD work, as opposed to how they
| currently work. And also maybe some dose of
| minimalism(?). Either way, I wish you all the best in
| building your startup!
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| To be fair, not everyone who optimizes for cash is
| "obsessed with cash" or a "cash obsessed optimizer" -- life
| circumstances like dependent family, the oppression of
| college debt, etc make stability of a large corporation
| attractive to some, even if they would take on risk given
| other circumstances.
|
| Example: taking 80k/yr out of college while having to
| retire 2k/month of college debt, then using the rest to
| afford bay area rent + commuting expenses + rest of life
| would have been hard and arguably not a good use of a young
| person's early career phase. They might opt instead to work
| at a bigco until their debt was sufficiently retired, then
| with the safety net of {an established career + no debt +
| some money in the bank} swinging for the fences at a
| startup later. You're more likely to get leadership roles
| at startups when you have a few years under your belt
| anyway.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Oh, totally agree - what you optimize for is a personal
| preference. I don't have a wife nor kids and that
| significantly affects the constraints of what I'm willing
| to do. And I've got nothing against anyone who chooses to
| work for FAANG, this is just my personal outlook: if
| you're concerned about money, you should take it from the
| people willing to pay you for your work. But if you've
| got an investor willing to pay you to develop something,
| then you better not be thinking about your own personal
| "total comp," because you've got (a) employees who need
| to be paid and (b) investors who want to see your company
| amount to something. As someone who's never had "a real
| job," I can promise you - my friend at FAANG
| contemplating quitting to pursue their own ideas - the
| grass is always greener on the other side.
| kodah wrote:
| > if you're concerned about money, you should take it
| from the people willing to pay you for your work
|
| I think this is half-right. When I evaluate startups I'm
| often expecting FAANG pay, but I don't expect _some_ of
| the benefits. Generally the hefty expectation is in RSUs,
| because at a FAANG those are almost a third of what I
| make. I also don 't accept inflated future leaning
| valuations, I rate them at current value. If I'm taking a
| gamble on a third of my salary I want to put the risk
| multiplier on that third, so I'll charge more.
|
| Passion can get you so far in startups, but if you're
| engineer (especially not engineer zero) then you likely
| won't walk away with much unless you're accurately
| assessing risk. That said, there's a fair amount of
| startups that are not worried about having a reputation
| of early engineers working away with very little.
|
| That said, I still have a mortgage and that's what
| informs my strategy when dealing with startups. If I
| didn't have a mortgage, I'd probably accept lower RSUs
| and a higher cash incentive.
| arcticfox wrote:
| That makes sense if you're optimizing for money. I think a
| lot of us that do startups actually enjoy the process as
| well. My years at FAANG were the years I felt the least proud
| of myself.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Are you apart of an angel network how do you do DD, seems
| akin to a lottery no?
| adastra22 wrote:
| > Compared to taking a $250k base and $250k equity offer from
| a startup
|
| No startup offers such high salaries.
| hemloc_io wrote:
| at least one does (I interviewed and got a similar offer)
| oldstrangers wrote:
| Oh they absolutely do.
| pstorm wrote:
| They do, the catch is that 250k of equity has a high chance
| of ending up as $0
| Yoric wrote:
| How do you end up in position to become an investor/buy
| equity?
| nostrademons wrote:
| Twogler and ex-founder here - I ping-ponged from
| entrepreneurship to Google to entrepreneurship back to Google
| again.
|
| I take the opposite approach, but with some caveats. Your
| financial success in any market is going to come down to
| _information advantage_ - you need to have better data and
| better insights on the success of your investment than your
| competing investors. In general, you have much better data
| and insight into the risk factors and success probability of
| your own startup than you do into any startups you angel
| invest in. You also have better data on your own startup than
| you do on startups you work for, but probably have better
| data on how a startup you 're employed at is doing than the
| investors in that startup do. Therefore you can make better
| choices about where to spend your equity (either sweat or
| monetary) when you're working for the company.
|
| The major caveat - and one that took a lot of hard lessons
| for me to learn - is that you have to actually _pay attention
| to that data_. If your gut tells you it 's not going to work
| out, cut your losses and find some other opportunity,
| regardless of sunk costs, how much you might be emotionally
| attached to the company, how much you love your coworkers,
| your fear of letting them down, etc.
|
| But similarly, you also end up with a much higher-resolution
| model of the business world from actually experiencing work
| at several different startups than you would get from angel-
| investing in startups. So unless you've previously
| experienced worked at or founded startups, your angel-
| investing is basically going to be spray-and-pray, and do a
| lot worse than investing in your own company stock or even
| index funds.
| vrglvrglvrgl wrote:
| [dead]
| preommr wrote:
| Makes sense, not a lot of space companies to begin with, much
| less with people that have a startup mentality. Feel like the
| culture at Boeing or NASA is going to be very different from the
| one needed for a pioneering startup.
|
| And even then it's only a handful of investements, with how much
| liquidity is/was in the market not surprising that people got a
| few million for moonshots given how the potential for a whole new
| industry.
| themanmaran wrote:
| Conversely- I put together a list of all the Space industry
| startups that YC funded over the last few years[1], thinking it
| would be entirely "ex-SpaceX" founders. But it turned out to
| have a pretty distributed mix:
|
| [1] https://havewelanded.com/yc-space-sector-
| investments#:~:text...
| schrectacular wrote:
| Pun intended I hope!
| pfoof wrote:
| A bit offtopic but this website has literally three fullscreen
| (mobile) consent boxes.
| endorphine wrote:
| I see none (probably uBlock Origin on Firefox doing it's thing)
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Alum a euphemism for "rich people"?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| From people I've talked to, SpaceX pay isn't any better than
| "old-space" companies (even before you look at the hourly
| breakdown) and their equity isn't very liquid.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I'd say most who have vested their shares are millionaires.
| At least those who vested by the 2010s.
| MPSimmons wrote:
| The equity is liquid enough.
| marak830 wrote:
| I read it as the original cast moving on, but maybe I'm
| less bitter :-p
| everly wrote:
| I read it as more of a euphemism for "smart, passionate people
| who were previously burning themselves out in pursuit of a
| single man's glory" but maybe that's not accurate
| concordDance wrote:
| Not just Elon's glory, the entire team, the USA and humanity
| get glory.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| SpaceX is private and Elon isn't exactly known for paying a ton
| so no?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Actually yes. SpaceX doesn't pay a ton in salary, but their
| equity options have been incredibly valuable, so overall
| compensation has been good. If they've been around for a
| while and have had time for their shares to vest, they're
| probably millionaires.
|
| SpaceX is worth a ton of money, and even tho SpaceX is
| private, they do regular private sales so employees can sell
| their shares. The early employees in particular have made a
| LOT of money. Gwynne Shotwell, the President of SpaceX, for
| instance, is one of the earliest employees and is worth over
| $600 million now, which is greater than the net worth of Elon
| when he started SpaceX (including adjusting for inflation).
| (And she deserves it, too. Absolute rockstar.)
|
| SpaceX really does show that hard work in a startup can pay
| off handsomely.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| That sounds great indeed. Didn't think of private sales
| that let you cash out your entire portfolio (or even a
| large fraction of it) were practiced. Anyone here have an
| idea of current spacex valuation?
| [deleted]
| gonesilent wrote:
| early SpaceX also had a very low salary cap.
| arcticbull wrote:
| I assume they've been given the chance to participate in
| secondary sales by now. 'Alum' in this case probably does
| mean 'new money' haha.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Anecdotal, but: Startup I worked at hired a bunch of SpaceX and
| other musk company employees as middle management, during the
| hyper growth phase and every single one of them was simply awful.
|
| Some were just abusive managers, many were just not that
| effective. The worst one was a manager that would swoop down with
| heroics, take credit for other people's work, not support reports
| on ideas you had, played the blame game, etc.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Man These Elon companies are really the biggest split
| personality companies I have seen. I have heard stories like
| what you describe from some people but then you have people
| like Astronaut Garrett Reisman, Chip Designer Jim Keller, and
| AI Research Andrej Karpathy all give amazing praise to Elon and
| his companies.
|
| And when the cars are torn down we see top tier engineering
| execution and innovation while at the same time we see mediocre
| build quality. I just don't understand how such organizations
| can be both filled with terrible people and rock stars at the
| same time and survive for as long as the Elon companies have
| done so.
| jjulius wrote:
| Hot take: The people you mentioned are hired to bring big-
| name cred to the organization. None of them stuck around
| (correct me if I'm wrong, I've only done a cursory glance
| just now), they all left. Eg, they're the "top tier
| engineering" part of the companies, and other employees (and
| I've dealt with these employees at Tesla in a past life, so I
| can attest to their terrible attitude) are the "mediocre
| build quality".
| adastra22 wrote:
| Might be generally true, but there are some major
| exceptions. Gwynne Shotwell for example.
| cma wrote:
| Based on her TED interview about passenger travel on
| rockets being in service by 2028 cheaper than business
| class, I'm gonna say they might be doing well in spite of
| her rather than because.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Astronaut Garrett Reisman worked for 7 years there and is
| on record stating that is all the stress he could
| handle.[1]:
|
| Jim Keller has a history of joining a company to start a
| project and then leaving once it is complete. He did this
| multiple times in his career and was with Tesla until they
| completed the self driving computer. He has also left
| behind a team of stellar well known people.
|
| I am not too sure about Andrej Karpathy. I dont know if we
| have enough of a history to know when he chooses to join
| and leave companies.
|
| There must be a lot of lower level engineers who have to be
| developing all these amazing subsystems in the car and
| other products.
|
| Wonder what the turn over is for the really skilled people.
| Maybe the truly burnt out people or just stragglers are the
| ones you are encountering.
|
| [1]:https://youtu.be/GNG6ZzDh9C8?t=420
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I overlapped there with Garrett, and while our work
| rarely overlapped, he was certainly around and "in the
| trenches". My point is that, from my point of view, he
| was a real person rather than a figurehead.
|
| To some extent I could say the same for Elon, who was
| certainly around a lot. He was more of a general visiting
| the trenches, though. Also a real person, but of a
| different caste.
|
| I was one of those lower level engineers building stuff.
| I stuck around for 3 years, and left when I was happy
| rather than burnt out. It was my first job after school,
| and I wanted to try some other companies before settling
| down.
| [deleted]
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| I had no idea Tesla self driving hardware was done.
| Judging by the lawsuits and performance I'd say it's
| barely even started.
| jjulius wrote:
| Appreciate the deeper details, thanks.
| rlt wrote:
| In a 10,000+ person org you're likely to have a huge
| variation in personalities, then you have pseudonymous
| internet commenters who may have an axe to grind or other
| agenda and be happy to cherry-pick one way or the other.
| xibalba wrote:
| [dead]
| rsynnott wrote:
| > I have heard stories like what you describe from some
| people but then you have people like Astronaut Garrett
| Reisman, Chip Designer Jim Keller, and AI Research Andrej
| Karpathy all give amazing praise to Elon and his companies.
|
| I mean, only one of these stayed more than five years; one
| only stayed _two_ years. And, frankly, if you're in a
| leadership position in a company, you say nice things when
| you leave after two years. It is What is Done. I don't think
| you can really read much into these sorts of statements
| either way; they're pretty much following a formula.
| 4khilles wrote:
| No, both Garrett Reisman and Andrej Karpathy worked for
| Elon for more than 5 years.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Karpathy worked for Tesla for 5 years and a matter of
| weeks. So you're technically correct, which is of course
| the worst sort of correctness.
| [deleted]
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Even if we give them the benefit of doubt that it's not a
| PR thing, when you're in a
| leadership/distinguished/emeritus position, the org often
| looks very different than how it looks when you're a foot
| soldier.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| I've learned to be super careful about what senior people say
| about other senior people. Because it actually reflects well
| on you to say nice things about already respected people,
| it's a free PR boost. It makes them sound generous and also
| knowledgeable. But, I've seen this happen a lot in big
| companies, someone will say "Well X is a fantastic engineer"
| or "X does great work" and my first thought is "Well that's
| interesting, since you have literally never worked with him,
| seen anything he's produced and have no engineering
| knowledge". So actually, whilst it sounds like a good
| endorsement, what is actually happening is that the person is
| playing politics. This is especially true when talking about
| public figures - Sam Altman in his recent interviews has been
| _incredibly_ diplomatic about Elon, despite the fact that it
| 's pretty public knowledge Elon tried to take over OpenAI and
| now loudly disparages it. Sam is playing politics, and you
| have to take that into consideration when thinking about
| these endorsements. Andrej Karpathy wants to have a good
| career in Silicon Valley and the way to do that is to gush
| about how fantastic Elon Musk is.... whilst quietly quitting
| the company having not delivered what he was working on.
| Yoric wrote:
| My experience, too.
|
| As a younger self, when I heard a C-ranked executive talk
| about X who's a "fantastic engineer", I assumed that I'd
| have to work hard to reach their level, without realizing
| that they may actually not have a clue.
|
| Now, when I hear a C-ranked executive talk about X who's a
| "fantastic engineer", I realize it's just name-dropping.
| mlindner wrote:
| > This is especially true when talking about public figures
| - Sam Altman in his recent interviews has been incredibly
| diplomatic about Elon, despite the fact that it's pretty
| public knowledge Elon tried to take over OpenAI and now
| loudly disparages it.
|
| OpenAI was co-founded by Altman and Musk together at the
| same time, with a huge amount of Musk's money, without
| which it would've never gotten off the ground in the first
| place. Also please give a citation for this "public
| knowledge". I'd counter that it's instead pretty public
| knowledge that OpenAI basically stole Elon's money on a
| promise of making an AI company that wouldn't lock things
| behind proprietary walls, but now has turned out to be the
| complete opposite. Sam Altman pulled a fast one on Musk and
| then pushed him out of the company.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| Here's the reporting on the takeover attempt[1], it also
| mentions he didn't provide anything like the amount of
| funding that was initially expected. Sam has been quite
| open about what is going on with OpenAI - namely that
| what they needed to develop the tech was billions of
| dollars, and the only way they would get that money is a
| private venture, which they've negotiated with terms that
| actually limit the upside with profits beyond a certain
| point returning to the non-profit entity, as well as the
| issues with dumping potentially dangerous tech straight
| into the public domain. Also, OpenAI was never a
| partnership between just Musk and Altman, there were half
| a dozen other people involved including Thiel and Reid
| Hoffman, there is no way that Altman unilaterally pushed
| Musk out. It looks a lot more like Musk wanted to be in
| charge, and doesn't like that OpenAI ended up succeeding
| without him.
|
| [1]:https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/24/23654701/openai-
| elon-musk...
| mlindner wrote:
| Do you have a source that's not the Verge? I've learned
| to not trust them for anything Musk related as they have
| a history of incorrect and biased reporting.
|
| > it also mentions he didn't provide anything like the
| amount of funding that was initially expected
|
| Elon provided $100M, were they expecting more than that?
| That's quite a lot of money for an early company.
|
| > Also, OpenAI was never a partnership between just Musk
| and Altman, there were half a dozen other people involved
| including Thiel and Reid Hoffman, there is no way that
| Altman unilaterally pushed Musk out. It looks a lot more
| like Musk wanted to be in charge, and doesn't like that
| OpenAI ended up succeeding without him.
|
| It doesn't surprise me that Elon wanted to be in control,
| given that they started to go against the joint vision
| established by Sam and Elon from the get go. You mention
| it was "half a dozen other people", but it was Elon and
| Sam that were the public leaders for the vision of the
| company.
| Clent wrote:
| Occam's razor is in effect. Elon is not good and smart.
| The onus is on your to proof otherwise.
|
| I was going to comment on how this article is a Musk PR
| move. It's quite clear why the first thing he guts in a
| company is PR. He has simp's that will do it for free and
| because there is no official PR channel, a literal
| reality distortion field is created because only fanbois
| get access to the man, the myth, the legend.
|
| Elon Fucking Musk!
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I don't know man. What breaks that argument is that
| multiple people make the same positive claims about Elon:
| That he can handle unimaginable amounts of stress that
| would break others, that he seems to have a breath of deep
| knowledge in various different engineering disciplines and
| that he is committed to his vision. Your theory would make
| more sense if everyone was making up random praise about
| him but the interviews with the three people I mentioned
| were conducted years apart and weirdly all mention these
| same praises. Its possible that there is some coordination
| going on but across so many people from his different
| companies? There must be some sort of truth to the
| statements.
| abudabi123 wrote:
| Elon M fried his braincells over at Tesla in an
| unwinnable situation which was saved by angel investors
| at the last moment. From that point in time to the
| present compare the advanced chips made at Tesla to Ford,
| GM for proof of Elon M and the vision thing. The Elon M
| companies fit together to tell a story that feels
| futuristic.
| cma wrote:
| GM's Cruise, though it was an acquisition, feels more
| futuristic than FSD. They are operating driverless.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> the interviews with the three people I mentioned were
| conducted years apart and weirdly all mention these same
| praises_
|
| Or it means they had little enough good to say about him
| that they had to google it.
| Glawen wrote:
| I work in a industry with around 1000 engineers in that
| field in my location. There must be like 10 big companies
| where I can work in the area. Basically everyone knows each
| other and when you interview someone, it's easy to get the
| person's reputation.
|
| I just got a new guy in January (didn't do the interview
| myself, I was away), I know his ex boss very well and of
| course I phoned him to know how he's like. He depicted me a
| kind of bad picture of him.
|
| After 3 months I agree that he's not the sharpest knife in
| the drawer. But unlike my friend, I'm not asking for
| perfect code, I'm asking for throughput and bold moves in
| the wilderness. With that consideration, the guy is
| actually ok compared to others!
|
| I've come to learn to not rely a lot on outside advice on
| people, and I prefer to judge it myself in situ. The team,
| the company, the project or simply personal life can
| greatly affect someone's performances, and it is not
| because someone is great at company A that he will be great
| at company B.
| r00fus wrote:
| This is exactly why I hate term "A-player". There's so
| much of the team and work culture that impacts someone's
| capabilities.
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Why do those brilliant folks praise him?
|
| To stay in his circle of influence or because Elon is indeed
| a genius even though he doesn't come across that way.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Musk himself is somehow schizoid .. he can be wise at times
| and then .. he tweets the most retarded thing possible.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Extreme aspergers?
| NeuroCoder wrote:
| He's got a lot of good business knowledge around certain
| industries but is way overconfident in how this translates
| to other areas
| XorNot wrote:
| Quality Assurance is one of the hardest things at any
| manufacturing company, because it absolutely doesn't care
| about "rock stars" or any other fluff. If your employees are
| tired and burned out, then yelling at them won't fix anything
| because it's not about whether they get it right _that_ time,
| it 's about getting it right _every_ time.
|
| Which means rested, attentive employees who are not going to
| be "rock stars", they're going to do the job correctly and
| then go home because that's what's required.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I'm inclined to agree with this. Its just amazing that they
| still haven't fixed these issues even to this day when it
| has become a running joke at this point.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > The worst one was a manager that would swoop down with
| heroics, take credit for other people's work, not support
| reports on ideas you had, played the blame game, etc.
|
| Sounds the type of person that typically gets promoted into
| those roles.
| zpeti wrote:
| Anecdotal, but I've found many people who complain about
| abusive managers are doing a terrible job and are looking for
| any excuse to be a victim or explain why their crap work is not
| appreciated.
|
| Misunderstood genius syndrome.
| uoaei wrote:
| If a manager can't be kind even to underperforming employees,
| that makes them a bad manager.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Well in this case more than one of the managers was not
| someone I reported to (only one was my boss) and a bunch of
| them were _actively let go_ because of their awfulness. I don
| 't actually care about the perception of my work. I care
| specifically about the startup community and am trying to get
| other people to not bring in middle managers from musk
| companies without carefully vetting them, because it will
| mean pain for their employees.
| submeta wrote:
| I have seen this kind of behaviour in the consulting business
| here in Germany many times. Actually so often that I started to
| believe this is the culture around those companies. No
| integrity, no real teamwork, lying behind your back, ego
| driven, playing the blame game, very poisonous atmosphere.
| dragonelite wrote:
| Classic office politics.
| bombolo wrote:
| At my previous company they hired a guy from amazon (aws) to be
| our new manager.
|
| He sucked.
|
| Overnight he implemented all the bullshit meetings they had
| over there. At said meetings he wouldn't listen what people
| said, and he'd forget what tasks he'd tell people to focus, so
| the next meeting he'd scold people for wasting company time
| doing stuff that was not the task they had been assigned.
| fhe wrote:
| selection bias? in that the people who were let go from or
| decided to leave SpaceX were the worse performing ones to begin
| with?
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Well the op article is specifically about people who left
| SpaceX and are seeding into startups, so in this thread we
| very much care about this selection bias.
| simonh wrote:
| Indeed, it seems premature to conclude that a set of people
| who all left SpaceX must be representative of employees who
| stayed at SpaceX.
| [deleted]
| mkolodny wrote:
| I'm the founder of a 1 person company. If the company ever
| grows to 2+ people, I hope to give my teammates the freedom I
| wish I had as an employee.
| MikeDelta wrote:
| Remember: it is all up to you to set the company culture. If
| you find the right people who can thrive under the freedom
| and responsibility that comes with it, I am sure you will
| have created a great place to work!
|
| All the best with that!
| majkinetor wrote:
| That naive utopian attitude will change as soon as you have
| 2+ people.
| lnsru wrote:
| Yes! When you think, that these resources each cost you
| 80000EUR a year, you want to use them really well and get
| some serious output.
| yawnr wrote:
| VCs and other startups love to shower these people with money
| like they're the second coming only to find out that their
| success was purely circumstantial and mostly a confluence of a
| ton of factors that had nothing to do with them like luck and
| timing.
| majkinetor wrote:
| Strange generallization. In any environment there are always
| those that don't belong.
|
| There must be some double digit percentage of them who are
| genuinelly sculpted in specific way in that harsh working
| environment. Or you are saying that stressor doesn't make you
| better in any way (if you survive it).
|
| Probability looks higher that you will find such people at
| ex-Space X group then other more relaxed and/or
| bureaucratically leaden companies, IMO.
|
| They shower them with money because, as always, they don't
| know who is genuine and who is not, only results will tell
| but looks like a solid bet anyway, more then showering with
| money random engineer of ex anything.
| robocat wrote:
| The VC model is invest in a bunch of companies, with the idea
| that one goes to the moon and the rest fail. One success pays
| for a lot of failures.
|
| So if you personally see a lot of failures, that doesn't mean
| the VC model is failing. Although most VC funds lose money
| (there's a power law for their returns too!)
|
| Paul Graham wrote a scathing summary of VCs, and one reason
| for YC is to be more honest and fair (YC still aims for
| capitalist gains, they just play the game differently).
| http://paulgraham.com/venturecapital.html He also wrote that
| it is near impossible to pick investment winners (which is
| what VCs are "supposed" to do).
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Sounds familiar.
|
| I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the ...
| SCUSKU wrote:
| My personal anecdote is that I had an ex-SpaceX engineer as a
| VP of Engineering for a startup I worked for. And he was great.
| He is a nice guy, super friendly, very knowledgeable, solid
| manager, always bringing people into the fold, and technically
| very talented.
|
| The company he was the VP of Engineering for was an indoor
| vertical farming startup (which is failing), and he moved onto
| a new venture in the climate space.
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Why is it failing?
|
| Poor management or not viable?
|
| Vertical farming seems key for our future.
| rapsey wrote:
| It has never been and has no path to being economically
| viable.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Vertical farming is a solution in search of a problem. It's
| not viable and it doesn't solve any meaningful issues in
| agriculture. In cities, land is more productive when used
| for other purposes (residential, commercial, retail, etc.),
| and out in the country where crops are typically grown,
| space simply isn't an issue to the point that you need to
| go up. Indeed, way more food is currently produced than is
| actually needed for human consumption (most cropland in the
| US is used to feed livestock or turned into bioethanol).
| catmanjan wrote:
| We still aren't fully utilising horizontal farming which is
| significantly cheaper
| prox wrote:
| My uncle is in that business. Even with organic (so no
| chemicals) techniques the amount of optimization that can
| be done is staggering. Companies do keep their knowledge
| very secret, so you won't know as an average farmer, it's
| definitely not an open source spirit in the farming
| industry.
| blatant303 wrote:
| Setting the topic of weed aside, are there pharmaceutical
| crops that would make sense economically to grow in a
| controlled environment ?
| philwelch wrote:
| > Vertical farming seems key for our future.
|
| This has never made sense to me. Vertical farming is just
| greenhouses except with artificial light instead of natural
| sunlight. Presumably the renewable source of energy for
| that artificial light would be solar panels. So why not
| just build normal greenhouses?
| notahacker wrote:
| Theoretically the advantages are light sources focused
| where the plant needs when they need it resulting in
| faster growth. Just turns out that for most crops, that
| (and lower land use) isn't enough to cover the
| disadvantages of the extra infrastructure needed. Plus
| you can install lights in a greenhouse...
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| They have only ever managed to grow lettuce with vertical
| farming. Produce out of farm gate is at the bottom of the
| supply chain. It will never be profitable unless people
| are willing to be 4-5x what they pay for lettuce now.
|
| CA field grown lettuce gets the farmer less than half a
| dollar per head. Meanwhile:
| https://www.montereyherald.com/2022/12/16/11-for-a-head-
| of-l...
|
| Expect price increases and food shortages this year
| because of rains in CA. We are not allowed to plant for
| 45-60 days after last rains so field can dry out.
|
| The truth is that we do have a real food shortage
| situation now. The vertical farms won't make a dent in
| making up the gap. Not even close.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Well, they were _former_ SpaceX people. Perhaps the good eggs
| are kept and these were SpaceX castoffs? But that is probably
| giving SpaceX too much credit. I get the sense that they simply
| have an insane turnover rate that sucks a little good work from
| everyone before kicking them to the curb. I would expect people
| grown in such an environment to be at least a little poisioned.
| robomartin wrote:
| Well, at a place like SpaceX you have many layers of people.
| First, you have people like Elon and the managers who learned
| from him. Elon is famous for ripping people to shreds in
| meetings. Yelling and screaming at them. Telling them just how
| stupid they are in front of the entire room.
|
| Layers of managers emulate this and treat people like shit in
| meetings. Not everyone, of course. You then have thousands of
| young freshly-graduated people who are in a range between not
| having a clue to believing they are hot shit because they come
| from a top university and work at SpaceX.
|
| In the middle of all of this, you have a ---relatively
| speaking-- small group of older, experienced people who make it
| all work. They work around folks who can't create a decent
| Excel spreadsheet to save their lives and the "I have a Masters
| degree from MIT" crowd who truly need to be humbled.
|
| Somehow the entire thing works. A reflection of society in some
| ways? It seems every company and society is, in some form,
| carried on the shoulders of a select few who actually get it
| and are capable enough to make it happen.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| > Somehow the entire thing works
|
| This is basically cargo culting/ type I error. I've worked
| for companies that were explicitly NOT this way, they were
| just fine.
|
| Hell even my immediate boss at aforementioned company was not
| that way but he was tanked by my skip boss (the musk co. Guy)
| and immediately my productivity tanked too.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Some were just abusive managers, many were just not that
| effective. The worst one was a manager that would swoop down
| with heroics, take credit for other people's work, not support
| reports on ideas you had, played the blame game, etc.
|
| Also anecdotal, but this is identical to my experience with a
| handful of ex-employees of some Elon companies. They were
| basically office politics machines, optimized to promote
| themselves at the expense of everyone else.
|
| One claimed to have worked closely with Elon, but after seeing
| him lie about so many other things I don't trust anything he
| told us.
|
| They were weirdly, unnecessarily ruthless in everything they
| did behind your back. But they were also highly polished and
| charismatic when addressing you directly.
|
| Obviously this isn't unique, but it was weird to see how
| consistent it was from this group of people.
| [deleted]
| hikawaii wrote:
| Then that means that office politics optimizers were able to
| make Boeing, Lockheed, and NASA look like jokers at something
| they'd been doing for decades.
|
| If I thought this about SpaceX management and ex employees
| was representative of the culture as a whole,I would throw
| out all the modern books on managing tech organizations and
| go all Taylor immediately.
| tekkk wrote:
| From what I understood SpaceX was founded by some brilliant
| engineers and Elon just became the poster boy with no
| actual engineering credentials. Undoubtedly he is business-
| savvy but it seems not that surprising managers who take
| credit for the engineers' work might thrive there.
| xedeon wrote:
| Patently false.
|
| 1. https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929
|
| 2.https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1099411086711746560
|
| 3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Mueller
| tekkk wrote:
| Tom seems brilliant but I wouldn't refute my argument
| based on a single datapoint. I've seen non-technical
| managers being able to hold conversations and make
| insightful comments having been around engineers for so
| long. A little bit like ChatGPT, now that I think of it.
| And they definitely can serve as a counter-balance to
| over-engineering.
|
| But would they be able to code a single HTML page on
| their own? I doubt it. They definitely know how to spec
| one down to the last detail, but alas there's a
| distinction here. And I would also argue Tom might be a
| little biased in his opinion. I don't particularly have
| anything against Elon but I'm not surprised certain type
| of people with personality faults gravitate towards him.
| xedeon wrote:
| > Tom seems brilliant but I wouldn't refute my argument
| based on a single datapoint.
|
| Sure, I agree. However, there are many other examples
| that you can easily look up. But I do find the by amount
| of mental gymnastics in your response interesting.
|
| I think it's fair to say that the opinion of those who
| have worked with Elon closely for many years hold the
| most weight. Compared to outsiders who just speculate on
| the internet.
| tekkk wrote:
| All right sir. You seem to hold a strong opinion about
| the subject, i do not. I find it funny rebuting me by
| using term mental gymnastics but i find this debate
| fruitless to pursue. A speculating outsider on interwebz.
| Okay. Sure.
| concordDance wrote:
| Got any source for further reading? Everything I can find
| says that Musk founded it and was heavily involved in the
| engineering.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| This is a common fallacy. Modern businesses are _enormous_
| and succeed or fail for all sorts of reasons. Trying to
| figure out who is actually responsible for the success of a
| company is difficult. Just because a company is successful,
| doesn 't mean every employee of the company is great. It's
| essential to understand what the dynamics of an industry is
| in order to understand why a company is successful. In the
| case of SpaceX there's no doubt there are _some_ people
| there who are great engineers. But that 's probably not why
| they beat Boeing.
| b33j0r wrote:
| A real-life reusable rocket that lands back on the pad
| was an exciting project to be a part of, no matter if you
| were doing it in a virtual sweatshop.
|
| I could see being part of that ultimate goal as being a
| motivation to work for the aliens from the Simpsons
| (don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!)
|
| But given the progressive nature of the projects and "for
| all of humanity" vision that was presented, I have always
| been disappointed to hear these things about the
| operation. I'm glad I didn't sign up, and it was
| tempting.
|
| Look at outcomes. The whole thing was _actually_ about
| cornering access to LEO, the whole time. And it largely
| worked.
| hikawaii wrote:
| They've only "cornered" access to LEO because they vastly
| outperform the competition in almost every conceivable
| category. That _should_ get you a short term monopoly.
| b33j0r wrote:
| Yep. Yep. and Yeah... I didn't quite succeed at making
| that sound like I was still a fan. I'd still work on
| these things given an opportunity. For sure.
|
| I guess around the time some of these crunchtimes have
| been reported, I was in some other crunchtime too!
|
| My bias: "hey remember when we sat around and played
| foosball for lunch? We actually got a lot done anyway"
| nostrademons wrote:
| "More revenue solves all known problems" -- Eric Schmidt
|
| "The only thing that matters is product-market fit" -- Marc
| Andreesen
|
| Being in a good market with the first product that can
| satisfy that market solves all sorts of management sins.
| Look at Twitter, Zenefits, Uber, WeWork, Zynga, Digg, etc.
| Or for that matter - how do you think Boeing, Lockheed, and
| NASA started looking like jokers?
|
| Dominance in a market is usually an anti-signal for
| management quality, because it means you can get away with
| stuff that you couldn't in more competitive markets.
| santoshalper wrote:
| Or maybe it's just the ones who left?
| jpgvm wrote:
| Or fired.
| dalbasal wrote:
| In a sense, this is _the_ organisational fallacy, of our
| time.
|
| The baby version of this was 15 years ago, when Jobs was
| Musk and being an asshole was the main/only feature
| visionary executives emulated.
|
| Maybe the lesson is that we're bad at lessons.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| What was the ACTUAL lesson with these two? I can guess
| your intent, but could you specify? Also I think the
| grand father version instead of the baby version. Apple
| is massive...
| lostdog wrote:
| * Build something people want and will pay for.
|
| * Figure out what the product must look like early, and
| keep your vision consistent for a long time.
|
| * Dive into the details of the product, and try to get
| quality at the lowest levels.
|
| * Hire great and motivated people.
|
| * Remove roadblocks that prevent people from moving
| quickly.
|
| Those are the real lessons.
|
| My current job does all of these, and doesn't do the
| "Treat people like shit," thing that is the core culture
| of Elon's companies. We move faster than the Elonverse
| companies, while working on a problem of similar
| difficulty.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Where do you work?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Business success often only requires that you be less bad
| than your competition.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Or maybe SpaceX did that despite being held back by those
| people. NASA's management is rather infamous too so it's
| not like they're competing against much there. Every time
| NASA's managers gained too much influence over the
| engineers people actually died.
| Clent wrote:
| Engineers are pragamtic as profession. Managers are
| glorified sales, their primary product is selling their
| team and move the goal post forward.
|
| As as a software engineer, I'd rather buy my next car
| from an engineer who designed it rather than anyone else
| in the chain. Not because we speak similar languages but
| because I know that engineer will happily list ever bit
| of that makes them feel uncomfortable.
|
| Engineers main task is to physically make something.
|
| Even in software engineering something is being
| physically built up to run the software. We decided to
| call this the cloud because we let sales people define
| it. It ain't a cloud, you cannot fly a plane through it.
|
| Construction is the one step that cannot be easily
| cheated. The machinery we build today is massive and
| complex so while the bureaucracy prevents a single
| engineer from addressing the issues, they are position to
| see see it.
|
| My first question for a rocket company isn't the CEO's
| confidence. It is, would engineer #134 use this product
| with their families? Would you entrust the lives of our
| children to what you've built?
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| > Construction is the one step that cannot be easily
| cheated
|
| This is a great quote, btw.
| ricksunny wrote:
| Selection bias on who decided to leave / got removed from the
| organization vs who opted to / could stay inside it?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> One claimed to have worked closely with Elon, but after
| seeing him lie about so many other things I don't trust
| anything he told us.
|
| Lol. Sounds like he indeed worked very closely with Mr. Musk.
| [deleted]
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| And yet their rockets really work!
| datadeft wrote:
| > Some were just abusive managers
|
| > They were basically office politics machines, optimized to
| promote themselves at the expense of everyone else
|
| > Obviously this isn't unique
|
| Most middle management is like that. You must be extremely
| lucky to work people who are not like these. During my 20
| years I had maybe 3 people out of the 100 I have worked with
| who were decent and looked out for the people who they
| managed.
| Yoric wrote:
| Still anecdotal but most of the managers I've worked with
| were very much decent people. Not all of them extremely
| efficient, but definitely decent.
| permalac wrote:
| Same for me. I worked with managers who mostly tried to
| do a decent job, some failed some succeeded, some were
| incapable others were good even when working at 50% of
| their capacity.
|
| I've only had to deal with one bullshit machine and he
| quickly moved to another location, my guess is he is
| moving every time his bullshit has grown to difficult to
| keep up.
| brandall10 wrote:
| Curious, but what kind of companies were these?
|
| I have a similar experience but haven't worked for any
| big tech or name brand companies. The vast majority were
| in the health tech space with a smattering doing things
| that would be considered ethically sound (ie. Solar
| energy marketplace).
|
| I have had a couple nightmare supervisors who were
| obvious sociopaths, and have several who were
| incompetent, but for the most part only worked for folks
| with high EQ.
| Yoric wrote:
| (I'm not going to count my time in academia)
|
| 1. One nightmare CEO in an early stage tech startup.
|
| 2. A dozen managers at Mozilla, which ranked from "should
| have remained a dev" to "great managers". One of them was
| politically-minded, everybody else was truly attempting
| to make the team and the project work.
|
| 3. A few managers in a more recent tech startup, all of
| them good (albeit over-worked).
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| You must have bad luck. Many middle managers are previous
| ICs who are still trying to pay the bills -- they're not
| automatically bad people. Consider also that bad companies
| hire bad people -- so maybe you could consider that as
| well.
|
| My experiences with management have been pretty positive.
| But I am biased: if my situation sucks -- I leave. Perhaps
| you stayed longer than you should have...
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| >During my 20 years I had maybe 3 people out of the 100
|
| Pretty much seems to reflect the general populace. The
| figure seems to be actually better than the general
| populace.
| HopenHeyHi wrote:
| [flagged]
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| "anti-Elon companies"
| rsynnott wrote:
| Companies which have committed thought-crime against Dear
| Leader, one assumes.
|
| (Nah, I've no idea what they're talking about. Companies
| which _compete_ with Musk's companies, possibly?)
| HopenHeyHi wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| realworldperson wrote:
| [dead]
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| - it's frankly impossible to pick investment winners - so a more
| sensible approach might be to provide smaller investments to more
| people. Governments basically do this by providing schooling and
| health care to children till age of 18 or so. I mean the RoI on
| teaching Elon to read was fairly high. I wonder if his primary
| school teacher could get a lien on future earnings?
|
| - if MMT is right, then the problem is not limited capital but
| limited investment opportunities- but if we invest in everyone -
| what does that mean or look like?
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| > I wonder if his primary school teacher could get a lien on
| future earnings?
|
| It's not the primary school teacher that made the investment.
| It's whomever was bankrolling salaries and expenses for
| teachers, cafeteria workers, buildings to house the activity
| ...
|
| The "lien" on future income would likely be "taxes" (assuming
| public school here.)
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Yes - I agree I was just trying to find my way towards
|
| "the human economy is a whole, even within countries seeing
| government as a cost to be minimised, taxes to be avoided and
| private investment as somehow privileged"
|
| is a poor analysis.
|
| I mean such a huge amount of private spending is trying to
| alter "predominant cultural norms" - advertising etc. yet
| breakout successful companies tend to break at just the right
| time that their PMFit barely needs advertising.
|
| Less dinosaurs trying to look cool and more evolved companies
| would help - and it would help in that we have constant turn
| over of companies would mean we were measuring actual
| productivity better - very useful in MMT terms.
|
| Somehow I am feeling towards our tournament style approach of
| allocating the power to allocate resources is false. We have
| young democracies, but work in dictatorships - and invest in
| similar ways.
|
| I think basically we need to find better ways of "doing
| democracy". imagine voting on internal projects? it will hurt
| but if we think democracy works then open discussion and
| decision making actually will result in stronger companies -
| or just a return of capital !
| lordnacho wrote:
| This poses a bit if an interesting quandary for society.
|
| Which society paid for Musk to be educated? He grew up in
| South Africa. How much tax does he pay there relative to
| where he built his stuff? Where should he pay his taxes?
|
| What about other people who grow up elsewhere and move? Is it
| ok to hire a load of doctors from other countries?
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| There is the glimmer of a movement here - the Yelland led
| move to 15% minimum corporation tax is part of the move to
| solve this very problem. The EU is trying to solve this.
| But it's reaching the point of dealing with cross border
| fiscal policy and that's really hard without become a real
| federation.
|
| And Inthink that is the ultimate global goal here. Which is
| ... science fiction
|
| Imagine how immigration would look different if South
| Africa had a lien on ex-citizens taxation - if a slice of
| every sales tax paid in Nevada by a Mexican citizen went
| back to Mexico City.
|
| I am not sure how it plays out - but it's possible that
| countries that benefit from immigration have to pay for it.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| > it's frankly impossible to pick investment winners
|
| There's an entire industry of highly compensated people built
| around the idea that you can pick investment winners.
|
| > so a more sensible approach might be to provide smaller
| investments to more people.
|
| Banks have commercial lending departments that fill this
| function. Doesn't help with startup capital, but I doubt that
| is the limiting factor preventing most people from starting a
| successful business.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| >>> There's an entire industry of highly compensated people
| built around the idea that you can pick investment winners.
|
| Just because someone pays you because you say you can pick
| winners, don't make it so. Top VCs like top Heege funds do
| get access to the best options - but the vast vast majority
| of those industries don't outperform index funds (after
| fees).
|
| Plus even for the good ones, it's only the handful of major
| winners that compensate for their parlours ability to pick
| winners.
|
| Bert Bachart was asked "what's the secret to a hit song" and
| he replied "If I knew that why would I write anything other
| than hit songs"
|
| There is a world of difference between "I have an idea and if
| it goes wrong I have some good war stories" equity investment
| and "I have an idea and if it goes wrong I have a decade of
| debt to pay".
|
| Really commercial lending departments are just part of the
| banks real roles of printing money and managing the temporal
| shifting of the liquidity illusion - ie helping existing
| businesses manage cashflow issues - startups is a tiny
| fraction of funding. yet startups is where the huge growth
| can only come from.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| [dead]
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