Roger Ramjets
Philosopher
In what way is Musk 'off the rails'?
Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985 for good reason. He reportedly had an "abrasive and authoritarian approach" and was "known for pushing people too hard and creating a toxic work environment". He was responsible for the Apple III being an unmitigated failure, due to insisting on packing too much into it and refusing to add a fan for cooling. The Lisa was also an expensive failure, costing $150 million to develop and only selling ~10,000 units.
The Mac did better, but again Jobs nearly sunk it with bad engineering decisions. The original Mac (launched in 1984) only had 128k RAM which was not expandable. That's the same amount as IBM's 'Peanut', but with a 16/32-bit CPU and graphical operating system that really needed at least 512k to be useful. Jobs also refused to put color in the Mac, arguing that since the printer only did black it was pointless.
In 1985 Jobs went so far 'off the rails' that he had no choice but to leave his own creation behind and wander in the wilderness. In 1985 he - along with several other former Apple Employees - started NeXT Inc. with the idea of producing workstation computers. They expected to complete the computer in early 1987 and launch it for $3,000. However by the time the machine starting shipping in 1989 the price had balloned to $6,500. It recieved praise from the industry for its Unix-based NextSTEP graphical OS, but sales were poor. Nevertheless they managed to attract a lot of investment, including $20 million from Ross Perot (who joined the board of directors) and $130 million from Canon.
In 1993 NeXT withdrew from the hardware industry, laying off 230 of its 530 employees to concentrate on the OS. By 1995 the market for NextSTEP was dead so they developed OpenSTEP for Sun OS and Windows NT, and produced a Java-based web server application called WebObjects.
Jobs probably would would have faded into obscurity if it wasn't that by this time Apple wasn't doing so well either. The Mac was struggling to compete against the IBM PC and clones. The original Mac OS was designed to work in a tiny amount of RAM, and the tricks they used to do that were starting to bite. Apple spent over a billion dollars trying to develop a compatible replacement called Copland. Then Microsoft released Windows 95 and that was it for Copland. Apple also confused customers with a variety of Mac models, many of which had poor performance and very limited expansion capabilities. By the end of 1996 things were looking dire, with sales cratering and no roadmap for the future. That's when Jobs stepped back in, offering to produce a new Mac OS based on OpenSTEP.
As an engineer and boss Jobs sucked, but he did have a strong vision. Even after he came back to Apple their computers didn't do that well, despite rationalizing the product line. The product that launched Apple to the Moon was the iPhone. It wasn't the first 'smartphone', but it was the first that had a proper OS and a touchscreen that did everything. Microsoft laughed at it, then they tried to copy it...
There are parallels between Apple and Tesla, and between Jobs and Musk. Musk has a better grasp of engineering than Jobs did, but Jobs eventually learned to stick with being a visionary and let the engineers flesh out his ideas. People scoffed at the iPhone - too expensive, no keypad - who would want one? They had their share of duds too. But they were always pushing the boundaries of innovation to find new markets. if you bought $1,000 of Apple stock in 2001 and held onto it you would be a millionaire today. Tesla might not manage to do so well, but if the products they are developing are perfected they could easily become worth more than 1,000 times what they are now, just like Apple.
You talk about 'the shenanigans of Musk' and that he is 'off the rails', but all I see is someone who isn't engaged enough with his company to stay focussed. I believe part of that was due to his 'pay package' being rejected by an activist judge (yes really - she cited Musk being the 'richest man in the world' as justification for denying his rightfully earned compensation - never mind that he invested almost everything he had in Tesla and hadn't received any income to speak of in 7 years). His slide to the right is disappointing, but not surprising - most business owners go the same way - and the attitudes of Democrats didn't help. In case you didn't notice, legacy auto makers are sucking up to Trump just as much if not more than Musk - they just don't advertize it.
In the future you will continue to see Musk posting incendary stuff on social media, and associating with people you don't like. But his foray into government is pretty much over, as he now realizes it is 'fundamentally broken' and not nearly as simple to fix as he thought (yeah, we could have told him that!). He now has a set of goals that he might be able to (at least partially) achieve that are more suited to his skills. I think this will take up most of his time, with the social media stuff just being for 'relaxation'. This is why the 'folks who matter' (over 70% of Tesla stock owners) voted to give him more stock options if he grows the company. They know the value of a CEO with drive and vision.
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