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Musk is a huge jerk. Period.

dudalb

Penultimate Amazing
dudalb
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https://www.chron.com/business/article/Elon-Musk-Brutally-Tells-Tesla-Executives-They-17212471.php

If the work gets done, why should Musk be obbsessed about whether it is done at home or not?
He is showing his true colors: A petty tyrant with an inflated vision of himself as some kind of messiah.
Yes, he is to be praised for Tesla. Yes, I fully support what he is doing with Space X.
But don't expect me to sign off on this "Musk is a Tony Stark level Genius who can do no wrong" crap you hear from his personality cult.
Over the past few week, he seems to be going off the rails. He has tried to keep apolitical for the most part, but now his sharp bent to the far right is apparent.
 
My friend works there and showed me the email earlier today. Didn't realize it was news too. I didn't read it all.

He hates it there. He is an electrician but get tasked to do all kinds of different things. He makes over 100k a year for the first time in his life and all he does is complain about the place. Broken promises, etc, and he is a team player and very hard worker. It takes a lot for him to complain about anything...to a fault in my opinion, and yet he hates his job.
 
mgidm86 said:
My friend works there and showed me the email earlier today. Didn't realize it was news too. I didn't read it all.

He hates it there. He is an electrician but get tasked to do all kinds of different things. He makes over 100k a year for the first time in his life and all he does is complain about the place. Broken promises, etc, and he is a team player and very hard worker. It takes a lot for him to complain about anything...to a fault in my opinion, and yet he hates his job.
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Why does he hate getting asked to do different things?
 
For the first two weeks of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Spring semester, our campus was remote, then we returned to in-person instruction. On the mid-terms, students performed poorly overall, but especially on material covered in those first two weeks, probably because they weren't paying attention and taking notes (I have identical exam questions going back over a decade for comparison purposes). In courses with pre-reqs, students had significant gaps in their knowledge. Naturally, many now prefer online classes, and bubble-headed administrators want to be as accommodating as possible to consumer demand (though this is scrupulously framed in the language of "equity").

I don't see why for-profit workplaces would insist on bringing people in if they believed employees were equally productive from home. Businesses would save on office space, furniture, and employee theft (among other things). They could probably pay even slightly lower salaries as employees would save on commutes. Of course, it's perfectly possible that some businesses are mistaken about the advantages of working in person, but the market should sort that out over time. I imagine companies will be more flexible in the future, but I'd be surprised if work-from-home were as productive in general. I'm also wary of self-assessments ("I'm MOAR productive from home").

Everybody wants win-win, but life often involves painful trade-offs.
 
Cain said:
For the first two weeks of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Spring semester, our campus was remote, then we returned to in-person instruction. On the mid-terms, students performed poorly overall, but especially on material covered in those first two weeks, probably because they weren't paying attention and taking notes (I have identical exam questions going back over a decade for comparison purposes). In courses with pre-reqs, students had significant gaps in their knowledge. Naturally, many now prefer online classes, and bubble-headed administrators want to be as accommodating as possible to consumer demand (though this is scrupulously framed in the language of "equity").

I don't see why for-profit workplaces would insist on bringing people in if they believed employees were equally productive from home. Businesses would save on office space, furniture, and employee theft (among other things). They could probably pay even slightly lower salaries as employees would save on commutes. Of course, it's perfectly possible that some businesses are mistaken about the advantages of working in person, but the market should sort that out over time. I imagine companies will be more flexible in the future, but I'd be surprised if work-from-home were as productive in general. I'm also wary of self-assessments ("I'm MOAR productive from home").

Everybody wants win-win, but life often involves painful trade-offs.
Click to expand...

there is an obvious reason: when employees self-manage their work, it shows how much bloat there is in Middle Management.
 
On the upside, not meeting everyone at the office even once a week
definitely has gone viral But as one article put it, there's a downside.
"We learned that there was a lot of alcohol consumption, eating, pot
smoking, and watching porn while quarantined."
 
Getting smarter unknowns to do all your work for as little as possible is definitely a time-tested winning formula, and in that Musk is master. Tapping into decades of results from publicly-financed efforts for free and calling it an "achievement" for private enterprise is also a nice trick, kind of like going to a US Geological Survey office just before announcing a "major mining discovery". Management by fear has been around since the pharaohs, so not much innovation there, either.
 
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The Great Zaganza said:
there is an obvious reason: when employees self-manage their work, it shows how much bloat there is in Middle Management.
Click to expand...

Except this directive is coming from the senior-most person at the company and it's aimed at precisely those supervisors, who he charges have an even greater responsibility to be present. Why isn't Musk interested in shedding busybodies who are not adding to his bottom line? I would be happy to see this tweeting celebrity CEO fail.

Putting aside company profits, there are larger social costs in play. People are not forging as many friendships and personal connections. What people want and what they need sometimes diverge. Jonathan Haidt likes to say you can present a person with two options, where 1) consistently makes people happier and more satisfied, but 2) will bring more popularity and attention. People chose 2). A similar story plays out when people are given the option of healthy food vs. junk food.

I attended a funeral on Saturday. I was so pissed when the pastor/hustler spoke to the people on the livestream. I didn't know it was streaming! I'm such a sucker.
 
mgidm86 said:
My friend works there and showed me the email earlier today. Didn't realize it was news too. I didn't read it all.

He hates it there. He is an electrician but get tasked to do all kinds of different things. He makes over 100k a year for the first time in his life and all he does is complain about the place. Broken promises, etc, and he is a team player and very hard worker. It takes a lot for him to complain about anything...to a fault in my opinion, and yet he hates his job.
Click to expand...

This description of your friend, and Elon Musk's own description of what he wants his workers to do (Be in the office for a *minimum* of 40 hours, and be visible to co-workers) is almost a perfect illustration of what David Graeber called "Bull **** Jobs". Link

In ******** Jobs, American anthropologist David Graeber posits that the productivity benefits of automation have not led to a 15-hour workweek, as predicted by economist John Maynard Keynes in 1930, but instead to "******** jobs": "a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case." While these jobs can offer good compensation and ample free time, Graeber holds that the pointlessness of the work grates at their humanity and creates a "profound psychological violence".
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The author contends that more than half of societal work is pointless, both large parts of some jobs and, as he describes, five types of entirely pointless jobs:

  1. flunkies, who serve to make their superiors feel important, e.g., receptionists, administrative assistants, door attendants, store greeters, makers of websites whose sites neglect ease of use and speed for looks;
  • goons, who act to harm or deceive others on behalf of their employer, e.g., lobbyists, corporate lawyers, telemarketers, public relations specialists, community managers;
  • duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing bloated code, airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive;
  • box tickers, who create the appearance that something useful is being done when it is not, e.g., survey administrators, in-house magazine journalists, corporate compliance officers, quality service managers;
  • taskmasters, who create extra work for those who do not need it, e.g., middle management, leadership professionals
Click to expand...

Graeber addresses a number of points about how this kind of bloat is often expected or criticized in the public industry, but produces example after example of exactly the same thing occurring in the private sector, maybe even to a greater extent, with the point being that even if it occurs in the public sector, there is usually no tyrants or taskmasters there to stop people from indulging their own interests. People like Elon Musk clearly jealously demand their workers visibly use up their time that he is paying for, which means the incentive is for his workers to look busy while onsite rather than, say, finish their work at home and spend time with their kids.
 
Musk has been playing pretend businessman and tech genius for years. The one thing he is genuinely good at is being a blowhard that's always pumping his personal brand in the news, which is no small part in why his business ventures can routinely draw in funding and attention well exceeding their actual output. Issuing diktats about whatever issue may be on the public's mind is a great way to keep his brand current.

Trump has shown that there's a lot of mileage to be made by embodying the moron's understanding of what a businessman is. Whether it's having some absurd show like the Apprentice or tweeting out business wisdom from on high, there's always going to be some segment of this country that is impressed by the idea of the genius dictator. The public is enamored with the idea of a hands-on petty tyrant guiding the company to success based on their super-human effort and intuition, even though anyone who has actually ever worked in these kinds of scenarios know how terribly this kind of organization functions.

It's really embarrassing how absolutely bedazzled the public is with people who play-pretend the role of big important businessman.
 
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angrysoba said:
This description of your friend, and Elon Musk's own description of what he wants his workers to do (Be in the office for a *minimum* of 40 hours, and be visible to co-workers) is almost a perfect illustration of what David Graeber called "Bull **** Jobs". Link





Graeber addresses a number of points about how this kind of bloat is often expected or criticized in the public industry, but produces example after example of exactly the same thing occurring in the private sector, maybe even to a greater extent, with the point being that even if it occurs in the public sector, there is usually no tyrants or taskmasters there to stop people from indulging their own interests. People like Elon Musk clearly jealously demand their workers visibly use up their time that he is paying for, which means the incentive is for his workers to look busy while onsite rather than, say, finish their work at home and spend time with their kids.
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Who finishes their work? Unless they are sub contractors to a specific project, once you finish a project you continue on to the next project.

The fact you think the employee can finish their work when there is infinite work to be done is why they need to come in.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
he does.
all he wants is some news that will raise the stock price he tanked.
Click to expand...

More specifically he wants to be able to fire as many people for cause right now as he can because if he doesn't, he's going to have to lay off some people soon instead and that will tank the price even further.
 
BobTheCoward said:
Who finishes their work? Unless they are sub contractors to a specific project, once you finish a project you continue on to the next project.

The fact you think the employee can finish their work when there is infinite work to be done is why they need to come in.
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Have you ever seen American History X?

The white supremacist guy is in jail and working in the laundry room with the black guy. The white guy is trying to fold all the shirts as quickly as possible. The black guy is like, "why are you doing this? They will just keep putting more shirts in. We never finish!"

So the moral is Don't be productive. Just work nice and slow until the end of your shift.

Elon Musk apparently also just wants people to work 40 hours.

If there is infinite work to do, then what is the point in being efficient?
 
Checkmite said:
More specifically he wants to be able to fire as many people for cause right now as he can because if he doesn't, he's going to have to lay off some people soon instead and that will tank the price even further.
Click to expand...

I once heard someone talking about Boris Johnson saying that that "jovial exterior" is the type of thing that gives way to sudden nastiness when people stop laughing along with him. I think that could be true of Musk.
 
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