For SpaceX it has long been Gwynne Shotwell, she’s the reason it works in spite of Musk.
Ok, Elon, what do you want to name the rocket?
“Marsfucker. Now take some suggestive promo pictures of me with it in the background so it looks like my penis.”
Kind of surprises me cause I thought he’d be too sexist for that.
Tss, he’s telling her how it’s to be done, of course!
/s
Is she a Bond villain?
From what I can tell from the outside:
- Linda Yaccarino Is the CEO of X so presumably her
- Gwynne Shotwell definitely runs SpaceX
- Vaibhav Taneja and Tom Zhu seem to run Tesla (but Elon obviously designs the trucks)
- Steve Davis is CEO of The Boring Company
- Jared Birchall is CEO of Neuralink and CFO of xAI so he’s probably running both
I have little to no respect for the man but Elon’s real job is raising money, which isn’t nothing. Start up CEOs often spend a lot of their time raising money and networking while the company is unprofitable. Tesla might be the only one that’s mature and turns a profit. (SpaceX could be profitable and it’s Falcon launch division probably is but between Starlink launches and testing Starship, I’m guessing the company is still in “start up mode” and losing money.)
Raising money? Aren’t companies suppose to generate money? Didn’t twitter lose a large portion of its ad revenue?
Start ups usually lose money while they’re getting established. You have build the product, hire the team, and then get customers. So, you lose money for several years — which is why Angel Investors, venture capital firms, etc. exist.
Take a novel medication, for example. You aren’t making a dime until you get FDA (in the U.S.) approval and so you do fundraising rounds to hire staff, do clinical trials, scale up manufacturing, etc. Then, once you get approved, you (ideally) make a fortune.
Ideally for the early stage investors (and staff that was partially compensated in shares), you “make an exit” — get bought by a bigger company or go public. And that’s when everyone gets paid. If a company stays private forever, you repay early investors with dividends or share buybacks (or everyone is just sort of fucked and waiting for an exit). Shares in a private company have value on paper but no store takes SpaceX shares as a payment method.
In the United States, you have to be an “accredited investor” to invest in early stage start ups. To be an accredited investor, you either have to be wealthy — $1 million in wealth (not counting your house) or have income over $250,000 for 2 consecutive years — or pass some of the tests generally required to be a banker (like the Series 7 exam).
That’s what makes start ups different from a normal small business. If you open a bar or restaurant, you generally get a loan from a bank and are profitable when you open. If you want to raise rounds and lose money for years, only “accredited investors” can invest. Basically, the government bans people who aren’t aware of the risks or able to take the L that often comes from investing in risky start ups. You have to prove you’ll be fine if the company fails (or that you know what you’re getting into).
I feel like I’ve heard about friends and parents chipping in small amounts to startups, is that a recent change or is there a limit on how much you can invest?
Friends and parents certainly can chip in but they usually get bought out for nothing or their shares are diluted to basically nothing when bigger money comes in.
They probably were using “start up” wrong but there’s no police force hunting down people who lied about being non-accredited investors. You just have to sign a standard form that says you’re an accredited investor and it basically just means you can’t sue anyone if you lose your money.
If a company fails, they might still have some value. In the medical company example I used, maybe they fail Phase III safety trials and don’t get approved. So, they sell all their laptops and beakers or whatever. You don’t get to sue anyone for shenanigans1 if you lied about being an accredited investor.
1 Shenanigans is not a legal term but don’t invest in risky start ups with founders you don’t know if you aren’t able to absorb the loss
This is true for pretty much any business. You should expect to be unprofitable for at least a year.
Tesla only exists because Elon talked Obama into subsidizing the living fuck out of it.0
Obama created tesla?
In a way. They were broke and about to shut down before the federal government stepped in.
The question I’m asking myself is: don’t people who work for a Musk company want to resign? I’d feel sick to my stomach going to work every morning.
My cousin works for Tesla and he absolutely despises Musk and the company, but he makes way more than he could anywhere else and is able to work remotely from his home in Canada. He also just bought a house so he needs that money.
He’s got the golden handcuffs
Are there people who don’t feel that way every morning?
I don’t. I like my employer, they like me. My company isn’t involved in anything disgusting or morally questionable. The products we make aren’t used for military purposes. The owners of the company are nice, decent, hard-working people.
I have a decent salary but probably below par for my age and experience. But the pleasure of waking up every morning looking forward to go to work outweighs the difference.
I dunno… Maybe I’m a minority.
In the same exact boat except Worked for a small company with a private owner and I took a jump to a giant corp (for the money) and absolutely hated every second of my life while I was there. Went out for a beer with my old boss, (the owner) a few months in and told him my current stateof mind. I didn’t ask or discuss coming back but the next day he sent me a new job offer with things more catered to my own personal goals and a bit of a pay bump.
I returned, It was never awkward I really enjoy going to work. I feel valued and when I left it made both the owner and I realize how much we benefit each other. I don’t have to take work home with me or ever stress about it. He’s super flexible with time off and if something comes up with my kids.
This allows me to persue things that interest me. I’ve learned c+ c# and some angular and made a crappy indie game. Ive learned the piano, guitar and how to sing. I’m starting a cover band with friends and none of this would have been possible because I would have been mentally and physically drained at the other place.
That value alone is hard to put a price on I just didn’t know until I hopped ship.
🏅
Yes, you are a very lucky minority. I would bet that 95% of humanity doesn’t like their job and 70% hates it. For the vast majority of people, work is a place where you go and somebody pays you to do something you don’t want to do.
I like my job in the sense of the overall purpose fulfilled each day, and I enjoy the logistical challenges I often face. What makes me not like coming to work and more and more looking forward to retirement is dealing with the people. Some of the workers, most of the management, and having to make things happen despite higher up decisions made for the company.
The great thing is that for the most part each day is its own thing, so I rarely have to walk into the next week and dread a continuing issue rolling over. It’s always new problems for that day to resolve, and I don’t mind the ones that normally come with the job. Just the ones created by those in charge that seemingly have never set foot in the field to see how their spreadsheet numbers really affect things.
I don’t like where I am for a variety of reasons but not even close to being so severe that I feel sick going to work or about what my work is contributing to. I had that experience once(in college) and quit within a month…thankfully I could at that point. But I would never stop looking for something else if my job sucked that bad.
I teach recent immigrants the language spoken here and work at a medium sized chain bakery. Both are pretty good.
Probably pays really well. Well enough to forget your conscience.
We might not know who is but we do know who isn’t.
I don’t really care because until The Problem is addressed, I will not support anything they do.
Elon Musk in-between his full-time job of grinding on his PoE 2 character
/s
A ton of underpaid exploited workers.
