I just want Elon to call Trump “pedo guy”, so I can sit back and enjoy the fireworks.
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I’ve met a few narcissists. That’s all it ever is. That’s where they’re stuck, and they can’t leave. When you get to know a few, it’s astonishing how empty things are inside them.
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For certain limited Wall Street definitions of “futurist”, I guess. He’s a talented investor, promoter, and market manipulator who managed to parlay a lucky break during the dotcom bubble (partially bankrolled by his dad) into his current fortune due to his ability to spot tech trends and exploit them in the short- to medium-term. He’s not really a visionary futurist or a hands-on engineer and he’s definitely not a trustworthy business executive.
That’s been my experience as well. Unfortunately their dysfunction is such that they want to suck as many people as they can into that void.
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He invests in relatively unchallenged companies in heavily federally subsidized markets and refuses to pay taxes. If “taking advantage” and “being an asshole” is a strategy, he is the master of 4D chess.
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He’s an awful futurist, then. He’s been promising self driving cars for over a decade and still can’t even get them close, he promised a person on the moon this fall when his spacecraft’s having trouble getting off the ground in crewed lunar situations, he’s said we’d be speaking with our minds and microchips by 2025, and has delivered on absolutely none of this. None of the technology companies he runs have invented anything new or compelling that actually made it into production. If he’s a “futurist” he’s doing a horrible job.
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Point of order. A “futurist” is someone who pontificates about what technology is absolutely going to radically change our lives in 10/20/50/100 years. Sometimes, by accident or because it’s so obvious, they even get it more or less right. In the same way that Nostradamus’ quatrains sometimes got things more or less right, and usually for the same reason.
The word for a person who makes the technology which will change our lives is “engineer”.
Musk is not an engineer. He’s also not much of a futurist.
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And he’s definitely not the messiah. Just a spoiled brat.
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He only seems like a futurist to the MBA crowd because he’s looking at business opportunities (maximum) five years down the road where they can’t look beyond the next fiscal quarter.
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Thanks - this isn’t said often enough. IMO, it’s also the only reason that his “gigafactories” kind of work (for now). His manufacturing thinking appears to be a throwback to Henry Ford. Fordian manufacturing has been completely trounced by Toyota’s Lean-style manufacturing for decades.
The Ford Production System only really works at “economy scale.” Its efficiency decreases as market share decreases due to the costs of the specialized machinery.
Admittedly, Ford-scale production using flexible, multipurpose machines could eliminate some of those downsides. However, even if the technology is there, it still seems unlikely to me that one company will be and remain at the top of industry performance through the whole processing chain. A series of local companies (even wholly or partially owned) would be able to take contracts for other design firms. That would help keep them exposed to new ideas and industry trends.
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From his own statements: the factories are struggling. They are understaffed, undersupplied, and underproducing. The hype overshadows actual performance in Musk’s case. He is one of the truest examples of US investment conflating money with expertise. This guy has a lot of one and what he is an expert at isn’t anything we should respect.
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He goes into those companies quick and dirty, applying the “move fast and break things” Silicon Valley mantra to industries not suited to it (like automobiles or aerospace). He then makes wild promises about upcoming features that maintain the illusion of a “visionary” for the fanbois but in practical terms only blindside the actual engineers who work for him.
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Y’know, I’ve never met a decent person who genuinely likes him. Sure, plenty of folks like the money that they make off him, but he man himself?
Not so much; only emotionally stunted fanboys and sociopathic malcontents seem to be checking for him.
So basically, it’s the same type of followers as 45’s fan base.
Go figure…
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To be fair, Lean is getting pretty beat up right now. “Just in time” supply is terrible during a pandemic…
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Speaking as a nerd, HELL NO!
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Without going into a thesis, I’d argue that JIT is Lean with all the protection and resiliency stripped out. They’re not the same.
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Fair. I’m speaking as much about how it’s practiced by the “black belts” I’ve worked with who think “safety stock” and “critical components” are dirty words…
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I will grant I know some people who had real respect for him. But the rich mining heir never had real potential for progressives, the ones who had hopes for him were more techie libertarians. There is this notion that truly smart people should be able to become rich off their inventions, and then these visionary John Galts should lead us into a brave new future. Except then all the actual billionaires keep being useless idiots whose visions don’t extend beyond quarterly profits.
Elon Musk was hoped to be the exception because he at least talks about cities on Mars and autonomous vehicles. To the point where many fans have tried very hard to overlook the fact that once you get past the fact he watched a sci fi movie at some point, he’s very much still the same type of born-into-wealth huckster who has no idea what he’s actually talking about. Heck, he’s not even good at memes like he thinks.
That is a kind of betrayal, that he is promising to take mankind all these wonderful places, and except for expecting talented engineers to do the heavy lifting has no plausible ideas for any of it. But only if you believed the first part.
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Oh, agreed - those practitioners have lost sight of the fact that inventory is the river and disruptions are the rocks. You have to keep the inventory level high enough to avoid disruptions, permanently lowering the inventory level only after removing the rocks, testing the lower level, and seeing that it works.
There’s an argument to be made that a disruption of this magnitude was unforeseeable, or that companies without the purchasing power of a Toyota-sized company can’t secure the contracts needed to avoid supply chain disruption. I’d argue A) even Toyota got complacent over the years and didn’t lock down their IC supply and B) if you can’t avoid the disruption then you just don’t get to lower inventory levels. After all, I don’t really get to stop paying for insurance just because I want to lower my monthly spending…
Pretty OT, so I’ll knock it off. I just wanted to say that I’m only being pedantic in this case because IMO conflating JIT and Lean can be a barrier to implementing the safety features in Lean that could help recover supply chain resiliency.
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