Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[Josquius]

Not to mention he bought the damn thing.  If he was being diligent he should of gotten this briefing before the purchase.

The "he tried to get out of it and how he is stuck is pulling a batwoman" explanation increasingly makes sense.

[Jacob]

What's "pulling a batwoman"?

[Josquius]

What's "pulling a batwoman"?

Batgirl sorry.
Recognising it all as a disaster and figuring the best way to salvage it is a tax write off.

[mongers]

What's "pulling a batwoman"?

The other baddies made me do it, but I really love you?

[The Larch]

That does not seem to be the appropriate level of detail for the CEO.

Yeah, I really doubt that a CEO's place is "down in the trenches" so to speak, taking care of the nitty gritty parts of the business. This situation is also relevant because it shows that, for Musk, Twitter's problem is one that can be solved by hard skills like coding great software, or whatever, rather than one that needs of softer skills like developing a viable and profitable business model. I guess that engineers sometimes don't make for great executives.

As has been said before, Twitter is not a novelty start-up that needs its employees to put up the hours to develop something from scratch, it's a mature operation that needs to be well managed.

[celedhring]

The business school I often do work for is pretty adamant that C-level types should understand the technical details of how the business works, and imho that's not unreasonable. That doesn't mean they have to micromanage those aspects, of course, or partake in that kind of ridiculous demonstration of power as Musk has done.

[The Larch]

C-level types

[celedhring]

C-level types

What?

[The Larch]

C-level types

What?

What the hell is a C-level type? 

[celedhring]

C-level types

What?

What the hell is a C-level type? 

The highest executive level in a organization, the "Chiefs", i.e. the CEO, the CIO, the CFO, etc...

[The Larch]

C-level types

What?

What the hell is a C-level type? 

The highest executive level in a organization, the "Chiefs", i.e. the CEO, the CIO, the CFO, etc...

Ok, so top level executives then.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I guess that engineers sometimes don't make for great executives.

Whether this statement is true or not--let us be clear Elon Musk is not an engineer. By education or by training or any other means.

[The Larch]

I guess that engineers sometimes don't make for great executives.

Whether this statement is true or not--let us be clear Elon Musk is not an engineer. By education or by training or any other means.

For some reason I thought that was his background. Went to check on wiki and he has two bachelor's degrees, one in Physics and another one in Economics, and was going to start a PhD on materials science when he went into business.

[OttoVonBismarck]

You should read this thread:

https://twitter.com/capitolhunters/status/1593307541932474368?s=20&t=PwoXkYlqagyknvHYtCPLNw

It turns out Elon does not actually have a Physics degree, but diligent research will show he has lied about it for around 27 years--and more importantly, his reasons for lying about it go beyond just ego but also tie into his legal immigration status in the United States back in the 1990s. It ends up he very likely lived illegally in the United States for at least one year.

While that full thread is worth a read (it sources tons of primary materials here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zPeWaaCZHqfq0tnkPwc61A6bGHySdj91), this is a quickish summary:

1. Elon was raised in South Africa and attended college for a few months there in early adulthood. His mother had Canadian citizenship, which he used to expedite a visa for himself to Canada. His stated goal was ultimately arriving in the United States and he viewed Canadian residency as a path to making that easier than going straight from South Africa.

2. He moves in with a second cousin in Canada and works odd jobs, manual labor, for about one year. He then enrolls in a Canadian university for a time.

3. He moves to the United States to pursue classes at the University of Pennsylvania. This most likely occurs through him getting a transfer from the Canadian university, which also would have facilitated his F-1 visa.

4. There is no evidence of him legitimately graduating from UPenn in 1994 or 1995--which are years he has claimed to have graduated.

5. We instead of evidence he dropped out of UPenn in 1995 receiving no degree, and moved to California with brother Kimbal to attempt to get into the early Internet boom.

6. This is where Musk starts to show both his savvy and his bad ethics. He interviews extensively at a small Silicon Valley startup, but does not take the position. What he does take is the startup's business plan, and copies it to make his own business--Global Link. Global Link putters around for around a year, and tech investor Mohr Davidow likes what he sees and buys Global Link for $3m. The original startup guy whose business plan he ripped off eventually sued Musk and lost (it isn't really a tort to steal someone's non-patented "idea.")

7. Davidow has Rich Sorkin come in to be CEO of Global Link, rebranded 2Zip, and Elon is made a top executive. This is where Elon's education became a problem. This is 1996 and his F-1 visa would have been expiring, and he had few options to get a legitimate alternative visa. H-1B wasn't possible because it actually required a college degree. A "genius" visa for someone of "extraordinary ability" was highly scrutinized then and now, and Elon's experience of doing some self-taught computer programming for 8 months at his own startup simply would not have qualified for this visa. It appears very likely he simply lived out most of 1996 and into 1997 illegally resident in the country.

8. In 1997 he finally gets a college degree--but not in physics, he gets a degree in Economics from UPenn. He also has  a strange "blank diploma" from this time as well that cannot be easily explained, but his only diploma with any program written on it indicates an Economics degree from the Wharton business school.

9. At various times between 1997 and now, he has been questioned about his claimed physics degree at various times, and always has given shady or confusing answers. The evidence suggests he simply never had and does not have a physics degree. He was enrolled as a physics student, has actually admitted he was behind on classes--he was stuck getting poor grades in 2nd year physics classes as a third year student, then dropped out.

10. According to the research, despite its prestige as an Ivy League school, Wharton has a bit of a bad reputation for being susceptible to "massage" degrees for people of means. It appears very likely that in 1997, with big money backers supporting him, Musk was able to "arrange" something with Wharton to take a few business classes and combine those with his old credits to be issued an Economics degree--given the timeline he could not have completed Wharton's full economics curriculum, so he would've had to have gotten a special program of study approved at this time--which apparently is not super uncommon for people of means.

11. The researchers have pulled Penn Physics department newsletters from all of the relevant years, despite them announcing all of their graduates, Elon's name never appears on any graduation list. Further, while UPenn itself has done several events where it touts Elon as a graduate, the Physics department never has--it appears they are not part of the "game" that the business school engages in.

[The Larch]

despite its prestige as an Ivy League school, Wharton has a bit of a bad reputation for being susceptible to "massage" degrees for people of means

Didn't Trump get his degree from Wharton as well?