Do rich people become jerks or do jerks become rich?

[JEDI]

Correlation between wealth and empathy is obviously severely negative, but what direction is the causality?

 

[KMFJD]

He's been slowly losing it since Grimes left him for Chelsea Manning

/actually there were plenty of signs before that as well, but it definitely accelerated his assholishness

 

[biostud]

I think the general consensus is that everyone is a jerk

 

[Torn Mind]

I have dealt with duplicitous, destructive assholes (not exactly the same as jerks) regardless of the tracks they came from.

Don't be fooled by the cosmetic differences between an attorney and a hood criminal of color. They use the same fucking tools...and mix of logic and social norms to cover abusing the system.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I'm normally a fan of Elon but I do see that he can also be a jerk and would not want to work for him. He has that mentality that if you don't work long hours and work hard all day you're not good enough. I always found that concept dumb, but it's a very American thing as lot of people think that way or are even proud of it when they put in like 80 hours a week. Working hard just for sake of it is actually not smart. If a job requires to work that hard it means it's not efficient.

 

[sdifox]

He's always been an asshat.

 

[jpiniero]

Elon is too early. Should have waited until the Fed does their thing. But yes, expect companies to threaten people with their jobs if they don't RTO.

Good way to get people to quit without having to pay severance too.

 

[repoman0]

Elon is too early. Should have waited until the Fed does their thing. But yes, expect companies to threaten people with their jobs if they don't RTO.

Good way to get people to quit without having to pay severance too.

Yes, we all know you take joy in workers being miserable via forced RTO.

The best companies who hire the best workers (speaking specifically about engineers here) will continue to offer remote work. Good quality engineers will continue to be equally or more productive at home 3-5 days per week. Tesla is and always has been a shit place to work with no respect for their workers so this is right on brand.

 

[mikeymikec]

He comes from an environment where working other people to death in emerald mines is OK. There's a shitload of entitlement that naturally goes with that. He also hates any criticism of his actions, so obviously he's hardly lived a life involving critical reflection from those beginnings. Any bad start his humanity had will only have been allowed to get worse.

We're all products of our environments at least to some extent. For the longest time I thought that people my age who couldn't spell / use grammar correctly must have been lacking in common sense / intelligence (justification being that I thought I just 'knew' how a word ought to be used / spelt), then at some point I realised that my early grip of the language was mostly due to my parents priding themselves on it and bringing me up according to their values/priorities. I also grew up with a touch of homophobia and racism (typical child of the UK in the eighties AFAIK), which took me a while to dispose of.

 

[jpiniero]

The best companies who hire the best workers (speaking specifically about engineers here) will continue to offer remote work.

Except it doesn't work for New Grads... and as it turns out, The Man underestimated how popular WFH is with them.

So now they are going to have to crash the stock market to get people back in line.

 

[JM Aggie08]

*Laughs in fully remote work*

 

[pcgeek11]

Well it is his company and he is the boss. He does leave room for approved exceptions.

I have been working in an automotive production facility for many years as an electronics and automation tech. They need engineering/programmer support available on site. A shutdown in production due to a lack of support can cost tens or hundreds of thousands if not more per hour. I could see an issue if he were demanding 60 or 80 hours a week.

 

[repoman0]

Except it doesn't work for New Grads…

I have watched it work well for two years. Just because boomers can’t handle it doesn’t mean millennials and gen Z who grew up online can’t.

*Laughs in fully remote work*

+1

 

[nakedfrog]

He's always been an asshat.

This.
But he also started out rich, did he not?

 

[sdifox]

This.
But he also started out rich, did he not?

Wealthy family, but he is trying to rewrite the narrative. Don't get me wrong, he accomplished quite a bit, but it is not the same as starting from nothing.

 

[Charmonium]

I'm normally a fan of Elon but I do see that he can also be a jerk and would not want to work for him. He has that mentality that if you don't work long hours and work hard all day you're not good enough. I always found that concept dumb, but it's a very American thing as lot of people think that way or are even proud of it when they put in like 80 hours a week. Working hard just for sake of it is actually not smart. If a job requires to work that hard it means it's not efficient.

I used to have that problem all of the time. I'm not the most "compliant" person you'll ever meet so I tended to get a log of grunt work when I was coding. But 9 times out of 10 I found a way to automate the work anyway. Boss thought he was punishing me. Sucker

 

[JEDI]

He's been slowly losing it since Grimes left him for Chelsea Manning

/actually there were plenty of signs before that as well, but it definitely accelerated his assholishness

Wait.. What?
The whistle blower?
How did they meet?

 

[jpiniero]

I will say that this might be Elon committing securities fraud yet again.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Rich people can afford to be jerks. Money solves every problem. Sad reality of our existence.

 

[nakedfrog]

I will say that this might be Elon committing securities fraud yet again.

Well, with how harshly he was treated last time, not much reason to stop now, right?

 

[Commodus]

I'd say it's jerks becoming rich.

While there are certainly nicer people who become rich, more than a few are Type A personalities who succeed precisely because they're assholes. They're too demanding of others because they're too demanding of themselves; they're the ones who'll work 80-hour weeks or toss out a project at the last minute because it's "not good enough." Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs are other examples.

The problem, of course, is that these assholes often have precious little regard for concepts like "safety," "work-life balance" and "labor rights." They'll work you to the bone and expect you to thank them for the privilege.

 

[Torn Mind]

I know one thing...
#2(ponyo) will be in this thread soon enough.

 

[JulesMaximus]

I hope all his best people leave and go to work for Rivian.

 

[pmv]

I'd say it's jerks becoming rich.

While there are certainly nicer people who become rich, more than a few are Type A personalities who succeed precisely because they're assholes. They're too demanding of others because they're too demanding of themselves; they're the ones who'll work 80-hour weeks or toss out a project at the last minute because it's "not good enough." Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs are other examples.

Yeah, that's the interesting part (insofar as there's anything more to it than 'entitled arseholes will be entitled arseholes'). To some extent it can be a case of being hard on others because you are hard on yourself (a person I knew who was constantly making negative remarks about other people being 'fat' was themselves a diagnosed anorexic, to a life-threatening degree)

The thing is those like Musk don't seem to grasp the difference between working very long hours voluntarily because you own the company and stand to reap all the financial benefits, or because its your pet project that you have a direct emotional commitment to, and working such hours solely to make more money for someone else, or further their dream.

 

[ThisLinkIsDead]

Musk gets way more credit than he should in the first place. Tesla was an already existing company with the Tesla Roadster as their idea. Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning were co-founders of Tesla. This is always glazed over, and everyone acts like Musk did this all himself.

The guy is a piece of work though. I wouldn't want anything to do with him in any business setting. Not working for him or as a board member. I hope the SEC goes after him soon with all the sneaky illegal crap he seems to be doing.

Now he has sexual allegations against him. His response is "you don't know the whole story" and "I've been in business 30 years and never been accused". Sounds like the famous last words of Jeffery Epstein!