• netwren@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    We have to stop identifying ownership with these billionaires and “their work” because it’s not. It’s a team of people who got together to accomplish a mission whether they succeeded or failed. How often is their success just a leader getting out of their way, and how often is failure because leadership was overbearing and “used their authority” to make poor decisions over the group.

    “We” society only ever focus on these individuals and it’s horribly incorrect to do so.

    We need to forget the celebrities and identity the groups.

    • gizmonicus@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Absolutely. As someone who manages a small team, my duties are advocating for the people who work for me, listening to the people closest to the problem, mediating disputes between people with different solutions, and ensuring we are all working towards the same overall goals. Most of the success of the team is directly attributed to their work. My biggest contribution is making sure they have what they need to do their job.

      • uphillbothways@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        So, since you’re support staff and economically a cost center and not a producer, they make more than you, right? You advocate for their wages first, right?

        • Victor@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I mean, despite the down votes I thought this was pretty based, even if it came across as a personal attack.

            • Vanix@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Could’ve removed the entire appositive of your first sentence,and removed “right?” to sound like less of an ass with your wording :) valid question though. my employer does operate this way

        • gizmonicus@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Not everyone in my position is a sniveling little shit, as much as you may think. I do get paid more than my team, but not by some ridiculous margin. The lowest paid person gets 70% what I do and the highest paid person is at 95%. When I took over it was no shit closer to 40% for the lowest paid member. I fought for that to be fixed and burned up a lot if political capital doing it too.

          When COVID came along and pay cuts and layoffs were a real threat, I told my boss to cut my salary before anyone else’s. We never had to, thankfully, but I literally told him I would quit if they cut one of my subordinates pay or laid them off without first taking out of my pocket.

          I had a direct report who, for three years wanted to be in a leadership role. I fought for a new position for him and put my own ass on the line recommending him for promotion every chance I got. He’s been promoted past me and I hope (since I can’t see his salary anymore) he is getting paid more than me because he’s earned it.

          I’m not some superstar manager, but I do feel like I keep my team out of the political battles and turf wars so they can focus on doing what they do best without dealing with all that crap. That’s my job. When something goes wrong, I’m accountable. So when the people doing the work get it wrong and take a critical system offline by fat fingering a command, I’m the one answering the phones and taking all the shit for it and smoothing things over with stake holders. And unless it was a result of gross negligence, I’m not going to give them hell for it either because I’ve fucking been there before.

          I didn’t even want this damn job. I was perfectly happy being the technical lead and not having job recruiting and performance reviews to do, but I took it because I knew at the very least I would do my best to advocate for the people I care about, and that’s not something I could say about everyone who applied.

          So you can make snap judgements and assume because I manage a team that I’m just collecting a paycheck while everyone else does all the hard work, but I don’t and I won’t because it’s unethical and shitty and despite your own insecurities, I actually give a fuck about other people.

            • gizmonicus@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Considering how important it is to me that I’m not some piece of shit manager, yeah, it was a little personal. I take that kind of thing seriously. It kinda doesn’t work as a meme reference without the meme.

              • uphillbothways@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                This is a shit posting community. Meme references should be assumed.
                And I’m not your employee. Neither time nor place for your insecurities. Some conflict resolution skills ya got there.

                Immediately talking about yourself, claiming authority, offended at the least thing, telling people what to think instead of showing those traits, serious in an unserious setting, and more. Your response to what started with a simple meme reference has me seeing more in common with the worst managers I’ve worked with in your actual behavior.

    • captain_oni@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Hey, if these guys do everything they can to make sure their companies’ “achievements” are considered all their own doing; let’s be fair and attribute all the fault of their failures as well.

      But you’re right, billionaires ride on the shoulders of the people that do the actual hard work.

    • paddirn@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Anytime management gets involved with our work, it’s because there was a monumental fuck-up or because somebody is doing too much micro-management. In either case, it’s thrice as stressful as a normal project that goes slow as shit because everything has to be run by the big person.

      • tryitout@infosec.pub
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        1 year ago

        He spent a bunch of dough on that hair. I believe he is likely aware of his appearance. He is pale and overweight because he spends a bunch of time playing video games, being a nazi in his failing social media site, and (based on this picture) eating french fries.

        Maybe at some point his vanity will compel him to get liposuction or just go full orange man with spray tan and wear baggy suits with ties that are too long. I don’t see him being like Bezos or Zuck and getting into shape.

      • TheHarpyEagle@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Meh, Musk has plenty of shitty qualities that deserve criticism, we don’t really need to pick on his appearance.

    • Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com
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      1 year ago

      I hate the photoshopped photos of those “celebrities” in the news.

      I mean splash one of the Elon news on this photo mother fuckers!

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    He’s a successful scammer, for sure, but at the end of the day still a scammer who got fired for incompetence and then got lucky.

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        A scammer who used his money he made through scamming to become CEO, and then to scam even more:

        • Scams his employees by paying too little or not at all

        • Scams his money lenders by breaking their investment

        • Scams his customers by asking premium prices for underperforming products

        • Scams governments out of funding

        • Scams new tech startups by suing them in order to be called a founder

        • Scams every person in every country his companies operate in by not paying the taxes he is owed

        • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I wasn’t talking about Twitter.

          SpaceX launched 60% of three global space launch market, I would say that’s pretty damn important. Also, Starlink.

          In any case, it’s obviously the people who work at these companies that are doing the work, not Mr muskrat.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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        1 year ago

        Are you going to tell us next that cigarette companies didn’t scam the public when they knew that their products caused cancer and didn’t reveal it because Phillip-Morris was so valuable?

        How about Theranos? At peak it was worth $9 billion. Not a scam, right?

  • TheLurker@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Poor Elon trying to tech-bro his way into social dominance by buying a social media platform.

    And to think that only ~6 years ago people saw him as a progressive visionary.

    There is the lesson people. Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought of as an idiot than to open it and remove all doubt.

    • CryptidBestiary@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I think that lesson definitely applies to us average folks. But the bigger lesson here is to not trust billionaires. You would have to be a special kind of asshole to reach the status of a billionaire

    • Dojan@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Like, I don’t know enough about this BS to argue, so I’m just going to believe what you’re saying, but what’s the point?

      NASA put people on the moon 54 years ago. Musk has said he’d do it several times now, but he’s not there yet.

      He’s also said that he’ll make space travel super cheap, yet his launches cost more than the Russian Soyuz ones used to.

      They’ve gotten nowhere near the moon, and Russia does launches cheaper with their WWII tech than Musk does with his cutting edge stuff. So to me it just looks like they’re burning money for funsies.

      • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        No it’s not…not at all…

        https://marspedia.org/Financial_effort_estimation

        Falcon is very successful. On top of that it allows the US and EU to stop providing money to RU for it’s war crimes

        Space travel is needed, right now we’re just on big rock away from being a short timeline in the history of the world.

        One reason SpaceX is so successful is because of the red tape that’s been removed that NASA had to deal with, getting to the moon isn’t the end goal, it’s just a platform to use as a layover for other travel.

        • kautau@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yeah musk has little to do with SpaceX success besides just being the money man.

          I fully support SpaceX and want them to succeed. I just want musk to be forcibly ejected and the company to be run and managed by more competent and ethical people because it’s obvious from his efforts at Twitter that he has no business running a company, much less one that has real and constant possibilities of bad management meaning the loss of human life.

          I feel the same way about Tesla, but Tesla to me is no longer about moving the human race forward. There are better competitors to Tesla, and now that EVs are mainstream, the trash build quality of those vehicles should mean the company should die or be absorbed.

          But also I just watched AI ethics die in 48 hours so that rich people could make more money, so fuck me I guess.

        • Dr. Dabbles@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Nothing we’re doing is going to prevent “one big rock” from changing life on earth. And there’s a solutely no possibility of moving humanity anywhere else. Science fiction isn’t a reason to support nonsense.

          • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Wow…you would have been that guy in a cave that said this is fine, no need to go outside.

            You have to start somewhere

            • Dr. Dabbles@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              This is a foolish response. We aren’t going to live anywhere but this planet, and only a moron thinks humanity is leaving this planet. Truly stupid shit, spoon fed to the incredulous by a billionaire dipshit and a century of science FICTION stories.

              Back to the Zubrin books for you.

        • Tyfud
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          1 year ago

          Space travel and colonization of other planets are wildly different problems to solve. We’re nowhere near colonization levels of anything outside the most habitable areas of the earth.

          We can’t even create a self-sustaining habitat on Antarctica, and that’s many times easier than Mars, the moon, or whatever other planet in our reach we’re shooting for.

          • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            We most definitely can create a self sustainable habitat in Antarctica, there is no real value of doing so though. That’s why we haven’t. And with the attitude you have we might as well not touch space anymore. You have to start somewhere, it just sounds like you hate a musk company doing it.

            • Tyfud
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              1 year ago

              Man, there’s a lot of projection here from you.

              I didn’t mention Musk once. Not even a little. That’s all you trying to simp to the jackass.

              There’s plenty of reasons not to try and colonize Mars right now. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t advance the technology ahead.

              But thinking that colonizing Mars is even remotely doable with the technology we have access to today, or in the future we can see, is being completely detached from reality.

      • flooppoolf@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago
        1. NASA already exists. Feed and house the poor instead, save the planet from greenhouse gases, help create new expensive policies to curb addiction and homelessness. Anything except literally burning money into our atmosphere. What the fuck are landing pads and propulsion guidance systems going to do for the entire planet.

        2. I don’t have to prove why you’re wrong I just don’t have to agree with you.

          • Dr. Dabbles@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            … You don’t realize that commercial entities have always built space craft for the government, so nothing you’re saying has any credibility. You should probably know something about the topic before arguing about it.

        • hoshikarakitaridia@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          “NASA already exists” if his team is doing something never done before and very helpful, that is evidence for the necessity of other space companies besides NASA.

          Edit: just so we’re clear, I don’t give two shits about Elaine Mosk.

          • flooppoolf@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Listen muskrat, who is this helping? Are we delivering cargo to mulvonites in sector 9?

            There is no need to be pursuing this science right now when there is more concerning shit like not having a planet to live on in the next 60 years because we made it a bit too hot.

              • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                You need to provide counterpoints for why their comment on why space tech is unneccesary in saving the planet, otherwise people will think that you have either nothing to say, or worse still, that you think living in space is an achievable reality for your descendants (no, they won’t be part of the super rich elite)

          • Dr. Dabbles@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            NASA isn’t a company, and they’ve always paid contractors to make their vehicles. Crucially, noone is doing anything that hasn’t been done before.

    • Dr. Dabbles@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      lmao

      Hot staging didn’t hot stage, flight termination failed again, it didn’t reach its target altitude, a bunch of engines flamed out unexpectedly again.

      That’s not a success. Not exploding on the pad doesn’t make it a success. Stop believing the YouTube simps.

    • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Massive success in the interest of science, in the sense that we can learn form our failures? Fine, it’s odd phrasing for a multi-billion dollar corp whose sole aim is to make money by cornering a not-yet existent market.

  • Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    He’s got the money where he can be lazy and still fix his health. Hire a personal chef and dietician. A personal trainer and a gym. Take a minute and get a stylist.

    You’re a billionaire for goodness sake. Buy a top hat!

        • captain_oni@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          we got a glimpse of that before he got his hair transplant.

          Not shitting on anyone that gets transplants, or decides to embrace their baldness; just shitting specifically on Elon, because fuck his anti-worker, anti-consumer ass.

    • explodicle@local106.com
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      1 year ago

      This must be after all that stuff. Without the billions, he’d look like the stereotypical basement neckbeard.

    • Fades@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You seriously think he has it in him to work hard on himself (or anything for that matter)??

      No shot, instead he would use that money for shit like ozempic, lap band or lipo surgery, etc.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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      1 year ago

      That’s not actually a country song, but I think maybe someone should blow Elon’s nose and then blow his mind. A massive brain aneurism would only benefit the world.