I'm glad that people look up to someone like that.
What I am disappointed by is how his fans react to criticism. There's healthy respect and there's unhealthy worship. When you have a bunch of people who will get really upset due to any criticism that is on the worship side of the coin. Any community with voting arrows (HN/Reddit) suppresses anything negative said (no matter how supportable/well constructed the criticism may be).
Plus these same fans love to attack competition who are also doing really cool stuff instead of supporting them (e.g. Orbital ATK, Faraday Future, NIKOLA ONE, et al). Using arguments that are often double standards or ignore Tesla/SpaceX's own history to make them work.
Huge fan boy here. I'm not saying he does no wrong; he's ruined his first, second, and third marriages. He's probably not around at all for his five kids. Its assuredly soul crushing (workload/expectation-wise, not mission, which makes a huge difference) working for him.
But he's changing the world. So I give the guy wide latitude with my opinion. At least he's not yet another useless silicon valley billionaire. He is the least terrible billionaire industrialist IMHO.
Yes, he has done great things since he left. But he set the computer industry back decades with his predatory business tactics.
A big part of the reason why we have so many walled gardens now is because he started the trend. And we're lucky we have multiple walled gardens. If he had succeeded a little longer we'd still only have one big one.
Isn't Gates still heavily invested and active in Intellectual Ventures? And the Gates Foundation involved as well? My impression is Gates and Myhrvold are still a team, though like Microsoft itself, now focus their efforts on creating and monetizing intellectual property.
So one became a humanitarian statesman? And the other became king of the patent trolls, the most feared man in the Valley? Or perhaps soon, humanitarian statesman and inquisitive chef? Image management is mazing.
Orbital and such are doing great things, but Faraday appears to be a bunch of scammers with no product. Maybe they'll prove me wrong, but until they demonstrate that they have something, I don't see what's wrong with criticizing them.
What I am disappointed by is how his fans react to criticism. There's healthy respect and there's unhealthy worship. When you have a bunch of people who will get really upset due to any criticism that is on the worship side of the coin. Any community with voting arrows (HN/Reddit) suppresses anything negative said (no matter how supportable/well constructed the criticism may be).
Plus these same fans love to attack competition who are also doing really cool stuff instead of supporting them (e.g. Orbital ATK, Faraday Future, NIKOLA ONE, et al). Using arguments that are often double standards or ignore Tesla/SpaceX's own history to make them work.