Survey Says: Elon Musk Is Most Admired Tech Leader, Topping Bezos and Zuckerberg (teslarati.com)

First Round Capital conducted a poll of 700 tech company founders and found Elon Musk to be the most admired leader in the technology industry. Elon Musk received 23 percent of the votes; 10 percent said Amazon's Jeff Bezos, 6 percent said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and 5 percent wrote in Steve Jobs. First Round writes: "We launched State of Startups to capture what it means to be an entrepreneur. We asked the leaders of venture-backed companies about everything from the fundraising environment to their working relationships with their co-founders to their office's price per square foot. [...] Once again, we asked founders to write in which current tech leader they admire the most and we tallied 125 names. The Tesla and SpaceX leader held firm at the top spot (23%)..." Teslarati reports: While the survey did not ask respondents to explain their choice, it is safe to assume that Elon's propensity for setting lofty and visionary goals, and then being able to execute on them, is one trait admired most by tech founders. Most recently, Musk moved the scheduled start of production for the upcoming Model 3 midsize sedan forward by a full two years. Tesla also recently celebrated a record-setting third quarter and has been moving aggressively to close the second half of this year with 50,000 cars delivered. The company has announced a series of sweeteners to motivate people to order and take delivery of new vehicles before the end of the year. Unlimited Supercharger access for long distance travel and a, then, upcoming price hike on its entry level Model S 60, announced by the Palo Alto-based electric car maker and energy company, were incentives to stimulate sales. With plans to increase annual vehicle production by a factor of ten to twenty-fold by the end of the decade, send humans to mars and transform the energy sector, Musk's innovative solutions to rewrite humanity as we know it joins an elite rank held by few genius inventors and industrialists who have gone on to change the world.

Comments

Survey brought to you by

[Anonymous Coward]

The friends of Elon Musk.

Re:Survey brought to you by

[jellomizer]

Well out of the other leaders in the world he seems to be the only one betting a business model on overall cultural progress.

Zuckerberg - A platform where you can gossip and spy on your old high school crushes.
Bezos - A platform that can ship stuff you want to your door.

Musk - Focusing on clean energy, cleaner transportation, and space travel (that isn't so clean), but finding ways to make peoples lives better and push society to the future without it trying to wait for the other companies to change what they are doing only when they find out it is too late.

Re:Survey brought to you by

[K. S. Kyosuke]

and space travel (that isn't so clean)

Well, clean-er, at least (building space hardware is seriously expensive and therefore not clean at all, so reducing the need to build it every time increases the cleanliness - although Jevons' paradox may apply!)

Re:Survey brought to you by

[JoshuaZ]

Even space travel they have focused on trying to do it cleanly. A big part of why their next generation of engines, the Raptor, uses methane as a fuel is that in the long-run one can synthesize methane directly and a straightforward way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction. This has both an advantage in terms of Mars (can make more fuel on Mars) and also in terms of eventually making clean fuel on Earth.

Re:Survey brought to you by

[Anonymous Coward]

You are seriously understating what Bezos and Amazon are doing.

Re:Survey brought to you by

[ark1]

Do we know how the survey was conducted? Perhaps it was chose among "a. Mosk, b. Bezos c. Zuck d. Jobs"

Re:Survey brought to you by

[Anonymous Coward]

You are seriously understating what Bezos and Amazon are doing.

It could be worse. He could have said "it's an online bookstore!" -

Re:Survey brought to you by

[Anonymous Coward]

A platform that can ship stuff you want to your door

That is a bigger cultural change than electrical cars or batteries.

Re:Survey brought to you by

[Shane_Optima]

Musk - Focusing on clean energy, cleaner transportation, and space travel (that isn't so clean), but finding ways to make peoples lives better and push society to the future without it trying to wait for the other companies to change what they are doing only when they find out it is too late.

+5 Insightful... christ, really? The hyperloop is a bad joke that has zero potential to be revolutionary or cost-effective in the forms it's currently proposed[1]. It's just diverting funds that could be spent on a worthier cause and (ultimately) breaking the hearts of millions of starry-eyed geeks. SpaceX isn't revolutionary; it's just the chorus of NASA's swan song.

That leaves only Tesla which, yeah, has done some good stuff and has produced a fair number of interesting things, but right now they're far from the most important players on the scene. They're still a luxury car company, first and foremost. The real potential revolution is in the batteries and in the low end car market. Once battery tech gets good enough, electric cars have the potential to be cheaper and much more durable than ICEs, but from what I've seen Tesla has yet to lead this charge.

They should be buying up patents and building partnerships and lobbying governments for assistance to lay the groundwork for next-gen batteries that are both more powerful/durable and yet only cost, at most, a couple thousand bucks. From there, the world pretty much should beat a path to the door of not just Tesla, but every single EV company out there.

EVs are the future, not merely because of the possibility of rising gasoline prices or global warming but because ICEs are such dirty, heavy, complicated, and ultimately fragile pieces of crap. Tesla might be helping us leisurely saunter towards that future, but only as a minor side-effect of their main business strategy of building fun toys for the upper and upper-middle class.


1. It's only 2x faster than maglev, the proposed route is too short to make a big difference, the extra engineering challenges regarding the 1/1000 atmosphere vacuum and the ultra high RPM jet engine on the nose of the thing are handwaved away whist simultaneously claiming it's somehow going to cheaper than maglev (how in the hell is it going to be cheaper with a much more expensive track and a jet engine tacked onto the nose? And that's not even touching the cheaper per-passenger argument), and the security and safety concerns are ominous indeed... and are almost certain to obliterate any advantage in cost, public enthusiasm, or travel time that it might otherwise somehow retain.

Re:Survey brought to you by

[spire3661]

>SpaceX isn't revolutionary; it's just the chorus of NASA's swan song.

Really? Landing a first stage back on its tail during a COMMERCIAL, FULLY PAID FOR LAUNCH IS A BIG FUCKING DEAL.

Re:Survey brought to you by

[Shane_Optima]

>SpaceX isn't revolutionary; it's just the chorus of NASA's swan song. Really? Landing a first stage back on its tail during a COMMERCIAL, FULLY PAID FOR LAUNCH IS A BIG FUCKING DEAL.

I meant technologically revolutionary.

Being a market revolutionary doesn't excite me all that much, particularly since there is a very hard floor on how low they can drive the prices. Space travel was expensive and niche in the 20th century and it's going to remain expensive and niche in the 21st century. I'm glad it's still being done, and by an American company no less, but seriously... meh. 99% of their customers are going to be people who want satellites launched or perhaps governments who want to launch astronauts. The other 1% will be multi-millionaire tourists who want to experience space. The safety concerns and engineering challenges will, as always, prevent space travel from being a commonplace or cheap thing. (Unless SpaceX has been secretly working on a carbon nanotube space elevator or a space gun or some other non-rocket technology.)

Isn't this pretty much how things were 10+ years ago? How is this a change from the status quo?

Re:Survey brought to you by

[spire3661]

http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/1...

"The future is already here, it is just unevenly distributed" Cheaper space flight is both a market revolution and a technological one. Ubiquity and cheaper costs are just as important as raw innovation (not saying rocket flight will be ubiquitous or cheap, most humans will die in the gravity well they are born on). You can still do a ton of Information Age stuff with cheap(er) rockets.

Re:Survey brought to you by

[Shane_Optima]

From that article:

The downside is a much smaller coverage area. ... It's a potentially very expensive endeavor,

Yeah, that's a world-changer right there.

You'll forgive me, but as someone who has taken a closer look at the hyperloop long ago (before thunderf00t did his underrated take down), random expensive-sounding Musk pipe dreams don't really stir me unless some extremely compelling details are provided. The man has been tilting at technological windmills for years and years instead of pursuing things that are actually achievable and really would change the world.

Tesla's efforts are a slight exception here, I mean obviously they've helped generate some of that momentum that someone is eventually going cash in on to help get next gen battery tech[1] off of the ground, but it could happen a lot sooner if Musk could put away his toys for a moment and spend his interviews trying to sensationalize (in an entirely plausible manner) the effect that cheap, durable, high-capacity batteries will have on the world. Instead, Musk is caught up in the dream of and/or is cashing in on this retro-futurist "where are my flying cars and moon colonies" type of frustration, instead of actually leading revolutions that will have a massive impact. Not could, will.

The effect on cars alone is a massive game-changer, but it's not just cars: off the grid homes will become much more doable, drones will be cheaper and be able to fly farther, tether-free robots will become more and more attractive, Apple will be able to make some ridiculous phone that's 1.3mm thick, etc.


1. Very possibly just some form of nanotech manufacturing added to existing chemical designs to increase durability and density. Nanotech fabrication is one obvious area that benefits from trailblazing and front-loaded investment, with lower costs usually becoming possible down the road once demand is high enough.

There are also intriguing side avenues that, while possibly pipe dreams, would at least be semi-plausible pipe dreams that really do have a non-zero chance of profoundly changing the world. (By this I mean super-capacitors or cheap molten salt batteries. For transportation applications, I've long been curious about the possibilities of molten salt electric-external combustion engine hybrid. The heat generation mechanism would thus have a dual purpose, and both electric and ECEs are high-torque so neither should require an expensive and fragile transmission to function.)

Re:Survey brought to you by

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a BeauHD post. This guy sucks so much Musk that cum is literally leaking out of his ears.

Re:Survey brought to you by

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to add "for rich people", since nothing he does benefits anyone else.

Re:Survey brought to you by

[Anonymous Coward]

It's something that was happening anyway without Amazon. Amazon just happens to do a better job of it than their competitors. What Amazon are doing is hardly revolutionary.

Re:Survey brought to you by

[Anonymous Coward]

you are a charlatan. you obviously are not versed in battery research, but don't let me stop you from pretending you know what you are talking about or that you understand the magnitude of any inidvidual/firms' contributions to current battery tech. It is an amusing for some of us and just a smarmy internet comment to the rest. thanks for the laugh

Re:Survey brought to you by

[Shane_Optima]

I never claimed to be versed in battery research, nor did I make any specific claims, Mr. Anonymous Coward, regarding the eventual nature of the tech itself; I merely covered the likely outcomes of a revolution in cost and/or performance. Specific battery technologies, which do exist, were mentioned only offhand as possibilities.

Keep working on your reading comprehension skills. Adult illiteracy is no joke.

Re:Survey brought to you by

[Shane_Optima]

Also.

As far as Telsa goes, yes I had looked into their battery contributions and they do not appear to be using anything particularly special (yet), just some variant of regular consumer grade lithium stuff. If you've evidence that they are developing, promoting or are heavily lobbying governments to help fund next-gen battery tech (efforts that are on par with Musk's ridiculous hyperloop hijinks and lofty SpaceX claims), I'd be happy to issue a brief apology. Otherwise, pretty sure my point stands. I have a ~45 second Google limit for testing the bullshit that random ACs spout and I didn't see anything particularly interesting.

Steve Jobs rather than Tim Cook?

[Anonymous Coward]

Must hurt to be seriously outclassed in leadership by someone rotting in his grave. Looks like Apple is considered to be on autopilot after Jobs went, and the autopilot is named Tim Cook.

That Apple plane is solar-powered, but if you don't have a clue about North and South, you might still run out of Sun eventually.

Re:Steve Jobs rather than Tim Cook?

[Lennie]

Don't certain of celebrities get even more popular after their dead ? It's like people see a TV report on what they've done and understand what has been lost. Also Steve Jobs was already very popular. Tim Cook was hardly known by the general public in comparison.

Re:Steve Jobs rather than Tim Cook?

[thegarbz]

Don't certain of celebrities get even more popular after their dead ? It's like people see a TV report on what they've done and understand what has been lost. Also Steve Jobs was already very popular. Tim Cook was hardly known by the general public in comparison.

That generally happens to everyone other than a CEO. Quick without looking it up, who is Jonathan Ive? It may surprise you given that he has more to do with Apple's products than Tim Cook does.

Re:Steve Jobs rather than Tim Cook?

[Lennie]

I know who Jonathan is because I've read about him before, he's the most important designer at Apple.

Re:Steve Jobs rather than Tim Cook?

[jellomizer]

To be fair since the release of the original iPhone. What really new technology had came out that really made us excited? The closest I can think of is the 4k tv. And the ultra high resolution displays where Apple introduced on the iPhone 4. Where for the most part is kinda of a yawn.

the MacBook today looks nearly the same as a Powerbook 15 years ago. Sure it may be thinner and lighter and some cosmetics. But there hasn't been a big change in design for a long time.

Much of the advancements in technology had been on the dull side. Better batteries, smaller components, faster networks. Removing the last bits of mechanical parts from computers.

Re:Steve Jobs rather than Tim Cook?

[thegarbz]

Well I'm impressed. I'd be happy to run a survey of the Slashdot to prove that your knowledge of him is an outlying case.

Re:Steve Jobs rather than Tim Cook?

[grub]

I would think most of /. knows who Ive is. Amongst the general population you will get mainly blank stares.

Re:Steve Jobs rather than Tim Cook?

[Anonymous Coward]

Must hurt to be seriously outclassed in leadership by someone rotting in his grave. Looks like Apple is considered to be on autopilot after Jobs went, and the autopilot is named Tim Cook.

Your jealousy that neither Ricky Stallman nor Linus Torvald were named is noted. That's why you missed the part about " 700 tech company founders". If you had talked about Woz or even Ron Wayne you wouldn't have looked so over-angered.

Re:Steve Jobs rather than Tim Cook?

[Lennie]

Well, I read a site where a guy regularly writes about user interface design... make that most of the time: rants about user interface design. ;-)

But who would know all of them?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is sort of why I don't like popularity contests on the internet. Because who would know all of them in order to make the best comparison, maybe noone. :)

Creeps

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of douchebags spend money to see how much their friend is liked is fucking creepy, what the fuck is wrong with them ?

Re:Hey BeauHD! Trump Won!

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I'm feeling a little down, I just remember that Trump won the election. I still can't believe it sometimes.

the second

[Anonymous Coward]

he has issues much like the wiki leaks guy.

Topping Bezos and Zuckerberg

[Anonymous Coward]

And I top a turtle and a snail for top speed. Yay me.

Re:Hey BeauHD! Trump Won!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like Brexit, I'd never dared to dream.

Ah yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody loves non-GAAP.

Because it's not software

[Anonymous Coward]

Musk is popular because rather than making intangible items such as software he's advancing hard technologies like Rocketry and Cars. Physical engineering accomplishments are always going to outdo software for its ability to inspire. An example: K&R vs Steve Jobs, one made the software foundation for everything we use, the other made shiny physical products. Now when we look back 100 years from now Musk is going to be a visionary of the like of Henry Ford. The same is true of the person who invents working fusion, whether it's Polywell based, ITER, or something else. Once working fusion has been built it'll be hailed as a true landmark in science/technological progression. Warp drive is another advancement of this scale. These are the big advances which matter to the species and which are readily visible. It takes visionaries and money cold hard cash to make these projects happen and these guys might not be the only people smart enough to build these advances, but at the time they're the only ones putting their balls/livelihoods on the line to push us forward.

Re:Because it's not software

[swb]

I thought Henry Ford was a visionary because of his business model -- an assembly line that could mass produce cars for everyone -- not because he necessarily innovated the automobile concept itself.

Musk's advancement mostly seems in the electric drivetrain, less so in the business model. He wants to do direct sales, but while it runs against the grain of the existing car sales business, existing regulation and low production volume make it appear less than revolutionary, especially when many products are sold directly buy their maker.

Re:Because it's not software

[K. S. Kyosuke]

There's nothing wrong with software. Without software, the productivity of this world would drop like a brick. Numerical methods, advanced search algorithms, digital control systems etc. are all-important today for the things we do.

Having said that, when discussing such vital components of modern world, Facebook it ain't.

Re:Because it's not software

[Nemyst]

I disagree. The internet is equal parts hardware and software and has defined our current era. Self-driving cars and trucks might well cause a revolution in transportation methods and that's largely software based. A hypothetical sentient AI would probably be the greatest achievement of mankind and would be software.

No, the real reason Musk is seen as a much more inspiring figure is just that what he's working on is far more interesting and ambitious than just creating a site where you can share cat pictures and complain about politics or making a Walmart clone, but on the web. You could make amazing software, but the current trend is to make crappy websites.

Re:Because it's not software

[Anonymous Coward]

> Having said that, when discussing such vital components of modern world, Facebook it ain't.

Facebook, rightly or wrongly, is a means to acquire the signals and text/image data necessary to train convolutional neural nets and deep learning algorithms, and contribute to improving existing techniques. Without this data, it is difficult to advance the state of the art in AI (this was why AI stalled in the in 80s-90s -- lack of computational power and insufficient large scale training data). It is precisely these advancements in AI that enable other applications that will change the world.

Re:Because it's not software

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I'm not quite sure if you're not confusing the cause and effect here.

Re:Because it's not software

[JaredOfEuropa]

Ford's innovation in business is that he saw the value of building an affordable car, one that his own employees could afford. But to achieve that he had to re-engineer the production process (rather than the business process). He did not reinvent the concept of a car, but he certainly had to redesign it so that it could be built efficiently on his production line.

You could say that Musk is following a similar path. He wants to get to Mars, needs to get launch costs down to make that feasible, so he (and his engineers) are trying to come up with a reusable rocket that allows them to drive down that cost. From vision to business model to engineering.

Re:Because it's not software

[Anonymous Coward]

Edison was the innovator. Ford was a hard-charging business.

Re:Because it's not software

[tgv]

You're completely right. I can't imagine a single reason to vote for Zuckerberg, whose only motto seems to be "let's see how far we can screw our users today", and Bezos' tech moment is behind us now. Musk has electric cars, vertically landing rockets, and a hyperloop. How cool is that?

Re:Because it's not software

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the software of in his cars and rockets?

Re:Because it's not software

[Anonymous Coward]

If things don't go as planned, Musk may be remembered as another Edsel.
I hate to say it, but we stand an iffy chance of technology delivering Utopia (thanks to K. S. Kyosuke above). On the other hand, a plague that kills off 20% or so of the worlds population may leave the survivors off in a better situation. I'm saying that I would like to see that happen! (Although if push comes to shove I'd want a say in who stays and who goes--oh it's fun being am armchair philosopher). Anyway, survivors of the black plague in Europe often had cheap housing and other wealth fall into their lap, as one example. On the other hand, if too many of the people in your village died off...

Not much competition there

[Anonymous Coward]

Musk obviously is the better innovator and so don't see much in competition there. Zuckerberg and Bezos are wannabees and yet those two are making the money and Musk has yet to really prove his worth. Funny how that works sometimes.

Yeeeah ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, whoop-di-doo.
Bezos gave us: improved logistics, more crap from China, and no way to tell what is genuine and what is not. And he treats his lowest employees like shit. Not, wait, he doesn't have any lowest level employees - he farms that out, so he never has to fire anyone ever and never has to pay workers comp. And the death of the small book shop.
The Zuck gave us a glorified international phone book, and five eyes' wet dream. We still don't know where he's going with this - apart from wanting to become a private-internet-with-ads, and neither, I suspect, does he.
Musk gave us PayPall (okay - booo), functioning, practical, and good-looking electric cars, cheap (in comparison) access to space (okay - orbit), solar cells you actually want to put on your roof, a believable concept for public transportation, a vertically landing rocket that actually does, enough political savvy to wrangle an okay to launch US military satellites (HTF did he pull that off?), and plenty of other stuff ... and I get the distinct feeling he ain't done yet.
I certainly know which one I want to be when I grow up &| get my shit together.

Re: Yeeeah ....

[Anonymous Coward]

That should have been the summary text instead.

Zuckerberg created one thing, Bezos two

[NotInHere]

Zuckerberg has created one thing: Facebook
Bezos has created two things: Amazon and Amazon cloud.
Musk has created (or helped to create): Paypal, Tesla, Solarcity, SpaceX, ...

Facebook is just a ruthless market leader who is at #1 due to network effects, but Musk is driving real innovation.

Re:Zuckerberg created one thing, Bezos two

[Anonymous Coward]

Zuckerberg is just scum, nothing to admire about him personally. And from what they say it's not like he really created Facebook even.

Re:Zuckerberg created one thing, Bezos two

[Anonymous Coward]

Zuckerberg is just scum, nothing to admire about him personally. And from what they say it's not like he really created Facebook even.

If anybody has positive proof that Zuckerberg did not create Facebook, how would that increase his scumminess?

At any rate, if a septic tank explodes, what point is there in finding out who really did take the first shit?

Re:Zuckerberg created one thing, Bezos two

[Anonymous Coward]

Bezos has created two things: Amazon and Amazon cloud.

Bezos has created three things: Amazon, AWS-cloud and Blue Origin. FTFY.

Re:Zuckerberg created one thing, Bezos two

[Anonymous Coward]

Bezos has created three things: Amazon, AWS-cloud and Blue Origin. FTFY.

Plus he is involved in some minor interested things listed here: http://www.bezosexpeditions.com/

Re:Zuckerberg created one thing, Bezos two

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Musk was there for the founding of Paypal. Paypal was a .boom winner. He's nothing more than a lottery winner who then invested ... and by invested I mean lobbied congress for subsidies for Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity. He didn't create any of them, he funded people who knew what they were doing to create those companies using money he got by dumb luck.

What do you mean by this? At least SpaceX was born out of an economical analysis on the board of a plane bound from Russia to US. Of course, he started hiring specialists ASAP, but these very specialists contradict your claims that he "didn't know what he was doing".

Re:Zuckerberg created one thing, Bezos two

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks! Couldn't have put it better myself.

Re:Zuckerberg created one thing, Bezos two

[rpstrong]

t any rate, if a septic tank explodes, what point is there in finding out who really did take the first shit?

Damn, an AC post worth keeping.

Most admired

[Hognoxious]

Is that the same as "least despised"?

Re:Most admired

[K. S. Kyosuke]

In terms of mathematical programming, yes, that's how you invert an objective function.

Re:Most admired

[Ol Olsoc]

Is that the same as "least despised"?

Tragedy of the commons. Especially bad in this internet age.

Anyone who is in a position of power or innovation gets a raftload of hate. Just human nature for some people to be angry at success. Or be angry at popularity. Or wealth. Take any positive thing, and there will be some people who freak out because it is positive.

I do some things, and it is pretty surprising the amount of crap one gets just for doing some things. Takes a lot of effort and time, and most of my people just love it.

Where the tragedy of the commons effect comes in is that the person who can't stand positives or success comes in has the same access to me as all the people who are positive, or when they do have criticisms, frame them in a way that I can use. Hard to improve things by dying in a fire or any of the other cute shit I get on occasion.

Oddly enough, the bashing tends to come in public, and kudos in private, which can make a competent person look silly bad.

And some people have trouble handling it. Some people quit and go back to being a lurker in life. Some people have their access tightly controlled to insulate them. Me? I absorb them all, and sometimes play the troll like a fish, or ignore them, depending on what appears to be what they want the least. Its like absorbing their energy.

But back to Musk, he'll reap a lot of hate, but only because he's doing stuff. New stuff. Cool stuff in my opinion. And he's largely succeeding.

And we've heard all of the whining of the folks that can't stand him because of his success, be it that electric cars will never be practical, or taking every accident as proof that they are (fill in the pejorative here) or that his rockets are subsidized, or that Hyperloop will never work because Musk, or that the Solar City roof sucks for some reason.

So as we adjust to the electronic tragedy of the commons, we have to realize that the slashdotter who believes that we'll be on oil energy forever and thinks Musk is a commie or something, is not remotely the equivalent of Musk and others who actually do things.

Re:Most admired

[thegarbz]

Is that the same as "least despised"?

Yes, but then if you despise all tech leaders then that actually says more about you than them.

Re:Most admired

[Anonymous Coward]

What if you're just apathetic?
I don't despise these guys, but I can't think of a "tech leader" I actually admire.

Re:Most admired

[Hognoxious]

Does it? At least I'm not an overhyped blowhard like all the fuckers mentioned in TFA.

Re:Most admired

[thegarbz]

Yes, but then if you despise all tech leaders then that actually says more about you than them.

Does it? At least I'm not an overhyped blowhard like all the fuckers mentioned in TFA.

Well I guess it's validated now too.

My most admired

[Anonymous Coward]

I gave it some thought, and I really can't think of one. So I reluctantly agree with Elon.

"Topping Bezos and Zuckerberg"

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not hard, they both seem like dicks to me.

No surprise at all, just abuse vs hope

[Morgaine]

The survey ranking of the top 3 winning technology leaders is no surprise whatsoever. One of them is revolutionizing the EV, energy, space and transport sectors with a large number of leading technologies and hence gives people great hope for the future, while the other two are best known for their profiteering and abuse of the public. It's hardly a contest.

If you want to be known as a technology leader then you shouldn't be a leeching middleman as everyone will hate you, and rightly so. And if you do something technical then you should do it well, instead of doing it absolutely appallingly on purpose because that gives you greater profit --- I'm thinking of Amazon product search here, which is undoubtedly the worst search system that has ever been implemented in online shopping (advertising unrelated things in disguise). Prime Video has a similar purpose, mainly a vehicle for Amazon to put non-Prime content in front of you and make you pay for the privilege of their direct advertising. Oh and Bezos, you really shouldn't be abusing your employees either, it's bad karma.

Regarding Facebook, there's not a lot to say in terms of technology because all the company does is provide a website which monetizes and hence abuses people, so you have to scrape the barrel to find anything technical at all to say about them. One example of FB tech is that their techies release some fine open-source packages behind the scenes (only programmers hear about this though), but this is incidental to FB's primary product which offers no technical leadership at all. In fact they've given us technical regression since FB has closed off much public communication into a walled garden. Zuckerberg offers no hope at all.

So there we have it, not really a contest among those three. I'm sure there must have been other worthy companies in the surveyed 700, but among these three corporate leaders only Musk deserves to be called a technology leader. The other two should be filed under "Abuse for profit".

Re:No surprise at all, just abuse vs hope

[Anonymous Coward]

The survey ranking of the top 3 winning technology leaders is no surprise whatsoever. One of them is revolutionizing the EV, energy, space and transport sectors with a large number of leading technologies and hence gives people great hope for the future, while the other two are best known for their profiteering and abuse of the public. It's hardly a contest.

Still Trump won the election.

Re:No surprise at all, just abuse vs hope

[ShooterNeo]

Amazon product search is bad? To be fair I sometimes have trouble with it - especially if use the wrong search terms - and the sponsored products can be annoying - but it generally works. It lets you know what most people buy, what most people give good reviews to, and the review system is...better than nothing. When/if they fix the bribed review system it'll be pretty good. Also the "other products people bought" is good, so the "frequently bought together".

All in all it's better than newegg or ebay or going to the store in person. It's not bad.

Re:No surprise at all, just abuse vs hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon search is a joke. Generally only the first few items returned match your query, and the rest is a filler made up by Amazon. It's easy to see this by running a query and then changing the Sort-By dropdown (from its default of Relevance) to Price: Low-to-High. This brings out all the irrelevant crap which you never requested in your query but which they want to sell you. Or maybe their web developers are simply incompetent, who knows.

If a 1st year student were given basic search to implement as homework, Amazon's would earn them a 'C-'. Better than an 'F' grade I suppose.

Bezos is a good leader? Look at any Amazon page.

[Anonymous Coward]

When reading an Amazon web page, you are distracted by displays of other products.

Used books sometimes say the price is one cent, not the total price. The cost for shipping may be several dollars.

There are other areas areas where there is apparently no supervision.

Inside Amazon's Warehouse

Enjoy it wile you can...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Leader TRUMP! will be holding that title for many years to come.

tech leader != money provider

[Anonymous Coward]

None of these guys are tech leaders. They are money providers.

RDF residue

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. It's just the residuals of the reality distortion field. Steve Jobs had a good one.

thanks to the article...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, thanks to the article, now you know who some of them are. Classic symptoms of insecurity, inadequacy, etc.

friends, fanbois, what's the difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I don't know about friends, but these people are just fanbois.
Besides, the only way that Tesla made a profit is by collecting hundreds of thousands of pre-orders (at $1000 each) and they don't need to deliver the cars until 2017. Let's see if Musk is as popular the.

Re:friends, fanbois, what's the difference?

[Humbubba]

Friends, Elon has almost $5 belllllion dollars in federal subsidies. Talk about vision. I'm a fan, and not just about the money either. It's mostly about the money.

Elon is already making a list of people to send to Mars. And you know, Jeff Bezos must be one of those fanbois too - he put Elon's name at the top of his list to get off the planet.

Seriously, I'm in awe of Elon Musk. Electric cars made in autonomous factories, SpaceX, home batteries, crazy-ass solar panels - this guy really does have a vision. He tells you where he thinks the world is going, how most of us are going to screwed, and what to do about it. No wonder he has enemies that don't stop at the truth, but peddle what they'd have you believe.

Re:friends, fanbois, what's the difference?

[thoughtlover]

It's the solar panels for homes that's really freaking cool, IMO... and that specific product that will translate to more homeowners owning a piece of Elon's Empire well-before they'd be able to own a Tesla. It also has the potential to kill electricity utilities when those panels are combined with the home battery system that Tesla created.

Very cool!

Re:friends, fanbois, what's the difference?

[russotto]

Was that non-GAAP profit? Under GAAP rules they shouldn't be able to book the revenue on the pre-order until the car is delivered.

Re:friends, fanbois, what's the difference?

[Humbubba]

Thoghtlover said

...It's the solar panels for homes that's really freaking cool...

Oh, I do agree. Those cool solar panels and big batteries might do more than kill a home owner's power bill though. A drastic drop in energy costs for both households and manufacturing\industry could be the basis for an economic revitalization. Power companies louse, the country wins. Who wouldn't want that? Oh...

Re:Hey BeauHD! Trump Won!

[fluffernutter]

If that makes you happy, you must be white, male and straight.

Re:Hey BeauHD! Trump Won!

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better than Trump winning - Hillary lost.

The Clinton's grip on the DNC has been broken and we won't have a puppet of George Soros in the White House

Only on Slashdot

[drinkypoo]

Elon Musk Is Most Admired Tech Leader, Topping Bezos and Zuckerberg

Only Slashdot could admire Elon Musk for topping Bezos and Zuckerberg. *squick*

Zuckerberg, really?

[swillden]

I don't despise Mark Zuckerberg like many do, but I hardly think he qualifies as a tech leader. Facebook succeeded through luck, timing, hard work and good engineering. That's all laudable, but there wasn't much leadership or vision involved. Bezos' initial idea, an online bookstore, was hardly visionary or leading but subsequent decisions, especially the decision to standardize internal system interfaces that led to the idea, and ability, to create AWS absolutely was visionary. Google should have done that, but didn't have the vision. There's no debating the vision of Elon "Mars or bust in my solar-powered electric car" Musk. Musk has so much vision we'd call him a crackpot, except that he has a tendency to succeed. Steve Jobs was clearly a leader and a visionary with a focus on making technology simple and beautiful.

And there are other leaders around who I'd say are much worthier than Zuckerberg. Larry Page, for example, whose goal for his new startup was to "Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful", an insanely ambitious mission which arguably is no longer ambitious enough to describe what Alphabet/Google is doing. Mark Shuttleworth, not so much for Thawte as for Canonical, where his vision hasn't really succeeded in displacing Windows but has gone much further than most of us considered possible. Though a bunch of CEOs probably wouldn't pick him, I'd put Richard Stallman high on the list, too. His vision of the importance of software freedom has been incredibly influential.

I could go on, but the point is... Zuckerberg? Really? For what? I suppose it was visionary to believe that you could build a billion-user interactive system with PHP.

Re:Zuckerberg, really?

[thegarbz]

Facebook succeeded through luck, timing, hard work and good engineering

You're talking about a social network which was not the first, not the biggest and had some serious competition in its inception. Luck, timing and good engineering only go so far when your competition had the same luck, timing and good engineering. The way I remember history Facebook evolved through a careful strategy to take over markets as it went and by the time it was released to the general public it was a long way behind an incumbent competitor.

Sure timing has a bit to do with it (e.g. the now laughable Google+ may have been a hit in 2003) but your comment implied that it was a simple idea and it just needed some massaging to get to an otherwise empty market. That's pretty far from the truth.

Facebook may not have been visionary, but it certainly was the product of a great strategy. Also we like to talk about Zuckerberg as Facebook alone without realising all the other work that is going on. AI research, communication systems, network design, contributions to open source projects for really large scale systems, etc. They are at a forefront of machine learning and computer vision, datacentre design, and more recently VR.

To claim that he just built a social network through luck and a bit of sweat on PHP is just garbage.

Re: Zuckerberg, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no competition when FB started. Sure there was Friendster and MySpace, but they were both garbage and dying. It was easy to see where things were heading and he was first/best to capitalize on it and deliver.

Re:Zuckerberg, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Facebook succeeded through luck, timing, hard work and good engineering."

There is no good engineering at Facebook.
Even the initial 'technology' they created was underwhelming and could not scale.
Older programmers understand and practice good engineering.
Zuckerberg was just simply lucky, and got away with some others i.p.. His actions don't even meet the definition of 'engineering'.

He has no special skills, and is no more intelligence or valuable as any other overpaid douche-bag in the u.s.

Admired?

[Anonymous Coward]

What for?
Paypal?
Tesla?
SpaceX?

s'cuse me but he is clearly overrated.

Oh did I mention I dislike any kind of person cult? There you go.

Re: Hey BeauHD! Trump Won!

[Anonymous Coward]

What if he's one of the 45% of college educated women who voted for Trump?

Musk is the only tech leader

[Anonymous Coward]

Musk is the only tech leader among the three. Bezos is a merchant. Guess what merchants use tech but they really don't drive tech with their creepy disrespectful drone visions. Zuckerberg has a website. Woo hoo isn't that grand tech leadership. If it is tech then it has moreMusk actually has some tech contributions with Tesla and SpaceX. I mean really. Who actually admires Bexos and Zuckerberg? Envy perhaps but admiration? No way.

Re:Musk is the only tech leader

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon is also a tech-leader with AWS.

Re: Musk is the only tech leader

[Anonymous Coward]

I voted for Bexos.

Re: Hey BeauHD! Trump Won!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. I loathe Trump (voted for Sanders), but the Clinton death grip being pried off is a very good thing. Musk is DEFINITELY the greatest flim-flam man, that would seem to be the criteria for making the cut here. Hard as it may be for the people in The Bubble to believe, not all of us accept the people on this list's greedy, made up bullshit as vision or brilliance.

Re:Hey BeauHD! Trump Won!

[LynnwoodRooster]

That's a rather racist, sexist, heterophobic thing to say. Stereotype much?

zuckerberg

[Anonymous Coward]

All the shitstain did was make a website. At least the other two have actually *done* something.

Elon Musk's ex-wife is in Westworld.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you haven't seen Westworld, you really should. Great sci-fi with superb acting

Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Evan Rachel Wood, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Jimmi Simpson, Elon Musk's Ex-Wife... They're all there.

Re:Hey BeauHD! Trump Won!

[fluffernutter]

Logic fail.

Re: Hey BeauHD! Trump Won!

[Anonymous Coward]

What if he's one of the 45% of college educated women who voted for Trump?

Trump U does not count. The fact that you went to TU and still voted for Trump shows just how dumb you are.

Musk is popular because he stays out of politics

[Anonymous Coward]

Zuckerberg at Facebook did nothing to slow the lies from fake news sites. Bezos owns the Washington Post a center-right newspaper that occasionally criticizes the right. Half the country is either right-wing or left-wing., Go into politics and the half the country will love you and the other half will hate you.

For two reasons.

[Lumpy]

Musk is the only man that is actually building shit to help society and further humanity while making a profit.

The other two are simply hiring others to make money off the masses for personal gain. Bozos and Zuck have done absolutely nothing for society, in fact many would say that have done the reverse.

Re:For two reasons.

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Amazon has really improved the online shopping experience. Sure, that's not the same thing a trying to put people on mars but it has a more tangible effect on more people.

Re:For two reasons.

[Anonymous Coward]

Being able to buy more useless shit easier is NOT a benefit to mankind.
The man has put out of business a lot of smaller business owners and he is proud of that.

Overrated.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had Paypal ducats and taxpayer money, I too could spout crazy shit and blow through cash seeing what sticks to the wall.

That said, credit where it's due: Giant fucking battery factory in the US. Mad props to Musk for that.

Meanwhile Bezos is flooding us with exploding phone chargers, the Google Fuckboys are trying to eliminate anonymity, Nutella is trying so very hard to make us miss Ballmer of all people, and Chuckle Zuck the Hillary Cuck is busy attempting to eradicate the tech workforce via H1B.

Yeah, if I was forced to admire someone out of the bunch, I'd go with Musk, too.

Re:Overrated.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Giant fucking battery factory in the US. Mad props to Panasonic for that."
FTFY

Friends...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just keep drinking the Kool-Aid. Let's see if it really goes anywhere after the government wastes billions of dollars on this.

I don't think so..

[Anonymous Coward]

Admire Mark Fuckerberg.. haha.. Haha... HAHAHAHAHA. That nasty cunt can go to hell!!!

Don't forget workers

[manu0601]

While having a visionary tech leader is nice, it would be nice to remind that even the better idea needs workers to be actually implemented as something real.

Blue Origin

[Anonymous Coward]

For all the people praising Musk for SpaceX, why is no one mentioning Bezos's Blue Origin? They're *both* tech billionaires who established space companies aiming to develop reusable launch vehicles. SpaceX is ahead, sure, as they're currently running commercial launches, but Blue Origin plan to test their New Glenn launcher by 2020, and they were actually the *first* to achieve a successful first-stage landing (from a suborbital flight) in Nov 2015, a month before the first successful Falcon 9 first-stage landing.

I'm just sorry that Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace now seems to be defunct - else we'd have *three* tech moguls revolutionising the space industry.

Re:Hey BeauHD! Trump Won!

[LynnwoodRooster]

You just claimed only white, straight men supported Trump. I guess Ben Carson, Nikki Haley, and Milo Yiannopoulos don't exist in your world.

Re:Hey BeauHD! Trump Won!

[fluffernutter]

I claimed nothing of the sort. All I claimed was that it is a safe bet that you are while male and straight, so am I right or not? I'm assuming if I wasn't right, you would have just said that by now.

Re:Hey BeauHD! Trump Won!

[LynnwoodRooster]

So much for the judging by the content of the character, you'd rather stick to the color of the skin... Typical leftist.

Re: Hey BeauHD! Trump Won!

[fluffernutter]

No, your character is pretty much what I judge to be a Trump supporter. Thanks for proving my Pont.