As we danced at our wedding reception, Elon told me, "I am the alpha in this relationship." I shrugged it off, just as I would later shrug off signing the postnuptial agreement, but as time went on, I learned that he was serious.
...the will to compete and dominate that made him so successful in business did not magically shut off when he came home. This, and the vast economic imbalance between us, meant that in the months following our wedding, a certain dynamic began to take hold. Elon's judgment overruled mine, and he was constantly remarking on the ways he found me lacking. "I am your wife," I told him repeatedly, "not your employee." "If you were my employee," he said just as often, "I would fire you."
And no matter how many highlights I got, Elon pushed me to be blonder. "Go platinum," he kept saying, and I kept refusing.
If that's how he managed his wife imagine what his execs deal with.
Well, the guy claims he needs to be in a relationship to be happy. Not the healthiest thing.
>If I'm not in love, if I'm not with a long-term companion, I cannot be happy," he told Rolling Stone. "I will never be happy without having someone. Going to sleep alone kills me. It's not like I don't know what that feels like: Being in a big empty house, and the footsteps echoing through the hallway, no one there -- and no one on the pillow next to you. F--. How do you make yourself happy in a situation like that?"
- Personal lives aren't really a reflection of how someone runs a business.
- He filed for divorce before starting a new relationship. If he'd done worse, presumably we'd be reading about it. That says a lot about his character.
- For his childrens' sake, it's probably better to live independent and stable lives rather than fighting constantly.
- HN is growing large enough that Elon might want to start posting here (as he does on Twitter), so it's probably not too helpful to incite a crowd into jeering at one side of a story.
Even with a top-tier company, recruiting top-tier employees, doesn't implie top-tier-interesting-work. I do think many of the top-tier companies do have good people, because they can pay for them, but it almost seems like it's a defensive move to keep talent away from other companies, rather than utilizing that talent to the utmost.
Sounds great but not a good idea in practice. A company should always be designed in a way that it works smoothly even with people of modest backgrounds. Especially as it grows larger.
Otherwise your "top tier" employees become liabilities, and it becomes unsustainable to rely purely on everyone being a top player. Basically you want a company that can still operate effectively even if everyone was a dumbass.
The game design. I meant user experience design constraints.
For example:
- Most people will lose after fewer than half the questions have been asked and have little reason to stick around.
- The chance of having a meaningful "win" is so low as to be nearly pointless. I won a round that, like, 100-ish people out of 50,000 won. That's too low. Games can also have multiple flavors of winning.
- Money is not a useful incentiviser. In fact, it can ruin the experience. Again, I won a round (along with about 100-ish people). Won about $15. Which after all of the hooting about $5k or $10k in prizes felt pathetic. (Also I can't withdraw until I get $20, which felt sort of insulting or borderline scammy and tainted the experience.) Good games create their value without extrinsic prizes -- or, at least, the extrinsic prizes have to be valuable enough to add significant drama to the game.
- Straight multiple-choice trivia is the unflavored ice cream of game design.
I could probably come up with a few more things, but it's late and I've got this third glass of half egg nog/half whiskey blend that I need to finish before bed. (Not a Christmas thing, just my year-round nighttime ritual.)
It'd be nice if you could still win 'points' or have some other reason to stick around. But I still do feel fulfilled even dropping out early. I think it makes getting further feel even more special, because you're simply in the game longer than normal.
Money is a great incentivizer to get people excited / interested. It's already fun but the _potential_ of actual cash makes it feel more exciting. It's also a better word-of-mouth hook.
The simplicity of multiple choice makes it easier to play with multiple people and still select an answer. It gives framing (you know one is correct), but 3 choices is still enough drama after it starts to get hard.
I'm not saying there's no possible improvement, but I feel like they've really hit the nail on the head with this one, and their growth curve seems to agree.
It's natural but probably wrong to assume that a product's success means it's getting nearly everything right. I agree with the original point: they've hit upon a really exciting concept in getting everyone around the world together at certain times to play a game, but the specific game is not very good.
I think you could even plug in traditional TV game show formats (something more like Jeopardy, for example) and do quite well. That would keep much more of the initial audience around for the whole game, and watching the inevitable forthcoming ads that will be required for the company to make any money from this growth.
