Tech Worship Is Breaking the Industry
I used to dream of working at a place like Tesla. Not anymore. I’ve seen https://www.votetesla.com and frankly it makes me want to run from the whole idea.
To give Elon Musk a pay deal of $1 trillion and telling retail investors that it’s because “he’s worth it” and encouraging devotion to a polarizing figure simply doesn’t make sense. We shouldn’t be asking investors to ignore reality in the tech industry as a whole.
It’s Illogical
When you’ve have a company that struggles to meet sales expectations led by a politicized polarizing CEO that thinks this is the time to make Elon Musk richer than any human (ever) questions need to be asked.
Poor sales? Check.
Robotaxis that can’t legally drive themselves? Check.
A CEO that moonlights as a tech influencer, AI edgelord and political controversy machine? Check.
As a tech developer this is beyond frustrating. We’re out here drowning in agile ceremonies and PR comments about line spacing, while the guy who wants more hardcore developers (at any price, as long as they pay it) gets the media attention, financial rewards and even weird adoration from around the world.
After all this failure apparently all stockholders should vote for this saviour of civilisation to stick around and run Tesla, lest he leave to run another one of his hobby projects.
In all honestly the vote should have been no, and he should leave the company where it stands.
The Problem is What Elon Represents
There’s a bigger issue at play here than Musk’s ego. Tech has a hero worship problem where people cling to the myth of the lone genius.
Steve Jobs was too visionary to be constrained by good manners. Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t need to understand why privacy would be a big deal. Peter Theil doesn’t need to understand accountability or why you should treat people well.
The whole model is rotting the software industry from the top down. I worked on a project which pivoted when someone’s friend on X suggested to them that they should. I’ve seen engineers treated as disposable parts of the machine that can be replaced at a moment’s notice. The bad behavior and performance of companies is actually caused by their willingness to fall over themselves to emulate Tesla and the like.
We’ve built a culture where unpaid overtime is romanticized, critical thinking is squashed under “alignment”, and the loudest person in the room gets to define the roadmap. It doesn’t seem to matter if the loudest person in the room is a billionaire who tweets memes and courts lawsuits without a second thought.
Corporate Governance, or Fan Club?
Let’s not ignore how messed up the board’s behavior is here. They’re buying paid ads to convince shareholders to reward the CEO with a hefty pay packet. Don’t forget that Elon’s brother Kimbal is also on the board, just if you were unaware of how twisted this saga actually is.
Could this gerrymandering be the reason Musk’s last pay package was voided by a judge due to excessive conflicts of interest? Well, the answer is self-evident isn’t it?
The warning light is flashing on the dashboard. When boards start stanning over their CEOs, and shareholders are expected to wave crazy packages through like groupies you’re going to get dysfunction.
No One Is Irreplaceable
Tesla claims Musk is the only person who can lead the company. That’s laughable. He isn’t writing the code. He isn’t fitting sprockets into wayholes [check these are real things, TSD please], he isn’t actually doing the work.
His “no one else can do this job” spiel is the exact same logic used by an underperforming team that tries to keep their positions at all costs. It’s what you hear before a CTO rewrites your entire tech stack into something they found on a YouTube conference talk (ask how I know). It’s what I’ve heard from people who actively block junior developers from contributing because they might “slow down velocity”.
In tech, as with code, if something is so fragile that it only works with one person involved. It’s a bug, not a feature.
What Now?
If you’re a shareholder, don’t be fooled. This isn’t about incentives. It’s about enabling a corporate cult of personality.
If you’re a developer, know this: the industry doesn’t need more Elons. It needs people who care about building good products, mentoring teammates, and fixing problems without a camera crew or a dogecoin joke in sight.
We don’t need visionaries. We need sanity. Now please.
About The Author
Professional Software Developer “The Secret Developer” can be found on Twitter @TheSDeveloper.
The Secret Developer has worked with people who used Twitter to decide their architecture. Their codebase looked exactly as you’d expect.