Success because of A and attributing it to B. There's a bit of megalomania too. He has a beef against VC funding. He lost 1/3 of staff once when he implemented a policy of no personal opinions at Basecamp. He is often shared because of his unpopular opinions and his successes are used to fortify those opinions.
I'm not saying Fried or Musk are wrong, and they both have brilliant insights at times. If Musk was crazy and wrong all the time, he wouldn't be a brand name.
But both of them also appeal to susceptible people who seem to think that a few good opinions make them good all the time. Basecamp isn't even a good tool, it's a pretty average one, yet prettier than Jira. But it's down this funnel of people who will buy whatever Fried and DHH sell them.
And what I'm getting at is whether Rails is one of those things that is average but prettier than Node?
>he implemented a policy of no personal opinions at Basecamp
Except he didn't do that, what he implemented was not making personal politics a part of Basecamp's workplace culture, which is a much more moderate thing than what you're accusing him of here.
You might not be aware of this, but it's possible to have a personal opinion about something and not bring societal and political discussions to the company account or forum. Here's the text of the new policy:
"People can take the conversations with willing co-workers to Signal, Whatsapp, or even a personal Basecamp account, but it can't happen where the work happens anymore."
Again, this is not at all the same thing as "no personal opinions [allowed] at Basecamp."
I'm on the pro-VC, anti-bootstrap spectrum and so is Elon Musk. American political spectrum of right vs left, authorarian vs libertarian makes little sense to me.
My political compass tends to be BRICS vs G7, religious vs secular. If you're saying they're both G7-secular, I guess that makes sense too.
edit: Also I was not even aware of Musk and the fascist thing before posting the comment, and I can see how it may have been interpreted differently now, lol.
Why? What "Musk vibes" have they given off?