A gentle reminder: Musk doesn't build any of that, he's just a source of cash, like a bank crossed with a toddler.
Thousands of employees build it. In the case of SpaceX and Tesla, they frequently build it in spite of Musk, dedicating time and effort to preventing him from screwing things up when he breezes in.
This lie seems mostly accepted only by non-technical people in technical fields from what I've found out. Leads me to believe Elon actually is one of those great people that will be more appreciated after his passing.
> He can get in discussions about flying a satellite and whether we can make the right orbit and deliver Dragon at the same time and solve all these equations in real time.
I’m not sure if they mean he can do them in his head or not because the other part of that statement seems to imply so. Regardless, this definitely shows that he isn’t just the “money man”.
Or... people like saying things that make them appear witty.
No need to ascribe political malice where typical internet popularity-seeking will suffice.
"Elon didn't have anything to do with his companies' technical successes" and "Elon had everything to do with his companies' technical successes" are both low-energy, groupthink-supported replies at this point.
Or we could take the middle ground, which is likely the most accurate.
I don’t see anyone claiming Steve Jobs personally designed the iPhone PCB by hand while mining cobalt on the weekends to stay in shape, but on the other, I don’t see anyone claiming that he just provided money and the vision and engineers just manifested themselves.
I’ve said this before. The reasons SpaceX and to a lesser extent Tesla are the successes they are, is because of the “true believer” leadership it draws. Those endeavours have a clear social-good aspect to them at the “good for humanity” scale. Those endeavours have continue to succeed because Musk’s genius was in hiring them, and in focusing on the regulatory context that allows them to be even more successful. His personal engineering acumen is largely overstated compared to his actual skill set. It also helps that those industries are heavily regulated and those constraints temper his ability to fuck things up.
Social media on the other hand doesn’t attract the same kind of believers at that level and there’s no one who cares enough to make it work in spite of him. Being a far less (or barely at all) regulated industry means he’s free to intervene and meddle in the most egregious ways, and the results are obvious for all to see. As a result of Twitter he’ll likely be in lawsuits (from investors, banks etc) for decades. Meantime SpaceX and Tesla will continue to do well. Not because of Musk but in spite of him.
SpaceX's mission is to spread humanity to the planets.
Bezo's mission is to offer orbital fun rides to cashed up tourists.
Fisker failed due to its major investor (DOE) halting future financing, and then being hit with the loss of a large number of vehicles in Hurrican Katrina. Up until then they were following a similar startup arc (with the same sorts of problems) as Tesla had in their first few years. [0]
With PayPal, Musk was insistent that the venture proceed as X.com (despite brand testing showing that people were likely to associate it with porn), but was overruled. He was also opposed to the sale to eBay, which actually catapulted PayPal in terms of growth, and embedded it as a "must have" for e-commerce. [1] [2]
Getting a huge head start by being a privileged narcissistic raised by Apartheid emerald mine owners (aka Slave Owners) is not success on your own merits by any reasonable measure.
"According to a Facebook post from Errol, the Zambian emerald mine he held a stake in "collapsed in 1989.""
Which by definition means he owned an emerald mine during the apartheid Era.
Regardless of his political beliefs or leanings, there is no means or manner in which such a mine could have operated _at_all_ without being advantaged by said apartheid norms and thereby being dependent on whar in effect slave labor.
Just a FYI your argument is that Elon got a Huge Head Start to his serial entrepreneurism just because someone in relation to him had a business 40+ years ago in South Africa. Far after which he lived almost as a destitute during his college years.
Don't accuse me of such BS. Especially when you're the one not doing research (No, disproven myths and a misleading, generalized LMGTFY don't count when we have specific, up-to-date info). Facts seem at best that Elon had a good childhood, not much reason to believe greatly "better" than a common well-aligned western family could give.
After that, he seems to have been in the position of having to make his own way, while only getting help by a partial investment from his family in a further round of his already-succeeding company that he set up living in his office. So in the positions millions have been. There aren't millions of Musks around but there are millions of younger adults that have more than they deserve. But facts don't bend for your weird fantasies to be true.
Funny thing is, some time ago I thought Elon came from a background where he got a lot of money to start his successes, and still cheered him for making so much more from that than really anyone else. Then people started trying to show in him bad light, which backfired hilariously and now his origin story puts almost anyone to shame.
I think you're trying to somehow include fancy concepts and bending your arguments to fit them, which is becoming a bit silly (No, Poe's law doesn't relate to the current conversation).
I am not shifting goalposts. Note that I'm not the original arguer here. I just noted that you basically doomed Elon from birth regardless of what good he's done during his life, which is a crazy weak argument.
I know people who think that casually considering non-comformists delusional is reasonable. They come in many sorts, but most often its Occam's razor so I don't hate and won't get more involved.
I am not disingenuous. I just hope people would cheer on the people of our time who push on innovation instead of attacking them for their money or pecularities. With enough mass just throwing lazy attacks things can only get worse for everybody.
I think you still don't realize I'm not the original arguer. I just came here to point out this:
>Just a FYI your argument is that Elon got a Huge Head Start to his serial entrepreneurism just because someone in relation to him had a business 40+ years ago in South Africa. Far after which he lived almost as a destitute during his college years.
Which you can't retort and makes other arguments meaningless. Which are already so badly-colored (narcissism, trying to dredge up race relations) that are not worth deliberating on for anyone's sake.
He got a head start through acess to better education, access to equipment others wouldn't have had (just like Gates), his fathers social snd business connections, and more, as a direct result of his father's wealth and connections. This lead to immediately improved outcomes compared to his "competitors".
I wasn't talking "global scale" I was speaking about domestically, which is what matters.
"top 5% childhood positioning, services, access to material and equipment, and more.
Strawman, moving goalposts, etc."
Nope what i listed were specifics, those advantages he gained.
You know that but chose to misrepresent with a red herring.
This is the SOP for Elon fanbois, just more trolling type behaviors just like thier wannabe lord and savior.
Really... it's rather sad and disheartening to know you folks actually drank the Kool aid and aren't just playing games, rather actually think like this and genuinely believe you arent fools.
Except he didn't succeed life on his own merits. This is an outright provable falsehood.
He fell upward every time and started with a sizable fortune. He absolutely didn't work so hard that he "built" a multi-billion dollar empire, no one human can work that hard.
> Revealing about his father's business, Musk stated "My father created a small electrical/mechanical engineering company that was successful for 20 to 30 years, but it fell on hard times. He has been essentially bankrupt for about 25 years, requiring financial support from my brother and me.".
Give it a rest.
Besides which, I can absolutely guarantee you that if I gave you a “small loan of one million dollars”, you’d be bankrupt by the end of the decade.
You actually can't absolutely guarantee anything of the sort, but it makes sense that this is something you'd think because you apparently also believe Elon Musk over this and not Elon Musk (or his dad!):
I take it you didn't even check the links because they disprove your comment but instead took something completely irrelevant but dislikeable and are now trying to somehow connect it to the context with chewgum.
My original reply was to a comment saying Musk is just a money bag. The second comment I replied to was saying that Elon "giving himself" the Chief Engineer title doesn't change anything, effectively carrying over the original claim.
"Chief/Lead Engineer" I guess this can mean a lot of different things. Reason I put "giving himself" to quotes, is because I've been in a situation in a few companies where titles weren't really much of a thing but if someone naturally ended up being in a leading role they would start to be called with such a title.
Given that Elon likes to be hands-on, obviously has a lot of agency, is motivated, and works long hours while shuttling around in his jet every few days (you can hear him saying summaries of his % time used by whichever company in many interviews), I really don't see it impossible that he's grown to the shoes being discussed. I haven't heard anyone saying he's the lead engineer at multiple companies at the same time, though he probably has had periods of putting a lot more time to a specific company, like with Tesla during the over-automation production hell.
I think this comes down to subjectivity and personal experience of what the title pertains. My experience as a Lead Engineer in software has come naturally as I have developed base of tech before others joined and cared for it, including reading most of other people's commits while working 1.5-2x the hours of others. This is in smaller companies. Probably in a bigger company, person with the title would use 70% of their time doing code review and attending meetings, working in a more tiered structure and being less hands-on.
Can I ask why you think the Everyday Astronaut's interview (series) _specifically_ makes Musk incompatible with the "Lead Engineer" title?
You're being repeatedly downvoted throughout this thread for both sycophancy and obnoxiously narrow reading of peoples comments.
The actual comment you originally replied to:
"Thousands of employees build it. In the case of SpaceX and Tesla, they frequently build it in spite of Musk, dedicating time and effort to preventing him from screwing things up when he breezes in."
From your own links:
"We’ll have, you know, a group of people sitting in a room, making a key decision. And everybody in that room will say, you know, basically, “We need to turn left,” and Elon will say “No, we’re gonna turn right.” You know, to put it in a metaphor. And that’s how he thinks. He’s like, “You guys are taking the easy way out; we need to take the hard way.”
And, uh, I’ve seen that hurt us before, I’ve seen that fail (Emphasis mine), but I’ve also seen— where nobody thought it would work— it was the right decision. It was the harder way to do it, but in the end, it was the right thing."
Stopped clocks are also occasionally right, but frequently wrong.
> You're being repeatedly downvoted throughout this thread for both sycophancy and obnoxiously narrow reading of peoples comments.
This argument is extremely funny in retrospect, with one of your posts being totally dead. I hope you adjusted at least some of your priors after this . . .
>You're being repeatedly downvoted throughout this thread
FYI, there's more upvotes than downvotes in total. The most noted visible one was at ~5 then magically dropped to -1. Even though it obviously has merit and hosts a lot of conversation below it, which makes the downvotes a bit suspect.
>narrow reading of peoples comments.
This seems like that KGB tactic of turning one's argument on its head. What is actually happening is I'm putting way more effort to answering to ill-informed comments because I just don't like watching obvious lies, even if comforting to some, on the web. This is more draining than giving I can say ...
>The actual comment you originally replied t....
-Nnope. You picked the subheading right after the main lie: "Musk doesn't build any of that, he's just a source of cash, like a bank crossed with a toddler."
>From your own links etc etc
It takes trying to read what you've read negatively. For a more illuminating view, there's actually a part that partially answers this in the provided video: https://youtu.be/t705r8ICkRw?t=810 (timestamped link). It's his own stake. You're claiming it's 100% confirmation bias that Elon is given any credit. Let me _try_ to present another take:
People remember conflict way better than success. So if it hurts them 20% of the time but succeeds 80% of the time, people WILL remember when it bit them in the ass. Because in that specific instance, everyone was against Elon, and it failed. But in the long the general practice has worked wonders. And obviously turns fail to success faster than a NASA-like forever project process. If I was working in such an inspiring field, I would give a kidney to have a leader that frequently took even half that kind of personal risk to favor progress instead of peace.
_These are qualities I don't just appreciate in Elon, but everyone in power who practices these._ Sadly people usually just pick the conformist path, to avoid hurt feelings, sometimes even if it's their own money (for god's sake!)
If you want to pick anecdotes, from when that video was filmed Raptor 2 has been greatly simplified while its performance has increased IIRC. Among with the cold/hot gas reuse for BFR, idea that was actually spawned through rubber ducking during the EA interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY73exaVpyw
By the way, you just completely dodged the question to your earlier criticism! Did you really have nothing?!
I'm actually still willing to engage in civil conversation. That is what I'm trying to turn this often self-hate fest in to.
If this is the KGB tactic again, I _actually_ recommend just getting a therapist. It's their job to listen to you and not argue much. Not sure how it's with your country/employer, but you might be able to get them to pay it for you.
Yeah and Assange's been implicated of that too and all of them drink water.
Trying to pull that kind of strings together on a conspiracy bulletin board with red eyes and shaggy hair in a dank cellar together doesn't really add value to the conversation.
Thousands of employees build it. In the case of SpaceX and Tesla, they frequently build it in spite of Musk, dedicating time and effort to preventing him from screwing things up when he breezes in.