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Comment by jayjay71 | Hacker News Reader

Overall I like Elon Musk (although I've never met him), but people seem to think he's the über-engineer when really he's the über-salesman.

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Can't he be both? He says he spends 50% of his time on engineering. Spacex launches and lands rockets. Standing up. On a Barge. In the ocean.

Seems like an engineering achievement to me.

I would say it's more the engineering achievement of his staff. Obviously Mr. Musk gave the right working conditions and probably motivated people who had the idea, so there is that.

Those things are huge, and super rare, despite being pretty simple. He totally deserves some of the credit for that alone.

But then why does every single one of the engineers who have worked with him report that he's the single smartest person they've ever worked with?

If you read the biography, there have been times when an engineer has said "I can't meet these requirements," and he said "Ok, I'll do your job AND my job, and I'll get it done." And he did.

I think anyone believing he's not an extremely talented engineer has not read much about him.

Honest question - has Elon written any of the code for Tesla or SpaceX? Or has he designed any of the electrical or mechanical systems? I know he used to code at past companies, but a quick google search doesn't tell me he still does this.

Elon takes an active hand in all of the engineering discussions and contributes heavily to design deicions. Of course he doesn't write code or machine parts himself, that would be a really poor use of his time-- that's what he's hired thousands of engineers for, so that he can be head engineer overseeing the countless moving parts involved in manufacturing both rockets and cars simultaneously.

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