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Comment by compcoffee | Hacker News Reader

>Cynics will say this is a PR move, but I don't think that's how Musk operates.

You can't be serious...

Musk's #1 trait, for better or worse, is promotion. Or do you really think he's the guy doing the engineering on all this stuff?

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For someone who's number one trait is promotion (as you claim), he definitely seems to have achieved much more in his life (I mean, last 15 years) in engineering than most other marketers, promotoers, or, well, engineers.

>he definitely seems to have achieved much more in his life (I mean, last 15 years) in engineering than most other marketers, promotoers, or, well, engineers.

In what sense? Because the companies he runs do great engineering? Was Steve Ballmer a great engineer because Microsoft built great things? What about Steve Jobs?

Elon Musk is great at a crucial skill for CEOs: selling a vision.

> selling a vision

You mean, financing a vision? I don't see many other billionaires doing that (Gates & Buffet excluded).

>You mean, financing a vision?

Do you say that because his wealth is tied up in the companies? Yeah, and Zuckerberg "finances" Facebook, and Larry Ellison "finances" Oracle, and Larry and Sergy "finance" Google...

Tesla has sold vast amounts of equity and debt. That's how the company is financed.

No, becaues he spent his own earned/liquid wealth to start up and finance these companies, before they reached any level of success that enabled them to be financed externally.

He says he spends the majority of his time on engineering, actually.

I dont know about others but I first heard of Musk as "the paypal guy who made a rocket". Felt like a sudden lucky-genius thing. Only recently I learned that he graduated in physics (energy storage or something not far). This changed my view of him substantially. He has flaws but I guess I can rely on his understanding of matter and moving objects.

>Only recently I learned that he graduated in physics (energy storage or something not far)

He has an undergraduate degree in Physics. There is no focus on "energy storage".

Sorry, material science in stanford, I didn't knoz he was at Upenn before that too and that he stopped at B.S (different terminology from France)

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