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Comment by i_call_solo | Hacker News Reader

Musk is heavily involved in the engineering efforts at Tesla and SpaceX. Losing him would not be a good thing for these companies despite his public antics.

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>Musk is heavily involved in the engineering efforts at Tesla and SpaceX.

Is there any evidence of this, outside of him personally claiming this to be the case?

https://www.quora.com/Does-Elon-Musk-do-some-very-technical-...

I'm too lazy to track down more right now. I don't know of anyone claiming (with evidence) that he doesn't.

In his biography there's interviews with people inside and out of spacex/tesla talking about it that are pretty convincing.

That thread has a quote from an interview, and then a bunch of random people saying he does.

I already know the mythology surrounding his engineering credentials. But I think perpetuating it does a real disservice to the real engineers doing work on these products. Do people really think that a bright, "well read" physics undergraduate can lead the practical engineering work on rockets and cars? I find it hard to believe.

Do people really think that a bright, "well read" physics undergraduate can lead the practical engineering work on rockets and cars?

Most people do not. Don't blame Musk for missing that memo. :P

(By the way: the book Mindset by Carol Dweck might be an eye-opener...)

My guess is this guy probably has more claim to "actually makes rockets" than Elon does: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/25/tom-mueller-spacex-cto-who-m...

I'm sure Elon sticks himself into tons of meetings, and hence has a lot of knowledge about what's discussed. And I don't doubt that he sets the goals for the engineers to meet, makes aesthetic and design decisions like some of the interviews suggest. But I think the guys Mueller manages are the people who actually make Falcons fly.

Just go to Blind. He is doing micromanaging. Also he is ,,managing by Twitter''. Whether that is good or bad is not clear, but so far he has a great track record.

Just look at the $35k Tesla that he pulled off by kicking out sales. A regular CEO wouldn't have done that. With all the chaos it has caused, Elon understands that at this point price is the most important part in the decision for buying a Tesla for lots of people, and paying sales just hinders selling.

> Just look at the $35k Tesla that he pulled off by kicking out sales. A regular CEO wouldn't have done that.

You know that's reversed right? https://paloaltoonline.com/news/2019/03/11/tesla-puts-brakes...

The decision to close most of the stores is (mostly) reversed, but the price drop to $35k for the Model 3 is not reversed.

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1121980_tesla-will-rais...

Partially correct. _Some_ variants of model 3 will continue to be sold at 35k

>Just go to Blind.

Can you do that without a tesla.com email address ?

I have no doubt he micromanages, but that's a long way from being "heavily involved" with the engineering of the products. In fact, it's the opposite, no?

They are almost certainly still losing money on the $35K Model 3, and released it simply to try and grab some cash to keep the lights on and maybe head off accusations of a bait-and-switch perpetrated on early reservation holders.

Is he? Musk has no engineering degree, he's never been the CTO of his companies, and most of his time seems to be spent on Twitter, dealing with media, and other PR things. I haven't seen any evidence that the engineering departments at either firm would be worse off without him.

He's CTO at SpaceX.

Which doesn't mean anything really. If you have founded the company and own it, you can be CTO and delegate all the real engineering / research work.

You can, except he says he spends the vast majority of his time doing engineering. There are lots of videos of him with a hardhat on working in his factories. Not PR videos, either. He's the head of product development for the cars, not just the CEO.

Hate the guy for his personality all you want; I can certainly understand why. But there's no need to downplay his achievements or skills.

Except the engineering work is usually not done with a hardhat on, "working" on the factory floor... that's production. I guarantee you if you see video of Elon Musk with a hard hat on doing anything other than touring the facility[1], it is marketing.

[1]Presumably, if he's down on the factory floor looking at things, he should be wearing a hard hat, so good for him. If he's bolting together cars himself, that's probably marketing.

He walks the factory floor every day wearing a hard hat, looking for process and tech improvements that could be made. He's not physically assembling the cars obviously. The engineering and design work is done in all of the meetings he's in every day, he says.

>There are lots of videos of him with a hardhat on working in his factories

That settles it then. Is it a yellow hardhat?

Even Tom Mueller, propulsion engineer & co-founder of SpaceX, publicly acknowledges that Musk is heavily involved in key engineering decisions. I get that Musk gets a large amount of hate these days, but at least find something material to criticize. "He's not even an engineer" isn't just an irrelevant argument, it's also wrong. (Except in the "certified engineer" sense, which I don't think anyone is claiming).

Yeah, but is Tom Mueller, whose boss is Elon Musk, really going to publicly state anything else?

I think he’s retired now, and only participates occasionally in an advisory role...?

>publicly acknowledges that Musk is heavily involved in key engineering decisions

Is his salary in any way tied to touting Elon Musk?

He has a physics degree.

So like millions of others?

He just hit the fortune with PayPal. The other stuff (his "involvement" in engineering etc) is the classic media hagiography of powerful CEOs.

I believe this underestimates his ability to see beyond what’s possible today and set game-changing goals and direction for those engineering teams.

Set game-changing goals like promising a self-driving car without LIDAR or other technology every year for the last three? I feel like every single Elon Musk "game-changing goal" is met with severe criticism by many of the engineers working in the field and setting their heads down to get things done.

Waaaat who told you this? An ceo directly interfering with engineering is a huge nono. Do you think this guy is Tony stark? He's a up jumped Web Dev.

He literally designed his rocket and built multiple million/billion dollar tech companies.

I literally do not believe you. I'm not saying he's an unsuccessful business man. Hes literally not a rocket scientist. What kind of silly nonsense is that?

He's talked rocket design specifics on many occasions and "built his own rocket" according to Vector Launch CEO Jim Cantrell [1]:

>He borrowed all of my college texts on rocket propulsion when we first started working together in 2001. We also hired as many of my colleagues in the rocket and spacecraft business that were willing to consult with him. ... I found out later that he was talking to a bunch of other people about rocket designs and collaborating on some spreadsheet level systems designs for launchers. Once our dealings with the Russians fell apart, he decided to build his own rocket and this was the genesis of SpaceX.

Additional info from Jim from a follow-up interview[2]:

>Cantrell ... loaned him some textbooks to study. The books were "Rocket Propulsion Elements," "Aerothermodynamics of Gas Turbine and Rocket Propulsion," "Fundamentals of Astrodynamics," and the "International Reference Guide to Space Launch Systems." He would quote passages verbatim from these books. He became very conversant in the material. ... Musk would absorb this information and then hold his own in conversations — and he didn't hold back.

Additionally, Ashlee Vance's biography [3] describes his day-to-day as "quite involved with rocket design" at SpaceX and goes into a lot of detail about spending time on the floor assisting SpaceX scientists with their designs.

Obviously any single person at a company the size of SpaceX doesn't individually design and build a rocket by themselves, but it's generally agreed upon that Elon is knowledgeable in rocket science and contributes many ideas to the designs.

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-did-Elon-Musk-learn-enough-about-r...

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-elon-musk-learned-rocket...

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/...

So I really am not going tp be convinced here. Just cause this guy's ego is so huge that he goes and pokes his nose in places he doesn't belong doesn't make him a contributer. I don't care what his fluffer Jim says.

He absolutely did not design a rocket. He didn’t found Tesla either.

The movie version of Tony Stark was actually modeled on Elon Musk.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/true-story-elon-musk-robert-d...

Is the bus factor really 1 though? Can the companies not survive without him? What if he gets sick or has an accident? That sounds risky.

No individual is essential.

If Musk slipped in the shower and cracked his head, life (for the companies) would go on.

The financial engineering maybe.

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