Why Elon Musk is not an engineer | Hacker News Reader

Why Elon Musk is not an engineer

ietsism.net

23 pointsryzvonusef34 comments

I really dislike gatekeeping on people calling themselves engineers. There’s a very narrow case for certification for some civil engineering work. Other than that I think it’s important to remember engineering started as a heroic endeavor to build technology to lift people out of the struggles of the 19th century with applied science. You’re an engineer if you choose to apply science to make the world better.

I’ll wager that he’s never driven a locomotive even once

>What engineer would Elon Musk be?

Elon Musk would be engineer in Industrial Engineering (sometimes Industrial Engineering and Management). Industrial engineers do just the kind of jobs Elon Musk does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_engineering

Elon Musk has no formal engineering degree, but he clearly is industrial engineer by profession. His approach to business and problem solving is typical industrial engineering approach.

His actual degrees (BS in both economics and physics) have good overlap with undergraduate curriculum in IE.

> There is no evidence that Musk actually (partly) designed any of the creations his companies spawned.

That's not really true though. He's on several patents, and accounts from people who work with him are that he spends a lot of time working on engineering problems.

I don't think he's like working on sims or anything, but he seems to be pretty involved in the high level engineering decisions and understand everything that goes into his companies' products.

It's not uncommon for someone up the corporate hierarchy who didn't directly contribute to be named as an inventor on the patent.

That remembers me Joe Rogan's "What is it Like to Work for Elon Musk?" [1] When Garrett Reisman who previously worked with Elon says: He's a very that BROAD engineer and can talk at the same table with their top engineer employees. So totally discrediting the blog post. I think it's actually the last refuge of the "title" mindset. Engineers solve problems using engineering principles; period. If you have a Engineer's degree, PhD or you build pyramids it doesn't matter.

[1]: https://youtu.be/GNG6ZzDh9C8?t=391

That doesn't mean anything.

Here's the list of Steve Jobs 323 patents:

http://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/...

I think you are proving the opposite point you think you're proving ;)

Not at all. The point is that someone the CEO of a technical organization can give themselves credit for the work done by the (actual) engineers working for them.

In regards to Steve Jobs specifically, Steve Wozniak said, "Steve didn't ever code... He wasn't an engineer and he didn't do any original design, but he was technical enough to alter and change and add to other designs." (emphasis mine)

Probably not how you would describe someone who honestly came by 200+ patents.

https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-never-wrote-compu...

Wait. You think Steve Jobs was an engineer who came up with 300+ inventions? Really now?

Inventions don't take engineers. Making the idea into reality takes engineers.

Does being on a patent mean that the person actually worked on the engineering of the idea? or worked at all on the idea?

I'm not sure how patents work but I don't think anybody verifies the names on it or what they actually did, and I guess in a company effort it could easily be the boss ending on it too?

Legally speaking, only people who actually worked on the invention can be on the patent. I believe (not a lawyer) that including extra people can be grounds for invalidating that patent. However, this does still get abused; Elizabeth Holmes was on many of the patents filed by Theranos.

Generally agree with the post and I think the proliferation of the engineering term is somewhat problematic, because to a general audience it implies a sort of rigor that isn't always present, see 'software engineer'.

I think Musk is a businessman but I'm not really sure if he's ever done actual engineering work, and the title gives him a sort of undue authority when he speaks on technical matters, for example his statements on the state of AI[1], the progress of autonomous driving, or generally other fantastical statements.

It also takes attention away from the people who deserve it. Say, Tom Mueller at SpaceX, who is responsible for a good amount of actual engineering work but I figure most people haven't even heard of.

[1]https://twitter.com/an_open_mind/status/1260528928617369601?...

He did coding for Zip2

That’s actually an interesting reply to the parent because, according to his book, his work was not rigorous and all needed to be redone.

https://www.quora.com/Did-Elon-Musk-write-any-code-at-X-or-Z...

Not sure what this shows evidence of.

I'd say its fairly ubiquitous that startups have bad code that get rewritten upon scaling demands.

Why does one need a $150k certificate to be an engineer. I went to a top engineering school, everything could be learned by reading engineering textbooks. Based on experience, Elon is an engineer.

Hiring smart engineers, does not mean Elon Musk is an engineer. Unless, Elon himself did actual engineering work. He did some software dev at Zip2 but then it has been mostly investments. I think it is fair to say he is a businessman instead of an engineer.

> In my opinion however, an engineer is someone who has gone through years of training and has obtained a master’s degree in engineering.

So first, we assume Musk isn't an engineer in order to prove he isn't an engineer? Who cares, the question is meaningless, much like this blog post.

Following that criteria then Nikola Tesla is not an engineer because he never graduated from university[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla#Early_years

I think the writer wrote it because he thinks titles are important, and that you have to earn it. Get some stamp of approval.

But in the real world titles don't matter that much. They are just a tool to organize the world, to categorize.

In my opinion, if you start painting today. You're a painter. maybe not a good one, but a painter nonetheless. Because you paint.

Don't focus on titles. focus on actions, on doing. making the world a better place.

Titles don't matter in the end.

I think Elon Musk tackles problems from an technical point of view. First principles. He identifies himself with an engineer. But in the end his actions are what matter.

FWIW: "engineer" is a term that goes right back to Ancient Roman times, people who could build or repair siege engines were "engineers." I'm pretty sure they didn't have degrees for that, back then. Elon is not a "Professional Engineer" (which is a term in law) and could be brought to court if he made that claim in an ad in many countries. He is an engineer, as Tesla was.

"Why Elon Musk is not an engineer" is an ambiguous title. It could mean:

a. Why Elon Musk made a decision at some point not to become an engineer; or

b. Why I (the author of this post) do not consider Elon Musk to be an engineer, despite what he claims for himself.

This post is all about option b.

My european bachelor's degree (three years in the Czech Republic) literally says "software engineering" on it. We also use the czech equivalent "inženýr" (Ing.) as the name for the master's degree.

just a meta fyi... one can go to the wikipedia "talk" page for the Elon Musk article and the topmost debate is the designation of "engineer": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Elon_Musk#Rfc:_Musk_as_an...

Do a Ctrl+F in your browser for "engineer" and the highlights of that word will light up the whole page like a Christmas tree.

I’d love to know if the blogger is (themselves) a Masters wielding “Engineer”. This argument was semi-recently dealt with in the Oregon courts. - https://reason.com/2019/01/02/judge-confirms-that-oregon-eng...

His undergrad was physics, and many engineers I’ve worked with started in physics then spent 1.5-2 years doing a masters in mechanical or electrical or aerospace engineering. So does Elon have the equivalent of 1.5-2 years of work as say an aerospace engineer in the past 20 years? Yea I think so..

Then I guess by this logic the CEO of Boeing (who has a degree in accounting) is also an engineer?

Well did he do many years of engineering work? It’s perfectly valid to become a chemical engineer, demonstrate knowledge in electrical engineering, and then become an electrical engineer without a degree. This is an accepted path.

I think this is the point of the article. Besides some coding a long time ago, nobody has presented evidence that he's ever done actual engineering.

Do you think PMs should be able to call themselves engineers? They know the work pretty well, many (at least in SV) have undergrad degrees in STEM, they can talk the lingo. They've just never actually written code. Some people would even protest PMs who used to be engineers still calling themselves that.

I think Musk knows things at the level of a technically-strong PM. But I think if you asked him to some basic tasks in structural engineering, for instance, he would have no idea what to do.

An undergrad degree in physics from my personal observation is typically quite math heavy and you learn mechanics, electrical theory, and many people in their 2nd year for their senior projects build fairly practical things. No idea what that was like back in the 90s for somebody like Elon. So I think its a bit different from an accounting degree.

Another elitist gatekeeping the term engineer. Nothing to see here.

That tweet of Elon regarding April and Covid did not age well.

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