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Comment by gamegoblin | Hacker News Reader

The book "Liftoff" (about the early years of SpaceX) paints a picture of Elon as a very smart person with a mind for engineering, but his true value-add over any other aerospace company at the time was his ability to hire the right people and sniff out bullshit.

That is, he knows enough about the engineering to hire people who know a lot about the engineering.

That, combined with his relentless drive (to the point of overwork both on himself and his employees) seems to be the key to SpaceX success.

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> That is, he knows enough about the engineering to hire people who know a lot about the engineering.

And he got really exceedingly lucky with his initial hires. One of the founding employees was the best living rocket engine designer in the world, and then later the best rocket salesman in the world convinced him that SpaceX needed proper sales/business development, even in the early stage, and Musk basically replied: "Okay, you're hired", to which she basically replied: "No, that's not what I meant... but okay."

I want to see that movie. Are there professional documentaries?

No but there are interviews with some of the people mentioned and the auther of the book has good stories as well.

- Gwynne Shotwell

- Tom Mueller

- Eric Berger

He very much reminds me of Steve Jobs in this regard. Steve was actually a competent technician, if not really an engineer at the time of the founding of Apple, and he really cared deeply about the engineering. He understood the language of engineers and the tradeoffs in a design and I think it's the same with Elon. The fact they both ran completely separate very successful and innovative companies at the same time might be a coincidence, but kind of clinches it for me.

If you read any of the fokelore stuff, there seems to be some disagreement there. He wanted stuff to look a certain way, but he didn't really understand the engineering trade off. Like asking for a computer with no holes in the case for cooling.

Well the current Macbook Airs don't have holes, so it's not like it was impossible.

And they run hot when under load, sometimes to the point where they're too hot to handle. Is there a benefit to not having proper ventilation?

I've owned one since release and the only time it's even felt warm to the touch is after charging from a low battery. I'm also not running renders or such on them, they're not really designed for that.

No ventilation means more thermal mass in the place of airways to absorb and disperse heat. I specifically bought this model because I am tired of fans in my laptops, which have failed multiple times or become loud to the point that I couldn't even have it in a meeting room without it being a major distraction. Perfect, guaranteed silence at all times from my electronics is a beautiful thing.

The folklore contains a lot of wild exaggerations and things taken out of context. A better source is interviews with people who worked with him, particularly engineers.

What do you think the folklore stuff is? Folklore.org, it's stories from actual engineers that were there. That one was from Andy Hertzfeld if I remember correctly.

Here's a video from someone who observed a design review for Starship[1]. From the sound of it, Elon is in the thick of it in the R&D engineering.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1nc_chrNQk&t=380s

He also seems to provide pretty good high level direction for his companies. Also, he seems to be a pretty good gambler, willing to take big risks that sometimes pay off huge, whereas others might play things more conservatively and not get such payoffs.

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