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Comment by browserman | Hacker News Reader

I don't have 'anger' towards him, although I certainly have an opinion about whether he is trustworthy or genuinely civic-minded, as I do about many other incredibly powerful political-business operators who collectively set the terms of public life.

Of course, I'm also baffled that people credit him as being a 'builder' rather than an extremely successful marketer and financial engineer, especially at the expense of all the people who, you know, actually do the building...

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Musk is an engineer. That is just a fact about him. There are repeated comments to this effect from people who have worked with him, including famously well regarded engineers. If you watch his 3-part Starbase tour with Everyday Astronaut it is incredibly obvious. Some quotes to this effect, though certainly not all, have been collated at [1].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...

Do you think engineers are fundamentally/inherently "trustworthy or genuinely civic-minded"? If not, how does this concern browserman's point?

I was addressing the second paragraph, not the first.

The word "engineer" does not appear in browserman's post except to say Musk is one, and "builder" is not a synonym of "engineer".

Now this is just playing semantic games. Nobody has ever claimed Musk is building Tesla's cars or SpaceX's rockets by hand. Obviously those are built by the factories and the people employed their for that purpose.

There is no way browserman's point was legitimately something not contradicted by the quotes I linked.

> “He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty,” Mueller said. “He’s out there with his nice Italian shoes and clothes and has epoxy all over him. They were there all night and tested it again and it broke anyway.”

You think he didn't build anything? He wrote the code for his first startup and is the Chief designer at SpaceX. Listen to some of his interviews, especially by everyday astronaut. He is indeed the Chief Deigner.

I don't think he is a good marketer - he is more middle of the road. I think people say that to discredit him. Have you watched any of his full length presentations. He is terrible. What he is good at is having a vision he believes in. He sells that well.

>Of course, I'm also baffled that people credit him as being a 'builder'

I'm on the other hand baffled that so many here are willing to spout off opinions like this without even so much as having listened to the man talk. He is _clearly_ an engineer's engineer.

This topic really highlights the people who form their entire mental model of reality around news headlines.

I agree that he is great at talking.

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