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Comment by bmitc | Hacker News Reader

Since when?

Watch this walk around Starbase with Elon and Tim Dodd, and you'll get a pretty good sense that he has an engineering brain that really understands the complexities of design, build and execute more than anything. https://youtu.be/t705r8ICkRw

I will watch it, but is he the same the “engineering” brain that thinks his Tesla tunnels are a good idea, continually promises tech that is decades away from realization is right around the corner (like self-driving cars or a humanoid robot or a Mars mission), and got replaced as the runner of the actual engineering organization (SpaceX)?

Elon clearly overpromises - but he also over delivers. SpaceX's current capability to deliver payloads to orbit is so far ahead of anyone else (particular considering they started from scratch only 20 years ago). Even their Starlink in just a few years had leapfrogged over incumbent providers. Tesla may not have achieved all they have promised but there is no denying they are the company that is leading innovation in not only EV but even in their approach to manufacturing.

> but he also over delivers

My family has had reservations for the Roadster, the Cybertruck, and we have a first-edition Model 3 & X.

Tesla has overpromised on all of our reservations, and the final product, imo, is not "overdelivering". It's honestly just barely "delivering".

>but even in their approach to manufacturing.

This is pure Tesla propaganda. Yes they have built bigger versions of existing technology (supepress, gigafactory), but they're definitely not leading innovation in car production, as evidenced by M3s still having the largest panel gaps in the industry.

Well, I am not an Elon Musk fan or hater and I don’t own any Tesla product. However, I think if your standard for him is “he hasn’t delivered yet on the two brand new proposed models of high-priced EVs that my family has reservations to buy”—I can tell you that I can’t drive 2 minutes without seeing several Teslas, I can see strings of Starlink satellites sometimes when I look into the sky, and at least a couple of times a month I can see SpaceX launches from my backyard.

Seems to me Musk may not be delivering on what you want, which I suggest is a couple of items serving a tiny elite market, but no doubt he is delivering something.

I’ll take a loose lipped dreamer that eventually delivers on most of his promises in a spectacular way over a buttoned down PR rep that consistently goes over budget, pushes delivery dates by years and drops a disappointing and outdated product at the end any day.

Apparently since 1984, when he won a prize for writing a computer game at 12 years old: https://blastar-1984.appspot.com/

That makes him an engineer?

not at all, but javascript programmers cant or dont want to make such distinctions

Admittedly, no. But, in addition to that, he has a Physics degree from UPenn and was accepted to a PhD program in MechE at Stanford, was co-founder of X.com, is Chief Engineer at SpaceX, and has some of the most respected people in their respective fields (some of whom have worked closely with him) vouch for his engineering chops (Andrej Karpathy[0], John Karmack[1], Gareth Reisman[2], an astronaut and Professor of Astronautics Practice at USC, Jim Keller[3]).

Unless you present your engineering qualifications that are of equivalent credibility as that of the aforementioned people, as well as present evidence that you've worked with him as closely with Elon Musk as some of these folks have, I'll stick with my conclusion that, yes, he's indubitably an engineer.

[0]: https://youtu.be/PlLmdTcsAWU?t=1439

[1]: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1038832124747571200...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNG6ZzDh9C8&t=390s, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/05/26/spacex...

[3] https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1225875212559933442?la...

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