“I was an intern at SpaceX years ago”
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Conclusion: Elon has been instrumental in engineering decisions, often overruling the opinion of the rest of the team and later proven right (though not always). Later in the interview when asked who his role model is he answers "Elon", for having completely changed the way he thinks about engineering and business. Building multiple billion dollar businesses is not luck, and is not simply the result of a "child king". For more details on his engineering and management of SpaceX I recommend the book "Liftoff". The anti-Elon rhetoric has gone too far and is completely detached from reality.
At that point, who he is is who I am. His public image and status reflects on mine.
Multiple sources have confirmed that Elon made no actual contribution to the development of the engines or craft beyond the input that aerospace executives normally contribute. He's just better at taking credit for the work done by others.
Even if you discount this fact, if every child with a millionaire father would go on to revolutionize two industries at once I think we'd be much further along as a species...
The anti-Elon crowd has truly created an alternate reality where they can dismiss anything he has ever accomplished. I get that his personality does not jive with a lot of people, but the solution to resolve this cognitive dissonance is not to find any and all reasons to dismiss what he's done but to realize he's a complicated person, great at a lot of things, intelligent, driven, but also childish, emotional and over-confident at times.
Is that significant? All rentals were subject to rent control at the time. Only since 2018 has new construction been exempt, but older builds remain under rent control.
Although I have a decent level of respects for a businessman Elon Musk in that he made several successful long term bets based on his physics/economics backgrounds, but this doesn't necessarily mean that I have to agree with his own narcissistic narrative. We also need to draw a clear line between the reality and his narrative as well as recently developed anti-Elon rhetoric.
This leads to companies 'backing the wrong horse' for too long and investing way too much resources and time into projects that are doomed to fail.
Imo this is what we've seen traditional US aerospace companies do for decades - the SLS is the most egregious example of this. In contrast Musk has walked back many times on ideas that turned out not to make sense - propulsive Dragon landing, numerous Starship redesigns etc.
In my opinion that ability has proven to be one of his greatest asset.
Not a special case, but different in the matter of degree. Every person (and CEO) is unique, but I think Elon stands out on a few dimensions, 1. raw tenacity, this guy just does not quit, 2. first principles thinking, 3. great at finding the right talent. I don't think any other CEO could make SpaceX work. Definitely not as a part time CEO/founder while also building Tesla. Bezos tried half heartedly and had very limited success. Zuck has yet to prove he can succeed outside of Facebook, Gates perhaps if he had the interest. Jobs seems to share many qualities but not the technical/engineering chops (although I think he knew more than people give him credit for). That said he's not a superman hero, but we can still marvel at he's done.
> We also need to draw a clear line between the reality and his narrative as well as recently developed anti-Elon rhetoric.
Agreed
"Oh it was from Daddy's emerald mine money"
"He just buys companies, his success is bought not made"
"He just hires competent people like Shotwell, Mueller etc, it not him, it's his employees"
"His success is not that big a deal"
and on and on
Like seriously, it's embarrassing. Really? A random nameless intern's tumbler post is now what we are using to get our rage boner on? And for what? something we will not even care about six months from now?
how about we realize it's not a net-sum game and a person can both be a genius AND an asshole at the same time? Like It is possible for MULTIPLE things to be true, we are supposed to be better than this.
Maybe it is because I directed actors and have an eye for human beviour and manierisms, but I instantly knew that Elon Musk is not the kind of guy I'd like to have around, have to trust or even admire.
Not that he is not without achievements as the richest man on the world. But it cannot buy him happyness, resolve or confidence, all of which this man has a lack of.
Rich men with holes money cannot fill are dangerous.
But at the same time, there have been many, many instances where people have come out and said these things. There have been lawsuits around this.
e.g. Bezos liking his info presented in essay form. And I bet the "S team" around him is quite skilled at Bezos management too.
Sometimes I think at this scale of the biz spectrum you're by default dealing with slightly quirky/insane people...
This is the conclusion anyone who works or has worked at a Musk corp eventually realizes, those are all necessary components of a business and should be lauded, but its the cult of Elon followers who are insufferable and truly believe a single person can be able to be involved on the day aspects of just SpaceX and hold the title of chief Engineer and ave it mean anything more than a figurehead title.
This experience is also worth noting before anyone ventures off to Mars under the guise of following 'the will of Elon' and is willing to endure what life under his management would actually look like rather than misguided fantasy that it will be a sort of egalitarian Space-camp playground. He is a remarkably talented Marketer/PR and Fiance guy but it's beyond delusional to think he has anything but a cursory (albeit respectable understanding for a non-specialist) beyond that due to the sheer amount of complexity and specialization in a single department (AI development for FSD) at one of these corps has, let alone all of them.
This is isn't a damning and sensationalist take if being objective with the collection of evidence and anecdotes who saw the sausage get made, it's just what seems to be a consistent outlook and the cost of admission to work on such amazing projects with amazing people and is best summarized as follows:
Managing Elon was a huge part of the company culture. Even I, as a lowly intern, would hear people talking about it openly in meetings. People knew how to present ideas in a way that would resonate with him, they knew how to creatively reinterpret (or ignore) his many insane demands, and they even knew how to “stage manage” parts of the physical office space so that it would appeal to Elon.
I sincerely hope Gwynne Shotwell, chief operating officer of SpaceX, starts to get way more recognition for the work! I just hope the next round of funding for SpaceX isn't negatively impacted because of the chaos that Twitter has become under Elon as it was valued at ~$150 Billion this month [0].
It took crazy Elon and his wild dreams of Mars colony building to put enough private capital behind building a really reusable rocket. But it’s absolutely Gwynn’s Shotwell who has made his vision possible she’s a damn global treasure and if we ever have a space colony because of Elon’s vision, she deserves a statue on the surface of another planet for making that vision happen!
You don't even need to be in tech to comb through the books and identify where things need to be cut. This is your standard financial CEO's bread and butter.
Imagine putting Steve Jobs at Twitter. You don't need a tech CEO to straighten Twitter out.
I'm not sure how to parse the juxtaposition of these two sentences - are you implying that Steve Jobs was not a tech CEO?
Tesla - Took an already well engineered Lotus chassis and electrified it. There were plenty of companies around that did the same thing, he just had the PR abilities to elevate it to the next step. As for the next step, look up the Henry Fisker/Tesla lawsuits regarding the design of the Model S.
Space-X - Purchased some of the admittedly best engineered rocket engines to come out of the Soviet Union, the RD-180. It was a surplus closed cycle combustion (efficient) left over from the Energia/Buran program. They then reverse engineered it, and built a small single bell model. This fact seems to have been scrubbed from the internet. This was all to win the Ansari X Prize. Then he tries to revise his own history by selling a bullshit ICBM story.
If memory serves this was on a PBS Nova doc around the xprize. There is a specific scene where Elon walks by his newly purchased russian engines. Now he has the gall to use US protectionist laws to block ULA from doing the same thing?!!!!
I was an admitted member of the Elon cult until I saw him for who he is. Spoiled entitled snake oil salesman manchild.
The contributions of 10000s of employees in Spacex and Tesla are what make those companies great.
Musk has made significant accomplishments in disparate fields - payments, electric cars, rockets. The idea that Musk is a simpleton stumbling his way into success in these disparate fields and to becoming the world's richest man is absurd. The evidence for this is an anonymous person's Tumblr (or tweet - also saw this posted there)?
Correction -- his companies have made significant accomplishments in those fields. The degree to which he was responsible for those accomplishments is unclear.