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Comment by izzydata | Hacker News Reader

Has Elon actually done anything? It seems like he just buys stuff then takes credit for things that happen to do well. I am not sure he even does things in the traditional sense of a CEO directing work towards an intended vision. The most successful companies that Elon happens to be a CEO at are the ones that do the best at managing Elon and working in despite of him. The only thing he has been good for is spending money and generating hype by himself being outlandish.

So the more money he spends and the more money he generates through investments with the least amount of personal involvement is going to create the most successful company that he happens to be a CEO at.

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Rubbish. He's clearly driving the engineering culture at both Tesla and SpaceX and has a fantastic knack for getting people to try new things and push boundaries.

Is he actually designing rocket engines himself? Of course not. Is he directing workers towards his vision? 100%.

He may be an arsehole with an ego the size of Mars but the idea that he is stupid and doesn't "do" anything is naive and wrong.

You figure he’s driving the culture at SpaceX more than Gwynne Shotwell is?

Yes. I used to work at a huge company owned by one man. He may not have run the day to day business but he still had enormous cultural influence because he could override any decision.

Not this drivel again. The man deeply understands his rockets, and is heavily involved in the design of them.

And no, he doesn't take credit for all the work, either. For example, find any NASA post-launch conference and the first words out of his mouth are always "I'd like to thank the SpaceX team and our NASA partners...", usually followed by the anecdote about how the company wouldn't exist today if not for NASA's willingness to believe in SpaceX after their first successful launch.

Ya'll really need to lay off the haterade, or at least dilute it with a little bit of reality. The dude gets a lot of (arguably well-deserved) hate, but that doesn't justify flat out inventing reasons to hate him.

> Has Elon actually done anything?

I mean, conclusively proving this either way requires A/B testing with a time machine, but I think it's hard to argue SpaceX would've managed to get Falcon 9s reusing their first stage without Musk's driving it. Reusable spacecraft does genuinely to be his thing, even if he's not doing the technical work.

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