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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

How much of SpaceX’s boring day to day stuff (including ~all of the F9 stuff) do you think he has a hand in anymore?

Isn’t he running Tesla, Twitter, Neuralink, The Boring Company, Starlink, and the Starship R&D, including its first-of-it’s-kind Raptor engine design which just hit major version 3? And also raising the remainder of his 12 kids (~8?) that are still speaking to him?

I’m fairly certain that most of the “boring” stuff at SpaceX happens despite Musk, not because of him. Ms. Shotwell’s (the SpaceX COO) name doesn’t come up nearly as often as his does, and I suspect she does at least an order of magnitude more work there.

Indeed, several SpaceX staff wrote an open letter complaining about him and his antics being a distraction that hinders them.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/spacex-illegally...

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In literally every thread about SpaceX people who don't like Musk (and sometimes others), people bring up Shotwell. Of course her name doesn't come up as often as Musk, Musk is literally one of the most famous people on earth, a highly controversial public figure and one of the richest people on the plant, who also owns and leads the company.

For most other tech companies people done even know the Nr.2 person in the company, and that includes companies much bigger then SpaceX. So if anything Shotwell comes up more often then literally any other Nr.2 person in a major tech company. I couldn't tell you the relevant people at Nvidia, or Google, or Microsoft.

Also the letter was more about the external image, that Musk reflected on them. There was no actual argument in the later work inside SpaceX was slowed down because of it. And from the continued progress SpaceX has made before and after that, there is no evidence of that it actually did.

But of course its also self evident that the CEO isn't doing 'boring day to day stuff', but neither is Shotwell.

The numbers 2-4 at Apple come up quite often, but “how annoying it is to work with Tim Cook” isn’t a recurring thread, despite his also being one of the most famous, wealthy, and powerful people on Earth as well.

Joel Spoksky’s meeting with Bill Gates about Excel is famous lore in our circles as well, although I doubt Spolsky was ever even top 10 at Microsoft.

Werner Vogels comes up fairly often, too.

I’ve never heard of those people

I don't know who 2-4 at Apple are, and I think most non Apple fans don't know them, and neither to most Apple fans.

And there is a big difference between people generally known and being a character in on famous 'lore' story.

I challenge you to compare all threads about SpaceX and Amazon and and see who gets more mentions, Shotwell or Vogels. I have never hared about Vogels despite reading many theads on Amazon, that said, I don't read many about AWS details.

Musk is pretty clear about the fact that Shotwell handles the 'boring' operational stuff, so, F9, FH, and very likely includes Starlink now. These have customer-related constraints, which Gwynne is much better at handling.

Elon does decision making for the R&D programs, i.e. Starship, where his style works better.

Imagine being so petty and filled with Elon derangement syndrome that you have to not only comment on his family but cast dispersions on his relationship with his children. Pathetic and speaks volumes on the person making the statement.

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