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Comment by thimabi | Hacker News Reader

Thanks to the wonderful SpaceX engineers who are actually responsible for the company’s achievements. What they’ve been accomplishing recently never ceases to amaze me.

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Talented people are everywhere. Unfortunately, most of them sit in boring jobs and wear out their brains thinking how to push even more ads on other people etc. As a result, their trace in the world isn't what it could be.

Gathering many talents together, keeping them together and channeling their abilities towards a laudable goal is a huge feat.

Were it not for Steve Jobs’ return to Apple, the brilliant engineers who made the iPod would not have made the iPod. Their talent would have been directed towards yet another Apple inkjet printer PCB, or yet another iteration of the Newton, or something.

Great talent and bold leadership are a uniquely powerful combination.

Do people selectively credit the engineers when a musk company has a success, then blame musk when there's a failure? Teslas have quality issues, why don't people blame the manufacturing engineers and technicians instead of piling on the CEO?

> Do people selectively credit the engineers when a musk company has a success, then blame musk when there's a failure?

Yes

The one big difference with the SpaceX organization is the willingness to "blow stuff up" while they are developing, which is enabled by the amount of sensor data they get on each test. That allows them to have a higher revision cadence that decreases development time. Compared to old space tech, where a rocket failure (even during early development) spells the end of the program (such as the X-10 -- it was looking good until a failed landing leg caused an impressive looking loss of vehicle, and then no more program).

Would these engineers have achieved the same working at Boeing?

Ah yes yes. Musk had nothing much to do with any of it. He didn't have the vision for SpaceX nor anything they did. He's just the front-man. Everyone I don't agree with is a loser.

:eyeroll:

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