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Comment by helveticabold48 | Hacker News Reader

Actually the world needs more Jobs too. More Jobs, more Woz. Brilliant engineers and hackers need to partner with some super egotistic, charismatic, bullying asshole visionaries to make a dent.

Remember how Jobs single handedly bullied Adobe Flash into its graveyard? Bullied record labels into selling individual songs instead of the whole CD? Cannot imagine Woz doing that. Elon is the next Jobs only even harder to stomach. I wouldn't want to work for these people but they, along with those who can work along side them, change the world.

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I would prefer a world with less 'asshole visionaries'. If that means we get smart phones a few years later (or not at all) it would be worth it, for a kinder world.

Elon is an engineer's engineer.

What software or system did he write that you've used?

Right? Musk isn't any sort of engineer. At most he reviews and comments on the work of engineers.

His name is on many patents. For many other engineering qualifications and work, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk

Come on, your comments trail shows that you have a lot of experience. You know that being on a patent doesn't make one an inventor, just like being on a peer-reviewed paper doesn't make one a contributor. Yes Musk seems to be a deeply technical person, even Karpathy wrote it somewhere here after he resigned, but these credentials you're citing are not the proof.

It's good enough for me. I don't know what proof you're looking for. He's far better than many engineers I've worked with.

BTW, I do not have a CS degree.

> He's far better than many engineers I've worked with.

How do you know that? Have you worked with him?

Otherwise you'd have to believe he bungled his way into multiple fortunes creating engineering triumphs that outdid the established automakers and NASA.

You obviously don't need to be an actual engineer to pull this off.

Elon Musk provided the vision and the money to assemble a great team of engineers. However, I find it hard to believe he does actual electric car or spacecraft engineering, given he has no education in these fields.

"Musk had spent months studying the aerospace industry and the physics behind it. From Cantrell and others, he'd borrowed Rocket Propulsion Elements, Fundamentals of Astrodynamics, and Aerothermodynamics of Gas Turbine and Rocket Propulsion, along with several more seminal texts."

"Elon Musk" by Vance pg 108

All three of those books are advanced engineering books (I have a copy of each).

So a biography says he borrowed some books. Do you want me to believe he suddenly became a genius rocket engineer over the course of a few months? With no prior track record or any indication of his supposedly extraordinary talent?

Hal Finney wouldn't show up for class at Caltech. He'd flip through the textbook at the end of the semester, and ace the final.

Yes, there are people like Hal. Not many, but they exist.

If you prefer to think that Elon bungled his way into inspiring top people to implement his ideas, and bungled his way into launching payload at 10% of the best cost NASA could do, feel free.

P.S. Buy those books, and look through them. They're the real deal.

There are certainly people like that! I just doubt that Musk is one of them.

First there are is no hard evidence for his supposedly engineering genius and second he has a long public track record of lying and gross hyperbole.

What I find more likely: Musk throws around wild ideas and his engineers figure out what might work or not. (After all, he also comes up with pretty dumb ideas.) This approach can be successful, but it doesn't make you an engineer yourself.

I am still confused why you would claim that Musk was better than many engineers you know, based on what little we actually know about his technical skills.

I recently saw a Tesla from the original company; it was a sports car, nothing like today's lithium battery on wheels

After Musk took over Tesla from its original founders one of the original founders sued him in state court in California

In the course of the litigation, discovery revealed Musk had lied about his educational credentials

The pleadings from the litigation are available:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zPeWaaCZHqfq0tnkPwc6...

https://archive.ph/gzGpF

The evidence presented showed that Musk lied about educational credentials

The issue raised is Musk's dishonesty, at most fraud, at least loss of credibility

Why did he lie

Note Jobs was named on some patents as well

For example, "Advertisement in operating system"

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20090265214A1/

https://patents.google.com/patent/US8712902B2/

https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/

("20090265214").pn.

Ugh, I have rarely been so disappointed in someone I respected than after reading the comments here by Walter.

https://www.google.com/search?q=did+elon+musk+write+software

Isn’t he more like Ford? To me it seems like most of his value add is in rethinking the physical manufacturing process

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