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Your objection is flat embracing. He has Degrees in physics, and many people with such degrees end up getting positions in engineering companies and are called
by panick21 5y ago
Your objection is flat embracing.
He has Degrees in physics, and many people with such degrees end up getting positions in engineering companies and are called engineers. He was accepted at Standford PHd program for materials science. That would natural lead into an Materials engineering position in some company if completed.
Of course instead of doing that, he left and started companies, as a software engineer he was the core developer one Zip2 and early on on PayPal. If that doesn't qualify you as an engineer I don't know what does.
Literally he has been the Chief Engineer at SpaceX since its founding. And the argument that its just an empty title just don't work. They were a small company for quite a while and somebody made all the final decisions. The are multiple stories where he works directly with other engineers on the rocket as well if 'making engineering decisions' is not enough. Multiple former employees have directly contradicted these sort of 'not engineer claim'.
Just recently former lead engineer at Ford with 50 years experience in automotive, defense and aerospace was allowed to sit in on a meeting for Starship. He said he had never seen anybody CEO be that involved in detailed decisions, about manufacturing processes and design choices and so on.
So just because you don't like him or his product, doesn't make him not an engineer. He has the education many other people that call themselves engineers have, and he has the title of engineer and that title has been officially recognized by NASA and DoD.
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Elon is both the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of SpaceX, so of course he does more than just ‘some very technical work’. He is integrally involved in the actual design and engineering of the rocket, and at least touches every other aspect of the business (but I would say the former takes up much more of his mental real estate). Elon is an engineer at heart, and that’s where and how he works best.
Former Head of Software Quality Assurance at SpaceX
- rlonn 5y agoI think Elon being a true polymath scares a lot of insecure engineers out there. They’ve gotten used to being pampered and told they’re special, and here is a goddamn billionaire business guy who could do their job also. It’s just too much to swallow.
- KSteffensen 5y agoElon being unstable scares a lot of insecure engineers out there.
- panick21 5y agoWhat is your evidence of him being unstable?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mcv 5y agoI think he's referring to his tendency to pick weird twitter fights. I have tons of respect for what Musk has done with Tesla and SpaceX, but it's undeniable that some of his tweets should not have been sent. And while I generally appreciate weirdos, he's a bit much sometimes.
- panick21 5y agoOk, somebody being competitive on twitter means that person is mentally unstable? I mean you want to call him a asshole fine, but doesn't mean he is unstable. If everybody that gets on fight on twitter or is sending tweets that shouldn't be sent is considers 'unstable' then most people on twitter are unstable.
- robbedpeter 5y agoPeople see what he's done as a criticism of their own failings and missed opportunities. I've never seen grapes more sour than the ones devoured by anti-Tesla/Musk folks (apparently by the electric truckload.)
- renewiltord 5y agoThis is interesting. I suppose Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are less threatening since they don’t work on hardware but other polymaths exist. Certainly I believe John Carmack of Id Software and Armadillo Aerospace is one - and the latter is hardware.