5 ms·

Accomplished? He's got money and hired some smart people. And tech media is more than happy to ignore all the stupid shit he's done and tried.

dijit 4y ago
> He's got money and hired some smart people. Definitely not a fan of his but hiring smart people and enabling them is an accomplishment. As wealthy as he is, he didn’t inherit all of what he has today. He’s definitely done more than many people who come from wealth.
- native_samples 4y ago
  He didn't inherit any of what he has today, did he? And he didn't come from wealth. He grew up in South Africa.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dijit 4y ago
    Are you implying that there are no wealthy people in South Africa? Not to sound “attacky” but that seems extremely naive. Truthfully, he comes from wealth, but not close to the wealth he has today; his father owned half of an emerald mine for example. He is quoted as saying (about his youth): "We had so much money at times we couldn't even close our safe"
    - stormbrew 4y ago
      No one on the planet at the time was as wealthy as the current crop of ultra-rich, including Musk. Perhaps no one in all of history, really, though that becomes a complicated comparison really fast. But yes, he absolutely comes from wealth. Just like most of them do.
      - dijit 4y ago
        John D. Rockefeller was at the peak of his wealth in 1909, with over $900 million (in 1909 dollars). Doesn’t sound like much today—just your run-of-the-mill almost-billionaire. But that fortune represented about 5% of the TOTAL GDP of the U.S. in about 1910. That is obscenely GARGANTUAN. If we were to translate 5% of the 2020 U.S. GDP today, that would be 5% of $20.807 trillion. Or about $1.404 trillion. So Bezos, with his $182.2 billion and Musk with his $264.6 billion, have A LONG way to go to catch up with Rockefeller.
JaceLightning 4y ago
He got money because he is really accomplished...
sshine 4y ago
Electric sports cars Self-landing rockets Underground tunnel systems Brain-computer interfaces OpenAI leading AI research PayPal Accomplished? Meh!
- gamblor956 4y ago
  All of those things existed before Musk. Is he retroactively giving himself credit for those things like he did with Tesla? EVs are over a century old. SpaceX was recreating NASA research. Subways have been a thing for over a century; literally millions of people use them every day. Paypal's tech stack used Thiel's startup's technology; they jettisoned everything from Musk's stack and moreover fired him for gross incompetence.
  - askonomm 4y ago
    Oh man, if one can only be considered accomplished when inventing completely new things I will never amount to anything :(
  - mattcwilson 4y ago
    I’m curious if there is anything that, if shown to be true, you would acknowledge as evidence of his accomplishment?
  - mlindner 4y ago
    No they did not. > EVs are over a century old. But not an economic success and there was (and still is to be frank) no successful EV industry besides Tesla. A lot of fanfare with little results. > SpaceX was recreating NASA research. NASA and competitors dismissed any idea of landing rockets or even reusability in the first place. It was deemed a failed idea. This is why the SLS has been created by NASA as reusability was deemed a failure. On the other items besides PayPal, they aren't successes yet so I'll reserve judgement. On the whole "jettisoned" stuff there's a lot of conflicting reports on that and he wasn't fired.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    > SpaceX was recreating NASA research. Reading such an absurd and idiotic reductionist take on HN just makes me sad. I mostly speaks to you having absolutely zero knowlage about space technology and rocketry. > moreover fired him for gross incompetence. They fired him because he had a 10 year business plan to replace banks and become the main monetary system for all payments. A combination of being a bank, an online payment provider and Apple pay. The other founders wanted to sell the company and make quick cash. > Subways have been a thing for over a century; Yeah such an asshole wanting to improve tunneling technology. Only assholes try to improve technology. We should just shoot anybody in the head who tries to improve on technology that is more then 10 years old.
capkutay 4y ago
I guess all people with money have bootstrapped companies that launched mankind into space?
- hef19898 4y ago
  Some of those with the necessary petty cash and the interest do: Bezos, Branson, Allen...
kiba 4y ago
He can be both accomplished and an asshole.
TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
This smells like the virulent detraction aimed at Trump, which a very large number of people tried to promulgate on social media. Sure, you can quote a bunch of subjective measures and conclude that he’s “stupid,” but he’s successful by every common understanding of the word. Trying to take a dump on him like this just comes off as jealousy.
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  Trump's companies failed at selling steaks, booze, and gambling to Americans. (He also failed at launching a coup d'etat, but at least he succeeded at avoiding punishment for it.) Musk's companies have already revolutionized at least two hard-to-crack industries, aerospace and automotive, and are attempting more. Your exercise in false equivalence is, well, an exercise in false equivalence.
Natsu 4y ago
> Accomplished? He's got money and hired some smart people. Lines like that work better on a site where most of the people don't appreciate just how damned hard it is to build a business.
fbrncci 4y ago
He's the richest person I a society which wholesale measures accomplishments by wealth. If he isn't accomplished, then I don't know who is.
playpause 4y ago
He’s the chief engineer and product designer at Tesla, and the chief engineer at SpaceX, as well as CEO of both. He led the design and engineering of rockets that land, cutting the cost of space travel by one order of magnitude. Meanwhile he created the most valuable car maker in the world and forced the rest of the industry to bring forward their electric car plans by a decade. And these things weren’t accidents, he often tells the world what his goals are before accomplishing them. And he’s the richest man in the world. He’s many things, but not unaccomplished.
- SpikeDad 4y ago
  He owns the companies. He can call himself whatever he wants - doesn't make it true. He got lucky with Tesla - good timing, a pliant customer base willing to ignore all the things Tesla got wrong but still was willing to spend untold amount of money. I am entirely skeptical he designed anything and considering the duds he's pretending are revolutionary (Boring, Hyperloop, Mars nonsense, Cybertruck, etc) but instead are failures it seems unlikely he could be so right about one thing and so wrong on others. Trump is rich also
mlindner 4y ago
He's one of the most "accomplished" people on this planet that is alive today.
panick21_ 4y ago
What a dumb ass comment. As if it was easy to start and lead major technology companies for decades. Even if you want to go with the idiotic 'he is not an engineer'-storyline to make yourself feel good, as a business man his credentials are literally unassailable. To downplay business success as 'hired some smart people' is just ridiculous and utterly sad and depressing to read on a page that is hosted on 'ycombinator'. Get a grip and think before you write something.
ridiculous_leke 4y ago
How did he get that much money and how did he end up in a position to hire so many people? These questions are important because majority of people cannot do that.
hackerfromthefu 4y ago
Well go ahead and start a series of successful category defining companies. We will be waiting to see how easy you make it look!
- hef19898 4y ago
  Same lazy argument as saying "go live somewhere else if you don't like it here".
  - hackerfromthefu 4y ago
    No, just no.
inglor_cz 4y ago
"He's got money and hired some smart people." Ever tried to count all the failed businesses that did the same? The attrition rate of technological startups that match your description is insane. How many space startups from the early 2000s do even exist today?

dijit 4y ago

> He's got money and hired some smart people. Definitely not a fan of his but hiring smart people and enabling them is an accomplishment. As wealthy as he is, he didn’t inherit all of what he has today. He’s definitely done more than many people who come from wealth.

native_samples 4y ago
He didn't inherit any of what he has today, did he? And he didn't come from wealth. He grew up in South Africa.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dijit 4y ago
  Are you implying that there are no wealthy people in South Africa? Not to sound “attacky” but that seems extremely naive. Truthfully, he comes from wealth, but not close to the wealth he has today; his father owned half of an emerald mine for example. He is quoted as saying (about his youth): "We had so much money at times we couldn't even close our safe"
  - stormbrew 4y ago
    No one on the planet at the time was as wealthy as the current crop of ultra-rich, including Musk. Perhaps no one in all of history, really, though that becomes a complicated comparison really fast. But yes, he absolutely comes from wealth. Just like most of them do.
    - dijit 4y ago
      John D. Rockefeller was at the peak of his wealth in 1909, with over $900 million (in 1909 dollars). Doesn’t sound like much today—just your run-of-the-mill almost-billionaire. But that fortune represented about 5% of the TOTAL GDP of the U.S. in about 1910. That is obscenely GARGANTUAN. If we were to translate 5% of the 2020 U.S. GDP today, that would be 5% of $20.807 trillion. Or about $1.404 trillion. So Bezos, with his $182.2 billion and Musk with his $264.6 billion, have A LONG way to go to catch up with Rockefeller.

JaceLightning 4y ago

He got money because he is really accomplished...

sshine 4y ago

Electric sports cars Self-landing rockets Underground tunnel systems Brain-computer interfaces OpenAI leading AI research PayPal Accomplished? Meh!

gamblor956 4y ago
All of those things existed before Musk. Is he retroactively giving himself credit for those things like he did with Tesla? EVs are over a century old. SpaceX was recreating NASA research. Subways have been a thing for over a century; literally millions of people use them every day. Paypal's tech stack used Thiel's startup's technology; they jettisoned everything from Musk's stack and moreover fired him for gross incompetence.
- askonomm 4y ago
  Oh man, if one can only be considered accomplished when inventing completely new things I will never amount to anything :(
- mattcwilson 4y ago
  I’m curious if there is anything that, if shown to be true, you would acknowledge as evidence of his accomplishment?
- mlindner 4y ago
  No they did not. > EVs are over a century old. But not an economic success and there was (and still is to be frank) no successful EV industry besides Tesla. A lot of fanfare with little results. > SpaceX was recreating NASA research. NASA and competitors dismissed any idea of landing rockets or even reusability in the first place. It was deemed a failed idea. This is why the SLS has been created by NASA as reusability was deemed a failure. On the other items besides PayPal, they aren't successes yet so I'll reserve judgement. On the whole "jettisoned" stuff there's a lot of conflicting reports on that and he wasn't fired.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  > SpaceX was recreating NASA research. Reading such an absurd and idiotic reductionist take on HN just makes me sad. I mostly speaks to you having absolutely zero knowlage about space technology and rocketry. > moreover fired him for gross incompetence. They fired him because he had a 10 year business plan to replace banks and become the main monetary system for all payments. A combination of being a bank, an online payment provider and Apple pay. The other founders wanted to sell the company and make quick cash. > Subways have been a thing for over a century; Yeah such an asshole wanting to improve tunneling technology. Only assholes try to improve technology. We should just shoot anybody in the head who tries to improve on technology that is more then 10 years old.

capkutay 4y ago

I guess all people with money have bootstrapped companies that launched mankind into space?

hef19898 4y ago
Some of those with the necessary petty cash and the interest do: Bezos, Branson, Allen...

kiba 4y ago

He can be both accomplished and an asshole.

TheRealDunkirk 4y ago

This smells like the virulent detraction aimed at Trump, which a very large number of people tried to promulgate on social media. Sure, you can quote a bunch of subjective measures and conclude that he’s “stupid,” but he’s successful by every common understanding of the word. Trying to take a dump on him like this just comes off as jealousy.

CamperBob2 4y ago
Trump's companies failed at selling steaks, booze, and gambling to Americans. (He also failed at launching a coup d'etat, but at least he succeeded at avoiding punishment for it.) Musk's companies have already revolutionized at least two hard-to-crack industries, aerospace and automotive, and are attempting more. Your exercise in false equivalence is, well, an exercise in false equivalence.

Natsu 4y ago

> Accomplished? He's got money and hired some smart people. Lines like that work better on a site where most of the people don't appreciate just how damned hard it is to build a business.

fbrncci 4y ago

He's the richest person I a society which wholesale measures accomplishments by wealth. If he isn't accomplished, then I don't know who is.

playpause 4y ago

He’s the chief engineer and product designer at Tesla, and the chief engineer at SpaceX, as well as CEO of both. He led the design and engineering of rockets that land, cutting the cost of space travel by one order of magnitude. Meanwhile he created the most valuable car maker in the world and forced the rest of the industry to bring forward their electric car plans by a decade. And these things weren’t accidents, he often tells the world what his goals are before accomplishing them. And he’s the richest man in the world. He’s many things, but not unaccomplished.

SpikeDad 4y ago
He owns the companies. He can call himself whatever he wants - doesn't make it true. He got lucky with Tesla - good timing, a pliant customer base willing to ignore all the things Tesla got wrong but still was willing to spend untold amount of money. I am entirely skeptical he designed anything and considering the duds he's pretending are revolutionary (Boring, Hyperloop, Mars nonsense, Cybertruck, etc) but instead are failures it seems unlikely he could be so right about one thing and so wrong on others. Trump is rich also

mlindner 4y ago

He's one of the most "accomplished" people on this planet that is alive today.

panick21_ 4y ago

What a dumb ass comment. As if it was easy to start and lead major technology companies for decades. Even if you want to go with the idiotic 'he is not an engineer'-storyline to make yourself feel good, as a business man his credentials are literally unassailable. To downplay business success as 'hired some smart people' is just ridiculous and utterly sad and depressing to read on a page that is hosted on 'ycombinator'. Get a grip and think before you write something.

ridiculous_leke 4y ago

How did he get that much money and how did he end up in a position to hire so many people? These questions are important because majority of people cannot do that.

hackerfromthefu 4y ago

Well go ahead and start a series of successful category defining companies. We will be waiting to see how easy you make it look!

hef19898 4y ago
Same lazy argument as saying "go live somewhere else if you don't like it here".
- hackerfromthefu 4y ago
  No, just no.

inglor_cz 4y ago

"He's got money and hired some smart people." Ever tried to count all the failed businesses that did the same? The attrition rate of technological startups that match your description is insane. How many space startups from the early 2000s do even exist today?