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Musk had no qualifications to run a rocket company. He didn't have much qualifications to run a car or solar company either. But he has done well by any measure

Musk had no qualifications to run a rocket company. He didn't have much qualifications to run a car or solar company either. But he has done well by any measure of success. The only qualification that he seems to need is clear thinking based on first principles and genuine conviction and perseverance at super hard problems even while facing total personal destruction. And total personal destruction is always a real possibility with him – as he always seems to be all-in betting everything every time. So, if he fails spectacularly at his stated goal for twitter, I wouldn't be surprised (and neither will he be, I bet), but it would be sad to see that.

deleted 5y ago
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Slartie 5y ago
Musk also does not run a rocket company. Musk owns a rocket company. Gwynne Shotwell runs it.
- wsgeorge 5y ago
  Perhaps he's good at getting the right people to run the stuff he owns?
  - KerrAvon 5y ago
    Tesla doesn't seem that well run?
    - xeromal 5y ago
      Tesla is the first U.S. auto company to go public since Ford did so in 1956. Is that not good enough? Seems well run enough to pull that off.
    - adoxyz 5y ago
      By what metric? Love it or hate it, Tesla is a huge success story.
      - hooande 5y ago
        there are tons of known problems with their hardware and engineering. plus lawsuits from employees, etc. stock price covers a lot of things up, but "well run" can still be evaluated
    - fastball 5y ago
      Tesla was started less than 20 years ago and sold nearly 1 million cars last year.
  - Slartie 5y ago
    That's a definitive 'yes'. He is extremely good at finding great and very qualified people, placing them in the right positions and getting 110% out of them.
  - Certhas 5y ago
    To me this is the fascinating thing about Musk that really sets him apart: He has succeeded at building several companies that make real stuff and tackle hard engineering challenges. And it's not just having money to throw at the problem, we know that because Bezos also wanted a Rocket company and threw tons of Cash at it. Hard to say from the outside what it is exactly that allows him to do that. It makes sense that its hard to say what it is, because if it was easy to describe, chances are it wouldn't be what sets him apart (the other option being that it's hard to emulate).
    - Graffur 5y ago
      There's a short list of people who can start a rocket company and want to: Bezos, Branson and Musk. I think it is fair to say that starting a rocket company is hard. The small sample size of people trying doesn't really let us learn anything from the success or failures.
      - kjkjadksj 5y ago
        The fact that there are so few examples doesn’t tell me its hard, it just tells me its unprofitable. Look at these examples, primarily bankrolled by the megalomaniac billionaire themselves vs the value investors who dollar cost average into lockheed martin et al.
      - steveoscaro 5y ago
        Must wasn't a billionaire when he started his rocket company. He had in the ballpark of 100 million. There are thousands and thousands of people that could start a rocket company. And he did it when no private entity had ever even reached orbit with a liquid fuel rocket.
- kanzenryu2 5y ago
  Musk is the lead designer for the rocket. That's not something Bezos does, for example.
  - adoxyz 5y ago
    He's also the Techno-King of Tesla. If you think he's actually doing any of the real science behind rocket design, I have a bridge I'd love to sell you. As influential as Musk is, he's not a real world Tony Stark.
    - mgfist 5y ago
      If you watch any of the starbase videos (part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw) It's clear he knows a thing or two about rockets. Obv no single person is designing the thing, but it's clear he's highly involved.
      - kevinsundar 5y ago
        I was going to link these videos too. Its evident he's closely involved with technical discussions and decisions.
    - caconym_ 5y ago
      I think he's more likely to be involved in relatively high-level (but still critically important) engineering decisions rather than "science". That distinction aside, I really wonder what makes people so sure he isn't involved, when every indication (interviews, etc.) is that he actually has a pretty good understanding of the principles SpaceX's rockets are built on, and the reasons they're designed the way they are. Can you enlighten me? Why is this such a common refrain?
    - dotnet00 5y ago
      While he obviously isn't a real world Tony Stark, other people who were very definitely involved in the nitty gritty have said that he's involved in the design. While he likely isn't doing the simulations or directly working on the hardware, it's pretty obvious that he participates in the design at a high level at minimum https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929 https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929
- mancerayder 5y ago
  What's your definition of run? It certainly seems like he's calling at least some shots? Are you saying he's a holding company?
- sytelus 5y ago
  Shotwell doesn't "run" it. She is president and COO, sure. The vision, strategy and engineering is all Musk. Read the book Liftoff. Musk doesn't get much credit for his engineering work and often gets written off as just "investor" type.
  - etchalon 5y ago
    The "engineering" is not all Musk. Vision and strategy, yes. Musk is not a rocket scientist.
    - wrycoder 5y ago
      It's engineering, at this point. I'm quite sure that Musk understands the engineering totally and makes important contributions. Plus, his instincts in providing direction as a CEO are excellent. Very few CEOs understand tech like Musk does.
    - sytelus 5y ago
      At least during initial days, Musk spent 90% of time on engineering at SpaceX. He self-thought in rocket engineering and can easily match knowledge of many experts in the field. Many of big engineering decisions were done by Musk, at least until Falcon 9.
    - jjmorrison 5y ago
      Seems as much a rocket scientist as anyone.
- dotnet00 5y ago
  He's certainly involved enough in the development process to be able to talk about technical details at length with even some of his previous top employees confirming that he's been heavily involved in development: https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929 https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929 (Tom Mueller is one of the leading experts in the world on rocket engines due to his work on SpaceX's engines), which is a lot more than most of the other big competitors (the only exception is ULA's Tory Bruno since he too has a strong engineering background). Shotwell is an excellent president and pretty much directly responsible for many of SpaceX's prominent contracts (as well as their survival in the early days), but she handles the 'business' side of things (although, since she has a mechanical engineering background I assume she also keeps up with the technical side), while Elon mainly deals with the technical side.
  - namecheapTA 5y ago
    I have an MechE background from a bay area school and honestly you don't learn a thing about anything that could really help you with this. You either have an incredible passion for learning on your own or you are more clueless about engineering than a guy welding rollcages into a racecar with his highschool diploma.
    - dotnet00 5y ago
      She does have experience doing actual technical work and anyway, at her level I expect her knowledge to be more high level. To take your example, she doesn't need to be able to weld rollcages into racecars, but she may be able to understand that a rollcage can only be expected to be useful in X cases or that a good rollcage should have Y features. Similar to how Elon most likely isn't telling people to change X flange into a weld by adjusting the pipe by Y mm, but rather asking his engineers what they would adjust to achieve Z and the technical tradeoffs, then stating what he thinks is acceptable and what isn't.
      - namecheapTA 5y ago
        I agree, hence the mechanic engineering degree is basically worthless IMO. Even in your example, any person with a functioning brain would understand your X and Y examples. So what exactly to mechanical engineers learn? As someone that went through it, I can assure you it's almost nothing. It's just a 4 year grinder so they can put a stamp on who can do medium level math and put up with the grind. The learning is up to you after.
- mlindner 5y ago
  I'm sorry but this is utter nonsense.
sytelus 5y ago
Tesla and SpaceX are technology/engineering problems. This is what Musk is good at and can take huge risks to go after it. Twitter is NOT engineering or technology problem. The politics and policies are not Musk's forte, at least not yet. However, the more concerning part is his continued defragmentation of attention. Tesla is now genuinly falling behind with massive new competitions rising up. New models haven't been on market for a while. Previously announced models aren't getting delievered. Pace of growth of superchargers is not keeping up. There is a lot at stack where Musk can make huge difference.
- standyro 5y ago
  Beg to disagree, other manufacturers are catching up but Musk's playbook since Tesla's inception has been to consistently overpromise to the nth degree, so it's not anything new. Remember it took 2-3 years from the Model 3 announcement for them to ship in any meaningful number (2015 -> 2019). Same thing currently happening for the Cybertruck, Roadster, Semi, etc. Are they being too ambitious? Certainly. But it's not really anything new for Tesla. If anything having Musk's attention being frayed to various companies is probably a benefit, from my anecdotal personal interactions with top employees at SpaceX and Tesla. A lot of employees left because Elon is a great figurehead and product leader but an annoying micromanager.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- presentation 5y ago
  Definitely not his forte, all his projects in urban planning have been so, so bad.
- hsn915 5y ago
  SpaceX is not just a technology problem. It's a sales and marketing problem. You're not selling to the mass market, you're selling to a government. You need to convince people with power to buy your product. If they don't, your business can't get off the ground.
anf 5y ago
I like Elon, too, but "no qualifications to run a rocket company" is simply delusional. He majored in physics at Penn and econ at Wharton and went to grad school at Stanford studying material science (for two days, just enough to get to signal being smart). I have a harder time imagining what kind of background would be better being CEO of a rocket company. If he runs Twitter like 4chan, it will surely fail, but I think he has more to his plan than he is willing to share publicly at this time.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Slartie 5y ago

Musk also does not run a rocket company. Musk owns a rocket company. Gwynne Shotwell runs it.

wsgeorge 5y ago
Perhaps he's good at getting the right people to run the stuff he owns?
- KerrAvon 5y ago
  Tesla doesn't seem that well run?
  - xeromal 5y ago
    Tesla is the first U.S. auto company to go public since Ford did so in 1956. Is that not good enough? Seems well run enough to pull that off.
  - adoxyz 5y ago
    By what metric? Love it or hate it, Tesla is a huge success story.
    - hooande 5y ago
      there are tons of known problems with their hardware and engineering. plus lawsuits from employees, etc. stock price covers a lot of things up, but "well run" can still be evaluated
  - fastball 5y ago
    Tesla was started less than 20 years ago and sold nearly 1 million cars last year.
- Slartie 5y ago
  That's a definitive 'yes'. He is extremely good at finding great and very qualified people, placing them in the right positions and getting 110% out of them.
- Certhas 5y ago
  To me this is the fascinating thing about Musk that really sets him apart: He has succeeded at building several companies that make real stuff and tackle hard engineering challenges. And it's not just having money to throw at the problem, we know that because Bezos also wanted a Rocket company and threw tons of Cash at it. Hard to say from the outside what it is exactly that allows him to do that. It makes sense that its hard to say what it is, because if it was easy to describe, chances are it wouldn't be what sets him apart (the other option being that it's hard to emulate).
  - Graffur 5y ago
    There's a short list of people who can start a rocket company and want to: Bezos, Branson and Musk. I think it is fair to say that starting a rocket company is hard. The small sample size of people trying doesn't really let us learn anything from the success or failures.
    - kjkjadksj 5y ago
      The fact that there are so few examples doesn’t tell me its hard, it just tells me its unprofitable. Look at these examples, primarily bankrolled by the megalomaniac billionaire themselves vs the value investors who dollar cost average into lockheed martin et al.
    - steveoscaro 5y ago
      Must wasn't a billionaire when he started his rocket company. He had in the ballpark of 100 million. There are thousands and thousands of people that could start a rocket company. And he did it when no private entity had ever even reached orbit with a liquid fuel rocket.
kanzenryu2 5y ago
Musk is the lead designer for the rocket. That's not something Bezos does, for example.
- adoxyz 5y ago
  He's also the Techno-King of Tesla. If you think he's actually doing any of the real science behind rocket design, I have a bridge I'd love to sell you. As influential as Musk is, he's not a real world Tony Stark.
  - mgfist 5y ago
    If you watch any of the starbase videos (part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw) It's clear he knows a thing or two about rockets. Obv no single person is designing the thing, but it's clear he's highly involved.
    - kevinsundar 5y ago
      I was going to link these videos too. Its evident he's closely involved with technical discussions and decisions.
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    I think he's more likely to be involved in relatively high-level (but still critically important) engineering decisions rather than "science". That distinction aside, I really wonder what makes people so sure he isn't involved, when every indication (interviews, etc.) is that he actually has a pretty good understanding of the principles SpaceX's rockets are built on, and the reasons they're designed the way they are. Can you enlighten me? Why is this such a common refrain?
  - dotnet00 5y ago
    While he obviously isn't a real world Tony Stark, other people who were very definitely involved in the nitty gritty have said that he's involved in the design. While he likely isn't doing the simulations or directly working on the hardware, it's pretty obvious that he participates in the design at a high level at minimum https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929 https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929
mancerayder 5y ago
What's your definition of run? It certainly seems like he's calling at least some shots? Are you saying he's a holding company?
sytelus 5y ago
Shotwell doesn't "run" it. She is president and COO, sure. The vision, strategy and engineering is all Musk. Read the book Liftoff. Musk doesn't get much credit for his engineering work and often gets written off as just "investor" type.
- etchalon 5y ago
  The "engineering" is not all Musk. Vision and strategy, yes. Musk is not a rocket scientist.
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    It's engineering, at this point. I'm quite sure that Musk understands the engineering totally and makes important contributions. Plus, his instincts in providing direction as a CEO are excellent. Very few CEOs understand tech like Musk does.
  - sytelus 5y ago
    At least during initial days, Musk spent 90% of time on engineering at SpaceX. He self-thought in rocket engineering and can easily match knowledge of many experts in the field. Many of big engineering decisions were done by Musk, at least until Falcon 9.
  - jjmorrison 5y ago
    Seems as much a rocket scientist as anyone.
dotnet00 5y ago
He's certainly involved enough in the development process to be able to talk about technical details at length with even some of his previous top employees confirming that he's been heavily involved in development: https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929 https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929 (Tom Mueller is one of the leading experts in the world on rocket engines due to his work on SpaceX's engines), which is a lot more than most of the other big competitors (the only exception is ULA's Tory Bruno since he too has a strong engineering background). Shotwell is an excellent president and pretty much directly responsible for many of SpaceX's prominent contracts (as well as their survival in the early days), but she handles the 'business' side of things (although, since she has a mechanical engineering background I assume she also keeps up with the technical side), while Elon mainly deals with the technical side.
- namecheapTA 5y ago
  I have an MechE background from a bay area school and honestly you don't learn a thing about anything that could really help you with this. You either have an incredible passion for learning on your own or you are more clueless about engineering than a guy welding rollcages into a racecar with his highschool diploma.
  - dotnet00 5y ago
    She does have experience doing actual technical work and anyway, at her level I expect her knowledge to be more high level. To take your example, she doesn't need to be able to weld rollcages into racecars, but she may be able to understand that a rollcage can only be expected to be useful in X cases or that a good rollcage should have Y features. Similar to how Elon most likely isn't telling people to change X flange into a weld by adjusting the pipe by Y mm, but rather asking his engineers what they would adjust to achieve Z and the technical tradeoffs, then stating what he thinks is acceptable and what isn't.
    - namecheapTA 5y ago
      I agree, hence the mechanic engineering degree is basically worthless IMO. Even in your example, any person with a functioning brain would understand your X and Y examples. So what exactly to mechanical engineers learn? As someone that went through it, I can assure you it's almost nothing. It's just a 4 year grinder so they can put a stamp on who can do medium level math and put up with the grind. The learning is up to you after.
mlindner 5y ago
I'm sorry but this is utter nonsense.

sytelus 5y ago

Tesla and SpaceX are technology/engineering problems. This is what Musk is good at and can take huge risks to go after it. Twitter is NOT engineering or technology problem. The politics and policies are not Musk's forte, at least not yet. However, the more concerning part is his continued defragmentation of attention. Tesla is now genuinly falling behind with massive new competitions rising up. New models haven't been on market for a while. Previously announced models aren't getting delievered. Pace of growth of superchargers is not keeping up. There is a lot at stack where Musk can make huge difference.

standyro 5y ago
Beg to disagree, other manufacturers are catching up but Musk's playbook since Tesla's inception has been to consistently overpromise to the nth degree, so it's not anything new. Remember it took 2-3 years from the Model 3 announcement for them to ship in any meaningful number (2015 -> 2019). Same thing currently happening for the Cybertruck, Roadster, Semi, etc. Are they being too ambitious? Certainly. But it's not really anything new for Tesla. If anything having Musk's attention being frayed to various companies is probably a benefit, from my anecdotal personal interactions with top employees at SpaceX and Tesla. A lot of employees left because Elon is a great figurehead and product leader but an annoying micromanager.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
presentation 5y ago
Definitely not his forte, all his projects in urban planning have been so, so bad.
hsn915 5y ago
SpaceX is not just a technology problem. It's a sales and marketing problem. You're not selling to the mass market, you're selling to a government. You need to convince people with power to buy your product. If they don't, your business can't get off the ground.

anf 5y ago

I like Elon, too, but "no qualifications to run a rocket company" is simply delusional. He majored in physics at Penn and econ at Wharton and went to grad school at Stanford studying material science (for two days, just enough to get to signal being smart). I have a harder time imagining what kind of background would be better being CEO of a rocket company. If he runs Twitter like 4chan, it will surely fail, but I think he has more to his plan than he is willing to share publicly at this time.