4 ms·

Serious question: is he technically smart? Or is he just a rich kid who got lucky and understands how to manipulate situations to his advantage? Some of his id

by smt88 4y ago

Serious question: is he technically smart? Or is he just a rich kid who got lucky and understands how to manipulate situations to his advantage? Some of his ideas are good, but others (like Hyperloop) are idiotic and are worse than existing technology. He seems to just dream things up and then throw money at good engineers until they accomplish them. This works with some things (SpaceX, Tesla) and fails with others (Boring). The situation with the kids in the cave revealed how poorly he understands a lot of things he claims to be a genius in.

jqpabc123 4y ago
He seems to just dream things up and then throw money at good engineers until they accomplish them. By all accounts from those who have worked for him, he is heavily involved and pretty hands on in terms of engineering and design. You can't just be a rich hands on idiot and have the success he has had. Just hiring a team of good engineers takes a certain level of technical insight.
- smt88 4y ago
  > By all accounts from those who have worked for him, he is heavily involved and pretty hands on in terms of engineering and design. I've heard that too, but I've also heard that he kind of goes in, drops a bomb on his engineers, like "This needs to be 25% more efficient by next year," and then leaves it to them to figure it out -- even if it isn't technically possible. Sometimes the breakthroughs are very hard but actually possible (like reusable launch systems at SpaceX) and sometimes they're just not possible (like reaching L4/5 SDCs in a few years without even having LIDAR). So the question I'd ask is, can anyone achieve a few breakthroughs if they constantly repeat this formula? 1. Make huge promises about advancements in technology. 2. Hire excited engineers. 3. Give them lots of money and unreasonably optimistic deadlines. 4. Repeat. Musk himself hasn't succeeded seemingly even 50% of the time with this formula, but he is one of the few people with enough money to keep trying it over and over again. Google is the same: they have so many moonshots, one of them was guaranteed to be a breakthrough like Waymo while a lot of the others were going to be more like Loon[1] or Calico[2]. 1. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55761172 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55761172 2. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/27/15409672/google-calico-secretive-aging-mortality-research https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/27/15409672/go...
  - jqpabc123 4y ago
    I am not the world's biggest Musk fan --- but there is no denying that he has achieved success more than once in some pretty diverse areas. Anyone can get lucky once --- but to do it over and over again (Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX) suggests something more than just luck or money was involved. For example, lots of rich people have tried to start a car company and failed. You don't get to be the richest person in the world simply by making demands.
RadixSorter 4y ago
Honestly, I think it's the latter. There is _some_ intelligence required to understand how to grift at the level that he does, but he is by no means a brilliant engineer or anything along those lines.
kennend3 4y ago
Was Elizabeth Holmes (theranos) "smart" or great at manipulating situations to suit her? One can argue that you must be smart to accomplish this level of fraud.. in Elizabeth's case she was defrauding people who should have known better. Many "rich and famous" are really just good at marketing, and one has to wonder how much of his "antics" are to keep himself in the news?
- smt88 4y ago
  > Was Elizabeth Holmes (theranos) "smart" or great at manipulating situations to suit her? I genuinely don't know. I listened to that podcast about her, and my conclusion was mostly that she was obsessive, manipulative, controlling, and unscrupulous. I wasn't able to figure out if she were actually intelligent or not. I'd ask the same thing about Meredith Perry at uBeam[1], who presided over a similarly fanciful (probably fraudulent) company. Can you be said to be "intelligent" if scientists are telling you that the laws of nature prevent your product from ever working, but you throw money at it anyway? Can you be said to be intelligent if you hire some of the world's most talented people and then abuse them until they leave? 1. https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/20/ubeam/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/20/ubeam/
  - deleted 4y ago
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by smt88 4y ago

jqpabc123 4y ago

He seems to just dream things up and then throw money at good engineers until they accomplish them. By all accounts from those who have worked for him, he is heavily involved and pretty hands on in terms of engineering and design. You can't just be a rich hands on idiot and have the success he has had. Just hiring a team of good engineers takes a certain level of technical insight.

smt88 4y ago
> By all accounts from those who have worked for him, he is heavily involved and pretty hands on in terms of engineering and design. I've heard that too, but I've also heard that he kind of goes in, drops a bomb on his engineers, like "This needs to be 25% more efficient by next year," and then leaves it to them to figure it out -- even if it isn't technically possible. Sometimes the breakthroughs are very hard but actually possible (like reusable launch systems at SpaceX) and sometimes they're just not possible (like reaching L4/5 SDCs in a few years without even having LIDAR). So the question I'd ask is, can anyone achieve a few breakthroughs if they constantly repeat this formula? 1. Make huge promises about advancements in technology. 2. Hire excited engineers. 3. Give them lots of money and unreasonably optimistic deadlines. 4. Repeat. Musk himself hasn't succeeded seemingly even 50% of the time with this formula, but he is one of the few people with enough money to keep trying it over and over again. Google is the same: they have so many moonshots, one of them was guaranteed to be a breakthrough like Waymo while a lot of the others were going to be more like Loon[1] or Calico[2]. 1. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55761172 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55761172 2. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/27/15409672/google-calico-secretive-aging-mortality-research https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/27/15409672/go...
- jqpabc123 4y ago
  I am not the world's biggest Musk fan --- but there is no denying that he has achieved success more than once in some pretty diverse areas. Anyone can get lucky once --- but to do it over and over again (Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX) suggests something more than just luck or money was involved. For example, lots of rich people have tried to start a car company and failed. You don't get to be the richest person in the world simply by making demands.

RadixSorter 4y ago

Honestly, I think it's the latter. There is _some_ intelligence required to understand how to grift at the level that he does, but he is by no means a brilliant engineer or anything along those lines.

kennend3 4y ago

Was Elizabeth Holmes (theranos) "smart" or great at manipulating situations to suit her? One can argue that you must be smart to accomplish this level of fraud.. in Elizabeth's case she was defrauding people who should have known better. Many "rich and famous" are really just good at marketing, and one has to wonder how much of his "antics" are to keep himself in the news?

smt88 4y ago
> Was Elizabeth Holmes (theranos) "smart" or great at manipulating situations to suit her? I genuinely don't know. I listened to that podcast about her, and my conclusion was mostly that she was obsessive, manipulative, controlling, and unscrupulous. I wasn't able to figure out if she were actually intelligent or not. I'd ask the same thing about Meredith Perry at uBeam[1], who presided over a similarly fanciful (probably fraudulent) company. Can you be said to be "intelligent" if scientists are telling you that the laws of nature prevent your product from ever working, but you throw money at it anyway? Can you be said to be intelligent if you hire some of the world's most talented people and then abuse them until they leave? 1. https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/20/ubeam/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/20/ubeam/
- deleted 4y ago
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