8 ms·

A lot of people in this thread saying "Musk isn't an engineer." According to Jim Keller, John Carmack and others, this simply isn't true: https://www.reddit.com

A lot of people in this thread saying "Musk isn't an engineer." According to Jim Keller, John Carmack and others, this simply isn't true: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...

AlexandrB 3y ago
For me at least, this perception comes from the level of hubris that Elon exhibits in public. Statements like "At this point, I think I know more about manufacturing than anyone currently alive on earth" is not something you hear from good engineers very often because it reeks of Dunning Kruger. Elon also frequently chooses to make statements with high certainty about areas far outside his expertise ("Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April") and consistency overpromises and under-delivers with some technologies (FSD). So I don't know. Maybe he's a good engineer when he's not on camera. But as a public figure I think he's massively overexposed, largely by choice, and it's doing him no favours in terms of perception lately.
- neurobama 3y ago
  >But as a public figure I think he's massively overexposed, largely by choice, and it's doing him no favours in terms of perception lately. I think you'll find there's a significant split in perception between, for example, the average American and the pseudo-elites who inhabit Bluesky and Hacker News. Or the latter and the average actual hacker, for that matter.
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    Golly, how do average Americans perceive Elon? Is there direct evidence of Elon's personal engineering prowess? All I can find are his own boasting and second hand reports of folks impressed by his familiarity with jargon.
    - neurobama 3y ago
      >Is there direct evidence of Elon's personal engineering prowess? Yes: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
      - paulryanrogers 3y ago
        Second and third hand accounts are nice. Even better when they come from folks no longer financially dependent on Elon's good graces. But I was hoping to see some of his source code for Zip2, some CAD he'd done himself, or even a video of him solving some intractable problem in one of these rooms full of stumped geniuses.
        Natsu 3y ago
        So this guy has founded multiple successful engineering-heavy companies, did not receive any actual financial support past 18 (despite inflated myths of an "emerald mine"), is attested by multiple skilled engineers, and has given videos where he talks in depth about engineering, but we're still looking for new & different kinds of evidence that he has skills? Are we testing whether he knows anything at this point, or whether he's a literal Tony Stark? This thread started with discussion of whether he's any kind of engineer at all now we're looking for "rooms full of stumped geniuses" as if this was something every random engineer experienced.
        paulryanrogers 3y ago
        Didn't see any links to talks by Musk. Perhaps you can share some? Look I can go read Gates' code, so I have some direct evidence of whether his reputation as an engineer is worth the paper it's written on. The story for Musk is much less direct. Still, I'm open to studying the evidence of Musk's engineering chops.
        Natsu 3y ago
- bena 3y ago
  There's a difference between "an engineer" and "a good engineer". So those saying he's not an engineer at all are probably wrong, but those saying he's a good engineer probably aren't correct either. I think it's also the case where his misses are more evident. If you said "We'll get to Mars in 10 years", people will likely have forgotten you said that after 5 years, much less 2 years after your boasted time frame expires. So people credit you for big ideas while not having to deliver on anything. Every year, we've been about a year away from fully autonomous self-driving cars. Complaining about twitter and saying how you'd fix it is easy when you don't control twitter. But actually fixing it is a different story once you have all the control. Promises are easy to make, harder to deliver.
- David_Axelrod 3y ago
  I remember my perception changed when I watched an interview with musk talk about the material science challenges of panel gaps on teslas. You can't have that level of knowledge unless you worked very close to the problem. https://youtu.be/YAtLTLiqNwg?t=1100 https://youtu.be/YAtLTLiqNwg?t=1100
  - jjulius 3y ago
    Worked very close to the problem != is an engineer
    - David_Axelrod 3y ago
      Not sure why people gate keep so hard around "he'S NOt An engiNEER". Even if he's not writing the code anymore, having deep technical understanding of important day to day tasks is an important quality in any leader in an engineering organization.
      - RoyGBivCap 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - TheAlchemist 3y ago
        Yeah. It's a bit like a junior programmer saying architects are not software engineers because they don't write the code. (Btw, software engineers are not really engineers.)
      - jjulius 3y ago
        I wasn't taking a position on Musk with that specific comment, and I don't disagree with your latter point at all. Broadly speaking, I wouldn't rush to consider anyone a doctor, an engineer, a pilot, so on and so forth simply because I watched a video of them speaking so well to a very specific problem that they just so happened to work so closely on. That's all I was getting at.
  - Avshalom 3y ago
    when does he get to the material science challenges in that video.
- jackmott42 3y ago
  I would characterize him as a bad engineer. Which for a CEO is a lot better than nothing, if one does not become too arrogant and stops listening. Which, by now he seems to have done. He clearly can do the math of rocket science, but that math is not actually super hard, but its still better than your average CEO he can do. He can understand math and physics based arguments. But he has never understood people, politics, etc. Which is what twitter is all about.
- javier123454321 3y ago
  I don't know man. I'll often hear things to the effect of I can't believe how incompetent the developers of this app are, regardless of the complexity of the app.
andyjohnson0 3y ago
I think he has some instinctive proficiency at the intersection of product design and PR. I wouldn't consider him an engineer.
- chippiewill 3y ago
  Elon is just as much an engineer as Steve Jobs was. That is to say, Elon is not an engineer.
  - cyrux004 3y ago
    Show me where Steve jobs talks about internals of macbook components like the way Elon talks about spaceship rockets; then i will believe you you
    - andyjohnson0 3y ago
      I'm not the person you replied to, but I'm struck by two things about that Reddit post. First, all but one of the quoted people who are engineers [1], are also Musk's subordinates. And second, there are suspiciously few (as in zero) dissenters listed. I've no doubt Musk can talk convincingly about engines or whatever, and maybe even about physics, but I don't think he could function as a professional engineer. I'm just not getting the impression that he has much depth. [1] discounting Carmack who is brilliant but is a different kind of engineer
      - deburo 3y ago
        You're basing this opinion on nothing but gut feeling.
        andyjohnson0 3y ago
        We all are. Like everyone else here, I haven't met the guy. Have you?
      - darawk 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
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biohacker85 3y ago
I don't know if he's a good engineer or not, but people that don't like him want it to be true and will propagate it regardless. All negative news or rumors about him--twitter is failing, his companies succeed despite him, SpaceX launchpad exploded, Tesla kills pedestrian, stock is tanking, etc..." grants a huge dopamine boost to these people. Unfortunately I understand this well as I have my own areas where this is true.
VikingCoder 3y ago
"I know more about rockets than anyone at the company by a pretty significant margin." That sounds way more like an arrogant micro-manager than an engineer to me. The quotes I read there make it sound to me like he's about as involved as Steve Jobs was. Which is not a compliment, coming from me.
- IMTDb 3y ago
  > Which is not a compliment, coming from me. But a compliment for anyone looking at the final results rather than focusing on an incomplete and external perception of the process.
  - VikingCoder 3y ago
    Diamonds are beautiful. Blood diamonds are horrific tragedies. Elon Musk is in charge of some projects that have amazing outcomes, yes. But does he actually know the engineering (which is kind of not a very interesting question to me), and is he horrible to work for? I'm pretty sure he's horrible to work for.
- balaji1 3y ago
  Engineers tend to perceive other engineers as micromanager? And it’s broadly actually true also? Elon being a micromanager (assuming he is) can not be the only reason a rocket (re)flies each weekend.
- theonething 3y ago
  You mean quotes like this? > Elon is brilliant. He’s involved in just about everything. He understands everything. If he asks you a question, you learn very quickly not to go give him a gut reaction. > He wants answers that get down to the fundamental laws of physics. One thing he understands really well is the physics of the rockets. He understands that like nobody else. The stuff I have seen him do in his head is crazy. Quotes like that give me the impression he's very much involved technically.
- rchaud 3y ago
  A famous anecdote from the Steve Jobs official biography was where he was telling the CEO of Corning glass about the specifics of glass manufacturing. The CEO just smiled and played along, because they wanted Apple's business. The custommer is always right; even when they bloviate well beyond their area of expertise.
77pt77 3y ago
He's definitely not a pure snake-oil salesman like Jobs.
darawk 3y ago
The idea that HN commenters who have never met the guy have opinions that contradict the statements of John Carmack, Jim Keller, Tom Mueller, Andrej Karpathy, etc. These people are not sycophants. These people do not need Musk. They have plenty of their own money. They are not speaking highly of him because they want a promotion, or they want to be in his good graces, or they're afraid of being fired. You can still hate him for the way he behaves. You can still think he's a bad guy. But if you think your opinion of his talent or engineering depth is better than these people's who've worked with him, you should seriously reconsider your epistemic blind spots. It's ok for him to be a good engineer and a bad person. Von Braun designed rockets for the Nazis and later the US space program. Nobody doubts his engineering brilliance.
- TheAlchemist 3y ago
  I share your point of view, 100%. As much as I don't like Musk behaviour lately, or how he try to picture himself as the founder of Tesla, it's really ridiculous to deny his achievements. And the money argument - "oh he just paid good engineers to create the companies" - is pretty dumb too - he wasn't that rich until 2 years ago, so why other billionaires didn't do the same thing ? Or all those other more talented engineers.
  - epgui 3y ago
    I'm with you, but: > or how he try to picture himself as the founder of Tesla I think this can actually be reasonably argued both ways.
    - TheAlchemist 3y ago
      Tesla as we know it wouldn't exist without him. IE, the company that almost single handedly (yes, with governments subsides etc etc - they were available to everybody) changed the car industry. But, the way Musk tells the story or tries to push the narrative is very fishy. I remember reading Ashlee Vance biography of Musk, without knowing too much of him at the time, and while I was in awe about the achievements and boldness, it was also pretty obvious that the guy is childish and a dick.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sethd 3y ago
So perhaps he’s a con artist?

AlexandrB 3y ago

For me at least, this perception comes from the level of hubris that Elon exhibits in public. Statements like "At this point, I think I know more about manufacturing than anyone currently alive on earth" is not something you hear from good engineers very often because it reeks of Dunning Kruger. Elon also frequently chooses to make statements with high certainty about areas far outside his expertise ("Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April") and consistency overpromises and under-delivers with some technologies (FSD). So I don't know. Maybe he's a good engineer when he's not on camera. But as a public figure I think he's massively overexposed, largely by choice, and it's doing him no favours in terms of perception lately.

neurobama 3y ago
>But as a public figure I think he's massively overexposed, largely by choice, and it's doing him no favours in terms of perception lately. I think you'll find there's a significant split in perception between, for example, the average American and the pseudo-elites who inhabit Bluesky and Hacker News. Or the latter and the average actual hacker, for that matter.
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  Golly, how do average Americans perceive Elon? Is there direct evidence of Elon's personal engineering prowess? All I can find are his own boasting and second hand reports of folks impressed by his familiarity with jargon.
  - neurobama 3y ago
    >Is there direct evidence of Elon's personal engineering prowess? Yes: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
    - paulryanrogers 3y ago
      Second and third hand accounts are nice. Even better when they come from folks no longer financially dependent on Elon's good graces. But I was hoping to see some of his source code for Zip2, some CAD he'd done himself, or even a video of him solving some intractable problem in one of these rooms full of stumped geniuses.
      - Natsu 3y ago
        So this guy has founded multiple successful engineering-heavy companies, did not receive any actual financial support past 18 (despite inflated myths of an "emerald mine"), is attested by multiple skilled engineers, and has given videos where he talks in depth about engineering, but we're still looking for new & different kinds of evidence that he has skills? Are we testing whether he knows anything at this point, or whether he's a literal Tony Stark? This thread started with discussion of whether he's any kind of engineer at all now we're looking for "rooms full of stumped geniuses" as if this was something every random engineer experienced.
        paulryanrogers 3y ago
        Didn't see any links to talks by Musk. Perhaps you can share some? Look I can go read Gates' code, so I have some direct evidence of whether his reputation as an engineer is worth the paper it's written on. The story for Musk is much less direct. Still, I'm open to studying the evidence of Musk's engineering chops.
        Natsu 3y ago
bena 3y ago
There's a difference between "an engineer" and "a good engineer". So those saying he's not an engineer at all are probably wrong, but those saying he's a good engineer probably aren't correct either. I think it's also the case where his misses are more evident. If you said "We'll get to Mars in 10 years", people will likely have forgotten you said that after 5 years, much less 2 years after your boasted time frame expires. So people credit you for big ideas while not having to deliver on anything. Every year, we've been about a year away from fully autonomous self-driving cars. Complaining about twitter and saying how you'd fix it is easy when you don't control twitter. But actually fixing it is a different story once you have all the control. Promises are easy to make, harder to deliver.
David_Axelrod 3y ago
I remember my perception changed when I watched an interview with musk talk about the material science challenges of panel gaps on teslas. You can't have that level of knowledge unless you worked very close to the problem. https://youtu.be/YAtLTLiqNwg?t=1100 https://youtu.be/YAtLTLiqNwg?t=1100
- jjulius 3y ago
  Worked very close to the problem != is an engineer
  - David_Axelrod 3y ago
    Not sure why people gate keep so hard around "he'S NOt An engiNEER". Even if he's not writing the code anymore, having deep technical understanding of important day to day tasks is an important quality in any leader in an engineering organization.
    - RoyGBivCap 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - TheAlchemist 3y ago
      Yeah. It's a bit like a junior programmer saying architects are not software engineers because they don't write the code. (Btw, software engineers are not really engineers.)
    - jjulius 3y ago
      I wasn't taking a position on Musk with that specific comment, and I don't disagree with your latter point at all. Broadly speaking, I wouldn't rush to consider anyone a doctor, an engineer, a pilot, so on and so forth simply because I watched a video of them speaking so well to a very specific problem that they just so happened to work so closely on. That's all I was getting at.
- Avshalom 3y ago
  when does he get to the material science challenges in that video.
jackmott42 3y ago
I would characterize him as a bad engineer. Which for a CEO is a lot better than nothing, if one does not become too arrogant and stops listening. Which, by now he seems to have done. He clearly can do the math of rocket science, but that math is not actually super hard, but its still better than your average CEO he can do. He can understand math and physics based arguments. But he has never understood people, politics, etc. Which is what twitter is all about.
javier123454321 3y ago
I don't know man. I'll often hear things to the effect of I can't believe how incompetent the developers of this app are, regardless of the complexity of the app.

andyjohnson0 3y ago

I think he has some instinctive proficiency at the intersection of product design and PR. I wouldn't consider him an engineer.

chippiewill 3y ago
Elon is just as much an engineer as Steve Jobs was. That is to say, Elon is not an engineer.
- cyrux004 3y ago
  Show me where Steve jobs talks about internals of macbook components like the way Elon talks about spaceship rockets; then i will believe you you
  - andyjohnson0 3y ago
    I'm not the person you replied to, but I'm struck by two things about that Reddit post. First, all but one of the quoted people who are engineers [1], are also Musk's subordinates. And second, there are suspiciously few (as in zero) dissenters listed. I've no doubt Musk can talk convincingly about engines or whatever, and maybe even about physics, but I don't think he could function as a professional engineer. I'm just not getting the impression that he has much depth. [1] discounting Carmack who is brilliant but is a different kind of engineer
    - deburo 3y ago
      You're basing this opinion on nothing but gut feeling.
      - andyjohnson0 3y ago
        We all are. Like everyone else here, I haven't met the guy. Have you?
    - darawk 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

biohacker85 3y ago

I don't know if he's a good engineer or not, but people that don't like him want it to be true and will propagate it regardless. All negative news or rumors about him--twitter is failing, his companies succeed despite him, SpaceX launchpad exploded, Tesla kills pedestrian, stock is tanking, etc..." grants a huge dopamine boost to these people. Unfortunately I understand this well as I have my own areas where this is true.

VikingCoder 3y ago

"I know more about rockets than anyone at the company by a pretty significant margin." That sounds way more like an arrogant micro-manager than an engineer to me. The quotes I read there make it sound to me like he's about as involved as Steve Jobs was. Which is not a compliment, coming from me.

IMTDb 3y ago
> Which is not a compliment, coming from me. But a compliment for anyone looking at the final results rather than focusing on an incomplete and external perception of the process.
- VikingCoder 3y ago
  Diamonds are beautiful. Blood diamonds are horrific tragedies. Elon Musk is in charge of some projects that have amazing outcomes, yes. But does he actually know the engineering (which is kind of not a very interesting question to me), and is he horrible to work for? I'm pretty sure he's horrible to work for.
balaji1 3y ago
Engineers tend to perceive other engineers as micromanager? And it’s broadly actually true also? Elon being a micromanager (assuming he is) can not be the only reason a rocket (re)flies each weekend.
theonething 3y ago
You mean quotes like this? > Elon is brilliant. He’s involved in just about everything. He understands everything. If he asks you a question, you learn very quickly not to go give him a gut reaction. > He wants answers that get down to the fundamental laws of physics. One thing he understands really well is the physics of the rockets. He understands that like nobody else. The stuff I have seen him do in his head is crazy. Quotes like that give me the impression he's very much involved technically.
rchaud 3y ago
A famous anecdote from the Steve Jobs official biography was where he was telling the CEO of Corning glass about the specifics of glass manufacturing. The CEO just smiled and played along, because they wanted Apple's business. The custommer is always right; even when they bloviate well beyond their area of expertise.

77pt77 3y ago

He's definitely not a pure snake-oil salesman like Jobs.

darawk 3y ago

The idea that HN commenters who have never met the guy have opinions that contradict the statements of John Carmack, Jim Keller, Tom Mueller, Andrej Karpathy, etc. These people are not sycophants. These people do not need Musk. They have plenty of their own money. They are not speaking highly of him because they want a promotion, or they want to be in his good graces, or they're afraid of being fired. You can still hate him for the way he behaves. You can still think he's a bad guy. But if you think your opinion of his talent or engineering depth is better than these people's who've worked with him, you should seriously reconsider your epistemic blind spots. It's ok for him to be a good engineer and a bad person. Von Braun designed rockets for the Nazis and later the US space program. Nobody doubts his engineering brilliance.

TheAlchemist 3y ago
I share your point of view, 100%. As much as I don't like Musk behaviour lately, or how he try to picture himself as the founder of Tesla, it's really ridiculous to deny his achievements. And the money argument - "oh he just paid good engineers to create the companies" - is pretty dumb too - he wasn't that rich until 2 years ago, so why other billionaires didn't do the same thing ? Or all those other more talented engineers.
- epgui 3y ago
  I'm with you, but: > or how he try to picture himself as the founder of Tesla I think this can actually be reasonably argued both ways.
  - TheAlchemist 3y ago
    Tesla as we know it wouldn't exist without him. IE, the company that almost single handedly (yes, with governments subsides etc etc - they were available to everybody) changed the car industry. But, the way Musk tells the story or tries to push the narrative is very fishy. I remember reading Ashlee Vance biography of Musk, without knowing too much of him at the time, and while I was in awe about the achievements and boldness, it was also pretty obvious that the guy is childish and a dick.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

sethd 3y ago

So perhaps he’s a con artist?