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> Those people can also be wrong about stuff. This is just an appeal to the reputation of those names. It doesn't give weight pro se. Err. Sure. It is, in prin

• asveikau 3y ago
  I guess some of the examples I'm thinking about are trashing on stuff that isn't technical, but there's little doubt to me that they bleed into technical things, because you can't have these personality traits and not have it affect technical decisions. For example, he was writing about the Bob Lee stabbing as if it was a random violent attack. I wasn't 100% certain but at the time I was extremely suspicious of this claim, based on knowing the block where it happened, it was basically guaranteed that Lee and the assailant were the only two people on the block and it was dubious a homeless person could have camped there. He started trolling the district attorney, who is more conservative about these topics than the last guy, but even she told him to STFU. There was another example where he questioned the ethics of a place I've worked at. He didn't have a leg to stand on but he made public pronouncements. Somebody who does that is not likely to be a good engineer. A good engineer waits for the facts to come in before reaching conclusions. He's clearly not level headed. I've seen loads of bad engineers who act like Musk in these circumstances. Sometimes they have good reputations in their orgs because overconfident narcissists sometimes get rewarded.
  • darawk 3y ago
    > For example, he was writing about the Bob Lee stabbing as if it was a random violent attack. I wasn't 100% certain but at the time I was extremely suspicious of this claim, based on knowing the block where it happened, it was basically guaranteed that Lee and the assailant were the only two people on the block and it was dubious a homeless person could have camped there. He started trolling the district attorney, who is more conservative about these topics than the last guy, but even she told him to STFU. I think you can still be a pretty good engineer and believe that a stabbing in SF is probably perpetrated by a random homeless person absent other information. It may have been wrong for him to jump to this conclusion, but I don't think it has any bearing on his technical skills. > There was another example where he questioned the ethics of a place I've worked at. He didn't have a leg to stand on but he made public pronouncements. Again you may be perfectly right, but this has nothing to do with engineering talent. Lots of great engineers are famously assholes (in various ways): see, Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, etc. > Somebody who does that is not likely to be a good engineer. A good engineer waits for the facts to come in before reaching conclusions. He's clearly not level headed. I've seen loads of bad engineers who act like Musk in these circumstances. Sometimes they have good reputations in their orgs because overconfident narcissists sometimes get rewarded. This is just not the case as any kind of rule. Like, sure, a perfectly rational Bayesian optimizer may not do these things. But real engineering at the highest level isn't about that - it's about intuition from experience about which system design choices will be good and which won't, and acting quickly and efficiently on that information. The very small intersection of incredible engineers who are also very good people have the humility to quickly pivot when they've been proven wrong, admit it, and move on. Elon is obviously not in this category. But I think you have to admit that it's telling that when pressed for examples of his technical failures in public, all you could come up with were completely non-technical examples.
    • asveikau 3y ago
      See, you're wrong on every count. Talented engineers don't jump to conclusions with this high frequency. It is totally predictave of engineering ability. You don't build a bridge by making public, arrogant statements that it will stand, when you are actually full of shit and haven't looked into any details. This clearly permeates all of Elon's thinking. He has financial success which blinds him to this problem at this point. This is different from Torvalds or Stallman. Torvalds is still writing commits for Linux, and they work. His public opinions are sometimes delivered sharply, but I have usually found them to be well based in fact. He's not going off on Twitter with a bunch of baseless personal attacks. Good engineers do not. Also, it sounds a lot to me like you neglect the relationship between sociability and engineering work. It is a huge thing. It absolutely cannot be ignored to be a successful engineer. Linus, despite criticisms, is quite sociable and socially aware, and it's a big part of his success.