5 ms·

Book Review: Elon Musk

25 points by spenrose 3y ago

gumby 3y ago
What is the appeal of reading biography? Personally I’ve never understood it. Biographies of historical figures can be interesting to me not for the person themselves but as a vehicle to describe the society they lived in. Thats what makes Plutarch’s “lives” dull but a biography of Cicero interesting (to me). But a recent or even contemporary figure? Yawn. Perhaps there’s something insightful that I don’t get?
- n4r9 3y ago
  People are generally interested in the character, psychology and environmental conditions of individuals who have an outsized impact on the world around them. What made them who they are, and how they achieved what they did.
- serjester 3y ago
  Musk has had an outsized impact on the world and many people want to know more about the type of person that can pull that off in our current climate. I love historical biographies but they aren’t as relatable as contemporary works.
- paxys 3y ago
  I kinda agree with this, especially when it comes to people who are not just still alive but also actively involved in the writing of the book and dictating what can and cannot go in it (like it was with Elon Musk and Walter Isaacson). At that point you aren't reading a biography but a PR puff piece. On the other hand well-researched biographies of historical figures who have been out of the public limelight are among the most interesting books you can read, which I'm sure will be the case for Musk as well maybe 30-50 years from now.
- avmich 3y ago
  The person could be uninteresting, but the stream of successful and not projects which happen to be united by the participant could be useful as a learning material.
- marcusverus 3y ago
  If you want to know how a machine works, you take it apart. You puzzle out what each piece does, and why. Biography is the same idea, but for people.
Workaccount2 3y ago
TL;DR: Musk is a hyper focused nerdy engineer with poor social skills. The reason people like him is because he genuinely is a nerdy smart engineer. The reason people hate him is because he genuinely has poor people skills.
- lazyeye 3y ago
  If only he was more like your average commenter on HN.
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
> Likewise, Musk didn’t found Tesla, and he didn’t invent their revolutionary battery technology. Do Tesla have revolutionary battery technology? > But when the founders came to him asking for an investment - and saying the batteries were the main sticking point - he introduced them to a battery inventor with revolutionary ideas Who is this, and what did he invent?
- moogly 3y ago
  Don't know about revolutionary, but that would be Panasonic, I'm pretty sure?
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
> He got a quote back for $120,000. “Elon laughed,” Davis said. “He said, 'That part is no more complicated than a garage door opener. Your budget is five thousand dollars. Go make it work.’” Davis spent nine months building the actuator. This seems like a bad business decision, yet is apparently the cherry-picked highlight of his technical acumen.
- AlchemistCamp 3y ago
  Do you believe it would be a better decision to spend 24 times more on every actuator? A key reason SpaceX matters at all is that it can launch things into space at a fraction of what it costs NASA, Russia, China or any other rival to.
  - ChainOfFools 3y ago
    Are you sure about that multiple? Exactly how much did musk spend paying an elite aerospace engineer 9 months of elite aerospace engineer salary plus load, to design something that saved SpaceX maybe 20% of that? This is not even getting into the opportunity cost of all the other things that engineer could have been working on during that time, things that had not already been developed and proven. It sounds like what Davis got was first quote and must threw it out, if this is the actual story it seems pretty strange that they didn't at least try to work that first-bid number down before discarding the idea of outsourcing the part altogether.
- bko 3y ago
  Why? There are countless examples where SpaceX adapted some simpler consumer product to serve their needs. That's why they were able to compete and drastically reduce price. Another reason was they never tried to get cost plus contracts which were the standard for industry (imagine how that affects your incentives) This isn't software where we can laugh at Uber building their own messaging service. These are somewhat specialized parts that are made for orgs that have no concern of cost controls. he's absolutely right to question everything as that gives him the edge. You see something similar with Jobs. From reading his bio, I would say his main skill was ability to sniff out BS. So if he wanted something in a certain way or by a certain time and got push back, he was able to ascert whether it was legitimate or he could just push and raise expectations. And more often than not it worked. The best managers I've had always pushed me and knew when something truly wasn't feasible
arrakeen 3y ago
what is it about this mostly-text page that Firefox is struggling so hard with?
- peterfirefly 3y ago
  Probably the comments at the bottom.
- cwillu 3y ago
  Substack's comment handling is a dumpster fire, which you mostly don't notice on other substacks because (a) they hide almost all comments on a post by default (Scott got them to disable that for him because the comments are a big part of his blog), and (b) most blogs hosted there don't have a community the size of Scott's. Open the network requests tab in developer tools and cry a little: they actually have an elegant system that would let them minimize the data churn needed to host exactly this size of comment thread, but instead it reprocesses the entire comment tree every time just about _anything_ happens on the page.
roughly 3y ago
Lightly mentioned in the article, but I think a key part of Musk's success comes down to two traits: he's willing to take large risks if he thinks the "right answer" requires it and he's willing to put significant capital up to do so. For Tesla, things like the aluminum bodies mentioned in the article or the "gigacasting" later took the kind of significant investment that most companies aren't comfortable making; SpaceX, for its part, blew up enough rockets to have put most companies off their lunches. There's shades of Jobs, who would not accept an inferior product made for expediency, and of Bezos, who's one of the few other company leaders with a history of gambling like that, but really, I think the willingness to aggressively deploy the capital required to achieve the answer he thinks is the right one is the core trait underpinning his success. (I think the article's also broadly correct in the diagnosis of his failings, too - the gods don't give with both hands, as they say.)
- BobaFloutist 3y ago
  I think Elon Musk is a very rich guy who's easily persuadable with the argument "Wouldn't it be super cool if...?" This works well for him when the people trying to persuade him are engineers, accountants, and other professionals that have an idea that could benefit from having a lot of money thrown at it. It doesn't work as well when he gets surrounded by people caught up in his cult of personality that are no longer trying to persuade him, but rather following his visions. And it certainly doesn't go well for him when he's trying to impress his various social media followers.
  - leetharris 3y ago
    Can you give any examples to back up what you're saying? I'm genuinely interested in understanding what you mean.
  - roughly 3y ago
    The article and book it’s sourced from make a pretty compelling claim that he does actually know the technical details of the things he’s working on, and that jives with other things I’ve read. I think a lot of what he’s doing is the kind of first-principles argument that can drive seasoned engineers nuts (“factor X is the root problem, so what if we just changed factor X?” “Yeah gee golly nobody’s ever thought of that”), but it turns out if you’ve got enough money, patience, and latitude, there’s a lot of meat on that bone. Agree though that the echo chamber around him really does feed into his worst instincts - I feel like it’s similar to George Lucas, who, with constraints, made the first Star Wars trilogy, and without constraints made the second. And, yeah, he’s got a strong engineering affinity and what looks like a strong anti-affinity for anything involving people. I don’t mean any of this to gas up Musk. I don’t particularly like him, I don’t think he’s a good person, and I think the fact that he’s as influential as he is is an indictment of our society broadly. I do think he’s had some outlier successes, and with both Tesla and SpaceX he’s shifted the world in what I’d consider a positive direction, so I think it’s worth taking a dispassionate look at how he’s done it, both the positives and negatives.
j_crick 3y ago
For some reason this page doesn’t load on mobile Safari because it crashes. Reader mode doesn’t render anything either.
cwillu 3y ago
(2023)
netrap 3y ago
> Musk has a saying: “The most entertaining outcome is the most likely”. The most entertaining outcome here would be for Peter Thiel to take over Twitter and rename it “PayPal”. I can’t wait. Amazing review. Opened my eyes. I need to read the book now...!

25 points by spenrose 3y ago

What is the appeal of reading biography? Personally I’ve never understood it. Biographies of historical figures can be interesting to me not for the person themselves but as a vehicle to describe the society they lived in. Thats what makes Plutarch’s “lives” dull but a biography of Cicero interesting (to me). But a recent or even contemporary figure? Yawn. Perhaps there’s something insightful that I don’t get?

n4r9 3y ago
People are generally interested in the character, psychology and environmental conditions of individuals who have an outsized impact on the world around them. What made them who they are, and how they achieved what they did.
serjester 3y ago
Musk has had an outsized impact on the world and many people want to know more about the type of person that can pull that off in our current climate. I love historical biographies but they aren’t as relatable as contemporary works.
paxys 3y ago
I kinda agree with this, especially when it comes to people who are not just still alive but also actively involved in the writing of the book and dictating what can and cannot go in it (like it was with Elon Musk and Walter Isaacson). At that point you aren't reading a biography but a PR puff piece. On the other hand well-researched biographies of historical figures who have been out of the public limelight are among the most interesting books you can read, which I'm sure will be the case for Musk as well maybe 30-50 years from now.
avmich 3y ago
The person could be uninteresting, but the stream of successful and not projects which happen to be united by the participant could be useful as a learning material.
marcusverus 3y ago
If you want to know how a machine works, you take it apart. You puzzle out what each piece does, and why. Biography is the same idea, but for people.

Workaccount2 3y ago

TL;DR: Musk is a hyper focused nerdy engineer with poor social skills. The reason people like him is because he genuinely is a nerdy smart engineer. The reason people hate him is because he genuinely has poor people skills.

lazyeye 3y ago
If only he was more like your average commenter on HN.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

> Likewise, Musk didn’t found Tesla, and he didn’t invent their revolutionary battery technology. Do Tesla have revolutionary battery technology? > But when the founders came to him asking for an investment - and saying the batteries were the main sticking point - he introduced them to a battery inventor with revolutionary ideas Who is this, and what did he invent?

moogly 3y ago
Don't know about revolutionary, but that would be Panasonic, I'm pretty sure?

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

> He got a quote back for $120,000. “Elon laughed,” Davis said. “He said, 'That part is no more complicated than a garage door opener. Your budget is five thousand dollars. Go make it work.’” Davis spent nine months building the actuator. This seems like a bad business decision, yet is apparently the cherry-picked highlight of his technical acumen.

AlchemistCamp 3y ago
Do you believe it would be a better decision to spend 24 times more on every actuator? A key reason SpaceX matters at all is that it can launch things into space at a fraction of what it costs NASA, Russia, China or any other rival to.
- ChainOfFools 3y ago
  Are you sure about that multiple? Exactly how much did musk spend paying an elite aerospace engineer 9 months of elite aerospace engineer salary plus load, to design something that saved SpaceX maybe 20% of that? This is not even getting into the opportunity cost of all the other things that engineer could have been working on during that time, things that had not already been developed and proven. It sounds like what Davis got was first quote and must threw it out, if this is the actual story it seems pretty strange that they didn't at least try to work that first-bid number down before discarding the idea of outsourcing the part altogether.
bko 3y ago
Why? There are countless examples where SpaceX adapted some simpler consumer product to serve their needs. That's why they were able to compete and drastically reduce price. Another reason was they never tried to get cost plus contracts which were the standard for industry (imagine how that affects your incentives) This isn't software where we can laugh at Uber building their own messaging service. These are somewhat specialized parts that are made for orgs that have no concern of cost controls. he's absolutely right to question everything as that gives him the edge. You see something similar with Jobs. From reading his bio, I would say his main skill was ability to sniff out BS. So if he wanted something in a certain way or by a certain time and got push back, he was able to ascert whether it was legitimate or he could just push and raise expectations. And more often than not it worked. The best managers I've had always pushed me and knew when something truly wasn't feasible

arrakeen 3y ago

what is it about this mostly-text page that Firefox is struggling so hard with?

peterfirefly 3y ago
Probably the comments at the bottom.
cwillu 3y ago
Substack's comment handling is a dumpster fire, which you mostly don't notice on other substacks because (a) they hide almost all comments on a post by default (Scott got them to disable that for him because the comments are a big part of his blog), and (b) most blogs hosted there don't have a community the size of Scott's. Open the network requests tab in developer tools and cry a little: they actually have an elegant system that would let them minimize the data churn needed to host exactly this size of comment thread, but instead it reprocesses the entire comment tree every time just about _anything_ happens on the page.

roughly 3y ago

Lightly mentioned in the article, but I think a key part of Musk's success comes down to two traits: he's willing to take large risks if he thinks the "right answer" requires it and he's willing to put significant capital up to do so. For Tesla, things like the aluminum bodies mentioned in the article or the "gigacasting" later took the kind of significant investment that most companies aren't comfortable making; SpaceX, for its part, blew up enough rockets to have put most companies off their lunches. There's shades of Jobs, who would not accept an inferior product made for expediency, and of Bezos, who's one of the few other company leaders with a history of gambling like that, but really, I think the willingness to aggressively deploy the capital required to achieve the answer he thinks is the right one is the core trait underpinning his success. (I think the article's also broadly correct in the diagnosis of his failings, too - the gods don't give with both hands, as they say.)

BobaFloutist 3y ago
I think Elon Musk is a very rich guy who's easily persuadable with the argument "Wouldn't it be super cool if...?" This works well for him when the people trying to persuade him are engineers, accountants, and other professionals that have an idea that could benefit from having a lot of money thrown at it. It doesn't work as well when he gets surrounded by people caught up in his cult of personality that are no longer trying to persuade him, but rather following his visions. And it certainly doesn't go well for him when he's trying to impress his various social media followers.
- leetharris 3y ago
  Can you give any examples to back up what you're saying? I'm genuinely interested in understanding what you mean.
- roughly 3y ago
  The article and book it’s sourced from make a pretty compelling claim that he does actually know the technical details of the things he’s working on, and that jives with other things I’ve read. I think a lot of what he’s doing is the kind of first-principles argument that can drive seasoned engineers nuts (“factor X is the root problem, so what if we just changed factor X?” “Yeah gee golly nobody’s ever thought of that”), but it turns out if you’ve got enough money, patience, and latitude, there’s a lot of meat on that bone. Agree though that the echo chamber around him really does feed into his worst instincts - I feel like it’s similar to George Lucas, who, with constraints, made the first Star Wars trilogy, and without constraints made the second. And, yeah, he’s got a strong engineering affinity and what looks like a strong anti-affinity for anything involving people. I don’t mean any of this to gas up Musk. I don’t particularly like him, I don’t think he’s a good person, and I think the fact that he’s as influential as he is is an indictment of our society broadly. I do think he’s had some outlier successes, and with both Tesla and SpaceX he’s shifted the world in what I’d consider a positive direction, so I think it’s worth taking a dispassionate look at how he’s done it, both the positives and negatives.

j_crick 3y ago

For some reason this page doesn’t load on mobile Safari because it crashes. Reader mode doesn’t render anything either.

cwillu 3y ago

(2023)

netrap 3y ago

> Musk has a saying: “The most entertaining outcome is the most likely”. The most entertaining outcome here would be for Peter Thiel to take over Twitter and rename it “PayPal”. I can’t wait. Amazing review. Opened my eyes. I need to read the book now...!