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Every time Elon Musk makes this kind of announcement, his engineering departments groan. As I understand, they have folks actively managing Musk trying to prev

Every time Elon Musk makes this kind of announcement, his engineering departments groan. As I understand, they have folks actively managing Musk trying to prevent him from promising the moon :)

JulianMorrison 12y ago
Too late, he promised Mars.
- AceJohnny2 12y ago
  ... I opened myself up for that one didn't I :)
- acqq 12y ago
  Anybody knows if any needed equipment is actually installed in his cars? From what I've understood with Google cars, the cars would need quite a lot things like high tech radars.
  - lylebarrere 12y ago
    They've been including the hardware in the cars since about 3 weeks before they first announced these features earlier this year.
pbreit 12y ago
I hate this sentiment. Yes, Elon makes huge promises. And you know what? He frequently gets there. Everyone quoted in the article says "No". Elon says "Why not?" And you're worried about the engineers.
- derefr 12y ago
  "He" doesn't frequently get there. The engineers get there. Or they don't. If they don't, whose fault do you imagine it is?
  - pbreit 12y ago
    You do realize that he co-founded and is running both a successful electric car company and a successful rocket company? And before that co-founded an insanely successful payments company?
    - jacobolus 12y ago
      Yes, but he also frequently makes false (or at best incredibly misleading) public statements about how far along they are on such projects. (Source: friend-of-a-friend is one of those groaning Tesla engineers.)
      - pbreit 12y ago
        I worked for him directly. That's how he gets amazing stuff done. And clearly it works. If employees aren't up for it, probably best to find something else.
        _ZeD_ 12y ago
        Were you an engineerer or a seller?
        throwaway12347 12y ago
        He was a product manager [1]. Before that, he worked as a finance guy [2]. He was not an engineer. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/person/patrick-breitenbach https://www.crunchbase.com/person/patrick-breitenbach [2] https://www.linkedin.com/in/pbreitenbach https://www.linkedin.com/in/pbreitenbach
        dang 12y ago
        Doxing is not allowed on Hacker News.
        mkal_tsr 12y ago
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
cbd1984 12y ago
> Every time Elon Musk makes this kind of announcement ... he does it not because it is easy, but because it is hard! For his engineers. Not so much for him.
- jkestner 12y ago
  You're discounting the value of his leadership and company stock.
ridgeguy 12y ago
Browning understood Musk's impulse: “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?” Robert Browning, from Men and Women and Other Poems
yason 12y ago
It's the engineers' job to resist with good reasoning. It's the visionary's job to convince them that we people only think the impossible things are impossible. That's basically how I do my internal dialogue. I shoot down an idea of mine because it's too brittle, vague, and difficult. But I still want to build that something. So, I keep thinking and end up saying to myself, "Well, maybe I could do something that's like an ugly partial implementation, just leaving out the hardest things: it won't be what I want but I can write something that resembles it." And then I write the first prototype and end up having something here to play with. However, I still keep wanting more and maybe I get an insight that allows me, having first played with the first build, to make a better approach with a new set of tradeoffs but such that will get me closer to what I want. Gradually I approach what I want, possibly never quite reaching that point, but still getting closer and closer.
- john_b 12y ago
  > "It's the engineers' job to resist with good reasoning. It's the visionary's job to convince them that we people only think the impossible things are impossible." While I don't disagree with you, context matters greatly here. This is the same logic of every middle managing pawn or upper management narcissist who self-styles him or herself the "visionary" you describe. Someone like Musk has the technical aptitude and experience to accurately assess what is technologically possible or impossible and estimate how much it will cost and how long it will take. He has also surrounded himself with highly talented technical people who, from what I can tell, he listens to. Unless someone has previously envisioned and brought to fruition some visionary product or service, we should remember that the most likely explanation for their insistence that the seemingly impossible is possible is some combination of their ignorance, incompetence, and narcissistic delusion.
  - derefr 12y ago
    Yep, this is the point I was trying to make way upthread. If "the engineers just couldn't do it" is treated as a physical reality due to the objective hardness of the problem, and Musk recalibrates his future time-estimates based on that, great! If "the engineers just couldn't do it" is treated as a failure of the engineers, and people are fired for failing to conform to Musk's rosy estimate, not great! And the latter is what you'd presume by default of a manager. It might not be true of Musk in particular, but in absence of explicit evidence to the contrary, it's likely, which is why this kind of overeager optimism can be downright scary-sounding coming from a high-level corporate executive. I have a feeling that, like you said, Musk listens to these people. Maybe he actually knows their potential better than they know it themselves; knows what they can pull off when driven, that they wouldn't think (or especially claim) themselves capable of otherwise. Maybe, in other words, he's like the protagonist of some military ensemble drama series. (Jack O'Neill in Stargate SG-1, say.) And given how successful he is, maybe he is that guy! Someone's gotta be. But that guy is really rare. Most corporations, sadly, don't have that guy anywhere in them. And without that guy, you've just got unrealistic promises, followed by flops, followed by finger-pointing.
mikeash 12y ago
I don't see why they would groan in this particular instance (although I can believe it in general). He's not promising anything in the near-term that doesn't already exist in other shipping cars, or that his own people haven't already demoed.

Every time Elon Musk makes this kind of announcement, his engineering departments groan. As I understand, they have folks actively managing Musk trying to prevent him from promising the moon :)

JulianMorrison 12y ago

Too late, he promised Mars.

AceJohnny2 12y ago
... I opened myself up for that one didn't I :)
acqq 12y ago
Anybody knows if any needed equipment is actually installed in his cars? From what I've understood with Google cars, the cars would need quite a lot things like high tech radars.
- lylebarrere 12y ago
  They've been including the hardware in the cars since about 3 weeks before they first announced these features earlier this year.

pbreit 12y ago

I hate this sentiment. Yes, Elon makes huge promises. And you know what? He frequently gets there. Everyone quoted in the article says "No". Elon says "Why not?" And you're worried about the engineers.

derefr 12y ago
"He" doesn't frequently get there. The engineers get there. Or they don't. If they don't, whose fault do you imagine it is?
- pbreit 12y ago
  You do realize that he co-founded and is running both a successful electric car company and a successful rocket company? And before that co-founded an insanely successful payments company?
  - jacobolus 12y ago
    Yes, but he also frequently makes false (or at best incredibly misleading) public statements about how far along they are on such projects. (Source: friend-of-a-friend is one of those groaning Tesla engineers.)
    - pbreit 12y ago
      I worked for him directly. That's how he gets amazing stuff done. And clearly it works. If employees aren't up for it, probably best to find something else.
      - _ZeD_ 12y ago
        Were you an engineerer or a seller?
        throwaway12347 12y ago
        He was a product manager [1]. Before that, he worked as a finance guy [2]. He was not an engineer. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/person/patrick-breitenbach https://www.crunchbase.com/person/patrick-breitenbach [2] https://www.linkedin.com/in/pbreitenbach https://www.linkedin.com/in/pbreitenbach
        dang 12y ago
        Doxing is not allowed on Hacker News.
        mkal_tsr 12y ago
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

cbd1984 12y ago

> Every time Elon Musk makes this kind of announcement ... he does it not because it is easy, but because it is hard! For his engineers. Not so much for him.

jkestner 12y ago
You're discounting the value of his leadership and company stock.

ridgeguy 12y ago

Browning understood Musk's impulse: “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?” Robert Browning, from Men and Women and Other Poems

yason 12y ago

It's the engineers' job to resist with good reasoning. It's the visionary's job to convince them that we people only think the impossible things are impossible. That's basically how I do my internal dialogue. I shoot down an idea of mine because it's too brittle, vague, and difficult. But I still want to build that something. So, I keep thinking and end up saying to myself, "Well, maybe I could do something that's like an ugly partial implementation, just leaving out the hardest things: it won't be what I want but I can write something that resembles it." And then I write the first prototype and end up having something here to play with. However, I still keep wanting more and maybe I get an insight that allows me, having first played with the first build, to make a better approach with a new set of tradeoffs but such that will get me closer to what I want. Gradually I approach what I want, possibly never quite reaching that point, but still getting closer and closer.

john_b 12y ago
> "It's the engineers' job to resist with good reasoning. It's the visionary's job to convince them that we people only think the impossible things are impossible." While I don't disagree with you, context matters greatly here. This is the same logic of every middle managing pawn or upper management narcissist who self-styles him or herself the "visionary" you describe. Someone like Musk has the technical aptitude and experience to accurately assess what is technologically possible or impossible and estimate how much it will cost and how long it will take. He has also surrounded himself with highly talented technical people who, from what I can tell, he listens to. Unless someone has previously envisioned and brought to fruition some visionary product or service, we should remember that the most likely explanation for their insistence that the seemingly impossible is possible is some combination of their ignorance, incompetence, and narcissistic delusion.
- derefr 12y ago
  Yep, this is the point I was trying to make way upthread. If "the engineers just couldn't do it" is treated as a physical reality due to the objective hardness of the problem, and Musk recalibrates his future time-estimates based on that, great! If "the engineers just couldn't do it" is treated as a failure of the engineers, and people are fired for failing to conform to Musk's rosy estimate, not great! And the latter is what you'd presume by default of a manager. It might not be true of Musk in particular, but in absence of explicit evidence to the contrary, it's likely, which is why this kind of overeager optimism can be downright scary-sounding coming from a high-level corporate executive. I have a feeling that, like you said, Musk listens to these people. Maybe he actually knows their potential better than they know it themselves; knows what they can pull off when driven, that they wouldn't think (or especially claim) themselves capable of otherwise. Maybe, in other words, he's like the protagonist of some military ensemble drama series. (Jack O'Neill in Stargate SG-1, say.) And given how successful he is, maybe he is that guy! Someone's gotta be. But that guy is really rare. Most corporations, sadly, don't have that guy anywhere in them. And without that guy, you've just got unrealistic promises, followed by flops, followed by finger-pointing.

mikeash 12y ago

I don't see why they would groan in this particular instance (although I can believe it in general). He's not promising anything in the near-term that doesn't already exist in other shipping cars, or that his own people haven't already demoed.