Musk is not a engineer and has never been good at making things. What he is good at is marketing and raising ridiculous gobs of money which he plows into various companies. All credit for engineering successes at those companies is entirely because of the leadership of those companies, like Gwynne Shotwell, and despite Musk's interference which we have seen time and time again to be actively detrimental to engineering success.
That is not to say that Musk's interference is "bad" from a company valuation standpoint as he clearly has a pretty good idea of what features he can effectively market to customers, it is just that those features are not markers of good engineering or actively detract from good engineering. For instance, selling FSD to the general public despite it not working is a criminal engineering decision, but it has done wonders for cash flow and their stock price.
I'm no Elon fan but as an aerospace engineer, I can at least vouch that he knows what he is talking about when it comes to rockets (wasn't the case when SpaceX started) and has steered his army of engineers in useful directions that weren't obvious to other people at the time (reusable rockets, Starlink, etc.)
If you have watched Everyday Astronaut's tours of Starbase with Elon[0], where he explains in significant detail pretty much everything that is going on with the various prototypes, you'll know what I mean.
He's not a guy with an MBA that has somehow lucked out by throwing gobs of cash at various Hard Engineering Problems (although there's that, too.) Of course the bulk of the work is done by "rank and file" engineers.
No, at the level of knowing off hand the design considerations down to thermodynamics for practically every design decision that Tim asks about. In many cases to a much greater depth than I, an average engineer, know about these things.
I'm not sure about Elon's proficiency with software, but based on his comments on twitter I'd lean on him being out of touch there. He does seem to be knowledgeable on the AI/DL side though, see Andrej Karpathy's comment:
The amount of effort people take to try to convince themselves Elon is just a relatively average (or even moronic!) intellect who got successful via non virtuous means is absolutely impressive.
To attempt to be civil, I will also state I find the hero worshiping of Elon to be similarly deranged.
The stochastic parrot argument. It seems there’s no evidence that will change your opinion.
Also, have a look at recent unedited videos of Tesla’s self driving. It’s not everything that was promised and it’s much later than promised, but it sure is impressive. However I agree it is being oversold and that’s extremely scummy.
In my noob eyes, I think he just doesn't care much about software. He kinda have the same radical motto (delete, reduce, combine, forget the past, forget the mainstream.. basically what he says around min 20 in the video above. which is not far from move fast and break things) and he got a lot of success before with that so he just barged in twitter applying this brainlessly.
This comment is ridiculous. The guy understands every single facet of every process at his companies. If he "sputters," it's because that's how he normally speaks.
My favorite from John Carmack:
John Carmack (Twitter, Wikipedia) is a programmer, video game developer and engineer. He's the founder of Armadillo Aerospace and current CTO of Oculus VR.
"Elon is definitely an engineer. He is deeply involved with technical decisions at spacex and Tesla. He doesn’t write code or do CAD today, but he is perfectly capable of doing so."
His title at the company is Founder and Chief Engineer, and there are tons of anecdotes from employees, as well as statements directly from Musk that major engineering decisions go directly through him.
They said Steve Jobs was not a coder or hardware engineer but I just found undeniable proof. It was not Wozniak but instead, Steve Jobs that was doing the software development at Apple": - https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/30494-50055-001-Job...
Yeah I’m not sure either TBH, I’m not a CAD person, just a programmer.
I do think the picture painted of him tracks with what I know life is like as a senior engineer.
Above L5 at Google, most engineers do not spend much time coding. Most time is spent approving CLs, mentoring, collaborating on design docs, and helping to make major engineering decisions.
Same with other faangs. This tracks with Carmack’s (and others’) description of Musk’s role.
Ya know I was doubtful of Elons engineering chops but that pic certainly seals the deal. Elon is in fact a rocket engineer and the proof is in the pudding. The pudding being that pic that is.
Well if you don’t like that pic you can also read the other links, which themselves include sources. You could also read his biography, which details his early life, credentials, and daily work life, and includes sources. I included the picture as just another detail.
Elon Musk is a compulsive serial liar about his personal qualitys.
In Paypal’s S-1 filing with the SEC in 2002 [1] to go public Elon Musk is listed as a director of the board and is reported as having graduated from UPenn in 1995. Elon Musk received his degrees in 1997 [2]. I do not know about you, but I do not know any college graduate who can not tell me the exact year of their graduation after a little thinking even if they graduated decades ago, but in this case he could not even accurately recall what occurred 5 years ago and he reported that in a SEC filing of a company where he was on the board (and formerly CEO?). Sometimes people forget the year they graduated, but not in SEC filings reviewed by lawyers, that is 100% deliberate.
Elon Musk viciously attacks his critics like when he viciously accused Vernon Unsworth, the cave diver, of being a pedophile, doubled down, and sent a investigator to harass him [3].
Elon Musk actively cultivates a cult of personality and directs them to attack his critics [4] causing them to be fired or quit due to the harassment.
He is also well known to impulsively fire employees that speak out against him. Also to harass employees who are being fired such as when he declared that the Iceland Person of the Year was faking his lifelong disability to get out of work [5].
Elon Musk does not get the benefit of the doubt when discussing his personal qualitys and when looking for 3rd party support since he makes significant effort to actively shape the narrative.
His personal statements are useless as support. Most of the people quoted were employees speaking on the record. You would be hard pressed in any company to find employees who would speak negatively on the record, let alone in a Elon company where he would fire, harass, and sue you if you did so. So, those are worthless. The rest of the people are then largely people who have not worked with Elon or are not experts in the field. And frankly, since Elon does not get the benefit of the doubt, the burden of proof is not on me to discredit their statements, but on the opposing perspective to provide proof that their statements are informed and credible.
As to the photos, the first one is obviously staged. The photo of him looking at wreckage unrelated to demonstrating engineering competence. It is also likely staged. No other images presented are relevant.
Labeling yourself as a Chief Engineer does not make you a engineer. In anything it lends support to the opposite because what actual engineer constantly broadcasts that at every possible opportunity so that everybody knows.
It might not even be raising money that he's good at but rather structuring business to optimize around government subsidies (ev credits, government space contracts).
Nah, he is shockingly good at raising money. SpaceX has been losing billions of dollars per year and making it up by raising money to cover the shortfall. In the last year or so they raised $1.7B at a $137B valuation [1]. This is a company that is only estimated to make $4.6B in revenue [2] in a industry with a total addressable market (TAM) of ~$13.5B. SpaceX is being valued at ~30x revenue and ~10x the revenue of the entire industry, not earnings, revenue.
Of course, this is all small potatoes compared to the immense amount of money Musk has raised for Tesla from consumers by falsely claiming they will have autonomous vehicles next year, every year, for 7+ years.
These raises are distinct from any government support they may have received, though his ability to structure the companys to receive government support and the cash flow generated from those activitys may have been helpful in supporting the companys and the narratives they built to achieve the valuations and funding levels they got. It really just all leads back to him being amazing at getting his hands on huge gobs of money.
But the logical question is, could any of that been possible without the government subsidies he received? I think without that prior optimization for subsidies, he's not given the creditability or ever actual credit to do any of the other shenanigans.
EV subsidies were made as a way for the government to encourage consumers to buy electric cars and encourage car producers to make electric cars. It’s not like they were made with the purpose of making Musk rich and literally any other car manufacturer or rich person wanting to make a car manufacture could have done the same. Should the US have never subsidized electric vehicles or should have all the car manufacturers have ignored the subsidies and continued to to completely ignore the EV market?
Complaining that someone filled a market niche that the government very intentionally created just seems so weird to me.
What's the point of making up misleading arguments? Are you that blinded by your dislike of one person?
SpaceX has been spending billions on R&D, that's what the fund raising is for, that's why their spending is greater than revenue, the results of which are clearly visible in the weekly Starlink launches and rapid development of Starship and which have a strong business case.
This sort of bad faith analysis is exactly why companies in industries with significant "front heavy" investment have such a hard time.
This is nonsense. I have many comments disproving this nonsense. And EV credits only happened long after Tesla was already well underway. And it was also something that all car companies could and did use.
In fact, credit hurt Tesla quite a bit because they burned threw them very early on when lithium batteries were super expensive and then later foreign competitors could undercut Tesla using mass market vehicles by using the credits.
And fuel credits are an enforcement mechanism that gives rewards and penalties to car companies based on how well they follow regulations, its not a government subsidy.
> government space contracts
If you want to see how well space companies do when they only do government work, look at ULA and Boeing.
SpaceX from the beginning attacked the commercial market with great success and the US went from 0% of the commercial market to like 60-70% in like 5 years.
Yes of course SpaceX gets government space contracts, its fucking space, governments are involved. But SpaceX was literally the least government oriented rocket company in history.
If you actually compare SpaceX to other space companies and Tesla to other car companies, the claim that these companies are uniquely depended on government totally collapse.
Just one example, Tesla got 400M$ loan to produce Model S (advanced vehicle manufacture), Tesla paid this loan back with profit for the tax payer before they had to and change the car industry, Ford and GM took multi-billion $ loans built a few compliance vehicle and have since delayed the return of those loans.
But yeah, Tesla is evil subsidy company, when they received less and did more.
And the claim about his companies raising huge amount of money is also false, compare Tesla and SpaceX with its peers, like Lucid, Rivian, Blue Origin, Relativity and that story falls competently apart.
People love to claim this but its just not true. Compare how much money Tesla raised to other EV companies. Tesla did far, far better with far less money.
The accusation that his companies are successful because he can just magically create money comes from tech people who have no idea how much it costs to grow capital intensive business.
Both SpaceX and Tesla have comparatively raised very little. Compare how much Lucid, Rivian, Blue Origin or Relativity Space raise and then compare the results after similar time-frames.
> All credit for engineering successes at those companies is entirely because of the leadership of those companies, like Gwynne Shotwell
Shotwell wasn't even the COO of SpaceX before Falcon 9 days. And magically Tesla doesn't even have a Shotwell figure and is still incredibly successful.
And even if Shotwell is great, Musk hired her, Musk promoted her, Musk empowered her. Putting the right engineers into the right places is maybe the most important skill in leading a tech team. Musk putting Mueller, Königsmann, Buzza, Shotwell in those positions and gave them all what the needed to succeed, while he coordinated and made the final decisions. That is what 'Chief Engineers' generally do.
> we have seen time and time again to be actively detrimental to engineering success
Except that far more often we have seen it to be extremely successful. I'm always astonished at how people who seem to dislike Musk can selectively read history. Anything bad at SpaceX, Musk is at fault. Anything good, Musk wasn't involved.
> but it has done wonders for cash flow and their stock price
It really hasn't, if you actually look at their cashflow. But maybe I'm not looking at the fantasy investor report you have in your head. I just looking at the one that is publicly disclosed by Tesla.
And in terms of stock price, if you actually look at all the major wall street analysts, the majority of them never had a huge amount of believe in FSD being a major driver of Tesla and only included it into their most optimistic long run bull cases.
Tesla stock really jumped when they showed profitable margin Model 3 mass production and spiked for a while when the market went crazy for all EV stocks. Not just those who claimed to have 'FSD'.
That is not to say that Musk's interference is "bad" from a company valuation standpoint as he clearly has a pretty good idea of what features he can effectively market to customers, it is just that those features are not markers of good engineering or actively detract from good engineering. For instance, selling FSD to the general public despite it not working is a criminal engineering decision, but it has done wonders for cash flow and their stock price.