The book "Liftoff" (about the early years of SpaceX) paints a picture of Elon as a very smart person with a mind for engineering, but his true value-add over any other aerospace company at the time was his ability to hire the right people and sniff out bullshit.

That is, he knows enough about the engineering to hire people who know a lot about the engineering.

That, combined with his relentless drive (to the point of overwork both on himself and his employees) seems to be the key to SpaceX success.

> That is, he knows enough about the engineering to hire people who know a lot about the engineering.

And he got really exceedingly lucky with his initial hires. One of the founding employees was the best living rocket engine designer in the world, and then later the best rocket salesman in the world convinced him that SpaceX needed proper sales/business development, even in the early stage, and Musk basically replied: "Okay, you're hired", to which she basically replied: "No, that's not what I meant... but okay."

I want to see that movie. Are there professional documentaries?

No but there are interviews with some of the people mentioned and the auther of the book has good stories as well.

- Gwynne Shotwell

- Tom Mueller

- Eric Berger

He very much reminds me of Steve Jobs in this regard. Steve was actually a competent technician, if not really an engineer at the time of the founding of Apple, and he really cared deeply about the engineering. He understood the language of engineers and the tradeoffs in a design and I think it's the same with Elon. The fact they both ran completely separate very successful and innovative companies at the same time might be a coincidence, but kind of clinches it for me.

If you read any of the fokelore stuff, there seems to be some disagreement there. He wanted stuff to look a certain way, but he didn't really understand the engineering trade off. Like asking for a computer with no holes in the case for cooling.

The folklore contains a lot of wild exaggerations and things taken out of context. A better source is interviews with people who worked with him, particularly engineers.

What do you think the folklore stuff is? Folklore.org, it's stories from actual engineers that were there. That one was from Andy Hertzfeld if I remember correctly.

Well the current Macbook Airs don't have holes, so it's not like it was impossible.

And they run hot when under load, sometimes to the point where they're too hot to handle. Is there a benefit to not having proper ventilation?

I've owned one since release and the only time it's even felt warm to the touch is after charging from a low battery. I'm also not running renders or such on them, they're not really designed for that.

No ventilation means more thermal mass in the place of airways to absorb and disperse heat. I specifically bought this model because I am tired of fans in my laptops, which have failed multiple times or become loud to the point that I couldn't even have it in a meeting room without it being a major distraction. Perfect, guaranteed silence at all times from my electronics is a beautiful thing.

Here's a video from someone who observed a design review for Starship[1]. From the sound of it, Elon is in the thick of it in the R&D engineering.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1nc_chrNQk&t=380s

He also seems to provide pretty good high level direction for his companies. Also, he seems to be a pretty good gambler, willing to take big risks that sometimes pay off huge, whereas others might play things more conservatively and not get such payoffs.

He's not necessarily involved in the intimate engineering of rockets. He's deeply involved in the engineering of a rocket company.

Talent and Engineering prowess are pointless without direction, and Musk provides strong leadership to move the company in the direction he sees fit. The actual rocket scientists are Woz, and Musk is Jobs.

Elon Musk contains multitudes, including a stellar mind for engineering, a credible claim to be working on products that are good for humanity, excellent business instincts, and the talent to come across as an obnoxious asshole.

Seriously: when you have Bond-villain levels of fame and fortune, I expect you to be at least as clever as Peter Thiel in fucking over people who crossed you. Musk just randomly calling people he doesn’t like “pedophiles” on Twitter always feels… I dunno, “small”?

If you're going to quote, at least quote correctly. "pedo guy" was the insult.

He also hired a private investigator to target the guy. I'm a huge fan of his work with SpaceX but let's not downplay what a petty asshole he was during that whole thing.

Absolutely. It is worth noting that Tesla was experiencing "production hell" at the time, so obviously Musk was under a ton of stress. That doesn't excuse the behavior, but does make it easier to understand. Frankly, Musk should have kept out of the whole thing, but staying silent isn't the style that anyone operating at that level is going to have.

Asking his team to build a sub is inexcusable. Still love his product, despite the distraction.

> Asking his team to build a sub is inexcusable

Is that what actually happened? Version I heard is that his engineers came up with the sub idea themselves, the idea didn't actually come from Musk. He just told them they could work on this and use corporate resources/funds to do so.

The sub didn't end up being used in the rescue. But, were the rescuers to any significant degree hindered by SpaceX/Boring/Tesla's offer of help? In a scenario like that, it makes sense to explore different solution options in parallel – the fact that some of them end up being culled doesn't mean it was wrong to explore them to begin with. Musk released an email exchange with the (co-)head of the cave rescue diving team [0], in which he asks if he should stop work on the sub and is told to continue with it. A lot of people paint it as if Musk and his team were hanging around the rescue site doing nothing but annoying the rescuers and getting in their way – but you'd think if that was actually true, they would have told him to abandon the submarine project not continue work on it.

[0] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016684366083190785

It's probably for the best that billionaires draw the line at Twitter rants, rather than... other things that money could buy.

He's just a very rich nerd.

That seems extremely unlikely, there's only so many hours in the day and while I'm sure that he has a keen eye on what's going on the odds of him being personally involved in the actual engineering are close to zero. If he's spending time doing that it'd actually be a huge failure on his part, there are more important things for him to spend his time on.

I lightly disagree, maybe he doesn't do the calculations or write the tests, but he's almost certainly grilling people all the way down to ensure alignment on engineering. His passion being engineering, he's probably not asking 'program management 101' questions, but doing a smell-test on your technical work and your competence level just as a fellow-level senior engineer would.

A while back I saw an interview with a NASA engineer they loaned to SpaceX for six months. He described a meeting in which two engineering proposals were being debated, and at the end Musk said "ok we'll do it this way" and that was the end of it. The guy was kinda blown away, and said at NASA they'd have had a dozen more meetings first.

Given that SpaceX lives or dies by how well their rockets work, I don't think there's really anything more important for Musk to be doing.

You are talking about Dan Rasky. Link to this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxIiiwD9C0E

He's one of the richest people in the world, with a massive interest in space & rockets, and owns the most exciting piece of space technology being built today. Where else would you spend your time in this situation?

I would probably spend my time focussed on growing and sustaining my companies and hiring very skilled people to do that engineering work for me, I'd be very interested in the engineering work, but I wouldn't be doing that work myself. Similarly I don't expect Mark Zuckerberg writes much code at facebook these days, there's just too much other stuff to do

If you're goal is literally just a successful company, then sure that makes sense. But if you actually have a passion for what you do (and I'm not arguing that Zuckerberg doesn't have a passion for spying on people), and the company is already a huge success, why wouldn't you spend your time doing something that you think is really really cool and hire very skilled people to do the other stuff?

Exactly this.

If your goal is to get rich and play golf and relax, that is one thing. The fact that Elon is one of the wealthiest people in the world and also as passionate as someone working in their garage seems kind of like a crazy situation.

I wonder if there is similar historical precedence in terms of an ultra wealthy person being interested and involved like he is.

For Elon Musk, Jim Keller or even Steve Jobs, their value isn't in manually doing the CAD / VHDL / Code, rather, it is being the Eye of Mordor on the critical path and understanding the solution top to bottom. No excuses, only problem solving.

I feel the key insight behind both SpaceX and Tesla is that both the napkin engineering from first principle and then having the force of will to personally see it through /are/ the most important thing. Both qualify as engineering.

Happy to have my fairy tale hero's journey view of success corrected.

Anyone inclined to argue against this could maybe sink 1,000 hours into Factorio. The game is simple enough to require 1-person-engineer, but complex enough that the player must both solve low-level problems AND be The Eye of Mordor. If you don’t relentlessly pursue both, you get stuck in the tarpit and progress stalls.