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Elon's a funny animal. Most hype artists are full of shit and never deliver anything. Elon is full of shit but then ends up actually delivering something rather amazing-- but maybe not quite as amazing as promised and never as quickly.

In /r/spacex they joke about "Elon time." Take "Elon years" and triple them.

Of course this is typical for engineers and Elon is an engineer. I do it too. "Oh this will just take a few weeks" == months later...

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> Of course this is typical for engineers and Elon is an engineer.

He's not! This was discussed in the article comments and according to Wikipedia he have a BS in physics and another in economics. He started a PhD but quickly stopped.

I know a lot of people in Silicon Valley who are called engineers and only have a physics background. They aren't certified professional engineers in the disciplines that have licensing, like civil engineers, but they're still engineers.

Used to be, a large segment of Silicon Valley 'engineers' were trained in music. Some weird overlap that worked early on, at least until the market got flooded with trained software types.

He is. He's been performing as an Engineer for a decade. Which makes him one. Regardless of his early certification/degree.

He manages engineers, and he would seem to be quite effective at it (a rarity!), but being a highly technical manager isn’t the same as performing engineering work. Do you have a specific example in mind?

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-elon-musk-schedules-a-typ...

That link doesn’t address my question. It says he works at SpaceX and he works at Tesla, not the nature of the work.

> In /r/spacex they joke about "Elon time." Take "Elon years" and double them.

There used to be a Valve time.

"Duke Nukem Taking Forever" holds a sweet spot in my heart.

> Most hype artists are full of shit and never deliver anything. Elon is full of shit but then ends up actually delivering something rather amazing--

Ergo, by your own logic, Elon is not full of shit.

>> Most hype artists are full of shit and never deliver anything. Elon is full of shit but then ends up actually delivering something rather amazing--

>> Ergo, by your own logic, Elon is not full of shit.

The way I read what he wrote, he/she's saying Elon is a hype artist that is (full_of_shit && delivers_something) as opposed to being a hype artist that is (full_of_shit && !delivers_something) .

Okay. I kind of wish I hadn't replied in the first place but thanks for giving me an alternate reading of it :/

No, read it again: Most bullshit artists deliver nothing. Others deliver something, but not what they promised.

Yes, but they were arguing that Musk delivers what he promised although not necessarily when he promised. In that case all engineers being eternally optimistic are bullshit artists to a fault (which nobody would say they are). Anyway, it's a stupid quibble but given what Musk has achieved it's kind of irritating.

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