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Comment by martindbp | Hacker News Reader

Not trustworthy. For a more accurate view listen to this interview with Mueller, the main engine designer at SpaceX: https://youtu.be/Uu9sobNjPFY

Conclusion: Elon has been instrumental in engineering decisions, often overruling the opinion of the rest of the team and later proven right (though not always). Later in the interview when asked who his role model is he answers "Elon", for having completely changed the way he thinks about engineering and business. Building multiple billion dollar businesses is not luck, and is not simply the result of a "child king". For more details on his engineering and management of SpaceX I recommend the book "Liftoff". The anti-Elon rhetoric has gone too far and is completely detached from reality.

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In my experience its quite common for both to be true- the founder is extremely talented and the business cannot survive without them, but also they have personality problems or ego issues that are allowed to run uncheked precisely because they deliver so much value. I have listened to Elon interviews enough to be pretty sure of this. What I am not sure of is if this strategy of running twitter like a manufacturing org where workers are interchangeable and disposable will work out.

Yes, Elon clearly has some issues. I'm sure having an abusive father, being bullied and almost beaten to death at school also leaves some emotional scars. When criticized he fights back hard, probably instinctively (pedo guy etc).

Did you read the original post though or know anything about Musk? Why would a main engine designer at SpaceX badmouth Musk publicly if he wanted to keep his job as said main engine designer? Your link is not a counterexample.

He is now retired and says the same thing as before (see "The Elon Musk show" on BBC). If Elon is truly so incompetent why would he work for him for 15 years? I know a fair bit about Musk, at least of what's publicly available, what do you know? Social media "Emerald mine" hot takes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

So if an employee has something good to say about their current boss, it's because they're afraid to lose their jobs (fair). If they're retired and still say good things, it's Stockholm Syndrome (as a Stockholmer I take offense btw ;)). So the only people we can trust are the ex-employees (possibly fired?) who have bad things to say? To me, the retired highly acclaimed engineer who worked closely with him for many years would be the absolute best signal here. Note that in the interview he's not unequivacly positive about Musk, he describes the experience as "stressful" and jokingly "I wouldn't want to have him as a dad", due to his high expectations and demands. But pushing your employees to the limits in order to do great things is not incompetence.

It's hard to tell, and it's certainly possible that this person genuinely enjoyed working with Musk and believes him to be a visionary. But if I spent half of my working years pursuing the erratic whims of an egomaniac, I'd have a very strong incentive in justifying this to myself with the belief that he is indeed an unparalleled genius, and not just a delusional rich man.

At that point, who he is is who I am. His public image and status reflects on mine.

Mueller is not a reliable source either. He is widely known as a huge kiss-ass within SpaceX.

Multiple sources have confirmed that Elon made no actual contribution to the development of the engines or craft beyond the input that aerospace executives normally contribute. He's just better at taking credit for the work done by others.

Source?

After seeing what Musk did at Twitter do you really think people at SpaceX are going to publicly identify themselves on this?

I knew it was bullshit when I saw the URL but regrettably I read the poor piece of fiction anyway. I don't know what compels people to write this garbage, or how dull someone who believes it is.

It's called being born with money. Talent and vision is plent, wasting money on random shit and being cruel to people until you have a profitable idea is luck with a side of evil.

His abusive father (who killed 3 people during a burglary btw) whom he cut ties with had some money yes. But he, his mother and brother lived on their own in South Africa while his mother worked multiple jobs to get by. Later they left for Canada without his father with a few thousand dollars at most. In Canada they had to live in a rent controlled apartment. Does this sound like the life of a rich kid to you?

Even if you discount this fact, if every child with a millionaire father would go on to revolutionize two industries at once I think we'd be much further along as a species...

The anti-Elon crowd has truly created an alternate reality where they can dismiss anything he has ever accomplished. I get that his personality does not jive with a lot of people, but the solution to resolve this cognitive dissonance is not to find any and all reasons to dismiss what he's done but to realize he's a complicated person, great at a lot of things, intelligent, driven, but also childish, emotional and over-confident at times.

> In Canada they had to live in a rent controlled apartment.

Is that significant? All rentals were subject to rent control at the time. Only since 2018 has new construction been exempt, but older builds remain under rent control.

Doesn't seem very trustworthy either. Meuller was probably one of those "Elon managers" and I don't see any merit of doing public denial on his "genius engineer" narrative. And overruling low level eng decisions which don't make business sense is a typical CEO job. Every single competent tech CEO does that everyday, Elon is not a special case.

Although I have a decent level of respects for a businessman Elon Musk in that he made several successful long term bets based on his physics/economics backgrounds, but this doesn't necessarily mean that I have to agree with his own narcissistic narrative. We also need to draw a clear line between the reality and his narrative as well as recently developed anti-Elon rhetoric.

Tbh, I think the biggest issue with kissasses and yes men most powerful narcissistic people tend to surround themselves with is that they'll isolate them in a bubble of their bad decisions.

This leads to companies 'backing the wrong horse' for too long and investing way too much resources and time into projects that are doomed to fail.

Imo this is what we've seen traditional US aerospace companies do for decades - the SLS is the most egregious example of this. In contrast Musk has walked back many times on ideas that turned out not to make sense - propulsive Dragon landing, numerous Starship redesigns etc.

In my opinion that ability has proven to be one of his greatest asset.

> Every single competent tech CEO does that everyday, Elon is not a special case

Not a special case, but different in the matter of degree. Every person (and CEO) is unique, but I think Elon stands out on a few dimensions, 1. raw tenacity, this guy just does not quit, 2. first principles thinking, 3. great at finding the right talent. I don't think any other CEO could make SpaceX work. Definitely not as a part time CEO/founder while also building Tesla. Bezos tried half heartedly and had very limited success. Zuck has yet to prove he can succeed outside of Facebook, Gates perhaps if he had the interest. Jobs seems to share many qualities but not the technical/engineering chops (although I think he knew more than people give him credit for). That said he's not a superman hero, but we can still marvel at he's done.

> We also need to draw a clear line between the reality and his narrative as well as recently developed anti-Elon rhetoric.

Agreed

How many people working at SpaceX have to say good things about Elon to make you believe?

I would take something said by an employee on a public platform with a grain of salt. Specially after how Elon recently treated employees not agreeing with him.

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