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Comment by beauHD | Hacker News Reader

> Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are enigmas

Elon is listening to the music inside his own head. He has the right people working for him, and he's often mistakenly seen as the person who takes all the credit, but he's sitting on the work of countless engineers who work painstakingly to create his product range. As for Jobs, again, sitting on the work of countless designers and product people who make Apple what it is. Jobs & Musk are only genius tier people insofar as they piggyback on others hard work.

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But that is their genius, the ability to convince other geniuses to devote themselves to Jobs/Elon’s vision.

That's what they said? Knowing when to invest both time and money into certain products and concepts and knowing what areas need the most investment from engineers and designers (simplicity for Jobs, speed and convenience for Tesla and AMZN [in different ways]) is how you attach your name and success to actual products making a big impact on peoples' lives. Would these products exist without the founders putting in the initial effort to build POCs and get VCs and investors onboard? Would the industry be x years behind without them?

except lots of people that have worked directly for him and with him say the exact opposite.

here is one example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33703617

many others are documented in books about spacex and tesla

Elon has demonstrated publicly that he doesn't understand some pretty basic shit.

And? You can demonstrate your complete lack of knowledge of something basic in one area, and understand some extremely complex things in another.

Ben Carson (a US presidential candidate from 2016) is one of the most brilliant neurosurgeons in the world, and yet he derailed himself often by bumbling about his conspiracy theories about pyramids in Egypt being used as rice silos. He showed himself a fool on a number of public occasions. And yet, he understands all complexities involved in being a great neurosurgeon better than heavy majority of experts in his field.

No, I mean he has demonstrated a lack of basic knowledge with programming itself, but he's making large architectural decisions and firing the people warning him about it.

Your metaphor reminded me of this quote:

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” —Nietzsche

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