When Musk first appeared I was hugely supportive. Definitely a fan of what he was doing both with SpaceX and Tesla.
I'm still a fan of what those companies are doing but Elon has destroyed my view of him with his own behavior and words. We should stop turning a blind eye to his labor practices. Likewise, we should give the engineers and other workers that are actually accomplishing these things more credit, vs pretending it's one lone genius. Tom Mueller in particular deserves far more credit.
> We should stop turning a blind eye to his labor practices. Likewise, we should give the engineers and other workers that are actually accomplishing these things more credit, vs pretending it's one lone genius.
We also need to hold him to account when Musk tries to ruin the lives of his employees who speak up about what goes on in his companies. He even tried to frame one of them as a mass shooter to police[1] in an effort to get them SWAT'd.
Musk has a history of going after people who critisize him in public. He (and his staff) have again and again attacked journalists, former employees, and anyone else who said anything bad about Tesla or Musk. A common thread is that they always try to present critics as liars and try to destroy their reputation.
It's happened so often, that we must assume it's their standard method of operation.
And whether that call was made by Musk himself or someone he instructed to ruin that persons life doesn't really make a difference. The fact is that Musk himself or one of his bullies lied to the police and they got away with it.
> Musk has a history of going after people who critisize him in public.
Does he? Can you name three cases?
> He (and his staff) have again and again attacked journalists, former employees, and anyone else who said anything bad about Tesla or Musk.
Again, can you name three cases where Musk went after a journalist or former employees, and we know, beyond reasonable doubt, that the victim was right - and not, in fact, lying through their teeth?
I ask because there is documented history of the reverse happening. Consider:
1. Top Gear did a hit piece on their first car, lying about its range (55 vs. 200 miles). This doesn't sound serious until you realize that, back then, people didn't believe in electric cars, mostly because of range worries. This kind of bullshit was arguably life-threatening not just to Tesla, but to the entire EV industry.
Anyway, Tesla sued for libel and lost[0]. Here's a kicker: they lost because the judge deemed Top Gear is an entertainment show and not documentary, therefore they're not obliged to be factually accurate.
2. The incident with Top Gear made Tesla install telemetry in the cars given out for test drives; this came in handy few years later, when John Broder from New York Times decided to publish a hit piece on Model S[1]. Tesla then released data from the logs, directly contradicting the story, and demonstrating that Broder put in extensive effort to fabricate the bad results he then reported on.
I can't blame them from being a bit sensitive after situations like these. For the past decade, there were, and still are, a lot of people standing to make boatloads of money from bringing Tesla and the EV market down.
What the heck are you talking about, Tesla failed at Top Gear because when you drive the car hard on laps (which is what TG was mostly doing), just like any other electric car the theoretical range goes down significantly. Just like any other car running on any other source of energy.
It annoyed the hell out of them that after driving for few laps they have to wait for hours to charge the car to do few more laps.
Musk's ego simply couldn't swallow the fact that show which is being watched by 300 million people regularly slanted his baby. Luckily in this case, his enemy wasn't some lone expert diver but BBC with team of expensive lawyers, hence the result.
I used to work at one of the Musk companies. He was a huge mark in the "cons" column when I was deciding whether or not to take the job. He is embarrassing and he made me a little ashamed to say where I worked. I did my best to ignore him and I suspect others did too. No one ever talked about him.
He calls himself that, sure. Elon is a smart guy, and that's why I think he positions himself the way he does. He doesn't want to be Bill Gates, he wants to be perceived as a man of the people. A dudebro who happens to be rich. That's why he's smoking joints with Joe Rogan on camera and tweeting about WSB.
There is zero percent chance that Elon is actually doing any technical analysis or design for SpaceX.
He calls himself Chief Engineer for the same reason Trump claims to be a master-level deal maker. They're narcissists cultivating their respective cults of personality, and the legions of sycophants just lap this stuff up.
This is 100% public perception that he's a business development guy and all, because all we see is him tweeting, memeing, and sometime making a fool of himself.
He's an engineer, and there's a bunch of engineers who worked with him who will attest to that.
Why do you need someone who worked with him to attast it? Engineer is something you go to school to become, not something you become because you have money or workers. Either he have an education as an engineer or he isn't an engineer. Giving yourself a title in your own company doesn't make it so.
Edit: I can admit when I'm wrong. I stand by my assertion that it's absurd to call him a founder of Tesla, but his position in SpaceX seems to be legit.
~~He may be credited as chief engineer at SpaceX, but that doesn't mean he's meaningfully contributing to actual engineering efforts.~~ He's also credited as a founder of Tesla, despite not actually being involved in the founding of that company.
Nonsense! Engineer is an education, not a job title. It's no different than Musk calling himself Doctor. He either went to school for years to become an engineer or he isn't one.
The term Engineer is pretty much meaningless in the US. The IT trade is pathetic in this area -- if you swap out a few cat5s you're suddenly an "Network Engineer". Cut and paste some stackoverflow snippets together and you're a "Software Engineer".
In the UK the term is meaningless too, but CEng isn't. You don't become a Chartered Engineer until you've done the education but also have monitored professional practice experience.
The bare minimum is to have bachelor's degree in engineering, no matter what engineering field. You have that, you are an engineer, you don't you'rr not. Regardless of the career you choose after graduation.
I'm a software engineer. I do software engineering with other software engineers. But I didn't go to school for it, I was self-taught. That doesn't make me less of an engineer.
It's ok to express an opinion about Musk either way. You can not like him for all kinds of reasons. But he actually wrote video games as a kid growing up. He wrote code at his earliest startups and a lot of it.
I know the word gets thrown around a lot, but “software engineering” doesn’t really have anything to do with engineering at all, and it certainly doesn’t make anyone engineers. Not just because it doesn’t have any formal recognition as an engineering discipline but more importantly because the field is too immature for any such recognition to be at all meaningful. Case in point, all those private certification schemes and how lousy predictors they are of project success.
You know as well as I do that when talking about building a submarine (and linking to SpaceX discussions) "Engineer" isn't meant as someone who made a video game back in the day. It has zero percentage to do with code.
With that said I'm also sure you know that Software Engineer isn't seen as a "real engineer" (and I'm in the same camp as you FYI). It is more like Medical Technician versus Doctor. In most countries you need a license besides an education to b a "real engineer" and Software Engineers cannot get one. The whole job title is a misnomer, just like Engineer in American English has become it seems, though some Board of Examiners still sue you if you try to call yourself an Engineer without a license[0].
I did not write a single word that was positive or negative about Elon Musk in the comment.
Even if he doesn't do the hands-on design work himself, he's clearly good at both recognising engineering talent and evaluating information that's presented to him. You couldn't have either of these skills without some engineering knowledge.
“He’s obviously skilled at all those different functions, but certainly what really drives him and where his passion really is, is his role as CTO,” or chief technology officer, Reisman said. “Basically his role as chief designer and chief engineer. That’s the part of the job that really plays to his strengths."
Why won't it? It's just scaling up bank air tubes. But that's almost irrelevant to my larger point:
Where would we be right now if [pick any inventor] had listened when the experts said, "it won't work"?
An inventor's job is to have a big imagination. A successful inventor usually has enough of an engineering background to test their hypothesis and refine as needed. Most of them also know how to gather highly educated minds to help them.
Many successful inventors do not have deep academic backgrounds, because often those educational backgrounds tell them only what is impossible, not what is possible.
Most large companies have people that deserve more credit than the sitting CEO. However, that's part of the role of CEO is to be the one people look to as being in "charge".
Musk definitely doesn't shy away from that part to his detrement (clearly he doesn't see it that way). But I'm firmly with the previous poster in that I like what Tesla/SpaceX are doing and attempting, but think Musk is a bit of a tool. The irony is not lost on me that sometimes a calmer figurehead might not have been able to lead to success a company like Tesla and/or SpaceX.
I'm no fan of Musk's shitty and arrogant behaviour. His treatment of Unsworth was truly disgusting.
But that's like saying after a rugby game that the left wing deserved far more of the credit than the coach or captain, since they were the one who ran in the winning try.
The thing is that Musk makes things happen. Not in some lame and purely money driven field like crypto or ad tech - but genuinely moving the needle in combating climate change.
I feel I have to cut him some slack and laud his achievements, even though he comes across as a person you would involuntarily punch in the face for his hideous behaviour.
No one here turns a blind eye to his labor practices. Everyone here at HN knows to steer clear. It’s everyone that doesn’t frequent this website that needs enlightening.
> We should stop turning a blind eye to his labor practices.
Aren't there legal systems to make sure that's being done right? Is "we" some labor inspectors?
If you want to give credit to engineers, where does it end? There are millions of engineers in the world doing important things. Crediting that many people will dilute the value of it all.
I'm still a fan of what those companies are doing but Elon has destroyed my view of him with his own behavior and words. We should stop turning a blind eye to his labor practices. Likewise, we should give the engineers and other workers that are actually accomplishing these things more credit, vs pretending it's one lone genius. Tom Mueller in particular deserves far more credit.