rkbabang Posted January 29, 2018 Posted January 29, 2018 I have an engineer friend who told me that among his engineering circle of friends, they actually don't find Musk's technical aptitude all that impressive. His main talent is rallying the best engineers together for a common cause (e.g. build a rocket, electric car). This is how me (I'm a computer engineer with some mechanical experience) and my engineering friends view him as well. I haven't actually seen much engineering done by him, but going off the hyperloop whitepaper he's either not an engineer or a terrible one. There's little to no mention of thermal expansion coefficients, mass of the capsules, seals, most failure modes, acceleration loading, recharging times, etc. All done for less cost per mile than a roller-coaster! Yes it's a neat idea, but not original besides the use of air bearings instead of magnets. That anyone would fund a hyperloop company based on the whitepaper is completely insane, and a testament to the ridiculous fervor surrounding Musk. He says he was fired from PayPal because he wanted them to switch from Unix to Windows. In 2000 this was nuts - Windows was not nearly as mature as a server platform as Unix or Linux. Moving to it would have been a bad decision. Then there are all his self-driving promises, with only a forward-facing radar and cameras... He seems to be backing off these claims now, which is good. I'd actually love to know what the dynamic range is on the AP2 cameras; anyone know where to get junkyard Tesla parts? From the available evidence it looks to me like Musk is good at motivating engineers to take bold risks and work on exciting projects. Sometimes he hits home runs (SpaceX), but his lack of in-depth, applied technical knowledge means he often mistakes what is possible for what is not. He may be a genius and fully capable of great feats of engineering, but if so he does not seem to focus his talents long enough to really analyze the viability of his goals. Disclosure: I'm probably going to short Tesla if it hits $400. In a related topic, Jeff Bezos isn't the best computer programmer in the world. His only talent seems to be hiring a lot of smart people and motivating them to create a website to sell a bunch of stuff. I've done some programming and I've got a circle of friends who agree with me. Sorry but what is your point exactly? And who really cares if you and your friends are better engineers than Elon Musk who's only talent is bringing smart people together to do astounding things.
Liberty Posted January 29, 2018 Posted January 29, 2018 I have an engineer friend who told me that among his engineering circle of friends, they actually don't find Musk's technical aptitude all that impressive. His main talent is rallying the best engineers together for a common cause (e.g. build a rocket, electric car). Humans are social animals. Those lower in the hierarchy always have to try to take pot shots at the top dog to try to raise themselves up. It's pretty stupid, and makes them look weak and insecure, IMO.
rkbabang Posted January 30, 2018 Posted January 30, 2018 I have an engineer friend who told me that among his engineering circle of friends, they actually don't find Musk's technical aptitude all that impressive. His main talent is rallying the best engineers together for a common cause (e.g. build a rocket, electric car). Humans are social animals. Those lower in the hierarchy always have to try to take pot shots at the top dog to try to raise themselves up. It's pretty stupid, and makes them look weak and insecure, IMO. +1. I've been an IC design engineer for over 20 years. I'm sure Musk couldn't just show up here tomorrow and do my job for me. But why on Earth would he want to? While I do okay, I'll never be a billionaire. His skill set is quite a bit more lucrative than mine... by a large margin. It's like criticizing an olympic gymnast for not being a great football player.
Liberty Posted January 30, 2018 Posted January 30, 2018 +1. I've been an IC design engineer for over 20 years. I'm sure Musk couldn't just show up here tomorrow and do my job for me. But why on Earth would he want to? While I do okay, I'll never be a billionaire. His skill set is quite a bit more lucrative than mine... by a large margin. It's like criticizing an olympic gymnast for not being a great football player. Exactly. But on top of that, Musk is known for actually doing other people's jobs. The Vance bio has anecdotes about people telling Musk that they can't do something he asked, that it's too hard or would take too long or impossible or whatever, and if Musk thinks they're not trying hard enough, he's been known to say something like "Ok, on top of being CEO of two companies, I'll also do your job" and then actually does the thing for a while until he's proven his point. Obviously he's busy and can't study everything, but there's little doubt that he has the brainpower to do almost anything if he could actually dedicate the time to do it. The dude's running two large companies that he grew from basically nothing using the hundreds of millions he made with his startups in totally different fields (where he coded and designed complex systems), is lead rocket designer at the first private reusable rocket company, has overseen every detail on the first aspirational EV company, and in his free times he's trying to improve infrastructure-scale tunnel digging (a field that basically has been stagnant for decades, like rockets were) and designs things like the hyperloop.. But yeah, some random engineers are saying they're better than him ::)
Spekulatius Posted February 1, 2018 Posted February 1, 2018 Even the question wether Elon is a great engineer is besides the point. What he is apparently though is abgerät Engineering Manager. A great Engineering manager almost never is the best engineer, but he is a good engineer , who asks the right questions, hires the right people and put the right people in his teams, have them work on the right things, motivates them etc. Elon is certainly good on all the above, I still don’t think he is a great company CEO in the end, but I think he is a great engineering manager.
Liberty Posted February 1, 2018 Posted February 1, 2018 I still don’t think he is a great company CEO in the end, but I think he is a great engineering manager. That's the crux of the matter, IMO. But the next level down is to ask whether he's a great CEO at accomplishing his goals, which might be different from those of most shareholders. I think he cares more about the tech than about per share value, something that many on wall street can't wrap their heads around because someone who doesn't put personal net worth above all else is an enigma to them. F.ex. Wall Street makes a huge deal of how he keeps missing his (self-imposed) dealines. But Elon probably knows that the crazy deadlines makes things move much faster than if he had given more realistic targets to his people, so the net result is worth it to him since he's got basically multi-decade ambition, so the pace is very important if he wants to get to his goals (EVs everywhere, space-faring civilization, ubiquitous clean energy generation, safe AI, whatever).
Spekulatius Posted February 1, 2018 Posted February 1, 2018 Yes, I believe for Elon, his companies are just the means to achieve his technological goals. I could easily envision a scenario, where Elon happily accomplished everything he wishes to, but his shareholders end up being broke.
rkbabang Posted February 2, 2018 Posted February 2, 2018 Yes, I believe for Elon, his companies are just the means to achieve his technological goals. I could easily envision a scenario, where Elon happily accomplished everything he wishes to, but his shareholders end up being broke. Even though I own shares, as I said before, it is more to support him than anything else, I wouldn’t be unhappy at that outcome. Of course I’d rather the shareholders make money along the way too.
Grant Posted February 5, 2018 Posted February 5, 2018 Sorry but what is your point exactly? As I said, it's that many of Musk's projects (e.g. level 5 autonomy with AP2 hardware and the hyperloop, at least within the next decade or so) are doomed to failure because of the lack of rigor and analysis to his claims. Humans are social animals. Those lower in the hierarchy always have to try to take pot shots at the top dog to try to raise themselves up. It's pretty stupid, and makes them look weak and insecure, IMO. Status games on largely pseudonymous forums serve no purpose. What's important is whether or not he's accurately judging the viability of his current moonshot projects. The available evidence on the projects I'm qualified to judge indicates to me he's either not, or he's lying about it. It's an important question because much of the value of TSLA to investors comes from the faith they have in Musk to pull off these moonshots. I'm sure he's quite capable of doing better, but this is irrelevant to the viability of current projects.
RichardGibbons Posted February 5, 2018 Posted February 5, 2018 You sound pretty logical and pretty convinced of your view, Grant, so I'm curious how you will respond if you're proven false. (I know that you don't view it as possible, but I'm curious about the hypothetical scenario, even if it could never come to pass.) So, if hypothetically, he does succeed in one of these impossible projects, would you conclude that you just aren't that good an engineer? Or maybe you just aren't good at judging other people's work? Or would it be more like you just didn't see the thing that made the project possible, and so you're a good engineer, but just missed something? Something else? The reason I'm asking is because I find resolving cognitive dissonance fascinating. You're logical and have made a huge statement that stakes your view of yourself on Musk's inability to achieve his goals. Since you seem to value intellectual honesty highly, I'm really curious how you'd resolve the cognitive dissonance in a scenario where you proved to be wrong. (And also, since you value intellectual honesty, I suspect you might be able to answer this hypothetical question honestly, which is why I'm asking it now.)
Grant Posted February 5, 2018 Posted February 5, 2018 To be clear I'm not saying all of Musk's moonshots are impossible, but the ones I'm somewhat qualified to judge look impossible to me. This makes me doubt Musk's veracity and wary of the ones I'm not qualified to judge. I believe he cannot achieve SAE level 4 automation on AP2 hardware, the hyperloop isn't going to be viable for at least a decade (probably longer), and the Tesla Semi will not meet its price and/or performance specs if it's made within the next three years. I'm fairly sure Musk is a much better engineer than I am. Being proven right or wrong won't change my opinion here. However fame and fortune can do strange things to people. If he gets to level 4 automation with AP2 hardware, I'll become more bullish on AI. I just got done importing all of Waymo's disengagement reports into a spreadsheet, and to me it looks like their once-rapid progress is slowing. Of course there's a lot the reports don't tell us, such as the ratio of street to highway miles, or how many disengagements would've actually resulted in contact. Note that Tesla did zero full self-driving testing on CA's public roads in 2017! If I'm wrong about the semi it'll be because I underestimated the drop in lithium-ion battery costs. I've modeled the semi's energy usage in steady-state conditions, which is fairly easy to do given the specs released by Musk and some data from the U.S. Supertrucks program. I'm pretty sure I did not screw this up as others have corroborated my results. If I'm wrong about the hyperloop, I'll be really impressed by the engineers who managed to create an entirely new form of transportation in such a short period of time. I suppose this would make me doubt my relative abilities too. Many Tesla investors say they know Musk's goals aren't achievable within the timelines he gives, and that he sets them to motivate himself and his team. This is fine, but he's also making these statements to investors and customers. Is he going to refund every AP2 owner who bought the full self-driving package? Or upgrade their hardware? What if lidar and/or side/rear-facing radar is needed? How expensive will that be? What if the stock drops for whatever reason and investors decide to sue for materially misleading statements? Edit: On the subject of intellectual honesty, I do try to be a rationalist. I may value it too highly for this crazy market we're in. I totally missed bitcoin's rise because I judged it to be a poor currency (too volatile, with no means or even incentive to stabilize itself). I didn't get in on any of the scamcoins which leaped up in value either. Oh well; at least my RIOT puts are doing well!
RichardGibbons Posted February 5, 2018 Posted February 5, 2018 Interesting. Thanks for your perspective and honesty, Grant. It sounds like you've done a fair amount of research on the topic--and I'm clueless when it comes to engineering--so it's interesting to hear your impressions. It's pretty rare to read such an honest analysis of where you think you could be wrong and how you'd handle it if you were, so I really appreciate that. I really respect that degree of intellectual honesty.
Liberty Posted February 6, 2018 Posted February 6, 2018 You gotta admit, this is some seriously cool stuff happening today:
John Hjorth Posted February 6, 2018 Posted February 6, 2018 Absolutely awesome! - World's best advertising stunt, and a success!
rkbabang Posted February 7, 2018 Posted February 7, 2018 Absolutely awesome! - World's best advertising stunt, and a success! It’s like watching a sci-fi movie watching those boosters land.
John Hjorth Posted February 7, 2018 Posted February 7, 2018 Honestly, I've lately been thinking about ~33 percent probability of pulling this off to success. - - - o 0 o - - - What happened at the barge? Thank you in advance.
Dynamic Posted February 7, 2018 Posted February 7, 2018 Sounds like the barge was showered with spray as the center booster hit the ocean at 300mph(500km/h) nearby destroying two of its engines. This according to The Guardian. Two out of three ain't bad and hopefully they can learn from that failure thanks to all the telemetry the barge will have recorded. Hopefully the fairings too will be collected as planned.
Spekulatius Posted February 7, 2018 Posted February 7, 2018 Interesting job maning the platform when this rocket module is coming towards you at 500km/h. Doodiligence should into that after doing some due diligence. Certainly not dull.
Liberty Posted February 7, 2018 Posted February 7, 2018 Interesting job maning the platform when this rocket module is coming towards you at 500km/h. Doodiligence should into that after doing some due diligence. Certainly not dull. The platform is a drone ship, nobody's on board.
rkbabang Posted February 7, 2018 Posted February 7, 2018 Interesting job maning the platform when this rocket module is coming towards you at 500km/h. Doodiligence should into that after doing some due diligence. Certainly not dull. LOL what about the guy in the pilot's seat on the rocket module trying to land it.
Liberty Posted February 7, 2018 Posted February 7, 2018 Interesting job maning the platform when this rocket module is coming towards you at 500km/h. Doodiligence should into that after doing some due diligence. Certainly not dull. LOL what about the guy in the pilot's seat on the rocket module trying to land it. What about the guy driving the roadster!
TorontoRaptorsFan Posted February 7, 2018 Posted February 7, 2018 Not quite the engineering feat of the Falcon Heavy but still have to commend this guy for designing this: The Blue Marble
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