[hnarn]

It's always been my sincere opinion that even if Musk fails miserably I'll still admire him more than most other "tech idols". There are people that say he's all talk, but I don't care. Even if he's 75% talk and delivers on the rest, whatever he does achieve is still better than a face-detecting smartphone or a social network that makes money by profiling your personality for advertisers. I don't care about the money, I like his vision and in the end that's what makes a leader.

[Klathmon]

Musk isn't a PR guy, and I think a lot of people respect and like him for that.

He makes crazy "moonshots", he has a vision and doesn't tone it down nearly as much as others do, and he's not afraid to be "wrong".

The SpaceX community has a running joke about "elon time" being set to mars time, because his predictions and goals are almost always late (and are often under delivering), but I honestly respect that. Him and his companies aren't taking the "easy way out" of making easily achievable goals and then making them again and again. They are shooting for unlikely and in some cases almost impossible goals, and getting 70-90% of the way there, and they aren't exactly ashamed of it. IIRC there was a reddit thread a while back that was "bashing" Elon and Tesla and SpaceX about only hitting something like 70% of the goals they set, but I read it differently. They set out to revolutionize 3 different industries (cars, space, and now "boring" and public transport), and even if they can only get to "70% revolutionized", it's still a massive win in my opinion!

He's not perfect, I hear lots of bad things from many employees about the work environment, but overall I really respect the man and the companies he has created, and I think he has and will continue to do a lot for humanity.

[jimbokun]

Musk is a genius at PR:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/945712432416137217

Saw this yesterday when someone threw together a quick article on all of the gushing responses from customers to this tweet.

How can you say someone nicknamed "the real world Iron Man" is bad at PR?

[kinkrtyavimoodh]

I think they meant PR-only guy. His PR genius is in using his fan following for free PR. Tesla or SpaceX hardly need to spend any marketing dollars.

No other tech leader is as charismatic (Steve Jobs came close, but Musk seems more genuine whereas Jobs felt like a salesman) and very few are as personally intelligent and accomplished.

[kumarvvr]

Steve Jobs used way more hyped up adjectives, almost as if talking to a cult following.

[TeMPOraL]

Steve Jobs was basically a salesman. A brilliant one. Nothing bad in that; I just wouldn't call him a "tech leader" - he was involved with technology only incidentally.

[staunch]

Steve Jobs was hacking on electronics in the 1970s and building the most advanced personal computing devices from then until his death.

He was not a programmer but he knew more about computers than most programmers do. There's absolutely no way to call him non-technical accurately. Bill Gates giving up programming did not make him non-technical.

Elon Musk wouldn't make this mistake. He's very openly trying to emulate Steve Jobs' entire skillset.

Maybe the cause of this confusion is that most people only saw Steve Jobs when he went up on stage for an hour every year. Try asking yourself what he was doing the rest of the time. Elon Musk did.

[gwicks56]

Read on twitter recently:

"Move far enough up in any career, and you are essentially doing sales".

Thought that was very true.

[27182818284]

He isn't a PR guy in the traditional sense at all.

He has been anointed as a neo-PR guy now because his style of doing things (like responding to requests on Twitter with "Done,") is breathtakingly refreshing compared to PR from actual trained PR agencies

[kumarvvr]

>He makes crazy "moonshots"

His back of hand calculations on the viability of self-landing rockets, while coming back from a trip to Russia after a failed attempt to purchase a launch vehicle certainly wasn't moonshot.

He is a technology man in and out and knows the capabilities and limits of technology. I remember reading a book about Tesla and I always felt like he saw opportunities in the gaps existing between what is available and what is possible.

[TeMPOraL]

Indeed. Musk is a tech guy. The real tech guy, not the usual CEO of a tech company, who really does mostly marketing and management. He knows his physics and is involved in engineering decisions. For me personally, it's Musk who defines what does it mean to be a "tech CEO", and most companies we discuss here every day don't even qualify.

> I remember reading a book about Tesla and I always felt like he saw opportunities in the gaps existing between what is available and what is possible.

My view is that he focuses on what should be possible from first principles, ignoring whether or not our short-sighted markets find it desirable at the moment. It's a good strategy if you have a non-monetary goal in mind and resources to bankroll the efforts at forcing the markets into accepting your work.

[kumarvvr]

> There are people that say he's all talk

I really wish there is stronger support for him against these sorts of people. How can he be all talk when we see his rockets going up and coming back down.

[wils1245]

How can you look at the valuation of Tesla and think that Musk lacks public support? The company is worth more than Ford, while delivering a fraction of the cars. The difference in output is made up by faith in his promises.

[falcolas]

Why does Elon Musk need popular support? He's not a politician who relies on popular support for his very job. He's not an actor who relies on popular support to bring money to his films.

He's a CEO. All the support he needs is to deliver on his promises. From my exceptionally limited point of view, he's at about 35% there:

Space X: 100% (Reusable, self-landing rockets. Fuck yeah!)

Tesla: 40% (Prototype in decent shape, promised production capabilities of model 3 still seems a long ways off)

The Boring Company: 0%

Hyperloop: 0%

[TeMPOraL]

He doesn't technically need it to run companies day to day, but he needs it to realize his visions. Two main reasons:

- More popular support means his visions resonate, and more people will start pursuing them too.

- More popular support means the market will be more receptive towards those visions.

Note that Musk doesn't care if it's SpaceX or Tesla that are the market leaders long-term. He cares that we go to Mars and get off fossil fuels in transportation, however that happens. Hence e.g. opening up Tesla patents.

RE your % score, I'd give a different breakdown, based on what are Elon's actual goals:

SpaceX: 40% (reusable, self-landing first stage done; Falcon Heavy yet to launch, BFR in the works)

Tesla: 80% (their latest cars might have problems, but they successfully cracked the car market and started a wave of electrification that's unlikely to stop now; Chinese companies alone will carry it forward)

[falcolas]

Fair enough on your popular support points.

WRT Tesla: The company has started a revolution, but to all intents and purposes it feels like its falling behind. The Model 3 was supposed to be in full production already, but it's not. It's also not profitable, which is a major problem for Tesla (and Musk by extension) in the long run.

Not to mention, all of the pre-orders for Model 3's that aren't fulfilled in a timely manner are going to hurt the population's opinions of Elon Musk - and rightly so.

As far as following a vision: history is full of failed visionaries, and vision alone is not enough to propel mankind forward. Execution is.

[nickik]

People are making way to much of a drama about Model 3. You can go 2 years back and find information that they hope to get mass production going by end of 2017.

Sure the might have fallen short 30-40% but given the scale of their plan, this seems like a extremly miner problem.

The buissness reality is that there are 100000s of people who want these cars and they have essentially a proven market for years to come. The waste majority of these people are not gone start hating elon because their car is a bit late.

> As far as following a vision: history is full of failed visionaries, and vision alone is not enough to propel mankind forward. Execution is.

Like building a reusable rocket or massivly improving the price and production capacity of batteries?

People need to stop listening to Elon own prediction of things and consider where things would be without him. He has already revolutionised the space and the car industry, that is just a fact.

[Retric]

I think you could add.

Paypal: 75% (Much hate, still good option for many things.)

Solar City: 75% (Over expanded, not sure if that was a bad thing and was bought by Tesla. Still it installed 870 MW of solar in 2015 alone.)

Steve Jobs had close ties to fewer companies, Pixar, Apple, NeXT and did a similar purchase of NeXT by Apple. However, while dubious Apple greatly benefited from NeXt. So, I am willing to bet Solar City could be a similar net benefit.

The boring company is still to early to judge. Hyperloop is not yet a failure and considering it was simply a short paper I think 0% is overly harsh.

[falcolas]

As someone who has lost money to PayPal, I have a hard time agreeing with the 75%, especially when you consider all the caveats associated with it. That said, I won't argue the point.

I could swear that the rush for solar via Solar City has dropped precipitously. It seems like those who want it have it at this point. Its business model is also heavily dependent on US grants, and has seen some major downturns in terms of litigation and has been operating at a net loss for its lifetime. Let's put it closer to 50%

The boring company is simply trying to make underground highways - a task which makes very little practical sense in a world where highways already exist, and their downsides are well known. Not to mention, no execution or proof of concept exists.

As for the Hyperloop, again with the lack of execution or proof of concept. Anybody can make a whitepaper, but Elon Musk has put his weight behind the concept, to no practical end. But sure, let's remove it because you're right, he made no promises behind it; didn't start a company around it.

We're still only around 40%.

[Retric]

The boring company includes the idea of ~140MPH electric sleds that carry cars. This is part of their goal for 1/10th the price. It may or may not be implemented long term, but it is a novel concept and they are actually digging right now to gain expertise.

I would call it similar to Space X before they started landing the rockets. Just making digging cheaper much like making rockets cheaper is a basis for a profitable company. A long term goal of 1/10th the price really would be game changing.

PS: Picture even a one way toll road that goes 20 miles under I-66 into DC they could easily charge 10$/ trip an get 100,000+ riders each way per day. So, the real question is how much that tunnel costs. At 20 billion $ that's 20 billion * 6% ~= 1.2 billion per year vs 2 * 10 * 100,000 * 5 * 48 = 480 million so not a win. But, at 1/10th the price or 2 billion that's ~120 million per year break-even vs 480 million and highly profitable. How many places could a 5 mile segment be able to charge say 3 dollars and have 100,000 people per workday?

[falcolas]

Consider this comparison: buses carrying 50 people each on I-66 going 60mph. Which is going to carry more people into DC, at what cost? Think of the station wagon filled with hard drives vs. gigabit internet.

Cars, unless going ungodly fast (140mph is not enough), are inefficient at throughput.

[kumarvvr]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oia53xOLDmw

[andrepd]

Well first of all they're not his rockets. The engineers and scientists did it, he supplies the money, arguably a meritless in ck prison.

Second, there are many promises he still hasn't delivered on: SpaceX targets not met, Tesla still running at a massive loss, Hyperloop being doomed to failure, etc etc. I can definitely see why people say he is mostly talk, even though admittedly he has achieved some successes.

[Strom]

> Well first of all they're not his rockets.

Am I understanding this correctly, that the criticism of Elon Musk being all talk is because he didn't personally perform all the work in achievements like Falcon 9 and Model S?

[nightski]

He is a brilliant business man and gave all of the engineers at spacex the opportunity and freedom to achieve great things. For that he should be commended - we need more business leaders like him in this world! I think at the end of the day though in idolizing Musk you are taking away from the hard work and brilliance of all the other employees at his companies. America has this iron man style obsession with one guy changing the world by himself. But at the end of the day we achieve greatness by working together as a team.

[TeMPOraL]

I think most Elon fanbois implicitly understand that each rocket SpaceX launches involves blood, sweat and tears of hundreds of skilled people.

Ultimately, focusing on a leader is a shorthand used in everything. We talk about famous generals, and not about their lieutenants. We talk about presidents and kings, omitting the low-level administrative staff that actually does the work and keeps everything from falling apart. Often it's a bad generalization leading to bad conclusions (e.g. most presidents have little influence on the direction of their countries), but I think it's fair in case of Elon Musk, since it's his strong vision that defines the direction of SpaceX and Tesla.

Consider this: if SpaceX went public and Elon decided to step down, the company would lose most of its fanbase for very simple reason - it would most likely turn into a regular company and stop being just the vehicle to get humanity to settle Mars.

[kinkrtyavimoodh]

What a ridiculous strawman. Do you want him to insert every last rivet and weld every last joint in his cars and rockets before they become 'his' cars and 'his' rockets?

Tesla I could still grant but you do him great injustice by simply ignoring how much of his personal resolve is responsible for SpaceX even existing.

Feel free to list the number of times a group of engineers have spontaneously teamed up to form a rocket company.

[salawat]

I disagree. It's not a straw man at all.

Your assume that A) big things can only ever get done by companies. B)A CEO 'owns' a company's assets.

I'll give credit to him for creating and acquiring funding for the organization. I'll give him credit for publicizing his vision. Each and every rocket/car however, was massively subsidized by taxpayer dollars, and made feasible by hundreds of people WORKING TOWARD A COMMON GOAL.

The practice of abstracting away hundreds to thousands of people's hard work and financial support, involuntary or not, is disingenuous at best and downright dishonest at worst.

Abstraction is evil. Abstraction is what turns "people" into "human resources".

And before the inevitable "That's not practical!" or "That's unreasonable!": It really isn't. Most people have just gotten so used to credit for their own work being sacrificed to someone else that nobody points out how incredibly screwed up the practice is.

[kinkrtyavimoodh]

It is a strawman because it is reliant on a literalist interpretation that no one is actually arguing for. Of course the rockets are not literally his just as Obamacare wasn't literally Obama's.

> B)A CEO 'owns' a company's assets.

Never made the claim nor does it seem relevant here. No one is talking of actual ownership. When it comes to ownership and accounting of a company, there are already well-established metrics and practices to figure that stuff out.

Yes, the rocket is designed by engineers and put together by technicians and mechanics and thousands of souls have come together to achieve this task, and no one is denying their contributions.

But none of that would have existed without Elon. And he is being praised for that vision and steely resolve while others work on their PhDs from Armchair University.

This leadership is not trivial and it is central to something like SpaceX even existing.

[mmsimanga]

You make valid criticisms. However, you have to bear in mind that nothing in this world is perfect. Not even Linux. I bet every sports person gets on the field intending to win but they don't always win. That doesn't mean that sportsperson is a failure. They just lost some matches.

I do not think that Musk should get a free pass. His companies have taken on some pretty impressive projects. One day someone will make a better electronic car but much like the Wright brothers and Henry Ford, Musk did lead the way.

[icelancer]

Neil Armstrong didn't build the rockets or the shuttle so I guess he's also a bum.

[lmm]

Armstrong made his way up meritocratically on the strength of his piloting skills, to fighter pilot then carrier pilot then test pilot then astronaut. Many reckoned they wouldn't've been able to pull Gemini 8 out of the spin he got it out of, or successfully find a landing spot for Apollo 11 in the boulder field they descended on.

Maybe Musk really is as skilled as all that. Or maybe he was lucky enough to make a lot of money once (with x.com) and hire good people. It's hard to tell since so few people ever get to try having that much money to play with.

[TeMPOraL]

> Maybe Musk really is as skilled as all that.

Whatever are his contributions to the rocket design these days (it's obviously a SpaceX secret), one can't deny that his ideas for future of humanity are the raison d'être and the driving force behind the company. He obviously hires engineers smarter than himself to do the work; his own engineering skills only add to the credibility of the company and its goals.

[kumarvvr]

It's really his push, his vision and his risk. NASA had tremendous resources for decades, with some of the best minds of 21st century working there. They didn't produce self landing rockets, and on top of that, it makes complete business and economic sense too.

[kemiller]

My understanding is that he personally learned a ton about rocket science and actively contributed to the design, as well as providing business context, which is itself no mean feat.

[nickik]

That is just false. Elon is one of the lead engineers of the Falcon 9 rocket, he knows as much about it as anybody. He also came up with the idea, he gathred the people, he gathered the investors and did about 100 other things needed for the success of SpaceX.

Elon is still in control of SpaceX, so the Falcon 9 and FH rockets are his by any reasonable definition.

> Second, there are many promises he still hasn't delivered on:

What matters is overall progress and not progress relative to elons timelines. Also, most of those were not promises but rather announcments.

> SpaceX targets not met

Yeah, he only took like 15 years to launch more rockets then China or Russia. Build the largests commercial launch buissness.

But of course what we should focus on is that he is such a failure because he said 5 years ago that the FH would fly a bit sooner.

You really need learn to evaluate things on its own terms.

> Tesla still running at a massive loss

Poor Elon, 500000 reservations that any other company would kill for. Revenue stream for 1-2 years even without new reservations. What a failure.

> Hyperloop being doomed to failure,

Whitepaper without company behind it not successful. More big news at 8pm.

> I can definitely see why people say he is mostly talk, even though admittedly he has achieved some successes.

Yeah, the guy who revolutionised space launch, landed fucking rockets and created reusable rockets is 'mostly talk, with some success'. Honstly people can't see the trees because of the forest. This is so fucking bizar.

[Already__Taken]

I don't really care either way for the man but something he said to the effect of "Technology doesn't just get better, it takes hard work and will and money" and the general building the future you want to live in.

I mean sentiments like that. It's just right in the feels ya know? It's a reason to go even read the news in the morning.

[awj]

He's arguably already had legitimate and impactful successes. Building a business even remotely capable of commercial spaceflight is a huge deal. What Tesla has done, both in batteries and in getting the major auto makers to put focus on EVs is a huge deal.

Musk arguably does significantly more talking than doing, but his goals are lofty enough that even failing to make it halfway still means significant advancement.