[hikawaii]

Then that means that office politics optimizers were able to make Boeing, Lockheed, and NASA look like jokers at something they'd been doing for decades.

If I thought this about SpaceX management and ex employees was representative of the culture as a whole,I would throw out all the modern books on managing tech organizations and go all Taylor immediately.

[SilverBirch]

This is a common fallacy. Modern businesses are enormous and succeed or fail for all sorts of reasons. Trying to figure out who is actually responsible for the success of a company is difficult. Just because a company is successful, doesn't mean every employee of the company is great. It's essential to understand what the dynamics of an industry is in order to understand why a company is successful. In the case of SpaceX there's no doubt there are some people there who are great engineers. But that's probably not why they beat Boeing.

[b33j0r]

A real-life reusable rocket that lands back on the pad was an exciting project to be a part of, no matter if you were doing it in a virtual sweatshop.

I could see being part of that ultimate goal as being a motivation to work for the aliens from the Simpsons (don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos!)

But given the progressive nature of the projects and “for all of humanity” vision that was presented, I have always been disappointed to hear these things about the operation. I’m glad I didn’t sign up, and it was tempting.

Look at outcomes. The whole thing was _actually_ about cornering access to LEO, the whole time. And it largely worked.

[hikawaii]

They've only "cornered" access to LEO because they vastly outperform the competition in almost every conceivable category. That should get you a short term monopoly.

[b33j0r]

Yep. Yep. and Yeah… I didn’t quite succeed at making that sound like I was still a fan. I’d still work on these things given an opportunity. For sure.

I guess around the time some of these crunchtimes have been reported, I was in some other crunchtime too!

My bias: “hey remember when we sat around and played foosball for lunch? We actually got a lot done anyway”

[nostrademons]

"More revenue solves all known problems" -- Eric Schmidt

"The only thing that matters is product-market fit" -- Marc Andreesen

Being in a good market with the first product that can satisfy that market solves all sorts of management sins. Look at Twitter, Zenefits, Uber, WeWork, Zynga, Digg, etc. Or for that matter - how do you think Boeing, Lockheed, and NASA started looking like jokers?

Dominance in a market is usually an anti-signal for management quality, because it means you can get away with stuff that you couldn't in more competitive markets.

[dalbasal]

In a sense, this is the organisational fallacy, of our time.

The baby version of this was 15 years ago, when Jobs was Musk and being an asshole was the main/only feature visionary executives emulated.

Maybe the lesson is that we're bad at lessons.

[hungryforcodes]

What was the ACTUAL lesson with these two? I can guess your intent, but could you specify? Also I think the grand father version instead of the baby version. Apple is massive...

[lostdog]

* Build something people want and will pay for.

* Figure out what the product must look like early, and keep your vision consistent for a long time.

* Dive into the details of the product, and try to get quality at the lowest levels.

* Hire great and motivated people.

* Remove roadblocks that prevent people from moving quickly.

Those are the real lessons.

My current job does all of these, and doesn't do the "Treat people like shit," thing that is the core culture of Elon's companies. We move faster than the Elonverse companies, while working on a problem of similar difficulty.

[poslathian]

Thanks for this, well distilled. I used to be anxious about how the handful of folks I knew running breakout companies all leaned heavily towards asshole. Was it a necessary but not sufficient trait to achieve great performance?

I’ve come to learn that if you do the things on your list well, some people are going to see that as being an asshole.

Clearing roadblocks quickly ( and nearly all roadblocks are made of people-problems after about 50+), insisting on certain aspects of a product vision for years, and engaging in someone else’s details are all strongly correlated with annoying someone.

I also learned that the assholes I knew were just the usual mean, dunning Kruger style people that exist everywhere. Those traits ultimately meant their inner circle perpetually excludes the kind of really great people you’d want to surround yourself with.

[whiplash451]

Where do you work?

[lostdog]

Sadly I've ranted enough on this account that it needs to remain anonymous.

[moffkalast]

Or maybe SpaceX did that despite being held back by those people. NASA's management is rather infamous too so it's not like they're competing against much there. Every time NASA's managers gained too much influence over the engineers people actually died.

[Clent]

Engineers are pragamtic as profession. Managers are glorified sales, their primary product is selling their team and move the goal post forward.

As as a software engineer, I'd rather buy my next car from an engineer who designed it rather than anyone else in the chain. Not because we speak similar languages but because I know that engineer will happily list ever bit of that makes them feel uncomfortable.

Engineers main task is to physically make something.

Even in software engineering something is being physically built up to run the software. We decided to call this the cloud because we let sales people define it. It ain't a cloud, you cannot fly a plane through it.

Construction is the one step that cannot be easily cheated. The machinery we build today is massive and complex so while the bureaucracy prevents a single engineer from addressing the issues, they are position to see see it.

My first question for a rocket company isn't the CEO's confidence. It is, would engineer #134 use this product with their families? Would you entrust the lives of our children to what you've built?

[hungryforcodes]

> Construction is the one step that cannot be easily cheated

This is a great quote, btw.

[santoshalper]

Or maybe it's just the ones who left?

[jpgvm]

Or fired.

[nitwit005]

Business success often only requires that you be less bad than your competition.

[tekkk]

From what I understood SpaceX was founded by some brilliant engineers and Elon just became the poster boy with no actual engineering credentials. Undoubtedly he is business-savvy but it seems not that surprising managers who take credit for the engineers' work might thrive there.

[xedeon]

Patently false.

1. https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929

2.https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1099411086711746560

3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Mueller

[tekkk]

Tom seems brilliant but I wouldn't refute my argument based on a single datapoint. I've seen non-technical managers being able to hold conversations and make insightful comments having been around engineers for so long. A little bit like ChatGPT, now that I think of it. And they definitely can serve as a counter-balance to over-engineering.

But would they be able to code a single HTML page on their own? I doubt it. They definitely know how to spec one down to the last detail, but alas there's a distinction here. And I would also argue Tom might be a little biased in his opinion. I don't particularly have anything against Elon but I'm not surprised certain type of people with personality faults gravitate towards him.

[xedeon]

> Tom seems brilliant but I wouldn't refute my argument based on a single datapoint.

Sure, I agree. However, there are many other examples that you can easily look up. But I do find the by amount of mental gymnastics in your response interesting.

I think it's fair to say that the opinion of those who have worked with Elon closely for many years hold the most weight. Compared to outsiders who just speculate on the internet.

[tekkk]

All right sir. You seem to hold a strong opinion about the subject, i do not. I find it funny rebuting me by using term mental gymnastics but i find this debate fruitless to pursue. A speculating outsider on interwebz. Okay. Sure.

[concordDance]

Got any source for further reading? Everything I can find says that Musk founded it and was heavily involved in the engineering.

[tekkk]

I based this on the intuition witnessing his incompetence managing Twitter. For a great engineer, he certainly lacks awareness that I attribute to either ignorance or being more accustomed to handling things in abstract - not in practice.