For a short couple years Musk actually was doing legitimate engineering work at SpaceX. Yes it was high level, but it did involve proper work and deep understanding of the systems. And yeah, Shotwell had to stop him from making several critically bad decisions during that time (like canceling Falcon Heavy).
I know all the Musk haters will disagree with me on the idea he did contribute to the engineering, but it’s extremely well documented by both the employees at the time and spaceflight journalists.
But honestly before and after that, I can’t think of anything else he really did at a technical level though.
My feeling is that he sort of lives for creating impressions like this, so people treat him as if he is, well Tony Stark basically. He gets off on that. And that is also why he is so obsessed by getting respect from the gamer, nerd, and geek communities. So fuelled by this motivation, he reads a lot on technical topics and is intelligent enough to absorb the superficial level details. Superficial but nevertheless enough to impress people who don’t know any technical details (journalists) and enough to impress engineers etc too because they are surprised to see that he knows anything at all on a technical topic of their expertise. I have had the same feelings before, if someone which I know is unrelated to my field comes and talks about some basic technical details of it, I get a mixture of surprised feelings and respect. But all it really takes to get that information is just reading some wikipedia articles.
Let’s paint with a broad brush and say everything you said is true and completely ignore the part where he has to be stopped from making stupid decisions. Let’s give him so much rope that we can ignore it.
What good stuff is he doing now? Like is he feeding the homeless? Hell, I’ll take doing the dishes when it isn’t his turn.
I genuinely want to know what he considers “good things he’s doing”.
Not as far as I can tell, he’s doing squat other than tweeting and dismantling the government at the present. And he’s fried his brain with drugs so far it’s going to be impossible to recover.
If this is any way true, then they need to be shut down immediately. He is not an engineer. He does not understand anything. I’ve heard him speak about things I know and pretend he’s knows about, and it’s obvious he’s a moron.
Sigh, just because he’s a moron about most things doesn’t mean it’s true about everything. Just watch some of his interviews with spaceflight journalists and you’ll see he knows his stuff for a while and then slowly loses it over the years.
Humans have this infuriating habit of believing that because someone is distasteful they must be stupid in every possible way, but this is very rarely true. Oh, I wholeheartedly agree that he’s remarkably stupid, and I agree that at this time he knows very little about what’s going on at SpaceX, but you are ignoring the evidence if you believe it has always been this way.
Let’s be better than this and actually look at the facts, not the emotional reaction. You’ll come to the same conclusion either way - Musk is a horrible human being who has no right being anywhere near government, or even industry for that matter.
What kind of engineering work? That’s a really broad category.
Like, are we talking aerospace engineering? Software engineering? Systems engineering?
I don’t think the interviews angle means anything. Just because he was able to convince a journalist he knew the right words doesn’t mean that he was actually contributing to the actual engineering of the rockets. If he spent 20 hours a week in engineering meetings, he might have absorbed enough to talk intelligently about it.
I also wouldn’t give much credit to employees saying that he did engineering work. This is the same guy who bought the title of “founder” when he bought Tesla, and loves using NDAs to muzzle people.
I’m not saying I have doubts about his actual engineering because I think he’s an asshole so he must be an idiot. I’m saying it because I’ve never heard him say anything technical that wasn’t basically Star Trek technobabble, and at the same time I have seen him do a lot of shady things to make it seem like he’s more involved than he is.
What positive stuff? Like I’m legitimately asking.
He is cartoonishly evil.
He’s not cartoonishly evil until he gets a pet cat and holds it all the time.
Right now he’s just evil
I wouldn’t wish that on any cat though
See how he trots his son out in public
aka … his human shield
Also that thing he does with his hands now.
For a short couple years Musk actually was doing legitimate engineering work at SpaceX. Yes it was high level, but it did involve proper work and deep understanding of the systems. And yeah, Shotwell had to stop him from making several critically bad decisions during that time (like canceling Falcon Heavy).
I know all the Musk haters will disagree with me on the idea he did contribute to the engineering, but it’s extremely well documented by both the employees at the time and spaceflight journalists.
But honestly before and after that, I can’t think of anything else he really did at a technical level though.
My feeling is that he sort of lives for creating impressions like this, so people treat him as if he is, well Tony Stark basically. He gets off on that. And that is also why he is so obsessed by getting respect from the gamer, nerd, and geek communities. So fuelled by this motivation, he reads a lot on technical topics and is intelligent enough to absorb the superficial level details. Superficial but nevertheless enough to impress people who don’t know any technical details (journalists) and enough to impress engineers etc too because they are surprised to see that he knows anything at all on a technical topic of their expertise. I have had the same feelings before, if someone which I know is unrelated to my field comes and talks about some basic technical details of it, I get a mixture of surprised feelings and respect. But all it really takes to get that information is just reading some wikipedia articles.
Okay but is he doing any work in SpaceX now?
Let’s paint with a broad brush and say everything you said is true and completely ignore the part where he has to be stopped from making stupid decisions. Let’s give him so much rope that we can ignore it.
What good stuff is he doing now? Like is he feeding the homeless? Hell, I’ll take doing the dishes when it isn’t his turn.
I genuinely want to know what he considers “good things he’s doing”.
Not as far as I can tell, he’s doing squat other than tweeting and dismantling the government at the present. And he’s fried his brain with drugs so far it’s going to be impossible to recover.
If this is any way true, then they need to be shut down immediately. He is not an engineer. He does not understand anything. I’ve heard him speak about things I know and pretend he’s knows about, and it’s obvious he’s a moron.
Sigh, just because he’s a moron about most things doesn’t mean it’s true about everything. Just watch some of his interviews with spaceflight journalists and you’ll see he knows his stuff for a while and then slowly loses it over the years.
Humans have this infuriating habit of believing that because someone is distasteful they must be stupid in every possible way, but this is very rarely true. Oh, I wholeheartedly agree that he’s remarkably stupid, and I agree that at this time he knows very little about what’s going on at SpaceX, but you are ignoring the evidence if you believe it has always been this way.
Let’s be better than this and actually look at the facts, not the emotional reaction. You’ll come to the same conclusion either way - Musk is a horrible human being who has no right being anywhere near government, or even industry for that matter.
What kind of engineering work? That’s a really broad category.
Like, are we talking aerospace engineering? Software engineering? Systems engineering?
I don’t think the interviews angle means anything. Just because he was able to convince a journalist he knew the right words doesn’t mean that he was actually contributing to the actual engineering of the rockets. If he spent 20 hours a week in engineering meetings, he might have absorbed enough to talk intelligently about it.
I also wouldn’t give much credit to employees saying that he did engineering work. This is the same guy who bought the title of “founder” when he bought Tesla, and loves using NDAs to muzzle people.
I’m not saying I have doubts about his actual engineering because I think he’s an asshole so he must be an idiot. I’m saying it because I’ve never heard him say anything technical that wasn’t basically Star Trek technobabble, and at the same time I have seen him do a lot of shady things to make it seem like he’s more involved than he is.