Having watched a good number of Elon Musk interviews, I wish more interviewers would ask more direct questions. Asking Elon general questions usually results in fairly similar responses to what you have heard before or read in his biography.
Elon Musk on How to Build the Future
61–70 of 542 posts
Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're just used to CEOs having only a decorative role, who can be replaced in an instant. So much so that when we see a CEO actually working/engaging with the actual product/service, they seem like a peculiar and rare specimen.
I would not characterize many CEOs as being "a decorative role, who can be replaced in an instant". Leading may not be hands-on engineering and design (at least, you hope!), but it's certainly FAR from decorative.
I would characterize most CEOs I've met(and not only) as decorative. And that's why they do get replaced in an instant.
Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future
#63I am very happy that there's a transcript. But I just spent two minutes trying to figure out how to cut and paste it into a textfile (Scribd won't let me download it without signing up). My request to YC is to publish transcripts like this as text.
I was able to copy and paste it just fine. See below. http://pastebin.com/1v0CaTwF
Me too. Click, select all, copy, switch to favorite text editor, paste. No signup/login prompt, and no problem. Maybe they fixed it?
Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future
#64>I think a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time with media or on businessy things. But actually almost all my time, like 80% of it, is spent on engineering and design. Uh... that's not really a CEO's job though.
What exactly does a CEO do?
I haven't spent much time in a corporate environment, mostly in a workshop making structural steel, so it's not at all clear to me who the CxO layer does.
As another comment suggested their roles seem to be mostly decorative. Do these roles actually make decisions, or just sign off on them?
Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future
#65I am very happy that there's a transcript. But I just spent two minutes trying to figure out how to cut and paste it into a textfile (Scribd won't let me download it without signing up). My request to YC is to publish transcripts like this as text.
I was able to copy and paste it just fine. See below. http://pastebin.com/1v0CaTwF
My guess is that JavaScript blocking interferes with Scribd.
Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Elon Musk isn't the kind of person I thought he was. > "Politically, Musk has described himself as "half Democrat, half Republican". In his own words: "I'm somewhere in the middle, socially liberal and fiscally conservative."[116] > Musk is a self-described American exceptionalist and nationalist, describing himself as "nauseatingly pro-American". According to Musk, the United States is "[inarguably] the greatest cou…
I like Elon Musk, but the hero-worship disturbs me. Yeah, he founded one pretty successful company, got in early at a very successful company, and has been using the money to fund cool projects ever since. I think Tesla and SpaceX are both interesting, but still experimental: he hasn't been singlehandedly Tony Starking up the future in a lab, he's just used a lot of money from making some smart/lucky decisions to hir…
>has been using the money to fund cool projects
Musk and his companies' investors enjoy most of the financial upside of the government support, while taxpayers shoulder the cost. [1]
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015...
Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future
#67Of course Elon Musk thinks that AI and brain interfaces are the most important things to work on, that's all that is holding back his raging space boner. Meanwhile, a large part of the world is still using Iron Age technology to get by with the bulk of their lives. The most important work of "How to Build the Future" is political work - reforming our property relations, for example, so that we aren't organizing our e…
Ah yes, the tried and true "You haven't solved MY pet problem, therefore you shouldn't be working on anything else" argument.
And people wonder why we rarely get anything done...
Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future
#68How would one go about meaningfully contributing to solving problems in genetics without having done the work leading to a MD or PhD (or both)?
Consider computational biology. There are lots of problems which hinge on understanding the impact of genetics on populations and variations in genetics and that effect. As there are already sources of genetic data sets and infrastructure to generate those data sets, genetic research becomes more of a data science problem than a medical problem.
Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future
#69>I think a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time with media or on businessy things. But actually almost all my time, like 80% of it, is spent on engineering and design. Uh... that's not really a CEO's job though.
Tesla/SpaceX are not your typical for-profit companies, where CEOs are decorative and all that matters is quarterly reports.
Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Elon Musk isn't the kind of person I thought he was. > "Politically, Musk has described himself as "half Democrat, half Republican". In his own words: "I'm somewhere in the middle, socially liberal and fiscally conservative."[116] > Musk is a self-described American exceptionalist and nationalist, describing himself as "nauseatingly pro-American". According to Musk, the United States is "[inarguably] the greatest cou…
I like Elon Musk, but the hero-worship disturbs me. Yeah, he founded one pretty successful company, got in early at a very successful company, and has been using the money to fund cool projects ever since. I think Tesla and SpaceX are both interesting, but still experimental: he hasn't been singlehandedly Tony Starking up the future in a lab, he's just used a lot of money from making some smart/lucky decisions to hir…
If anyone deserves hero-worship, it's Elon. In our age where the Kardashians and other vapid people are being worshiped, we need people like Elon to get a bit of the limelight and encourage and motivate ordinary people.