Elon Musk
Epic feats. Epic failures. An epic story. Walter Isaacson charts Elon Musk's journey from humble beginnings to one of the wealthiest people on the planet - but is Musk a genius or a jerk? From the author of Steve Jobs and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate story of Elon Musk, the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era - a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter. When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue and charismatic fantasist. His father's impact on his psyche would linger. He developed into a tough yet vulnerable man-child with an exceedingly high tolerance for risk, a craving for drama, an epic sense of mission, and a maniacal intensity that was callous and at times destructive. At the beginning of 2022 - after a year marked by SpaceX launching thirty-one rockets into orbit, Tesla selling a million cars, and him becoming the richest man on earth - Musk spoke ruefully about his compulsion to stir up dramas.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
19mentions
19people
2016–2026years
32% recommend58% neutral11% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Why not both?
I think it's both the incompetence of the incumbents, and the impressive work of SpaceX that got us to where we are. With the vast majority of companies, especially tech companies, I think the leadership gets far too much credit. In most organizations I have been a part of, they succeed in spite of the leadership, not because of it.
In the case of SpaceX though, I am less sure. Reading the Walter Isaacson biography on Elon Musk was quite fascinating and illuminating about his leadership style. I would never work for him myself, but he does have some really fascinating philosophies.
- I just finished Elon Musk’s biography by Walter Isaacson and I was struck by how often this actually works. Whether you’re actually sending humans to the ISS, or building cars removing requirements and complexity is a surprisingly effective tactic.
I love his “algorithm” for getting shit done. The final step is, “If you don’t put back at least 10% of what you take out, you aren’t removing enough.”
- Read the biography Elon Musk from Walter Isaacson.
The engineers likely learned of this news via the tweet.
- I finished reading the Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson, and, for all his faults, Musk really knows how to get shit done. I was constantly amazed by his ability to strip a process to its essentials before embarking on its construction. SpaceX single-handedly* brought down the cost of space flight by using off-the-shelf and custom-created-from-metal components, where they only had to pay for the raw cost rather than the markups by others (the "idiot tax" as mentioned in the biography).
Generally, I simply don't give a shit about what a founder says, I have a Toyota in addition to a Tesla, and I don't care what the CEO of Toyota says at all, so I always find it puzzling when people talk about their dislike of Musk in particular, as if that should matter when buying their products.
*for some definition of the theoretical hand of a company
- “Elon Musk” by Walter Isaacson.
It’s a balanced account of the most important industrialist of our generation.
Refutes some of the “Elon Bad” groupthink myths too.
- The Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg (highly recommended)
Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson (recommended)
Modern Romance - Aziz Ansari (audiobook recommended)
Boomerang - Michael Lewis (great if you have a light interest in macroeconomics)
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (recommended)
Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell (recommended)
Joyland - Stephen King (great, short read)
Creativity, Inc. - Ed Catmull (Parts on the history of Pixar were interesting)
