
Tesla and SpaceX Share More Than Musk - fmihaila
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-07/from-software-to-staffers-tesla-and-spacex-share-more-than-musk
======
rw2
I think the quality of engineering talent at Space X is probably higher.
Having lived with and met a couple of Tesla Engineers, they seem to optimize
for ability to work insane hours and accept lower salaries. The result is that
Tesla does not have as many people from top engineering schools. This probably
doesn't apply to early Tesla employees who seems much more qualified.

I'm sure there is a reason for this and it might be a better approach for
scaling production.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
> top engineering schools

That is an elitist conceit that is irrelevant to the actual practice of
engineering.

~~~
lorenzorhoades
It represents kind of mindset. If early on in life(13-14 when grades start to
matter)you wanted to excel in education and are willing to go to a top
university where you are crushed with workload, it demonstrates a sense of
drive and passion. You definitely can have that same drive and passion and go
to a very mediocre school, but there are less of you statistically. you may
even have more self-discipline since you must go above and beyond you peers,
but from a recruiters perspective, when they are looking for top applicants it
becomes a statistical game really fast.

~~~
Ntrails
I completely agree, the guys going to top universities worked hard in school
and got good grades. They were high achieving children. They're good at exams.
They were _probably_ also relatively smart, and _probably_ also somewhat
privileged.

Now, to what extent that translates to "being good at the job you're trying to
fill" \- that's the interesting question. It'll generally be relative to the
biases of the people doing the interviewing and their personal experiences.

~~~
gxs
Right, that is why companies like google and Facebook who do a ton of research
in hiring play such an emphasis on academic achievement, especially in younger
employees.

I think saying that being good at achool doesn’t make you good at your job is
something we say to make ourselves better.

You can’t be good at your job if and only if you do well in school, but if you
do well in school, especially at tough universities, chances are you will be
good at your job.

------
clickbyclick
If you can send a building into space, land it on a postage stamp floating in
an ocean... I have high-confidence you can solve production line scaling
challenges.

~~~
rsynnott
Yes, that's why the Soviet Union's lead on space in the early 60s translated
into abundant production of consumer goods. Ladas all over the place.

Making a spacecraft work and making a production line work are completely
different problems, and there's little reason to think that an organisation
good at one is necessarily good at the other. I'm not saying Tesla WON'T sort
out their production difficulties, necessarily, just that it doesn't follow
from SpaceX being good at space launch.

~~~
dogma1138
USSRs problems weren't that they couldn't make production lines work they were
extremely good at manufacturing at scale.

The problem was that they were really bad at figuring out what needed to be
made and at what amounts because of the worst kind of planned economy you can
imagine (take aby soviet era product hammer, clock, lock, radio w/e and you'll
see a very peculiar thing a physical price tag embedded on it, if you were a
factory you were basically told you are making X now, price, profits and all
economic decisions were taken out of your hands).

If anything their problem was that they produced way too much of pretty much
everything on a whim.

Additionally there was all the wrong kinds of competition in which the
establishment was the selective force rather than the market.

These aren't the problems Tesla is facing.

~~~
azernik
They also had problems enforcing quality requirements across different
organizations. Aside from the military, it was impossible for a downstream
organization to reject the output of an upstream supplier for low quality or
non-conformance to spec. Hence each organization was incentivize to produce at
as low a quality and at as cheap an interpretation of the central plan as
possible, practical usefulness be damned.

Hence not just producing goods unsuitable to demands, but also shoddy build
quality for anything that wasn't military supplies.

~~~
dogma1138
That was an outcome of having "factories" rather than companies you could have
be making razor blades on Tuesday and radios on Friday.

Employment was also non selective you went to school, got your engineering
degree did your thesis on jet engine blades and then sent to a factory across
the country making mailboxes

Many of the design decisions of Soviet era engineering are becuase of these
conditions stuff was designed with high tolerances because it will likely be
produced on repurposed tooling not design for it by people who'll be trained
every 2 weeks to make something else.

~~~
jacquesm
Which, as crazy as it sounds resulted in some products that were extremely
durable _because_ of the huge tolerances allowed for in the design.

~~~
greedo
This isn't unique to the USSR however. There are similar weapons in the US
arsenal (M2 Browning for example) that are so well designed that is still in
service 84 years after initial introduction.

Back when engineers had to use slide rules, and metallurgy wasn't as
sophisticated, designers had to over-engineer machinery (and buildings, and
bridges).

------
juiyout
My uncle, being in Mitsubishi car manufacturing, he is specifically
responsible for sheet metal and paneling. Heard him mentioned ways for non-
destructive damage detection, with Ultrasound, X-ray, and good'ol knock-and-
listen being the prominent choices, I am quite surprised to hear Tesla needing
to call in rocket scientists. I guess it must've be that specific context that
prevented them seeing the solution.

~~~
aedron
It's marketing. "Tesla, made by rocket scientists" is the message they want to
implant. Musk does a lot of that kind of thing, like the mock 3D gesture
controlled CAD rig [1], or the Jetsons manned rocket [2].

It's smart and good salesmanship: Figure out the coolest announcement you
could make, then work backwards from there and make it happen.

[1]: [https://venturebeat.com/2013/09/06/this-is-how-elon-musk-
des...](https://venturebeat.com/2013/09/06/this-is-how-elon-musk-designs-
rocket-in-immersive-3d-virtual-reality/) [2]:
[https://www.engadget.com/2015/09/11/spacex-crew-dragon-
first...](https://www.engadget.com/2015/09/11/spacex-crew-dragon-first-
look/#/)

~~~
juiyout
I understand the line of reasoning you presented. It reminds me of Stephen
Covey's 2nd habit: begin with the end in mind.

Now to me personally this incident docked some points off of Tesla. I guess it
is not the end they meant to justify.

------
aroman
I wonder if all of Musk's enterprises (all of which seem in some way
synergistic) will be formally grouped together a la an "Alphabet".

What are the pros/cons of doing this from a financial/legal/organizational
perspective?

~~~
reactiveinertia
A company that is similar in practice is the giant Samsung. They make
electronics, military equipment, ships, missiles, medical equipment, etc...
they even make some basic technology for space rockets and cruise missiles.
The only thing they don't or can't make is the stage 1 launch system which the
US prohibits them from developing and they instead purchase it from Russia.

The Samsung family are geniuses at running complex operations, but their basic
operations are heavily assisted by other companies and people from other
nations.

Musk on the otherhand is kind of like the Trump of America's advanced
technology industry with the illusion of a heavy liberal bent. His focus is on
more of a "white" company, being South American and having escaped from the
abolition of Apartheid, he fits in well with what the majority of Americans
are looking for. However, the expectation of him being a "white US" friendly
operation prevents him from adequately recruiting the needed personnel to run
a conglomerate.

edit: I understand that some of you are finding it difficult to process how
Musk can run companies that appear so attractive, yet ignore its cultural and
political structure. It doesn't matter economically. Economically, all that
matters is what you perceive of his image and thereby the company(s) whose
image you believe-in from what you think you understand of Musk.

What works in the US and Europe is to develop a latent "white supremacist"
image with a strong undertone, without any direct overtures. The only
difference between Western liberalism/democracy/etc... and Western
Fascism/Racism/Consveratism etc... is how the basis and execution of this idea
of supremacy is viewed and communicated.

~~~
lovich
I'm gonna need some more clarification on this white company stuff. Those are
big claims I've never heard before

------
codeisawesome
I'm as big a fan as the next guy, but did anyone find the breathless tone
progressively harder to tolerate? Whatever happened to just stating the facts.

~~~
tw1010
I'm kind of of the philosophy that you aught to train yourself to extract the
facts on your own. You're unlikely to change the trend and it's a good ability
to have in situations other than reading the news, like in conversations.

------
SubiculumCode
I see Tesla, SpaceX, Boring, Solar companies as being quite synergistic over
the medium term...and especially in application in space.

~~~
SimbaOnSteroids
Going to need some pretty advanced AI to prefab human living spaces and life
support as well. Not only would 480k ms ping be murder on anyone trying to
drive ground vehicles but if you're going to be trying to build deep
underground autonomous would probably be easier than laying cable.

------
dmix
This is largely the product of talent attracting talent more than anything.
Having access to capital and connections also helps.

It's not quite a repeatable model for other companies as these business book
style articles like to believe.

------
smegel
I wonder if this happens between other companies even less related.

Would two companies that did not compete in any way be willing to help each
other other out because there CEO's were old-time buddies? Say some chemicals
engineers from a big oil company going to help solve a problem faced by a baby
food manufacturer?

------
jedberg
So when I told my daughter the Tesla X is a rocket ship car, I wasn't entirely
lying?

------
Animats
That crossover really showed up in the interior of the Dragon spacecraft.[1]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjSb_b4TtxI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjSb_b4TtxI)

------
SubiculumCode
Didn't see an example where SpaceX engineers reached out to Tesla. :)

~~~
softbuilder
The first thing I thought of was the Dragon 2 capsule.

~~~
greglindahl
Friction stir welding has been mentioned as a technology that was transferred
from SpaceX to Tesla.

------
smpetrey
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-
Royce_Holdings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Holdings)

------
altern8tif
I wonder if this happens for Square + Twitter as well.

------
lafar6502
Another portion of meaningless revelations. Just shut up and do your work
Tesla , your bragging about trivial stuff is an insult to normal business and
engineering

