Ask HN: Why Do We Act Like Elon Musk Is Super-Man?

We need to get him working on global warming.

In what way? As far as I can tell, he's smart but not particularly brilliant. His business achievements don't seem to be the result of any particular incredible ability in the field. What's the insane gift?

- We, as a species, tend to attribute way too much credit to the people in key roles and not enough to the people around them. You see this in sports, in tech, and in politics. I wish there was a name for this cognitive failure, because I see it all the time and it really deserves its own name.

- The second point - as to the merit of Musk. You've already discussed his managerial and technical excellence - but for me, what sets him aside from many other highly talented peers (Zuckerberg, Page, etc) is that he focused on very concrete 'solid' problems. Facebook is a marvel, but to me, rocket science will always remain more impressive than social media. This willingness to take on incredibly difficult problems is something that I really admire - which is also why I love what Gates is trying to do with his foundation.

Having read books like "Good to Great" and "Creative Capital" and given my own personal experience at a large company, I raise Elon Musk to the "Super-Man" level because of his leadership. Consider the technical challenges and setbacks that his companies (Tesla and SpaceX) have faced. It is no easy task to maintain the vision and energy necessary to motivate the thousands of people who work for him in the face of such issues and audacious goals.

I don't really consider him Super-Man by the way and I have never met him. I only know how difficult realizing my own visions in life have been. To be in his position certainly requires more of "something" that I am yet to discover in myself. I therefore consider him worthy of my respect.

Furthermore the reason I believe him to be the most significant entrepreneur of all time is this... No one that I know of... has taken progressively larger fortunes and bet them on such high risk venture. No one ever has done that... Most people would have retired after zip2. Even a highly driven person would have probably become a venture capitalist after paypal... like Peter Thiel did. Also, no one that I know has come so publicly to the brink of failure and succeeded like Elon did in 2008. The underlying reason is no one has vision like he does. Going to Mars, and accelerating the transition to electric vehicles are huge ideas... The vision of going to Mars alone is in the same league as JFK and going to the moon. And that's just 1/2 of what is working on.

Yes, he does now, but at one point in the past, he did not. Building a world-beating team is extremely difficult--IMO, way more difficult than most programmer/engineer types here on HN give credit for.

Hiring super smart and dedicated people is hard to do, especially for a risky startup. You have to identify the talent you need, and convince them to leave their current job to take a risk on you (because talented people tend to already be employed in nice jobs). And you have to do it very quickly, repeatedly, without making too many mistakes.

It's difficult to get out of the hindsight mode, and remember that in the early days all of his current companies looked unlikely to succeed. He's "Elon Musk" now, but in those days he was just one of the PayPal millionaires--potentially a one-hit wonder.

Beyond hiring, there is organizing the team. That means hiring leaders outside the engineering comfort zone, like financial, sales, managerial, communications, HR, etc. And organizing them and delegating the right work to them, while maintaining focus on the things that only a CEO could do.

So, the fact that his companies employ thousands of top-notch people is, to me, one of the best reasons to think of him as an unique and amazing leader.

On top of this, he's doing it in multiple industries at once--and in industries that most people thought had very high barriers to new entrants.

As the public face of these companies that are so awesomely nerdy Elon Musk gets the public credit for their success just like he will take the blame for their possible failures.

If you did this exercise with most people, there wouldn't really be much difference. However with Elon, it would be impossible to calculate the difference.

PayPal probably would've still happened, but not in the same way. And there likely would've been less of a subsequent impact from the investments and experience gained by the people who worked at PayPal.

Tesla has put pressure on the auto industry to be innovative in a way they hardly felt prior to Tesla. Aside from electric cars, theres the Gigafactory, and the new pressure on dealerships.

Aside from SpaceX, I've only heard of Virgin Galactic in the same area... and Virgin Galactic is not nearly as advanced as SpaceX.

The point is not that none of this would've happened without Elon. The point is that it /did/ happen, and it happened /because/ of Elon. Elon may not have the power of thousands of minds in his own mind, but, he has organized all of those minds in such a way that it creates new opportunities for everyone - not an easy task.

1965 Engineer: I'm working on a rocket to put a man on the moon.

2015 Engineer: I trick people into clicking on ads.

2015 Elon Musk: I'm working on a rocket to put a man on the moon.

Here is an example from a friend of mine who went to USC with me, you're in a store and someone comes to rob it with a gun, the police arrive before they finish, and they line you up with the other customers against a wall, wave a gun at you and threaten to kill one of you if the cops don't let them go. The police storm the store and shoot the perpetrator dead right in front of you. Outside, sitting in the back of an ambulance being checked out, the detective comes over and asks you "What were the other customers wearing?"

Now in this case the police thought the guy had an accomplice who was pretending to be a customer when it went wrong. My friend realized he could remember nothing of the event other than the end of the gun barrel, and that the noise of the gun shots when the police stormed the store made the take down some sort of sad silent movie. Under that level of stress he just stopped thinking. And the police assured him that was absolutely the normal way of things for people who had not be trained to deal with these situations.

The CEO of a company finds out that there biggest customer has just cancelled its "non cancellable" POs and the company is not going to make payroll if they don't do something in the next three weeks.

Being able to operate under stress, being able to make good decisions under stress, things that Elon has demonstrated a number of times (and yes sometimes the stressful event was his own fault but it didn't take him out of the game)

And getting people to do something well. Easy to say hard to do, they have to want to do it. As you manage more and more people, you will get to experience a diverse set of personalities and traits, the larger the group the more diverse and the harder it is to get all aligned. To be a successful leader in a large enterprise you have be able to get the best out of people, even when they may not like working with each other, to achieve a larger goal. Bigger the group, the harder that is to do effectively.

So you take him out of the equation, and the reset falters. Take Steve Jobs out of Apple and Apple headed for the toilet. Put him back, and it comes back from the dead to the largest company in the world. Sure that is the work of thousands, but the guy inspiring those thousands has a disproportionate effect.

Over your career you should evaluate your CEOs. Some will be great, and some will be horrible. Look at what the company accomplishes under great CEOs and what it accomplishes under horrible CEOs. Do that enough and you'll develop a healthy regard for Elon has pulled off in both Tesla and SpaceX.

- Making cars electric (Tesla) and electricity renewable (Solar City) which if successful in a big way will help to combat climate change and provide a step towards a 'post [energy] scarcity' world.

- His desire and efforts to settle humans on Mars (SpaceX) are one of the best chances we have to become a multi-planet species which some consider a very important goal for humanity in and of itself and also provides some insurance for the long term survival of our species.

2. He does these things in a way that suggests he cares about the overall advances produced by his work in addition to the profitability and success of his companies (e.g. by releasing patents). This could just be clever marketing and rhetoric but it appears genuine and of benefit to the world in general.

3. He comes across as an engineer and a 'nerd' - whether by being honest about failures or getting the in jokes. Even if it's all for show, he pulls it off well enough to endear him to large sections a crowd like this one.

Few if any others with the money and capability to be successful are working on these problems (and even fewer look like they might be succeeding). Where it is happening, it's often hidden inside secretive 'skunk works' type organisations which deny us the opportunity to imagine the impact they may have and elevate those responsible to 'super man' status.

Apple wasn't all Steve Jobs either, except for the important ways in which, y'know, it was.

Like a Messi in Soccer Michael Jordan in Basket,or Sampras, Federer in tennis, there are people that are-was really much better in their field than anybody else.

"but some people act like he is achieving all this on his own when he has thousands of people working for him who are among the best minds available."

This is exactly where is is a superman, managing other people, if you want to ignore that Elon wrote software on his own and made a ton of money from it as a kid.

I know that you never managed bright people because you consider it easy. You imply that if you left them alone they will do bright work.

E.g You could have geniuses writing code that are troublemakers, depressive or just so cynical that destroy the company from inside out.

Every single stereotype of person could be poisonous for the company if you don't manage it well.

The proof that this is not easy is that there are lots of big companies full of brilliant people that flop in the market.

I had seen lots of them, in fact my own experience tells me that incompetency at the top is the rule, not the exception.

All under the banner of "We're going to f*cking Mars!"

So yeah, giant nerd cred.

If the utilitarian, long-term survival of the human species is what one believes in...there is no one better than Elon Musk at this point moving the world forward.

Many people may argue my last point, but he gives hope and shows people that they can achieve what they dream of and that is more important than just about anything a single person is working on. Sure he has an entire team, but he is the leader and without him, these companies simply would not exist and would not be nearly as successful as they are.

It is a classic story of what a real leader looks like. In those respects, I cannot think of a better leader on the entire planet.