With no family or personal life.
For those non-hourly at SpaceX a piece of advice:
Know your equity and watch closely your risk of dilution.
Been there, done that. (3 times)…
It can and it will run for awhile because, unlike a software venture, there is a fairly high barrier to entry. Elon for sure knows this.
It will slow when people become poach-able by the likes of ULA or ULA hemorrhages spin-off subsidiaries with a buy-back proviso that act as an attractor. If I was Tory, I’d be thinking along those lines… How does Sowers’ feel about working with kids?
Dave
Number 3 is why I don’t have an interest to work for SpaceX. I know people who work there. They work harder than I do, which is very respectable and commendable, but for it, they are far less compensated. There are certainly better rewards in life that money can’t buy, but I rather give up my personal life and family for something more significant. I saw the same behavior when I worked in Silicon Valley, and I was unimpressed.
Same here. Not interested in burn-out syndrome. Been there done that. Delivered the project and then *poof* meltdown. In the long run it is always better to have a sustainable pace with adequate breaks.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a lot of issues caused by overworked people messing up something somehow.
When you keep cutting the timetable to the bone what will invariably happen, with a good engineering crew, is that the design will be cut to the bone. Time, features, money, pick any two. Money he doesn’t want to spend, time he doesn’t want to use, so of course features will be slimmed down further and further. To a degree cutting down on features and simplifying the design can be a good thing. But some things cannot be simplified anymore or the penalty is getting something out which doesn’t get the job done.
Things will get worse if he ventures too much into unknown design territory. How long have they been designing the staged combustion LOX/Methane Raptor by now? My estimate is that they started basic design around the time Merlin-1C was finished, perhaps around 2010, with the real development effort probably only starting once Merlin-1D was finished in like 2013. So its probably been like maybe three years so far? AFAIK ESA took five years to design Vulcain and it was a lot simpler of an engine design. I doubt it will take them less to design the LOX/Methane engine. So perhaps in 2018. That’s my estimate. Assuming the schedule doesn’t slip further because of requirement changes or basic design issues. I think the SSME took like a decade from design start to finish so that’s probably the worst case estimate (2023?). I don’t know if Elon can keep his attention and drive for all that time if the engine development gets really protracted. He always seems to have more than one idea in his head.
As for only wanting top tenth-percentile, *everyone* wants the top tenth-percentile. But if you start scaling your company like mad, like he’s been doing, eventually you have to settle for less. Of course it would be stupid to hire someone with no prior experience even if its as a hobbyist during college. It’s not like he has the time to train people to begin with.
I don’t know if Elon can keep his attention and drive for all that time if the engine development gets really protracted. He always seems to have more than one idea in his head.
I keep saying that I wish he would forget about Tesla and concentrate on SpaceX.
I don’t know; maybe he thought he could fund SpaceX in part by selling electric cars, but from what I’ve heard, Tesla has serious financial problems. I hope it doesn’t bring down SpaceX.
At first he wasn’t supposed to be the CEO of Tesla. Just one of the main investors and I think he was in the board. Then they had issues getting the Roadster out in time, partly because of requirements he himself requested I might add, so they sacked the CEO and he became the CEO.
As for money I think most of the issues are regarding scaling up production capacity to meet demand. They are constantly behind their own manufacturing volume productions, but the truth is the volume has been going up. The Model 3 is going to be a whole different scale of manufacturing but I think they can do it. I was kind of aghast at the interior design though. I mean that large protruding screen right in the middle of the dashboard. Looked like something easy to break, and possibly injure someone, in a crash. But it wouldn’t be the first time the production design of a car is significantly different from the concept prototype.
Yah, I’ve been thinking the same thing. People get on Blue Origin for being opaque, but I think we know more about about BE-4 than we do about Raptor. Can you point be toward any pics of Raptor hardware?
Yes, I know I am late in commenting. The past couple of days have been busier than usual for me.
Let me point people to an old posting on my blog I titled An Interesting Side Comment by Michael Griffin. It is about round the bend workaholism. Believe it or not, this kind of stuff almost always does not work.
It is things like this that make me doubt whether Elon Musk and company will really change space exploration and development very much.
Oh — I think we need Moon bases and O’Neill colonies before we even think about trips to Mars. We really don’t know how to actually live out there yet. We will someday, but not yet.
It helps to be under 25.
With no family or personal life.
For those non-hourly at SpaceX a piece of advice:
Know your equity and watch closely your risk of dilution.
Been there, done that. (3 times)…
It can and it will run for awhile because, unlike a software venture, there is a fairly high barrier to entry. Elon for sure knows this.
It will slow when people become poach-able by the likes of ULA or ULA hemorrhages spin-off subsidiaries with a buy-back proviso that act as an attractor. If I was Tory, I’d be thinking along those lines… How does Sowers’ feel about working with kids?
Dave
Number 3 is why I don’t have an interest to work for SpaceX. I know people who work there. They work harder than I do, which is very respectable and commendable, but for it, they are far less compensated. There are certainly better rewards in life that money can’t buy, but I rather give up my personal life and family for something more significant. I saw the same behavior when I worked in Silicon Valley, and I was unimpressed.
Same here. Not interested in burn-out syndrome. Been there done that. Delivered the project and then *poof* meltdown. In the long run it is always better to have a sustainable pace with adequate breaks.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a lot of issues caused by overworked people messing up something somehow.
When you keep cutting the timetable to the bone what will invariably happen, with a good engineering crew, is that the design will be cut to the bone. Time, features, money, pick any two. Money he doesn’t want to spend, time he doesn’t want to use, so of course features will be slimmed down further and further. To a degree cutting down on features and simplifying the design can be a good thing. But some things cannot be simplified anymore or the penalty is getting something out which doesn’t get the job done.
Things will get worse if he ventures too much into unknown design territory. How long have they been designing the staged combustion LOX/Methane Raptor by now? My estimate is that they started basic design around the time Merlin-1C was finished, perhaps around 2010, with the real development effort probably only starting once Merlin-1D was finished in like 2013. So its probably been like maybe three years so far? AFAIK ESA took five years to design Vulcain and it was a lot simpler of an engine design. I doubt it will take them less to design the LOX/Methane engine. So perhaps in 2018. That’s my estimate. Assuming the schedule doesn’t slip further because of requirement changes or basic design issues. I think the SSME took like a decade from design start to finish so that’s probably the worst case estimate (2023?). I don’t know if Elon can keep his attention and drive for all that time if the engine development gets really protracted. He always seems to have more than one idea in his head.
As for only wanting top tenth-percentile, *everyone* wants the top tenth-percentile. But if you start scaling your company like mad, like he’s been doing, eventually you have to settle for less. Of course it would be stupid to hire someone with no prior experience even if its as a hobbyist during college. It’s not like he has the time to train people to begin with.
I don’t know if Elon can keep his attention and drive for all that time if the engine development gets really protracted. He always seems to have more than one idea in his head.
I keep saying that I wish he would forget about Tesla and concentrate on SpaceX.
I don’t know; maybe he thought he could fund SpaceX in part by selling electric cars, but from what I’ve heard, Tesla has serious financial problems. I hope it doesn’t bring down SpaceX.
At first he wasn’t supposed to be the CEO of Tesla. Just one of the main investors and I think he was in the board. Then they had issues getting the Roadster out in time, partly because of requirements he himself requested I might add, so they sacked the CEO and he became the CEO.
As for money I think most of the issues are regarding scaling up production capacity to meet demand. They are constantly behind their own manufacturing volume productions, but the truth is the volume has been going up. The Model 3 is going to be a whole different scale of manufacturing but I think they can do it. I was kind of aghast at the interior design though. I mean that large protruding screen right in the middle of the dashboard. Looked like something easy to break, and possibly injure someone, in a crash. But it wouldn’t be the first time the production design of a car is significantly different from the concept prototype.
Yah, I’ve been thinking the same thing. People get on Blue Origin for being opaque, but I think we know more about about BE-4 than we do about Raptor. Can you point be toward any pics of Raptor hardware?
Yes, I know I am late in commenting. The past couple of days have been busier than usual for me.
Let me point people to an old posting on my blog I titled An Interesting Side Comment by Michael Griffin. It is about round the bend workaholism. Believe it or not, this kind of stuff almost always does not work.
It is things like this that make me doubt whether Elon Musk and company will really change space exploration and development very much.
Oh — I think we need Moon bases and O’Neill colonies before we even think about trips to Mars. We really don’t know how to actually live out there yet. We will someday, but not yet.