Elon Musk

Author: Walter Isaacson

I had read Walter Isaacson’s authentic biography on Steve Jobs and wanted to read this book. But there were several things that made me reluctant to pick this one one up. For starters there’s a lot of informatio about Elon Musk and the media is always hanging off his every breath or tweet (to be more precise).  Another damper was the fact that this was a whopping 688 pages.  

I had a long flight to India coming up, and that was the catalyst for me to gather up the courage to embark on this reading journey. I have to say that I was not disappointed. Walter Isaacson somehow knows how to suss out interesting details from folks around his protagonist and is able to narrate them in a very entertaining way. 

There are lots of details around the many controversial incidents in Musk’s live that give the reader better insight into his thought process and motivation. For starters Musk is quoted as saying,  "I never wanted to be a CEO, but I learned that you could not truly be the chief technology or product officer unless you were the CEO.”

His philosophy of forcing design, engineer and manufacturing to work side-by-side and under the same roof is well known. He says “Separating the design of a product from its engineering was a recipe for dysfunction. Designers had to feel the immediate pain if something they devised was hard to engineer.”  In this regard his philosophy is not far from Steve Jobs who is quoted as saying  “Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers.

In terms of management, Musk is a big proponent of an engineering led organization. Furthermore “All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can't ride a horse or a general who can't use a sword.”

There are many other Elon Musk quotes in the book that I truly identify with

• It's OK to be wrong. Just don't be confident and wrong.
• A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle.
• When you’ve had success, for too long, you lose the desire to take risks.

We should not take for granted that technology always improves. There are many examples in the past where we built giant pyramids in Egypt or built aqueducts in ancient Rome, and then lost the instruction manuals  that were used to build them.

Gates and Musk’s differing views on making money and philanthropy are interesting to ponder about. Gates shorted Tesla so he could make money, presumably to do good in the world elsewhere. But from Musk’s point of view  it was “Why make money on the failure of a sustainable energy car company?” If you cared about climate change?

In summary, this book is both entertaining and thought provoking. I got a lot of perspective on the many “crazy” things that Musk has said or done and now they don’t feel so crazy after all!