Sunday, June 22, 2025

Review of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson

This book review was written by Eugene Kernes   

Book can be found in: 
Book Club Event = Book List (06/28/2025)


Watch Short Review

Excerpts

“From the very beginning of his career, Musk was a demanding manager, contemptuous of the concept of work-life balance.  At Zip2 and every subsequent company, he drove himself relentlessly all day and through much of the night, without vacations, and he expected others to do the same.  His only indulgence was allowing breaks for intense videogame binges.” – Walter Isaacson, Chapter 10: Zip2: Palo Alto, 1995-1999, Pages 74-75


“Musk restructured the company so that there was not a separate engineering department.  Instead, engineers would team up with product managers.  It was a philosophy that he would carry through to Tesla, SpaceX, and then Twitter.  Separating the design of a product from its engineering was a recipe for dysfunction.  Designers had a corollary that worked well for rockets but less so for Twitter: engineers rather than the product managers should lead the team.” – Walter Isaacson, Chapter 12: X.com: Palo Alto, 1999-2000, Pages 91-92


“Musk was laser-focused on keeping down costs.  It was not simply because his own money was on the line, though that was a factor.  It was also because cost-effectiveness was critical for his ultimate goal, which was to colonize Mars.  He challenged the prices that aerospace suppliers charged for components, which were usually ten times higher than similar parts in the auto industry.  |  His focus on cost, as well as his natural controlling instincts, led him to want to manufacture as many components as possible in-house, rather than buy them from suppliers, which was then the standard practice in the rocket and car industries.” – Walter Isaacson, Chapter 18: Musk’s Rules for Rocket-Building: Space X, 2002-2003, Page 129


Review

Is This An Overview?

Elon Musk is a brilliant visionary with an aptitude for hardware and software, but Elon is someone difficult to work with.  Does not like sharing power, and does not accept no as an appropriate response.  During childhood, Elon went through physical and emotional turmoil.  Becoming callous and impulsive.  Elon can be intimidating.  Elon potentially has Asperger’s, given the lack of social skills, emotional connectivity, and self-regulation.  Elon is frank with people, which does not endear Elon to others.  But Elon does not think that managers need to endear themselves to others, that endearment would be counterproductive for a manager.  Elon loves to argue, and is drawn to chaos.  Stability and contentment are not acceptable.  Rather than mitigate risk, Elon seeks risk out.

 

Elon Musk is a demanding manager, who instills a constant sense of urgency.  A relentless work effort during the day and night.  Elon expects others to do the same.  A work ethic that can inspire, but also demoralize.  Leisure is rare, with videogames being an accepted indulgence.  Teams are formed to enable people from different production aspects to work together, rather than separately.  A system in which engineers and designers work together, and gain immediate feedback on how their ideas affect the product and manufacturing capacity. 

 

Elon has a production algorithm for what everyone working needs to consider.  The algorithm asks to question requirements, delete anything unnecessary, simplify, accelerate cycle time, then automate.  Rather than rely on established requirements, everything needed to be experimented and tested.  To experiment as much and fast as possible to quickly find the problems that needed to be resolved.  Sometimes finding that the requirements had good reasons and were costly to test, and sometimes taking the risk improved the product. 

 

To achieve long term goals, Elon needed to keep costs down as much as possible.  Rather than outsource components, Elon decided to manufacture components in-house when the market price of the components was high.  Deleting as much as possible from the product.  With the claim that if at least 10% of the deleted parts were not brought back, then not enough was deleted.  Cutting costs has enabled product improvements, but sometimes cost cutting came at the expense of safety. 

 

Caveats?

This biography covers a range of sensitive topics.  From personal to the different companies.  Sharing a person who is complex, and has complex views.  From how Elon’s personality can motivate, but also cause harm.  Setting up the narrative for the reader to make their own decision on what to think of Elon Musk.  


Questions to Consider while Reading the Book

•What is the raison d’etre of the book?  For what purpose did the author write the book?  Why do people read this book?
•What are some limitations of the book?
•To whom would you suggest this book?
•Who is Elon Musk?
•How does Elon respond to fear?
•How does Elon respond to contentment? 
•Does Elon have Asperger’s?
•How did Elon learn the difference between what people said and meant? 
•Was Elon interested or hardware or software? 
•What does Elon think of technological progress? 
•What did Elon learn at Zip2?
•What happened between Zip2 and PayPal?
•Why SpaceX?
•What is America’s approach to space?
•What happened to the NASA’s cost-plus contracts? 
•What happened at Kwaj?
•What was the space race? 
•What is Starlink?
•Why Tesla? 
•Was Tesla bailed out by the government? 
•What is Tesla’s self-driving approach? 
•What happened with the SEC?
•What was the approach with China? 
•What was Tesla’s approach to vehicle accidences?
•Why Neuralink? 
•What does Elon think of Artificial Intelligence? 
•Why SolarCity?
•Why The Boring Company? 
•Why Twitter / X?
•How did Elon effect content moderation? 
•What does Elon think of psychological safety?
•What was Twitter’s political bias? 
•What is Elon’s management style?
•What is The Algorithm? 
•Is being a tough and cruel needed to innovate?
•What was Elon’s approach to engineers and product designers? 
•What is Elon’s approach to risk? 
•What is Elon’s approach to costs? 
•What is Elon’s approach to deadlines?
•What is Elon’s approach to experimentation? 
•What did Elon think of rules?
•What is Elon’s approach to automation? 
•What is Elon’s approach to feedback?
•What material does Elon favor? 
•What does Elon think of woke? 
•What were Elon’s inspirational sources?
•How did Elon effect Ukraine? 
•What does Elon think of Bill Gates?
•What is reddskool?
•How did Kimbal Musk affect Elon?
•How did Maye Musk affect Elon?
•How did Errol Musk affect Elon?
•How did Elon behave in relationships?
•What was Elon’s relationship with Justine?
•What was Elon’s relationship with Talulah?
•What was Elon’s relationship with Amber Heard?
•What was Elon’s relationship with Grimes?
•What happened to Elon’s children? 
•What happened after the Rio vacation in 2001? 

Book Details
Publisher:               Simon & Schuster
Edition ISBN:         9781982181307
Pages to read:          686
Publication:             2023
1st Edition:              2023
Format:                    eBook 

Ratings out of 5:
Readability    5
Content          4
Overall          5