Saturday, March 31, 2018

11 [Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future] by Ashlee Vance


For people who have been working for years in an engineering company, most of my colleagues and I always hope that the direct boss that we are working with is someone with sufficient technical experience or at least someone who has at least a basic understanding of the technical stuff that we are dealing with on a daily basis. However, this is not always the case and it can be quite frustrating if you are working for a Yes-man or someone who follow exactly the instruction given by the top management and care only the KPI results but knows nothing about the things that are going on in the office or without interest to know more. What if Elon musk be my boss? From paypal to spaceX, Tesla and then the Hyperloop. What he has done so far really gives me a better idea how a CEO in technical industry could be. As compared to achieve the KPI every month, the passion to change the world with technology could contribute more to the technological development for the mankind. Instead of creating something that can allow people to upload their baby’s photos to share with others online and see how many “Like” the photo is worth for, perhaps we need more powerful batteries, greener electricity driven car or powerful space shuttles that could take us to the Mar under the space migration project that seems practicable in the next two or three decades.

This book shows the readers the unknown sides of the entrepreneur that we could not know from the mass media in details. How he created all these companies and made them the leaders in their respective industries? How he continued believing that his plan was practicable after repeated failure and long delay from the targeted dates?  And even his private life, his young age, marriage and children. This book gave me a better understanding on how the life of an entrepreneur in west coast of US could be. Opportunity and timing is important. When you seize them, you must work the hardest you could to make use of what you have so that you won’t be regret of no making full use of them later. And, one more important thing, the life of an entrepreneur is many times more exciting than a white-collar job with daily 9 to 5 working routines. If you have passion for something, you should pursue it and challenge it. While reading this book, I can’t help but keep comparing my current job with an engineer in Silicon Valley or more specifically the engineer working in one of the Elon’s companies like Tesla or SpaceX. I think that they must be very passionate about what they are doing and that’s why they can continue advancing forward in spite of the difficulties and technological challenges. An engineer job in a company that makes its profit using the technology of last decade and almost no investment in R&D seems not promising at all. Perhaps this is one of the many reasons why many talented people migrate to US to pursue their dreams and look for a bigger world that can make use of the skills that they have!

Very interested to know how the future of the abovementioned technology companies would like and whether, in the coming future, would there be any new company to spearhead the technological development of the world…

(566 Words)




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