Astral Codex Ten

Boeing

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Boeing

Article

Boeing is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between September 13, 2023 and September 18, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “many employees also talked about their past jobs at Boeing or GM or wherever”; “top engineers from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Orbital Sciences with a high tolerance for risk fled to the upstart”; “‘Boeing is currently run by a former hedge fund guy with a degree in accounting.’“. It most often appears alongside Ashlee Vance, Elon, Elon Musk.

Metadata

  • Category: Organizations
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: September 13, 2023
  • Last seen: September 18, 2023

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Book Review: Elon Musk
September 13, 2023 · Original source
The cliche answer - that they believe in the mission - is mostly true. But many employees also talked about their past jobs at Boeing or GM or wherever. They would have some cool idea, and tell it to their boss, and their boss would say they weren’t in the cool idea business and were already getting plenty of government contracts. If they pushed, they would get told to file it with the Vice President of Employee Feedback, who might hold a meeting to determine a process to summon an exploratory committee to add it to the queue of things to consider for the 2030 version of the product.
Musk would personally reach out to the aerospace departments of top colleges and inquire about the students who had finished with the best marks on their exams. It was not unusual for him to call the students in their dorm rooms and recruit them over the phone. “I thought it was a prank call,” said Michael Colonno, who heard from Musk while attending Stanford. “I did not believe for a minute that he had a rocket company.” Once the students looked Musk up on the Internet, selling them on SpaceX was easy. For the first time in years if not decades, young aeronautics whizzes who pined to explore space had a really exciting company to latch on to and a path toward designing a rocket or even becoming an astronaut that did not require them to join a bureaucratic government contractor. As word of SpaceX’s ambitions spread, top engineers from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Orbital Sciences with a high tolerance for risk fled to the upstart, too.
Highlights From The Comments On Elon Musk
September 18, 2023 · Original source
I don't think most people know the general state of aerospace industry CEO's and managers. Boeing is currently run by a former hedge fund guy with a degree in accounting. Relative to the industry, Elon Musk's public statements demonstrate enormous engineering acumen for an exec. I've got a master's degree in AE and whenever he's said something in aerodynamics or structures I'm like yep, that's about right. I remember a while back Musk said something about the 787's batteries catching on fire and some MIT prof, world expert on batteries, was quoted saying, "I would have said exactly the same thing."
I've worked along former SpaceXers and hung out with current ones (mostly in outdoors sports). If you work in the industry, especially in LA, you run into them. I was also interviewed by Brogan at Hyperloop a while back (super nice guy). The SpaceX hiring bar for technical talent is super high and I wouldn't exaggerate to say the average SpaceX engineer is twice as talented and hardworking as the average Boeing guy. Also, pretty arrogant in my experience (versus Googlers I've met tend to be humble even if they went to Stanford). I think this really started from the top of the company and he couldn't have built this pyramid of insane talent if he didn't have an informed, critical understanding of mechanical engineering.