What can I say, call me a Musk fanboy.

I just read Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. What an inspirational book! It has taught me several lessons about the business of technology while provoking much self-reflection.

Time to hit the books

Early in the book, Elon is quoted as saying “I think there are probably too many smart people pursuing Internet stuff, finance, and law.”

This made me gulp. A decade ago, I turned my back on finance and law so that I could be a productive web programming member of society. The idea that “Internet stuff” can be grouped together with finance and law in societal value made me think about my place in the world. He hit me again toward the end of the book.

“You should have a pretty broad engineering and scientific background…. Engineers are usually trained in a very fixed area. When you’re able to think about all of these disciplines together, you kind of think differently and can dream of much crazier things and how they might work.”

My strengths include progamming, math, and finance. The confidence I had drawn from these areas of expertise melted away. Truth be told, I had already began making plans to update my skills in preparation for the next wave of innovation. (Coursera is amazing.) The writing is on the walls: the days of easy innovation in cloud-based software are nearing an end. Meanwhile, the barrier to entry for web and mobile programming nowadays is essentially nil.

Reading Musk caution against having “fixed area” engineering backgrounds has abruptly moved up my self-learning timeline.

I find it inspiring to remember that Musk post-PayPal had essentially the same technical skillset that I do now: web software. He learned about rocket science, battery engineering, solar panels, and car manufacturing by reading and talking to people.

I have ordered several textbooks in adjacent disciplines such as robotics, machine learning, and physics. It’s time to double-down on training up.

On engineering risk-taking

“SpaceX had been making significant changes to its rocket since the last, failed launch. A traditional aerospace company would not have wanted the added risk, but Musk insisted that SpaceX push its technology forward while at the same time trying to make it work right.”

Replace “traditional aerospace company” with “career software engineers” and you essentially have described the kind of well-intentioned, “senior” programmer that much of the industry produces.

My blood must still be running hot because I feel like it’s time to take the gloves off and take some bold engineering risks.

On SpaceX culture breaking the corporate mold

“Make sure your output is high,” [SpaceX president Gwynne] Shotwell said. “If we’re throwing a bunch of shit in your way, you need to be mouthy about it. That’s not a quality that’s widely accepted elsewhere, but it is at SpaceX.”

Definitely does not sound like my father’s Rocketdyne/Boeing/UTX!

On SolarCity’s gameplan

I distinctly remember two things about solar panels in the last decade: that they were difficult to install and that their prices kept dropping. It was against this backdrop that SolarCity executed its business plan:

“At the time, it was not easy for consumers to get solar panels on their houses. You had to be very proactive, acquiring the panels and finding someone else to install them. The consumer paid up front and had to make an educated guess as to whether or not his or her house even got enough sunshine to make the ordeal worthwhile. On top of all this people were reluctant to buy panels, knowing that the next year’s models would be more efficient.”

Once it has been pointed out, how obvious it seems that homeowners do not want to invest in rapidly changing solar panel technology, and that a business innovation could make such concerns disappear.

On the brilliance of the Gigafactory

(The Gigafactory is Tesla’s lithium-ion battery factory.)

“The competitors… think it’s a stupid idea, that the battery supplier should just go build something like that. But I know the idea of spending several billion dollars on a battery factory. You’ve got a chicken-and-egg problem where the car companies are not going to commit to a giant volume because they’re not sure you can sell enough electric cars.”

Of course, no other car company is making anywhere near the kinds of investments in battery production. It will be amusing to watch from afar how things play out for those competitors.