I've learned to be super careful about what senior people say about other senior people

My experience, too. As a younger self, when I heard a C-ranked executive talk about X who's a "fantastic engineer", I assumed that I'd have to work hard to reach their level, without realizing that they may actually not have a clue. Now, when I hear a C-ranked executive talk about X who's a "fantastic engineer", I realize it's just name-dropping.

> This is especially true when talking about public figures - Sam Altman in his recent interviews has been incredibly diplomatic about Elon, despite the fact that it's pretty public knowledge Elon tried to take over OpenAI and now loudly disparages it. OpenAI was co-founded by Altman and Musk together at the same time, with a huge amount of Musk's money, without which it would've never gotten off the ground in the first place. Also please give a citation for this "public knowledge". I'd counter that it's instead pretty public knowledge that OpenAI basically stole Elon's money on a promise of making an AI company that wouldn't lock things behind proprietary walls, but now has turned out to be the complete opposite. Sam Altman pulled a fast one on Musk and then pushed him out of the company.

I don't know man. What breaks that argument is that multiple people make the same positive claims about Elon: That he can handle unimaginable amounts of stress that would break others, that he seems to have a breath of deep knowledge in various different engineering disciplines and that he is committed to his vision. Your theory would make more sense if everyone was making up random praise about him but the interviews with the three people I mentioned were conducted years apart and weirdly all mention these same praises. Its possible that there is some coordination going on but across so many people from his different companies? There must be some sort of truth to the statements.

I work in a industry with around 1000 engineers in that field in my location. There must be like 10 big companies where I can work in the area. Basically everyone knows each other and when you interview someone, it's easy to get the person's reputation. I just got a new guy in January (didn't do the interview myself, I was away), I know his ex boss very well and of course I phoned him to know how he's like. He depicted me a kind of bad picture of him. After 3 months I agree that he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But unlike my friend, I'm not asking for perfect code, I'm asking for throughput and bold moves in the wilderness. With that consideration, the guy is actually ok compared to others! I've come to learn to not rely a lot on outside advice on people, and I prefer to judge it myself in situ. The team, the company, the project or simply personal life can greatly affect someo…