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11 Lessons from Elon Musk that can be applied to your Engineering Career

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This is a guest post by Jake Voohrees.

Elon MuskElon Musk is the most famous engineer alive today, is the inspiration behind the modern image of “Iron Man”, and is responsible for running five companies (Tesla, SpaceX, Solar City, The Boring Company, Neurolink). There is a lot that we can learn from him. His original story highlights include selling a video game at age 12, double majoring at UPenn in physics and economics, co-founding Zip2 and selling it for $307M in 1991, and co-founding PayPal and selling for $1.5B to eBay. This sale left him with $180M after taxes, and Tesla / SpaceX / Solar City were born after that.

Everyone told Musk he was crazy, he’d lose all his money, and none of the ventures would be successful. Tesla had a rough start, SpaceX had three rocket explosions (including a live payload loss), and Solar City began when solar panels were nowhere near as cool as today. But all three survived. Elon is famous for his futuristic vision, work ethic, and his ability to create a team to literally accomplish anything. Here are 11 lessons from Elon Musk that you can apply to your professional development efforts as an engineer and beyond.

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An Engineer that will be remembered for much more than engineering – and some lessons she left for us.

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The engineering industry lost a dynamite engineer and person last month.  Suzanne Audra (Muzzey) Seminara, 39, passed away June 16, 2017 after a courageous battle with cancer.

Suzy was my classmate in undergraduate engineering school, and my wife’s college roommate.  The three of us spent a lot of time together in college, mostly doing engineering homework or assignments, but always laughing.

Suzy was always one of the happiest, most positive people I remember from my four years in college.  It was like a smile was cemented onto her face, because no matter what had happened to her, no matter how many assignments she had, she was smiling.

After graduation, my wife and I moved to northern New Jersey, took engineering jobs, and eventually had kids while Suzy took a great job with Lockheed Martin for which she eventually moved to Texas.  We kept in touch sporadically and would see each other once a year or so.

Suzy really advanced at Lockheed, and she would always tell us about the amazing projects she was leading within the company including being a project manager on Lockheed’s F35 Program.

There was so much more to Suzy than engineering though, and unfortunately, it was through her death that my wife and I were reminded of this, specifically at her funeral service, where the room was packed to capacity and one person after the next talked about how amazing of a person she was.

Suzy would marry another Lockheed Martin engineer Gary (on a ski slope in New Hampshire) and together they were blessed with two beautiful boys over the past five years.

Suzy lived life to the fullest every day….

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