[nickik]

Do you know Elon Musk? He absolutely builds and designs. He is CEO and Chief Engineer at SpaceX and that is not just a title.

He knows more about the rocket then probably anybody else.

He said that he spends about 80% of his SpaceX time as and engineer.

[Inconel]

Just to add a small anecdote, I have no involvement on the design side of the house but there isn't a rocket that leaves Hawthorne without touching my hands at some point, and I've always been impressed with Musk and some of the other more senior engineers, Tom Mueller deserves to be called out in particular, for how much they know about the low level technical things that go on here. I'm very, very, very low on the hierarchy here but I've escalated things to Musk and other VP's in the past when I felt it was necessary and they always took the time to respond to me.

Also, and this was particularly true when we where in much more cramped quarters on the production side, I would run in Musk on occasion in my area and he knew way more about the intricacies of my work, and the equipment I was using, or complaining about, than I would have assumed considering all the things he's responsible for.

[krapp]

>He said that he spends about 80% of his SpaceX time as and engineer.

Fair enough, but that leads me to believe he needs to hire more engineers. He shouldn't need to be that hands-on, even if he wants to be.

[mft_]

Hum... you wanna tell the guy who's totally revolutionised the space industry, doing things rational people would have thought impossible not so very long ago... that he's doing it wrong?!

I'd hazard that companies which achieve truly impressive things, often do so because of how decisions are made. You need benign (or not so benign) dictators right in the weeds with their teams. Put layers of bureaucracy between Elon and his engineers, turn him into a board-meeting CEO... and SpaceX would lose one of the fundamentals that makes it special.