[sneak]

I think CEOs tend to be publicly assigned most credit for what their companies do, for some reason.

This also happened to Jobs.

People talk about "Elon Musk is building rockets to go to Mars". While not strictly incorrect, the insane numbers of people working long, hard hours for years on end is the reason these rockets are getting built, despite the indelible fact that Musk has served as a nucleation site that allowed and facilitated so many incredibly talented people to come together around a shared dream. Zubrin tried for decades and failed, and yet Musk succeeded.

Anyway, Jobs would usually get pretty much full credit for just about anything that came out of Apple, too. He accomplished a lot, to be sure, but I always tell those people the iPod fishtank story, or the details of the wage pricefixing scam he masterminded that successfully stole billions of dollars from his staff.

I think people just really really need to personify large groups into a person or facsimile, so that they can fit large entities into narrative structures in their heads (whether true or false). The same thing happens to nations, too: the political result of tens of thousands of people working very long hours is assigned singularly to Xi, or Putin, or Trump.

The system is not its figurehead.

[japanuspus]

I find it disingenuous to refer to Elon Musk as a "figurehead" of spaceX, see e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...

I actually believe that the fact that spaceX has a leadership qualified to make technical decisions is the reason they are the ones pushing the envelope.

[sneak]

First, I didn't make that claim. I do think, however, that the contributions of others must necessarily far outshadow his own considering that he is dividing his time between at least four companies. Even someone of equal competence (to say nothing of greater) working full time on just spacex would likely have a greater impact.

Then again, the thing would not have happened without him, so credit where credit is due.

You're right that figurehead probably isn't exactly the right word.

[ngcc_hk]

Probably one said it is both. But in real life the direction especially in firm and totalitarian countries are really affected much more by the leader.

Not sure about trump. You look at the way hus sect of state work abd you wonder whether it is trump or in spite of trump sometimes.

And he gave you a good example of migrating from California to Texas, not because of Trump or Biden.

But I would blame xi for all the human violations in Hong Kong and U and T etc. It is not a democracy. So is firm or many firms.