You do realize that he co-founded and is running both a successful electric car company and a successful rocket company? And before that co-founded an insanely successful payments company?
Yes, but he also frequently makes false (or at best incredibly misleading) public statements about how far along they are on such projects. (Source: friend-of-a-friend is one of those groaning Tesla engineers.)
I worked for him directly. That's how he gets amazing stuff done. And clearly it works. If employees aren't up for it, probably best to find something else.
If you listen to his interviews, he qualifies most of his statements, certainly more than 90% of the professional business BSers I know. Definitely he qualifies and hesitates much more than most CEOs, that's probably why people emotionally invest in his statements, they trust he at least performed some critical analysis before spitting out the conclusion or tweet.
His original point was that people are crediting Musk with what is actually the success of the engineers working there. The public loves to give credit to figureheads. Naturally, this upsets the people actually doing the innovation who get ignored.
The more technical the crowd the more you hear this kind of thing but it really does bear mentioning that if these engineers could be doing it without these figureheads then really, they should do that.
They fact that it's plausible has no bearing on the fact that it is often simply not the case.
Why did Apple nearly fail before Jobs return?
Why are Tesla and SpaceX a direct result of one mans vision?
I'm not saying that no one else is involved in these businesses, I don't think anyone is stupid enough to assert that these are not examples of fantastically great organisations made up of brilliant engineers and probably project managers and lawyers and all of the other parts that make up a great companay but yet the fact remains that the 'figurehead' is there.
Why is that if these 'figureheads' serve no purpose other than to court the media?
The more technical the crowd the more you hear this kind of thing but it really does bear mentioning that if these engineers could be doing it without these figureheads then really, they should do that.
This is an oldish thread, but I want to point out that the main reason engineers need figureheads is to attract capital. The second reason is to unify the engineers toward a common goal.
I do believe engineers deserve a lot more credit from society, and also that engineers underestimate the contributions of non-engineers. I feel that the subtly snide way you worded your statement ("really, they should do that") is needlessly derisive to both groups.
That's exactly what I mean. Why state the incredibly obvious? Is there anyone who actually thinks Musk sat there and built the Tesla in his basement? Am I supposed to reach out and personally shake the hands of each engineer?
The engineers "thank you" comes in many forms. The fulfillment of the job. The privilege to work on cutting edge tech. The satisfaction of their customers. Their salary and so on and so forth.
Irrelevant, that is/was part of their contract regardless of outcome (otherwise R&D departments wouldn't exist, failure tolerances wouldn't exist, etc).
Musk merely gave directive, he didn't implement or do this R&D on his own. Calling this Musk's success is like saying Einstein design and built the atom bomb thus he is solely responsible for the death of many a Japanese. But society doesn't take that point of view, instead only that he contributed to it, not that he owned it through and through. A good leader leads their subordinates, but they are not the sole factor in their subordinates achieving success. If a leader does not recognize their subordinates, they will soon find they have no subordinates to lead.
And Zip2. He's at least 4 for 4 and maybe 5 for 5. And these aren't little web sites or mobile apps. Payments ($1.5b), automobiles ($25b), rockets ($10b), solar power ($5b).
Yeah, his record pretty amazing. I mean, even his least successful startup zip2 'only' sold for $300m, earning him a 'measly' $20m, and that was his first one after college.