As others have pointed out you are focusing entirely on his mistakes, which are many, but ignoring his real successes and actual abilities. Of course it took all the people working at SpaceX and Tesla to make the companies become successful but you can't ignore the fact that the person leading these companies, (plus his other successful companies), obviously has some extraordinary abilites in some areas. Blind hatred of Musk and his accomplishments is no more rational than blind worship. His problem is that he thinks those abilities extend further than they do.
I'm going to chime in here because I have the experience. Until recently, I've been a working development engineer with 30-some years of experience.
I'm a telling you: All it takes is
one misguided upper management type to kill an engineering division and a company. Come up with a better mousetrap? "It wasn't done like that in
my day." That's one. Or, "Yeah, the division is losing money. Yes, this New Thing would Save The Day and Blow Away The Competition. But my compensation is based upon How Much Profit My Division Makes (an engineering division that doesn't have a manufacturing source of profit?), so I'm cutting costs. No development budget. Here's some cockamamie thing I made up that I want this thing to have (
we're talking about some gonzo six levels up who hasn't done engineering since there were slide rules) and go back to the drawing board."
One of the things that Musk has done, repetitively, is to fire inefficient, misguided managers who get in the engineers' way. He's pushed engineering groups to Go For The Gold and, delightedly, those engineers have done just that. He
allows for mistakes and encourages people to Try New Stuff to see if it works.
Do you people realize how
rare this attitude is? Most management types above (but not always) One Level Up are insanely risk-averse. Most engineering groups are under the impression that One Mistake gets one fired or the group disbanded.
Think Venture Capitalists. They routinely fund what (they hope) are promising startups. For every ten start-ups funded, the majority fail; some make a little money; and once in a while, something Majorly Impressive comes around, pays serious money, and the VC funds
more start-ups. It works.
The difference: Musk has serious technical chops. He stays, however imperfectly, in the loop with the Real Engineering Designs and Data in front of him. He makes fewer mistakes than the run-of-the-mill VC, and he dreams.
Sometimes those dreams aren't super-duper wonderful: The Boring Company comes to mind, not to mention Hyperloop. But SpaceX and Tesla have punctured moribund, risk-adverse and/or corruptly managed companies.
It takes more than tons of talented engineers. It takes a CEO, or CEO-like figure, who
forces the management to stand up and fly right.
There are things about Musk that are, frankly, detestable. His speech on Twitter should make anybody cringe. But the ability to manage a couple of tech companies and change the world? That's not in question, even though those that detest his weird political leanings would like to think so.
