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I mean obviously with a team of thousands of people, everyone is smart and working hard. But isn't it Elon who is deciding - yes/no I want to put tons of money

I mean obviously with a team of thousands of people, everyone is smart and working hard. But isn't it Elon who is deciding - yes/no I want to put tons of money and people into figuring out landing rockets, yes failures are acceptable, yes let's build a big f'ing ship to go to Mars, yes we're going to release a truck that looks like an oragami DeLorean and give it a crazy name CyberTruck, yes we're going to let you play video games in your car. And now, everyone gets a blue check mark! You can have the best engineers in the world, but if the person at the top wants them to build a car that looks like Homer Simpson designed it then the company is going to fail. And that's Elon's role - make decisions all day long. Engineers give him options, cost/risk trades, etc.. and he has to make the right decisions that won't lead to bankruptcy. Tens of thousands of jobs on the line if the wrong decision is made.

simondotau 4y ago
> And that's Elon's role - make decisions all day long. The key point is that Elon's decision-making tends to be very close to the coalface. He's often involved in the minutiae of factory operations at Tesla[1] and he is a core member of the rocket engineering team at SpaceX[2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiMvQSWr-v4&t=651s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiMvQSWr-v4&t=651s [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
renewiltord 4y ago
I actually think he's a genuine one of a kind technologist+businessman and folks are pessimistic about everything. He wins some and loses some. And his wins are bigger than anyone else's.