This is an insight that I think most closely hews to the the reality of the current situation at Twitter, and at larger companies in general. There is a need fo

This is an insight that I think most closely hews to the the reality of the current situation at Twitter, and at larger companies in general. There is a need for people at all levels of skill and competency because there are tasks and problems at all levels of difficulty and importance. It's essential to ensure your organization is matching the right people to the right problems, and that your leadership is creating the right incentives so that this happens more often than not. This is incredibly difficult and I think more represents the ideal, rather than a consistently achievable reality (at least I have never actually seen this in my own experience). Inevitably your upper leadership becomes infiltrated and then taken over by people who's primary skill is gaming the system of incentives. Once entrenched, they are difficult if not impossible to remove, and jealously gatekeep against anyone more competent that might threaten their position from below. New ideas and reforms are seen as threats, as most of the leadership is only interested in these things to the extent that they might provide an opportunity to increase their own social status, wealth, or power. In a company, this is takes on the form of the depressingly banal, but it is as true at the highest levels of power in every state and such things are behind many of the human-initiated catastrophes we see throughout recorded history. To your point about the 90/10 ratio, I really don't get the sense that Elon thinks this way at all, however. I also agree that I don't think he is really getting the people he wants. As you said, those that would be most likely to stay under these circumstances are those who can't really go somewhere else (like those with a visa) or who are workaholics. Neither of these neatly intersect with the group of productive and skilled engineers and support staff. Instead of gross competency you are selecting for the desperate and the pathological.