The reason the twitter fiasco is happening is that twitter doesn't have such a team dedicated to cushioning musk, and so he goes around dictating whatever thoughts he has on an already major platform, even if these thoughts are directly contradictory with earlier ones, as was visible publicly on twitter.
Other than PR, which he is becoming worthless for (unless you count appealing to the historically not-believing-in-climate-change right as good PR for an EV company), i don't think musk has achieved much personally beyond having capital (with questionable legitimacy re its acquisition).
Elon didn't design Starship – SpaceX engineering teams did. Why don't ULA's engineers do something like Starship, is it because they aren't capable? I don't think that's fair; I think many engineers at ULA would love to do something like Starship, but Tory Bruno won't let them. And why is that? Well, I think Tory would love it if ULA could do something like Starship too, but he only has as much money as Boeing and Lockheed Martin are willing to give him, and he can only spend it on what they feel comfortable spending it on. And as far as Boeing and Lockmart go, why risk billions on some high-risk commercial space venture, when there are plenty of far safer big juicy defense contracts to chase instead?
That's the thing that Elon brings to SpaceX – expansive requirements, but also a willingness to risk billions in pursuing them. Gwynne Shotwell and Elon Musk make a good team, because she balances that out with pragmatism, organisation, management efficiency, customer focus. But, imagine if Elon had died suddenly 10 years ago – would Starship still be where it is today? As excellent an executive as Gwynne is, if it was all up to her, she might not have been wiling to make as big and risky bets as Elon has.
So I think this idea that all that Elon brings to the table is capital and PR is very mistaken. The other thing he takes to the table, is a willingness to take big risks which few others would, and the direction he gives to his teams to chase the limits of what is currently possible rather than settling for what is more obviously feasible. Sometimes, it all blows up in his face; other times, it has been a recipe for immense success. But, in that regard, both the success and the failure are coming from the same place.
You seriously believe he allows a team of people to act as an intermediary between him and the company, yesman and nod to him, then go and do their own thing?
Step back for a second and consider how incredibly unlikely this scenario is. Try and put another successful billionaire and the company they founded into a hypothetical, and tell me it's realistic.
Another scenario to think about here is how does he spend any amount of quality time focusing on SpaceX or SpaceX projects when he’s running day-to-day ops at Twitter for sure and supposedly Tesla too. Something has to give.
If he’s mostly spending his time on Twitter I don’t see how it’s all that implausible that for SpaceX he does randomly show up and toss around ideas and people tell him yes so he goes away and they can go back to their normal ops. I don’t know either way, but I wouldn’t really dismiss it so offhandedly.
However, he did found SpaceX 20 years ago in 2002. And their first successful launch was in 2008, 14 years ago.
It's entirely likely he puts less effort and impact into the daily running of SpaceX now, however I don't believe his last 6 months running Twitter invalidate his last 20 years running SpaceX.
Let me rephrase:
What makes you believe he effectively does not run the company, despite his entitlements? There appears to be strongly evidence for him running it (his entitlements primarily) and no evidence I've seen against it.
I’m not sure why you’re so obsessed with a fantasy version of a man.
Given the number of news stories I’ve read like that, from a range of news outlets, and given that Musk is also CEO of Tesla, I’ve decided that I find these stories plausible.
Have to imagine investors in Tesla are not happy right now with such divisive activities from Elon Musk in the public sphere and the lack of focus on the company (yes I can say factually he is not focusing enough on Tesla).
No, I have never worked with a billionaire CEO, founder and chairman of a space company. I have however worked with many founders and CEOs, and the ones who are dead weight quickly get moved on.
Why you do believe it's likely for this one to hold all the decision making power in a successful company with effectively no input?
Surely the default assumption is the founder/CEO of a successful company plays a part in it? So what do you have to indicate this is untrue, aside from your obvious dislike of a person you don't know.