> but you lose credibility if you call the guy who is leading multiple companies...
Leads? How many Musk corps have you worked at? I have been at 2 of Elon's and one of Kimbal's, I can tell you from from first hand experience, neither of them 'lead' anything there and their titles are merely on paper.
They were merely figureheads, who came in for photo ops and to be seen on occasion (especially when things went wrong) and made their presence felt but that is the extent of it. Elon didn't sleep on the factory floor during Model 3 hell, he was shit posting photos of himself at Sparks in NV at the time: Panasonic was having major issues and was a major choke point for the battery packs all the while the assembly lines for M3 were being revised without his 'insight' at all.
I'm convinced it was him who did the whole crowdfund Elon a couch non-sense, despite him being a damn billionaire who can buy the entire work force a couch without noticing in his bank account, the whole thing smelled of a typical Elon clout chasing tactic.
(All he does is shit post all day on Twitter, how can he lead anything with his posting history?!)
Rather they both rely on an extensive team to handle day to day operations, and a deep pool of exploitable talent to achieve the goals: who eventually burn out in the process after countless iterations before things work correctly.
Go look at the average lifespan of workers at Tesla/SpaceX. It's incredibly short, in the best case of both it's only long enough to vest (the pay is horrible, but the stock options make up for it if you make it that long) but often layoffs or targeted firings (union threats) are often the cause for premature terminations as well.
It's really not hard to see that SpaceX is run by Shotwell, even as an outsider, and I wish she would stage a coup already as she has the loyalty of the rank and file there, unfortunately Elon's title as 'chief engineer' there remains and the way he has structured these companies post-paypal means he cannot be ousted.
That doesn't mean he shouldn't be, as he does more harm than good at this point.
Again, people want to simp for Elon having no first-hand experience and posting behind throwaways online is the extent of his marketing prowess (the only thing I think he really excels at) which makes him like a modern PT Barnum.