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> Even with a lot of money, this is no small feat.

Unfortunately we will never know how much Musk contributed to any of these companies.

It is in his best interest to act like he was vital but unless you were there, there isn’t any way to know.

If you want to get an idea, why not listen to some engineers that have worked with him? There are plenty of those around, for example, Andrej Karpathy talked a bit about working with Elon recently - https://youtu.be/cdiD-9MMpb0?t=5668

Unless it was off the record, I wouldn't. There are all kinds of potential conflicts of interests. These include ownership in companies where valuation is directly connected to Musk'a perceived competence and his ability to help/hinder their career.

Andrej doesn't work at Tesla anymore, but it sounded like he would want to leave the option to return open, so presumably he wouldn't want to burn bridges. I think most people prefer not to criticize people they know well publicly, anyhow.

Why not ask the people who were there?

For one thing, there are two groups, those who went there and eventually left, and those who are still there. I bet they give very different answers.

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