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Comment by willnonya | Hacker News Reader

I think this perspective is born of ignorance. A mature company doesn't rely on interactions of the ceo in day to day operations. If the right people are in place those will take care of themselves. The ceo value comes in from the strategic and big picture elements.

Twitter will eventually get to this place too. The risk to both Tesla a d SpaceX is where Musk as as much as lead engineer as CEO. Distracting him from that side is where there is likely to be an impact.

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Sounds like an argument for making CEO a part time position. If Musk can be CEO of 3 companies at once and still tweet 24/7, the role of CEO seems pretty light.

Like, if my day-to-day duties are so light that I can take a similar full time job at 2 other companies, and everyone gets on fine while I’m gone doing those other jobs, maybe that’s an indication I’m not really doing anything important in the first place.

A lot is going to depend on how much they can delegate. If Musk trusts other people to do the work at Tesla and SpaceX he can focus his attention elsewhere.

Imagine if it were acceptable for me to delegate my job to my underlings, and then use the freed time to draw a salary at another company. How come only CEOs get to do that?

this is like saying why does rich people get to have their own maids and butlers so they never have to do any housework, and effectively double their time in a day.

at the end of the day, everyone has a boss and Elon's is the general public. his stock is tanking. while you can say it's not the same as being fired as a regular employee (and it's not), he doesn't 'get to do that'

Normally, yes, but for an iconoclast like Musk, in addition to having to handle helicopter CEO-ing that takes careful management by specialized teams at both SpaceX and Tesla, there's also the unknown amount of Tesla and SpaceX engineering time that's been spent on Twitter instead. Depending on your opinions of FSD though it might be a good thing.

With the rest of the auto industry finally getting into EVs, I'm sure there are strategic and big picture elements that are going unnoticed by the absentee CEO.

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