Turns out, when you own the company, you can make the company call you whatever will best serve your ego.
So either he's a really good engineer or he's really good at hiring them, which means he's a really good engineer.
It's comical how much people hate this guy. He's a smart person you don't like, why is that so hard to accept.
Or someone else at SpaceX is good at hiring engineers? Is your conclusion that everyone who owns a successful engineering company is a really good engineer?
I think that his unique talents are not in engineering but sales. He's great at selling his vision to some people who will then bleed for him. He's great at fundraising and convince people to fund his ventures.
I don't think he's an engineering prodigy like Carmack or Wozniak. I don't think he's a product genius like Jobs. I think he's a fantastic salesman who finds bets that will pay off if you can keep at them for long enough, and uses his fundraising talents to keep his companies afloat until they do pay off.
He has a physics degree.