I am not complaining about Elon Musk. I'm complaining about the people worship I am reading all over the internet whenever he makes the news. I am complaining about you and me.

I don't think it is worship so much as it is respect. While its true engineers did the work there is ample evidence that the exact same team can have very different outcomes with different leadership. This is shown again and again in sports where one year the team does poorly, but a new coach or manager can get that same group of men into the playoffs. Same guys, different leader.

That is true of engineers as well, I've met engineers who, under a great manager, have achieved results that they themselves didn't think they could achieve. And I've known engineers who were superstars and unable to perform well at all under poor management.

The point is you need both, the talent to do the work and the leadership to inspire the talent to do their best work. Without both you don't make the playoffs and you don't advance the state of the art in rockets.

Imagine this scenario. Musk is fired from his leadership role and is moved to the mail department, where he sorts mail. He is the best mail sorter in the group. Does he deserve the same respect? His influence is given by the position as leader, not any individual quality he may have. It doesn't take a great imagination to think of other possible organizational forms that don't disproportionately give one person influence and unjust praise.

We see things differently.

And it's hard to argue that a guy fired from his job deserves respect. Shkreli deserves no respect (for example) and was recently fired. The coach who doesn't having a winning season gets no respect.

In my experience I found a huge difference in organizations with good leadership and those with poor leadership (and I've been in both!) And I've been both the engineer and the leader in my career.

You can imagine other organizational forms, but as you experience them you may find, as I did, that the people make the difference, not the form. And that every position has its advantages and challenges. The more senior you are, the more leverage you have in screwing things up. If a line manager makes a bad call, the schedule slips, if the CEO makes a bad call, the company can cease to exist and lose all those jobs. Sort of like in a Viking longboat the oarsmen do the work but if the guy on the tiller falls asleep they are all dead.

It took me a while to understand the roles everyone has to play in getting something done, and the stakes involved for everyone involved. Of course I've really only known organizations which have operated in the environment of US laws and customs, (of which SpaceX is one) but in those organizations I've found that people don't arbitrarily "get to the top", and understanding the difference between what it takes to operate at that level, versus at the level of getting the stuff done that you're told to do. There is a big gulf.

One of the more interesting things a CEO I respect and admire told me about being a senior leader was this, "Chuck the good thing about being in this role is you get to make some of the important decisions, the bad thing about being in this role is that you have to make the important decisions."

So we disagree on what is disproportionate and what is unjust. Perhaps one day we'll be more in agreement.

> Chuck the good thing about being in this role is you get to make some of the important decisions, the bad thing about being in this role is that you have to make the important decisions

I disagree that people make make the difference over the form. The role of CEO or product manager, or whatever, is a human invention. We as people created these roles.

Roles are designed to limit or enhance your skills. A senior role is an artificial multiplier and therefore a person's praise, or pay, or whatever, is artificially enhanced.

Imagine Musk, same as he is, in a different role, like a mailman. The FORM limits how we can contribute. LIMITS what he gets paid. and LIMITS who listens to him.

The workers of SpaceX don't listen to musk because they like the guy, they listen to him because he will fire them otherwise.

There are organizations that have different roles, and the idea of someone having so much power is a really stupid one. We decided this to be true in politics, why not other places?

Lets say we had taken 1000 random people off the street in 2002 and put them in charge of a new space launch company with equal funding to SpaceX. How many of them do you think are likely to have achieved the same success SpaceX has?

To put it another way, if Elon Musk hadn't founded SpaceX in 2002, how many of the engineers currently working there would right now be celebrating working at a company having successfully recovered a first stage from an orbital rocket?

Let's try looking at it from a third angle. Lets suppose a random employee other then Elon Musk had been unable to join the company during it's history and had to be replaced with another job candidate. What are the chances such a substitution would have prevented SpaceX from achieving a stage recovery?

Finally, I'll address your proposed scenario directly. How likely is it that having the wrong mail man in that position would lead to the failure of the company? In contrast, what are the chances that having the wrong CEO might lead to the failure of the company? I can imagine Elon Musk might make a pretty decent mailman. But if we took the best mailman in the country and put him or her in charge of SpaceX, do you think that would be likely to have a positive or negative effect on the prospects of the company?

You are precisely correct. Replacing Musk with someone else would lead to bigger changes than replacing the mailman.

But Why? It has nothing to do with Musk but everything to do with organizational form. He has an invention at his disposal called "Role of CEO". It is a magical invention that gives you the power to control what thousands of people do everyday. A mailman doesn't have this invention and obviously won't be able to decide what thousands of people do everyday.

There is nothing magical about Musk here. Since so few people get a chance at being CEO, it is hard to say if most people would be good or bad at it. And it is also hard to say how hard the work really is.

Maybe this random employee: http://www.technologyreview.com/emtech/15/video/watch/innova... ?

> ... the United States is "the greatest country that has ever existed on Earth"

IMO, the statement is not as absolute as it first seems. At one point, Rome held that title, about 100 years ago it was Britain, in another 100, it probably will be China.

Actually it's not as absolute in any case.

"Greatest" in what sense? Isn't that a value judgement (but without any qualifying arguments)?

If we just talk about numbers, then it's not best in many categories, not even financial ones. Heck, not even in infant mortality (57 other countries fare better).

As for quality of life and actual democracy (as opposed to two parties alternating in power forever and a crazy vote transfer system - gerrymandering), there are several candidates far better in one or the other, and some even in both terms. Switzerland, for one.

Maybe we should just call it "the country with the biggest idea for itself".