Why is that uncomfortable? I don't think anybody takes issue with the idea that some engineers are great at being engineers but not great at being managers, and so it's important to have a career track for senior engineers to continue doing the engineering work that they're great at instead of forcing them into a role that's not fulfilling.

That idea shouldn't be more uncomfortable just because the engineer is a founder. It should be reasonable for a founding engineer to let somebody else come in and do the boring management work that a CEO has to perform while the engineer continues doing the work that got them to where they are.

Except, you know, he didn't found Tesla.

Wikipedia lists him as a co-founder, but even ignoring that you still have zip2, x.com, space x, the Boring Company, Neuralink, OpenAI...

People keep saying this, and it makes very little sense. The Tesla that he "didn't found" was a boutique outfit formed to modify another company's obscure sports car to make it run on batteries. That company no longer exists in any sense beyond the name on the business license. The Tesla that exists now is indisputably there because of Musk's ambition, willpower, and engineering instincts, for better or worse.

I'm actually confused.

By "another company's obscure sports car" I assume you're referring to the Lotus Elise - arguably one of the world's better known and more successful sports cars.

I'm British so I also take offense to this (how very dare you!) but I'm assuming this was written from a US-centric point of view. The Elise and Exige may have been fairly common this side of the pond but I get the impression they're very rare outside of the UK.

No more rare than any other sports car. I’ve seen more on the streets here in the middle of the country than I have seen of nissan gtrs.

Lotus's best sales year in the US was 2007, with about 3,000 sold across all models including the Elise. That year, the Corvette alone sold 33000 units.

Not in the US, it isn't.

In any case, the point still stands.