Agreed! Only a software engineer would risk a product launch delay because of an uber-bikeshedded pet feature (Model X doors) or wait until the last minute to ship and then construct a makeshift “factory” in a parking lot and make staff go through a death march, QA be damned.

The Model X doors are terrible. It's an SUV that you can't put a roof rack on. Does seem like a case of geek myopia over usability.

Or… optimized for a different case (ease of access for small kids).

I haven't used or wanted a roof rack in 30 years (extra mass and drag at the highest location? No thanks), but the Model X has a lot of storage space, including the frunk so it's a non-issue.

The falcon doors also provide a surprising benefit: cover in the rain. And they are very practical with small children.

Sliding minivan doors get you both.

Optimized for showy and unique features, when a young Tesla really needed its products to stand out.

He actually thinks like a systems engineer and a highly skilled and mature one at that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOpMrVnjYeY&feature=youtu.be...

Musk does not design the rockets.

Musk was chief designer for Falcon 1, their first rocket. Musk is very much involved in detailed technical decisions.

Musk is very much responsible for why the team works the way it does. He specifically focused on hiring people who experiment and try out things a lot. He did not want just pure theoretical guys.

He doesn't do most of the work but he's very involved. Here's an interview Mueller gave that describes some things Elon did with the Merlin engine, search for "face-shutoff."

https://zlsadesign.com/post/tom-mueller-interview-2017-05-02...

> And, uh, I’ve seen that hurt us before, I’ve seen that fail, but I’ve also seen— where nobody thought it would work— it was the right decision. It was the harder way to do it, but in the end, it was the right thing. One of the things that we did with the Merlin 1D was; he kept complaining— I talked earlier about how expensive the engine was. [inaudible] [I said,] “[the] only way is to get rid of all these valves. Because that’s what’s really driving the complexity and cost.” And how can you do that? And I said, “Well, on smaller engines, we’d go face-shutoff, but nobody’s done it on a really large engine. It’ll be really difficult.” And he said, “We need to do face-shutoff. Explain how that works?” So I drew it up, did some, you know, sketches, and said “here’s what we’d do,” and he said “That’s what we need to do.” And I advised him against it; I said it’s going to be too hard to do, and it’s not going to save that much. But he made the decision that we were going to do face-shutoff.

So, he knew about a problem, he heard someone mention a possible solution, and he insisted they use that solution.

That is not what designing is.

Mueller begs to differ "And now we have the lowest-cost, most reliable engines in the world. And it was basically because of that decision, to go to do that. So that’s one of the examples of Elon just really pushing— he always says we need to push to the limits of physics."

His title is literally CEO and Chief Designer.