Give someone a massive retention bonus (in this case structured as an RSU) to get them to stay doesn't seem like unique genius to me
Going to Tesla a few years ago was a hard choice, they paid below market (substantially) but offered pretty generous stock grants.
The stock hadn't really appreciated in-line with the companies growth because of the enormous risk of the Model 3 project. This represented massive risk overhang that until cleared didn't allow the stock to really take off.
2020 (over?) corrected for that however so now the employees that have put in the years are sitting on massive unrealized gains.
He has retained (and attracted away from places like Apple) really high quality talent for over a decade.
You are saying Elon hired a bunch of dumb people to be executives for his companies.
Not sure that's what you want to imply.
I know for a fact the good engineers are sticking around because I know a bunch of them personally. I wouldn't say all of them are staying because of Elon alone but it generally factors into the calculation (along with massively appreciated stock options ofcourse...)