You imply that skills are context-free black or white - that is a terrible way to think about people or the world IMHO. And you can’t ignore changes over time either.
But, the fact that he so clearly doesn't know when he is out of his depth in the first place is the real tell.
A computer engineer without those skills is merely an amateur physicist. A software engineer without those skills is merely a programmer. Ask a quant with no engineering background to put their ad-hoc scripts into production one day and let's see how that goes.
Musk might know some science, but that doesn't make him an engineer.
He's a narcissist. People used to worship him - and given just how hard Tesla kicked the butts of the ICE car industry or how SpaceX just completely obliterated Boeing/ULA, rightfully. But let's be honest, both are mainstream now and don't get as much attention as they once did... and then, his wife leaves him for Chelsea Manning and one of his children comes out as trans and sticks the finger to him.
A bad enough combination of events for normal people to handle (getting dumped by a partner is one of the chief causes that sends people into depression and other mental health disaster loops), but for a narcissist with no real support structure to fall back on and already on the edge? No surprise he blames everyone but himself and allies with those that are against those whom he feels "wronged" by: the far-right.
Note, this doesn't excuse any of his actions. He needs to come out of this rabbit hole either by himself or, when he finally hits rock bottom and commits something that he can't just buy himself out of prison, by the government.
I am guessing this couldn't have been just luck either.
Once you have x dollars and own companies government is aware of it comes as no surprise
One thing he's demonstrated from the beginning is a stark undersupply of emotional intelligence. There are noises that come out of his mouth that my 15yr old would roll her eyes at for being too self-centered and immature.
The two are not the same.
It is like calling someone an idiot because they won't do what you want and ignoring what they want.
You have to admit that it may not be a priority for Elon to maintain his reputation with you in your 15 year old
I'm not interested in chatting with the Weird Nerd defending Elon Musk from Valid Criticism.
The odds of any given entrepreneur getting lucky several times in a row is very small.
Given a large enough entrepreneurs, the odds of one of them getting lucky several times in a row gets very large. We just don't see all the ones who tried and failed, or succeeded once or twice and fizzled out.
I don't doubt that Musk has some skills and appropriate personality traits as well, but luck is likely the dominating factor.
That either seems extreme luck or there’s something else
What an hilarious amount of bad faith! What drives you to resent him that much? Envy? It's okay: he's achieved a lot, but maybe you can too if you work at it.
However, I think it's an unhelpful mindset for others to believe that Musk is some sort of model for entrepreneurial success.
Then maybe you should scrutinize who you get your information from: intelligent people who have worked with Musk, or random journalists and forumers that repeat talking points such as "this immense success over several decades of active executive role is just pure luck".
> However, I think it's an unhelpful mindset for others to believe that Musk is some sort of model for entrepreneurial success.
What an interesting thing to think! The person with arguably the greatest track record of entrepeneurial success alive should, under no occasion, be taken as some sort of model for entrepreneurial success. If you have contenders for this position, I'm interested.
There is a far stronger underpinning to the American attitude to wealth: It's not "equate wealth with ability", it's more "equate wealth with virtue and morality" - that the owners of wealth "did something right" generally has nothing to do with ability. Even the founders of Hewlett-Packard aren't remembered for their technological advances but for the "HP Way", a marker of virtue rather than business acumen.
The absolute veneration of "hard work" as a marker of success over connections/which hoo-ha you accidentally fell out of is rarely raised, despite their being overwhelming evidence that to be successfull in the US, you have to be born on 3rd base.
When it comes down to it, it should be absolutely no surprise that these billionaires with feet of clay rarely live up to the image that is built for them by the fanboys. Musk's family had a history of bizarre, he has simply not fallen far from the tree.
Musk certainly used to have decent business accuumin - he hit it big several times, that’s not just luck. From all accounts he’s a half decent engineer too, which is rare in many CEO levels.
However his behaviour over the last 3 years has been very surprising. He seems to be less interested in the tech and more in the politics, which is a shame.