I think Elon’s strategy is that he hires workaholics like himself. It’s not a scalable general purpose strategy.

For a workaholic, Elon seems to spend a lot of time not working.

Depends on your definition of work, I guess.

I don't think this fits anyone's definition of work:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExile2/comments/1hwxc17/docum...

It seems as though you are trying to say that he isn’t a workaholic because he’s not very dedicated to playing games, but that surely doesn’t make sense.

I kind of don't imagine a workaholic having online gaming scandal about paying someone to run a game for them and then doubling down on that, but well, I was already told before I lack imagination.

That is kinda orthogonal to being a workaholic.

It isn't hard to imagine someone spending 16 hours of working and then going home and playing a game and putting in money to make themselves more powerful in the game.

He said he was very dedicated, but turned out he wasn’t (surprise). What else could he be lying about? Surely not his work ethic

He's paying a talented guy to do something and then claims it as his own, that's definitely work! (Well, at least that's pretty close to his actual work as a company owner).

His real full time job is watching alt-right videos and memes on YouTube and 4chan.

so does steve jobs, seems to have worked out for him

Be careful not to confuse “great leader” with “cult leader”.

A great leader is someone who cares about you and helps you surface the best version of yourself. They understand there is a person behind the work and don’t neglect the human side. They mention the team behind projects when talking about successes and don’t blame others for failures.

A cult leader is someone with a hypnotic personality who puts themselves first before anyone else. They couldn’t give less of a shit about you or your sacrifices, and will fire you even if you sleep in the office to get more work done. They are selfish and narcissistic, believe they know everything, and speak about successes as if they personally did all the work.

What would you call a leader that puts the objective ahead of everything else, including employees and themselves? I think that more closely aligns with people that have been very successful.

> What would you call a leader that puts the objective ahead of everything else, including employees and themselves?

That definition is too broad to be useful. Is the “objective” to make money at all costs, and the leader is willing to suck employees and themselves dry, even over protests? Or is the objective to build a free hospital in a poor country and everyone is so committed to the cause they are willing to make personal sacrifices?

> I think that more closely aligns with people that have been very successful.

Also aligns with scammers and other grifters who are now in jail. “Successful” is also too broad a term to be useful. One person may think that “being very successful” means being rich, while to another interpersonal relationships and a happy life are what matter.

"cult leaders" are, by definition, "great leaders" - they excel at leading people. Sure, it's better to work for someone that cares about you instead of someone that only cares about themselves. But that doesn't make this a Venn Diagram - there are great leaders who are selfish and narcissistic. There are cult leaders who aren't either.

> "cult leaders" are, by definition, "great leaders"

Not as defined, and I did define them.

What matters is the explained distinction between the two types of leader, arguing exact semantics of individual words in the shorthand term isn’t productive.

Since the original poster I replied to used the word “amazing” (plus the context of the conversation), I used “great” to mean “Very good; excellent; wonderful; fantastic”, not “effective”.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/great

> even people that some people decry as bad and terrible people (for example Elon Musk) still can make amazing leaders

None of the leaders in this conversation are good people. Elon's controversies are way past the point of "some people decry" (why even use a phrasing this convoluted unless you just want to signal that you don't agree with it?) and firmly in "lots of great people wouldn't touch it with a pole". Part of leadership is creating a safe work environment and shielding your companies/brands from unnecessary drama, and Elon has done an absolutely abysmal job at it lately.