Probabilistically it's not that implausible. Musk has what, one successful company he founded himself - SpaceX? The hyperloop is flop, the boring company is a flop too, so is SolarCity, and the sucessful one came with a lot of exceptionally great hires. I'd say empirically his skill at hiring competent people that are willing to work hard is higher than average, while his engineering skills don't seem to be particularly special.
Yeah, many people don't get how much the world is tilted in favor of the rich. Look at Jared Kushner's ability to keep failing upwards, for example.
Musk is an amazing hype man; the way he talked Tesla's stock price into the stratosphere gave him incredibly cheap capital. And he was correct in thinking that electric cars were a coming thing that the major auto companies were sleeping on, so he gets points for insight. But now that the majors are in the game, over the next decade we'll see how much Tesla's built on skill vs luck.
> I'd say empirically his skill at hiring competent people that are willing to work hard is higher than average…
He wasn’t competent at hiring the right people, his ideas in the beginning looked amazing and drove the best minds to apply there. Now they’re leaving…
Right right, "they're leaving", exactly who is they and how mow many is that?
> Tesla revealed in its 10-K filing with the SEC that it employed 99,290 employees as of December 31, 2021. This is a substantial increase from how many people the company had employed at the end of 2020. Tesla reported an employee headcount of 70,757 people at the end of 2020.
Also, it's often that those who leave, should leave, as there is a mismatch.
To generalize and extrapolate a minority percentage of misfits that you clearly are focusing on is quite the error.
Let's see Tesla's growth year over year:
Tesla revenue for the quarter ending June 30, 2022 was $16.934B, a 41.61% increase year-over-year.
Tesla revenue for the twelve months ending June 30, 2022 was $67.166B, a 60.45% increase year-over-year.
Tesla annual revenue for 2021 was $53.823B, a 70.67% increase from 2020.
Tesla annual revenue for 2020 was $31.536B, a 28.31% increase from 2019.
Tesla annual revenue for 2019 was $24.578B, a 14.52% increase from 2018.
Yep, sounds like you know what you're talking about.
1 out of 4 seems solidly probable to me.