What struck me from reading Elon Musk’s (he proofread this essay) biography is that he would do things that you could obviously hire someone else to do. For example, to make the Tesla car line more productive. His heavy involvement seems to be a way to create decisiveness and quickly iterate. if something goes wrong, the blame is on him, and he’s the founder and chief executive. Whereas if an employee attempted to do some of these things they might have to write up a detailed report and rationale and possibly even conduct studies. in probably less time than someone would normally finish their studies and report (let alone make any changes) Musk had iterated to tripling the throughput of the Tesla factory.

Musk as a founder-like role (he wasn’t actually a founder) has the incentives to make this happen. in this case, he had a specific milestone to reach to get a very lucrative bonus. at the same time, he had a lot of stock and would not want to do anything that would damage the long-term prospects of the company. Whereas an executive might go after a bonus without worrying about long-term negative effects. Even if an executive has stock options, they might not vest and even though they are an executive, the founder and others are creating the fate of the company and the value of the options, not just them.