Is Elon Musk hurting his company

Tesla’s share price slip today after the human resources director announced her leave from the company, following the leave of the company’s chief accountant officer. Some people suggest that Elon Musk is the core of his company’s problems because of his instability. Elon Musk is undoubtedly a genius with excellent ideas and brilliant imagination; however, he does not deal with other people with differences very well. He has been constantly attacking the investors who short Tesla’s shares, he attacks a British diver who helped rescue a Thailand boys’ football team and called Tesla’s miniature submarine a ‘PR stunt’ three times. Moreover, he even smoked marijuana during an online interview. We know from his previous interview with New York Times that he is using drugs; however, this is definitely something shocking to many people that a public and well-known company’s CEO uses drugs publicly, though it is legal in California. On the other hand, he went on an interview with YouTubers who love him and his company(ies) and got along with them very well. The YouTubers may be Tesla’s shareholders but they are not institutional investors; they may be influential on YouTube, but hardly influential in the financial market. In this way, Elon Musk is like Trump who likes to be surrounded by the people who love him and hates to be disagreed.

We should give the geniuses more tolerance and patience that Steve Jobs had not been a very good head of a company either in the beginning. However, Elon Musk’s instability has created a number of crises for Tesla, and even legal cases as well. For example, the recent privatisation tweets have made Tesla and himself be sued by several investment firms which will cost Tesla millions of dollars to settle these cases. These costs are unnecessary, and really distraction from the core of the company. The issue is not only about the argument about whether to be public or private, but also if Elon Musk controls himself as the market wants him to be. Elon Musk is not a common person, he is special; this is why some people love him and also why some people dislike or hate him. We cannot ask him to be a normal CEO, and Tesla’s value is not built on him as a normal CEO. It is Okay for him to be special to be a king in his company, to hang out with the people who love him; however, he should be more careful and speak less in public, just in case of avoiding some damaging effects.