I worked at a multi-billion dollar company (not Tesla) where the CEO considered himself chief engineer and tried to prescribe low-level technical solutions from the CEO level.
It was terrible. CEOs don’t have the time to keep up with technologies and understand the low-level requirements that drive good decision making. A person doing a CEO job can’t possibly keep up with someone doing full-time engineering work in any fast-moving field.
The only way we could make progress was by subtlety seeding our ideas to the CEO and waiting for him to claim them as his own directives after he realized they were good ideas. It was an exhaustive way to get things done.
It was terrible. CEOs don’t have the time to keep up with technologies and understand the low-level requirements that drive good decision making. A person doing a CEO job can’t possibly keep up with someone doing full-time engineering work in any fast-moving field.
The only way we could make progress was by subtlety seeding our ideas to the CEO and waiting for him to claim them as his own directives after he realized they were good ideas. It was an exhaustive way to get things done.