I think it’s less about strictly better talent and more about trust and familiarity. Musk trusts Tesla software engineers to tell him what is good, what is better than Tesla, and what is concerning.

I’m not a software engineer (data scientist) and I’ve only managed up to 15 people, but if a friend who worked in a factory asks me to review a CTO of a team of 50, I feel confident I can say “Asking people to write their own unit tests isn’t abuse of power” and “Asking people to be behind their desk at 9 am or risk pay cut would not fly anywhere else” — things that he might not have the context to know.

Sure, there might be a new paradigm that I’m not familiar with where devs don’t write unit tests, but I’m fairly confident if I hear about that, I can ask questions and see why it’s more efficient.

A really good (reverse) example of that is James Douma. Several Tesla commentators rely on him to comment on Tesla’s AI announcements. He doesn’t work at Tesla and confesses that he might not be able to lead the AI team there, but he’s personable, clear, and familiar enough with ML to offer some judgment on why things are done in a certain way. He’s usually very positive but he could easily be asked which teams don’t seem to be executing as well, and what questions to prod them.