> I'm starting to question how much he has ever. Has something changed with him? Or has he always been like this?

His growing group of admirers started treating his like a messiah, and he fully embraced that role, along with the behaviors that it engenders upon someone. He's not special in that way. It's a position a lot of ambitious people would like to be in.

He completely underestimated the difference between a corporate takeover of an established company and growing a startup. In addition, he appears to be getting terrible advice, which is not uncommon for powerful people who attract sycophants.

I think what's changed is that Twitter is 1) an established thing, rather than something Musk built up and 2) not really tech.

Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Co have ambitious objectives with clear right/wrong answers. You put something in orbit or don't. Your car goes 500km with 70kWh of energy or it doesn't etc. You can inspire smart engineers to work hard to meet ambitious goals that require creative thinking.

Twitter has none of that, it is more like a club. Having the loudest speakers or brightest lights isn't going to make your club the best club. There is a certain baseline of technical competence required, yes, but mostly its about attracting the right crowd (being extra nice to some people, kicking others out) and making sure everybody has a good time. Musk might have actually succeeded with this using his previous person, but his new culture warrior schtick isn't gonna work.

he had very capable partners/lieutenants at spacex and tesla (shotwell and straubel, respectively). elon's undeniably great at cheerleading and fundraising but it's unclear how much credit he deserves for the technical accomplishments of spacex and tesla. at paypal he was run out almost immediately upon becoming ceo and at twitter he's surrounded himself with non entities like jason calcanis and alex spiro

Not sure if this will be shareable/readable, but I thought this piece was interesting: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/elon-musk-and-the-narci...