He failed at getting Tesla profitable sooner. So many job losses resulted in his erratic behavior.
He fails by not doing as well as someone else in his position.
To anyone who can see it (maybe it takes some relevant life experience), it's patently obvious he's been spiraling down a dark hole of drugs, depression, ego, burn out, and addiction.
He's in a very dark place and lashing out, hurting himself and others, like so many people in dark places do.
The man desperately needs help, as much as someone on the street doing fentanyl does. But being rich can actually make it harder to get clean. Wealth can insulate a person from consequences, which can make it harder to hit rock bottom which is often the wake up call people need to shock themselves out of their problem.
Elon Musk isn't the devil, he's actually good and useful person deep down, but right now he's fighting demons and they're winning.
I wonder if Shitter is a big factor in this spiral. Jaron Lanier pointed this out in Nov 2022 [1].
Unfortunately, if so, we have a worst-case scenario of "getting high on your own supply", and nobody can cut him off (or stage an "intervention").
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/opinion/trump-musk-kanye-...
Obviously, he has had some huge successes too. Tesla has a huge valuation based on the assumption that it was going to win everything, but growth has stalled -- the 18 wheelers are nowhere to be found, the cybertruck is an article of derision to everyone but fanboys. The sedans growth has stalled, in large part due to Musk going out of his way to alienate his core group of buyers -- liberals who think buying a tesla is green. Space-X is doing great things. The jury is out if starlink and thousands of LEO satellites will be a win or a loss.
His final big win is his support of a particular minority group: Nazi's and the Nazi-adjacent. They are platformed on Twitter, and he is doing his best to normalize giving Nazi salutes (at the presidential inauguration no less).
Musk is a ruthless businessman, but make no mistake - when it comes to engineering, he is an empty suit. https://archive.li/bePMk
I'd call that a fail.
Also, he was supposed to "save" Twitter and make it into a bigger social network and "everything app" (like WeChat). He instead decimated its revenue and so poisoned the brand that it'll never become an "everything app" other than among the same people buying $Trump coins.