Elon is running a company, not working a desk job for someone else. The point is following YOUR vision, either by yourself on your project, or by running your OWN company. The goal is intellectual and creative freedom.

Or don't, I guess the world needs its mindless drones, that discourage everybody else from taking the leap and following their dreams.

Fortunately, he's running multiple companies and he can't focus on all of them, so SpaceX can work fine, unlike the company formerly known as Twitter which he is right now focused on running and ruining it.

My impression is (i) Musk has a great team doing the work at SpaceX and (ii) those people have a clear, compelling mission they believe in. SpaceX may not need a lot of his attention.

It's possible to work for someone else without being a mindless drone.

Then you’re doing it wrong!

I joke, but a lot of people just want to show up and do the bare minimal until quitting time. Disturbingly, many seem employed in customer facing positions.

To be fair, if they’re paying minimum wage, the employer has the same attitude towards the employees.

Or you're working in companies that basically stop you from being productive. Managers questioning the developer's decisions, focus on the sales topics instead of fixing the existing product and colleagues taking shortcuts and exponentially increasing the technical debt is something I basically have to work with every day. I now have worked on multiple projects on the side, both alone and with others who know their stuff and I've never had any of those issues there. That's why I'm currently in the process of starting a company with a few of those "good guys" to get out of this madness.