There was too much hysteria in the coverage of, and reaction to, this whole affair.
It's not like he will be any less influential where it matters. Merely running a company probably isn't Musk's most valuable contribution to Tesla. This will give him more ability to focus on engineering matters.
But Musk does a thousand times more engineering than I do. And he knows a thousand times more about engineering than me. Or anyone of my colleagues.
He can surely also be considered an engineer.
[1] You could argue it's true by pointing out that ninety percent of Tesla's marketing IS engineering, engineering that fuels a powerful perpetual hype machine.
[2] It's obviously not. He is formally trained in economics and physics, and he proved these qualifications with PayPal and SpaceX respectively. When it comes to marketing he's quite clearly uncomfortable in that role.
There are comments about how quickly Musk managed to understand rocketry but that doesn't make him an engineer. I suppose he has enough knowledge to understand what SpaceX is doing and where to invest but not for designing entire rockets.
Nobody knows as much about every single part of the Falcon 9 as Elon. Again, this has been said by many people.
Please actually inform yourself and don't be guided by bias.
> Musk is agreeing to step down as chairman of the board (while staying CEO) and Tesla is appointing two new independent directors. It's a significant curtailing of his power over Tesla. How was the coverage overplayed?
The obsession with Musk is way overplayed at this point. The idea that people care about Tesla at all is laughable. At this point it's all about the desire to see their betters brought low.
Why are you so confident?
The SEC had a very strong case (or Musk would never have settled). Had they pursued it to its fullest extent, I see no reason why they couldn't get a strong ruling in their favor.
This comment reminds me of the comments that "this will never amount to anything" when rumors of SEC interest in Musk's announcement just begun circulating. And yet, here we are...
The other big factor is that removing Musk as CEO would have caused more harm to Tesla shareholders than Musk’s tweets did. The SEC does not want that outcome. The SEC wants to find outcomes that punish rule violators without harming investors.
Because the SEC, like most other litigants, is willing to accept less than its ideal solution for a certain, cheap, immediate, and final resolution; what you seek going to court is everything you would ever want, what you ask for in a settlement is may be more than the minimum you will accept (if you want negotiating room, OTOH, you may want to do a best offer to maximize the chance of immediate acceptance and just move on to litigation if that fails) but will always be less than everything you would want, unless your case is so strong that you view settlement as basically a gift of swift resolution of a foregone conclusion to the other side, which is rare.
> The other big factor is that removing Musk as CEO would have caused more harm to Tesla shareholders than Musk’s tweets did.
Tesla shareholders as a class aren't the harmed party the SEC seeks to address a harm to, they are the principal who failed to adequately supervise their agent who is the bad actor in this case, which is why Tesla as well as Musk is, even with the settlement, paying a fine.
Then why did the SEC say "The resolution is intended to prevent further market disruption and harm to Tesla’s shareholders"?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with trying to minimize harm to Tesla shareholders, in fact that would be part of the SEC's stated mission.
However, it is not the only part. If Musk used fraud to inflate Tesla's share value, benefiting Tesla shareholders but harming many other people, then the SEC would still intervene.
In other words, it's a consideration, but not the only one.