Recently it broke, and I have no clue how to get it working again. Fortunately it's just an internal thing so it's just disrupting work and not causing problems with customers, but now we're having to abruptly scramble to migrate off it and it's going to push back a lot of timelines. We got away with coasting on our upfront investment for six years, but it didn't last forever.
The analogy I reach for is fitness. If you were super fit for years, you can probably take a year off from exercising and still do that all-day hike. You'll probably be slower, but you'll make it.
But eventually the lack of investment will hurt.
In the end he succeeds powering through all the dumb decisions he makes and manages to pull ahead:(Tesla production and engineering is now seen as a innovation leader in the industry and not just dismissed as some dumb flash in the pan, SpaceX has no real competitors, maybe the Chinese will eventually catch them but no one else is even in the conversation).
I have often wondered why so many people sign up to put themselves though this and I guess the clearest answer I got was when I interviewed some Starlink employees at DEFCON. They just want to be part of a team of excellent players and will overlook Musk's faults to be a part of that team.
It's not like overworking employees is a novel concept no other big corp has left untried.
I think attributing Musks success to "overworking employees" is either completely wrong or not sufficient to explain his success.
You can't say it's by chance, because it's not his first and last successful company either.