Elon Musk is notorious for his poor delegation skills and practically obsessive levels of micromanagement.
Some praise him, using him as the example for a model CEO, for being so involved at his companies. Some chastise him, for wasting his time on menial aspects of the production process.
However, regardless of how you spin it, you have to admit that Elon Musk needs help. Which is why Tesla employs more than 40,000 people and why SpaceX employs another 6,000.[1][2]
Even Musk himself recognizes that he can’t “save the world” alone. He has employees to help him achieve his overarching vision for humanity, and two of those employees stand out above the rest.
At Tesla, the title of “Elon Musk’s most valuable employee” goes to CTO JB Straubel.
This title also could’ve also gone to Jerome Guillen, the president of Tesla’s automotive division, who is now one of the company’s top dogs.
However, Straubel has been at the company forever!
Aside from being the longest tenured executive at Tesla, however, he’s also in charge of several major Tesla projects. For instance, the entire Tesla Energy division is under his watch and he was instrumental in the development of Gigafactory 1.
He’s also a huge part of the company’s R&D department, focusing on technical direction and engineering design for battery tech, motors, and software.
JB’s a pretty big deal at Tesla.
At SpaceX, we have none other than Gwynne Shotwell.
Gwynne Shotwell is the President and COO of SpaceX.
She handles the day-to-day business at SpaceX, freeing up time for CEO Elon Musk to focus on research and development. She’s the one who makes sure SpaceX runs smoothly.
Just like JB Straubel, Shotwell has been a key component of her company since the early days. In fact, she’s longest tenured executive at any of Musk’s companies.
Without her, SpaceX would have never reached the literal and metaphorical heights it has reached. She takes Musk’s crazy ideas and turns them into something SpaceX can make a profit off of.
It’s safe to say that, even without Musk, SpaceX would be in good hands.
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