Elon Musk is an enigma. Every move he makes is mysterious and often questionable. This is truer than ever considering the wild weeks that he has recently had. It started with his accusations of one of the cave divers in Thailand being a pedophile, then most recently his appearance on the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience during which he smoked marijuana.
Due to these erratic decisions by the Tesla CEO, two of his top executives at Tesla have resigned and his stock has dived enormously. To add to that, the Air Force, which has signed SpaceX, Musk’s other company, to multiple contracts is looking into his marijuana usage since people with government security clearance aren’t allowed to use drugs.
However, this problem is bigger than just Elon Musk. His actions are setting an example for future engineers and leaders to come. Kids who look up to him will see what he does and follow suit. There will always be those who will be fans of his work, loyal followers who do exactly what he does, but those people won’t differentiate between what his good and bad decisions are. Nathan Wong, a senior at PV, said, “I don’t think it’s a big deal personally but I can see why parents would be mad at him since he’s such a prominent figure in society.” As Nathan said, people look at Musk as a prominent role model, and his decisions are just as much of a reflection of his character as his company and leadership is.
This isn’t to say that Musk is a bad person. He is still a wonderful CEO and has successfully been running two major companies that have been doing amazing the last couple of years. Tarun Vedula, a freshman at PV, said “I think Elon Musk, regardless of his occasional rash or impulsive decision, is a great role model because of how hard he works and what a great work ethic he has.” This is the Elon Musk that everyone loves and hopefully the Elon Musk we see more of.
