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Elon Musk voted by SpaceX and Tesla employees as one of 2018’s Best CEOs
It is no secret that the past 12 months have been particularly difficult for Elon Musk. While his companies experienced milestones such as the maiden flight of the Falcon Heavy and the ramp of the Tesla Model 3, he has nonetheless courted numerous controversies. Yet, despite all the drama surrounding Musk, Tesla and SpaceX employees have nevertheless voted him as one of the best CEOs of 2018.
Workplace culture and compensation monitoring website Comparably recently published the results of its 2018 Best CEO Awards. The website’s awards are determined from sentiment ratings provided by employees, who anonymously rated their employers on the Comparably.com website. The site’s surveys were conducted between November 26, 2017 and November 26, 2018, with the site compiling almost 10 million ratings from across 50,000 US-based companies this year.
Among the CEOs that were considered, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk came out as No. 19 in the survey’s overall rankings. Musk, apart from GM CEO Mary Barra (who was No.49) were the only CEOs from the auto sector that made it to Comparably‘s list. Musk was also ranked as the 14th most sought-after tech CEO, among 29 chief executives that made it to the Top 50 rankings. Overall, Musk’s 19th overall and 14th in tech rank are quite impressive, particularly as he did not make it to the website’s rankings last year at all. That said, the majority of Elon Musk’s high ratings in Comparably‘s study came from workers at his private space venture.
Looking at the votes from Tesla and SpaceX employees, it was evident that Musk was ranked higher by his workers at SpaceX. On a scale of 0-100, SpaceX employees gave Musk an average score of 83. Those from Tesla, on the other hand, gave him a more conservative 77 out of 100. If Comparably‘s study only focused on Musk’s ratings from his Tesla employees, he would have missed a spot in Comparably‘s Top 50 Best CEOs list once more. In a way, though, Musk’s average rating from Tesla workers is actually pretty admirable, considering that the company had to pass through multiple tribulations over the past year due to the Model 3 ramp.
Part of Elon Musk’s high ratings among his employees is likely attributed to his personal style of leadership. During Tesla’s difficulties with the ramp of the Model X, Musk started sleeping on the Fremont factory’s floor so that he could “lead from the front lines.” He adopted the same strategy in the Model 3 ramp, particularly when the company was pushing its self-imposed manufacturing targets at the end of the second quarter. During this time, anecdotes from the Tesla community even indicated that when the company was setting up GA4 on the grounds of Fremont, Musk could be seen torquing bolts with his employees.
Musk is also never one to shy away from putting the risk onto himself. A report from The Information last month indicated that Musk is Tesla’s resident test mule for its Autopilot software. The publication noted that Musk’s personal vehicle is loaded with a pre-released “development build” of the driver-assist system, which allows the CEO to make the software as aggressive as possible. This has allowed Tesla to identify bugs in Autopilot before improvements are rolled out, though a member of the team has noted that this resulted in Musk finding himself in “situations that many of us wouldn’t want to be in.”
During his recent 60 Minutes segment, Elon Musk noted that Tesla’s workers are the unsung heroes of the Model 3 ramp. Musk also stated that during the most painful periods of the electric sedan’s production, he wanted to make sure that the difficulties he is experiencing are worse than the challenges being faced by his employees. He also defended his workers against the company’s critics.
“There’s been relentless criticism, relentless and outrageous and unfair. Because what actually happened here was an incredible American success story. All these people work their ass off day and night to make it happen. And they believe in the dream. And that’s the story that really should be told. I think there was like literally one week where I actually worked 120 hours and just didn’t leave the factory. I didn’t even go outside. I wanted to make it clear to the team. They needed to see that however hard it was for them, I would make it worse for me.”
Comparably‘s Top 50 Best CEOs of 2018 list could be accessed here.
Elon Musk
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a recent podcast interview that Tesla is not who Americans should look at to beat Chinese carmakers.
The comments have sparked quite a bit of outrage from Tesla fans on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
Farley said that Chinese automakers are better examples of how to beat competitors. He said (via the Rapid Response Podcast):
“If you’re an American and you want us to beat the Chinese in the car business, you’re all going to want to pay attention, not necessarily to Tesla. Nothing against Tesla—they’ve been doing great—but they really don’t have an updated vehicle. The best in the business for us, cost-wise and competition-wise, supply chain, manufacturing expertise, and the I.P. in the vehicle, was really BYD. In this next cycle of EV customers in the U.S., they want pickups and utilities and all these different body styles. But they want them at $30,000, not $50,000. Like the first inning, they want them affordably.”
Despite Farley’s synopsis, it is worth mentioning that Tesla had the best-selling passenger vehicle in the world last year, and in China in March, as the Model Y continued its global dominance over other vehicles.
Musk responded to Farley’s comments by stating:
“This is before Supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.”
This is before supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2026
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford cancels all-electric F-150 Lightning, announces $19.5 billion in charges
Instead, Ford is “doubling down on its affordable” EVs and said it would pivot from its previous plans.
Reaction from Tesla fans was pretty much how you would expect. Many said they have lost a lot of respect for Farley after his comments; others believe he is the last CEO anyone should be taking advice on EVs from.
Nevertheless, Farley’s plans are bold and brash; many consider Tesla the most ideal company to replicate EV efforts from. It will be interesting to see if Ford can rebound from this big adjustment, and hopefully, Farley’s plans to replicate efforts from BYD work out the way he hopes.
Elon Musk
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
NASA awarded SpaceX a $175 million Mars rover contract while the White House proposes cutting the mission.
NASA just signed a $175.7 million contract with SpaceX to launch a Mars rover that the White House is simultaneously trying to defund. The contract, awarded on April 16, 2026, tasks SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy with launching the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosalind Franklin rover from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, no earlier than late 2028. It would mark the first time SpaceX has ever sent a payload to Mars.
Under NASA’s Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation project, known as ROSA, the agency is providing braking engines for the rover’s descent stage, radioisotope heater units that use decaying plutonium to keep the rover warm on the Martian surface, additional electronics, and a mass spectrometer instrument, as noted by SpaceNews.
Those nuclear heating units are the reason an American rocket was required at all. U.S. export controls on radioisotope technology mean any payload carrying them must launch on a domestic vehicle, which narrowed the field to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. Falcon Heavy’s pricing made it the practical choice.
SpaceX is quietly becoming the U.S. Military’s only reliable rocket
Falcon Heavy debuted in February 2018 and has 11 launches to its record. The rocket has not flown since October 2024, when it sent NASA’s Europa Clipper toward Jupiter. The three-core design, built from modified Falcon 9 first stages, gives it the lift capacity needed for deep space planetary missions that a single Falcon 9 cannot reach.
The Rosalind Franklin rover has been sitting in storage in Europe for years. It was originally due to launch in 2022 as a joint mission with Russia, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ended that partnership, leaving the rover built but stranded without a launch vehicle or landing hardware. NASA stepped back in through a 2024 agreement with ESA to rescue the mission. The rover is designed to drill up to two meters below the Martian surface in search of evidence of past life, a science objective no previous mission has attempted at that depth.
The contradiction at the center of this story is hard to ignore. The White House’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal included no funding for ROSA and did not mention the mission at all in the detailed congressional justification document released April 3.
Musk has long argued that reaching Mars is not optional. “We don’t want to be one of those single planet species, we want to be a multi-planet species.” Whether this particular mission survives Washington’s budget fight, the Falcon Heavy contract means SpaceX is now formally on record as the rocket that could get humanity’s next Mars science mission off the ground.
The timing of this contract carries extra weight given that SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC in early April and is targeting an IPO roadshow in the week of June 8. It would be the largest public offering in history.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is set to hold its Earnings Call for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday, and there are a lot of interesting things that are swirling around in terms of speculation from investors.
With the company’s executives, including CEO Elon Musk, answering a handful of questions that investors submit through the Say platform, fans want to know a lot of things about a lot of things.
These five questions come from Retail Investors, who are normal, everyday shareholders:
- When will we have the Optimus v3 reveal? When will Optimus production start, since we ended the Model S and Model X production earlier than mid-year? What’s the expected Optimus production rate exiting this year? What are the initial targeted skills?
- What milestones are you targeting for unsupervised FSD and Robotaxi expansion beyond Austin this year, and how will that drive recurring revenue?
- How will Hardware 3 cars reach Unsupervised Full Self-Driving?
- When do you expect Unsupervised Full Self-Driving to reach customer cars?
- When will Robotaxi expand past its current limited rollout?
Additionally, these are currently the three questions that are slated to be answered by Institutional Firms, which also answer a handful of questions during the call:
- Now that FSD has been approved in the Netherlands and is expected to launch across Europe this summer, can you discuss your Robotaxi strategy for the region?
- What enabled you to finish the AI5 tapeout early and were there any changes to the original vision? Last week, Elon said AI5 will go into Optimus and the Supercomputer, but one month ago said it would go into the Robotaxi. Has AI5 been dropped from the vehicle roadmap?
- Given the recent NHTSA incident filings, can you update us on the Robotaxi safety data? If safety validation remains the primary bottleneck, why not deploy thousands of vehicles to accelerate the removal of the safety driver?
The questions range through every current Tesla project, including FSD expansion and Optimus. However, many of the answers we will get will likely be repetitive answers we’ve heard in the past.
This is especially pertinent when the questions about when Unsupervised FSD will reach customer cars: we know Musk will say that it will happen this year. Is Tesla capable of that? Maybe. But a more transparent answer that is more revealing of a true timeline would be appreciated.
Hardware 3 owners are anxiously awaiting the arrival of FSD v14 Lite, which was promised to them last year for a release sometime this year.
The Earnings Call is set to take place on Wednesday at market close.
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
