If you use a combination of math, science, and available resources to create something that didn't exist before, and were paid to do it, then you are doing engineering work. Every other take on the profession is just pointless gatekeeping from the bleachers.
Engineering great organizations is still engineering (a fact that I personally wish I'd appreciated at a much younger age.)
And yes, speaking of engineering: FEM.
No, he did not. I still can't believe people bought his BS so easily - "it must be true, because he said it!" No, it isn't, never was, never will be. And I don't even care about that salute - Musk lost all his credibility around 2015 when he promised self-driving cars (coming next year! for the past 10 years, and counting), then by lying about the Solarcity roof tiles (and basically committed fraud for which he didn't go to prison - go figure).
It is also quite dehonestating to those _real_ engineers working for Tesla or Spacex, who actually know their stuff. It was them who made Musk possible, not the other way around.
> all that great work by thousands of talented people in his companies..
Exactly.