Can I ask what your source for this is? Perhaps you're an ex-employee?
I never worked under Tobi directly (or even close), but I was almost always thoroughly impressed with his communication and direction. I think I have a totally different take than the one you stated. The only axis I could see Elon & Tobi both sitting on is being members of the tres comas club.
Externally he has a personal writer whose whole job it is to make him seem smart. He's the darling of the Canadian tech industry, which badly needed a win since the implosion of Nortel, so he has a ton of advantages. In SV he would be a mediocre wannabe founder but in Ottawa he's hot shit.
That seems disingenuous at best—the man helped create Ruby on Rails & founded a mutli-billion dollar tech startup that has been wildly successful. Is there really any ground to question his intelligence, or rather, whether or not he's smart?
I never worked under Tobi directly (or even close), but I was almost always thoroughly impressed with his communication and direction. I think I have a totally different take than the one you stated. The only axis I could see Elon & Tobi both sitting on is being members of the tres comas club.