Yeah I’m not sure either TBH, I’m not a CAD person, just a programmer.
I do think the picture painted of him tracks with what I know life is like as a senior engineer.
Above L5 at Google, most engineers do not spend much time coding. Most time is spent approving CLs, mentoring, collaborating on design docs, and helping to make major engineering decisions.
Same with other faangs. This tracks with Carmack’s (and others’) description of Musk’s role.
Can't speak to what it takes to do CAD, but as a developer I know for a fact that being capable of writing code is a very low bar.