Tesla announced Wednesday that it is replacing general counsel Dane Butswinkas, who had been on the job for only two months. Tesla Legal Vice President Jonathan Chang will take the job.

The groundbreaking electric carmaker has suffered a number of senior executive departures in the last couple of years—and some were of surprisingly short tenure. Last September, Chief Accounting Officer Dave Morton announced that he was leaving after less than a month on the job.

Tesla short-sellers have revelled in this kind of news. Especially last year, as Tesla was struggling to ramp up Model 3 production and Musk was dealing with the fallout from several self-inflicted problems, critics portrayed each departure as the latest sign that rats were fleeing a sinking ship.

But the reality may be more banal: Musk is a famously demanding and temperamental boss. Working for him isn't much fun for anyone, and some people will find the experience so grueling that they can't manage it for more than a few weeks. Others will get burned out after a few years.

But it's important to keep in mind that Tesla is a big company now with dozens of employees who can be characterized as senior executives. Tesla is also one of the world's best-known companies, so its executive departures get vastly more coverage than the average company.

Yet any company Tesla's size is going to lose several senior executives in any given year. Tesla does seem to be losing executives faster than the average company; that's easily explained not only by the fact that Musk is a tough boss but because Tesla is also pursuing an unusually difficult task: building America's first new mass-market car company in decades.

Tesla is still an interesting and prestigious place to work. There's little doubt that the company can find talented people to replace executives who leave. High turnover is never helpful, but Musk's demanding and mercurial management style has taken Tesla further than almost anyone expected. The company can survive a trickle, or even a steady stream, of executive departures.