Pretty clever PR move by Elon Musk. Now, if Boeing accept the offer, they give the impression that Musk has better engineers. If they reject it, they look arrogant and ungrateful.
That's the problem. Its now public that Elon made the offer. If it was done quietly, that would be a different story. Maybe he did make the offer quietly, but it was refused.
Boeing fly F-16s and Lockheed sometimes fly F/A-18s. I've heard stories about the engineers/test pilots exchanging safety of flight related information to a competitor. This is done with full permission of both companies.
If they reject it, they look like a massive company with 70 billion dollars yearly revenue turning down an informal offer on Twitter from a guy who founded a car company with 200 million dollars yearly revenue and a space transport company with 4 billion dollars of contracted revenue. I can't imagine anyone an Boeing giving a moment's pause to this offer.
"Do you like random people offering help when you are doing something?"
If they are domain experts and they are actually likely to be helpful, then absolutely I do. If they are just being polite and can't really help, then not so much but I'll usually still appreciate the offer unless they are being persistently annoying about it.
When I was younger and more insecure about my own abilities, I did not accept help so graciously, but luckily I grew out of that phase.
