This is how the madman insults his employees
Elon Musk describes it as “clear and open feedback” that would sometimes be misunderstood as “ridicule”. Tesla employees, on the other hand, fear their boss’s tirades and report an “atmosphere of fear”.
In his book “Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk and the Bet of the Century”, Tim Higgins – a full-time journalist at the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) – deals with Elon Musk’s behavior towards his employees, among other things. This has led to a poisoned working atmosphere that is characterized by an “atmosphere of fear”.
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Outbursts of anger and spontaneous announcements: Tesla employees probably don’t have it easy
According to Higgins, this is caused by the Tesla boss’s regular freaks and outbursts of anger, in the course of which Musk should not only mercilessly clean his employees down, but also fire them directly over and over again. Musk should not make any distinctions in terms of the rank of those affected. The common worker could just as easily be the victim of a desperate abuse by Musk as a member of the management cadre. Management meetings, for example, always took place with the anxious expectation of “whom he would devour today,” according to Higgins.
Especially when it comes to resignations, Musk should act almost indiscriminately, as Higgins describes. It could happen that trivialities at the wrong moment darken the mood of the Tesla boss to such an extent that the perpetrator has to take his hat off. There is an anecdote of an employee who fell out of favor and was said to have been greeted by Musk the next day with the words: “I thought I fired you yesterday!”
Apart from the possible pathological reasons for the serious freaks that Musk seems to regularly expose his employees to, the – admittedly weak – explanation for this is certainly his own commitment. So he should be extremely motivated himself and – if necessary – spend the nights working in the factory. This is exactly what he seems to expect from his employees.
From Mai Tais and naked supermodels
At least this is how an incident from 2016 could be interpreted. At the time, employees at the Fremont plant in the US state of California reportedly complained about too many weekend shifts. They would need this time to recover if they dared to speak to Musk.
Musk is said to have yelled: “I could drink Mai Tais with naked supermodels on my own island, but I don’t. Instead, I’m here with you, working my ass off. I don’t want to hear about how tough everyone is in this factory. “
Real swear words are also not taboo for Elon Musk at the moment of rage. He is said to have accused a group of engineers with whom he had talked about setting up a production line and got angry that it was all “shit”, followed by the multiple use of the F-word.
Elon Musk has so far commented rather monosyllabically whether the allegations from Higgins’ book are correct. Higgins “managed to make the book wrong and boring at the same time,” the billionaire’s devastating conclusion. For his part, the author points out that he would have liked to have verified many topics in an interview with Musk. However, the Tesla boss could not even be persuaded to do a single interview during the creation of the book.
Second Musk biography is coming
As it became known yesterday, there should now be a third book and thus the second biography about Musk. It will be written by bestselling author Walter Isaacson, whose Steve Jobs biography has sold more than three million copies since 2011. Isaacson had already certified Jobs for the masterful creation of a “Reality Distortion Field”, that is, a climate in which realities are blurred. It’s hard to imagine that he’ll let Musk get away with unnamed idiosyncrasies.
