Self-confident, visionary and often a bit self-centered – this is how Tesla founder Elon Musk is described again and again. A new book now shows a darker side: Musk is supposed to freak out completely on a regular basis and let out his anger unfiltered on the employee.
He is considered a highly intelligent visionary, albeit a bit eccentric: With sometimes bizarre appearances, lots of absurd and mocking tweets and a gigantic success, Tesla founder Elon Musk has worked hard for his image. When dealing with his employees, Musk should regularly show another side – and mercilessly finish them off when angry outbursts and even throw them out spontaneously.
This is reported in the book “Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk and the Bet of the Century” by Tim Higgins, who works for the established “Wall Street Journal”. Musk’s success is also based on an “atmosphere of fear” that he had built up at Tesla. The founder was obsessed with making the electric car a success, slept on the factory floor and gave interviews in T-shirts that had not been changed for three days. “But while his vision, enthusiasm, and determination make Tesla a success, his ego, paranoia, and resentment threaten to destroy it all again,” Higgins believes.
Wüterich Musk
He sees Musk’s outbursts of anger as the main reason for this. In countless examples, he describes how the Tesla founder completely freaked out at meetings, factory visits or in conversations with employees – and how he would have publicly rounded up everyone from the little mechanic to his management team in wild insults. Before every leadership meeting, “whom he would devour today,” was joked, Higgins said.
Musk was often concerned with the matter. In 2016, for example, there was an “uprising” among workers in a factory in Fremont, California. In order to create the production rates, the employees there would have had to work at short notice even on weekends more and more often, even the management advised Musk to give his employees time to relax. He should have ticked it off. “I could drink Mai Tais with naked supermodels on my own island, but I don’t,” he is reported to have shouted. “Instead, I’m here with you, working my ass off. I don’t want to hear about how hard it is for everyone in this factory.” Then he stormed out.
Shout and fire
The anecdote is one of many. Again and again, Musk is said to have yelled at employees in small or large groups if he did not like their statements or if the work results did not meet his wishes. “This is all sh ***”, he is said to have yelled at a group of engineers. Each of them should tell him “who the fuck you are and what the fuck you do to get my goddamn production line up and running.” One of the engineers is said to have resigned without notice during the meeting – and thereby even more attracted Musk’s anger. When he left the room, Musk yelled after him. Another, who had quit, he ran after him into the parking lot to be able to abuse him further.
Musk himself is said to have started throwing employees out at random. “He’s always been someone who was quick to fire people. But first it was done through managers. Today he throws out anyone he comes across in the factory,” writes Higgins. The next day he greeted an employee who had previously struck him negatively with: “I thought I had fired you yesterday.” When he was advised of a solution to a problem by an assembly line worker, he did not react as one would expect. But yelled “How can it be that someone here knows the solution and you don’t know anything about it” in the direction of the factory manager. And immediately put him on the street.
“Clear and open feedback”
Numerous attempts by various media to get Tesla’s comment on the allegations went unanswered. Musk himself has so far only commented on an alleged attempt to become head of Apple through a takeover on Twitter. “He managed to get the book wrong and boring at the same time,” he told Higgins. He made it clear that he had also tried several times to win the Tesla boss over for a discussion.
Musk had only commented on the accusations of outbursts two weeks ago: He gave “clear and open feedback that would sometimes be misunderstood as ridicule,” he said at a court hearing in Delaware. The accusation: Musk fired employees when they had angry fits. Even in the courtroom, he could not hold back despite the threat of billions in fines. And called the plaintiffs’ attorney a “criminal” and a “bad person”.
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