Image credit: Paul Harris/Getty Images

Oh No, I Kinda Want to Work for Elon

An examination of the man-child who would be king

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When the third SpaceX rocket exploded, Elon Musk was edging toward a meltdown. The company was on the brink of failure, his entire net worth had been poured into money-losing ventures like Tesla and SpaceX, and this explosion could have been the thing that made it all come crumbling down. Everyone knew it. The mood at the launch sight was sober, perhaps even depressed. The company could be done.

After a minute-long pause, Elon looked up, a glint in his eye. “Pain is not bad, it’s good,” he said. “It teaches you things. I understand that.” 

Engineers around him nodded their heads. A manic, industrial energy started to build in the room. As usual, he went back to the purpose of why they were there. The mission. “What the hell do I wanna go off and go to work for? Work for what? Money?” They were going to Mars—who cared about the business?

Elon Musk, the new biography by Walter Issacson, reported on what followed:

“‘I think most of us would have followed him into the gates of hell carrying suntan oil after that,” said Dolly Singh, the human resources director. ‘Within moments, the energy of the building went from despair and defeat to a massive buzz of determination.’”  

The next time, they pulled it off, making SpaceX the first privately built rocket to launch from the ground and reach orbit. They had done it with 500 employees, compared to the 50,000 that Boeing had at a similar division. It was the launch that set the company up for the roughly $150B valuation it enjoys today. 

So, a confession. This story is a bit of a lie. 

The rockets did explode. Elon did make a rousing speech. The engineers did come together and build an incredible company. The only difference is that these quotes are not from Elon Musk—they’re from murderous cult leader Charles Manson. Musk actually said, “There should be absolutely zero question that SpaceX will prevail in reaching orbit. I will never give up, and I mean never.”

And honestly? There isn’t that much of a difference between the two. They both have an ability to make you do crazy things in service to the divine mission.

The cult of Elon

Musk’s terrible, wonderful magic is that he makes you want to go all in. Even me, a person who very much enjoys not working for Elon Musk, finished the book and thought, “Hmm, I kinda want to work for that guy.”

Do you realize how sick of a thought that is? How utterly deranged of a reaction? 

Musk is demonstrably, unequivocally an asshole. When I started the book I stuck a Post-It note on the page every time I thought he acted reprehensibly. I soon realized that for the 615-page book, I would need 615 Post-It notes. He fires dozens, if not hundreds, of people based on his mood. He is more than somewhat unstable: constantly self-medicating with Ambien or ketamine, smoking joints on Joe Rogan’s podcast, pounding Red Bull after Red Bull, and barely sleeping. At various points, he diagnoses himself as having Asperger’s or bipolar disorder. He plays video games until 5 in the morning. Between the three mothers of his 11 children, his personal life is conflagration in a waste container (i.e., a dumpster fire). 

It is not my place to judge how people conduct their personal lives, but it is his employees who pay the price. The book frequently describes him going “demon mode,” where he fires anyone who disagrees with him, even if they’re innocent. Two to three times a year, he does a “surge”: he sets an arbitrary, totally unrealistic deadline, and forces his employees to work 24/7 until that deadline is met. Anyone who annoys him or underperforms to his standards is immediately fired. 

I cannot overstate how bad of a boss my analytical brain would tell me this guy is. Yet I still found myself vaguely wanting to quit the content business and go work with him to be a part of something bigger. 

And I’m not alone in this feeling. There are legions of Muskinites. He has a supernatural ability to get the best engineers in the world to pour their souls into his companies. Part of the reason he can fire so many people is because so many other talented technical staff want to come work with him. It is, frankly, a bit spooky how powerful his magic is. 

This is not his only skill. He has a superhuman risk tolerance—when he exited PayPal, he put his entire net worth into Tesla, SpaceX, and a solar company. He is demonstrably a genius who has a deep, intuitive understanding of physics, frequently coming up with novel solutions for problems his company is facing. He can, with seemingly little effort, get the media to breathlessly do his marketing for him (exhibit A: this very article). He can juggle a scope of responsibilities and workload that would crush a mere mortal. He is currently leading six multi-billion-dollar companies. 

All of this talent—and chaos—has resulted in one of the most compelling technological leaders we have ever seen. It is worth considering what he has built and, importantly, how we can apply his methods to our own work. It is also worth considering whether we should emulate him at all. 

The MCU (Musk Company Universe) 

Musk is the leader of:

  • Tesla: an electric car manufacture valued at $839B
  • SpaceX: a rocket company valued at $150B
  • Boring Company: a tunneling company valued at $5.675B
  • Neuralink: a company that wants to put computer chips in people’s brains to enhance cognitive capabilities. The first products are focused on assisting disabled people to use computers.
  • Twitter: a rotting hellscape filled with slime and villainy and handsome newsletter writers. Its last public valuation was $44B.
  • X.AI: discount-brand OpenAI attempting to build artificial general intelligence. Its valuation—at whatever Musk feels like— was last reported at $20B.

I’m being snarky, but this portfolio of work is incredibly impressive. Most of our current billionaire class, like Gates or Zuckerberg, has come from software. Musk did the opposite, with vertical hardware integration, by tackling some of the most challenging physical challenges in the world. I mean, just look at this. I can’t help but be a little inspired by a 394-foot rocket, preparing to launch man out into the stars.

Image credit: SpaceX 

Perhaps the reason he has scaled so well is the operating paradigm by which he evaluates his companies, dubbed “the algorithm.” Developed over many years of trial and error, this was the closest the book got to revealing Musk’s secret sauce: 

  1. Question every requirement. Because hardware products will have hundreds of design decisions and integrated raw materials, specific accountability is crucial. Every choice should have a real name attached to it. Then, you should question every single one of these assumptions, no matter who made it. 
  2. Delete any part of the process. Complexity is the death of speed and is anti-innovation. Remove to the point of failure. As Issacson wrote, “If you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough.” 
  3. Simplify and optimize. Only do this after deleting. Deletion is a precursor to improvement. “A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist,” Isaacson wrote.
  4. Accelerate cycle time. Again, speed is what matters. Since Musk’s companies are so hardware-dependent, they have increased capital and supply costs. Increased speed greatly improves the flow of capital. But it should only follow step three, as there is no use accelerating processes that will end up being deleted. 
  5. Automate. Only once everything has been questioned, deleted, simplified, and accelerated can you automate. Musk learned a painful lesson when he tried to automate Tesla production too soon, leading to the “most hellacious period of his life”: he had to rip out expensive robots in favor of human labor. 

Like a Buddhist monk who loves factories, Musk chants these principles as a mantra to motivate subordinates. He has some other Muskisms: technical managers need to have hands-on experience. Engineers work next to design or on manufacturing floors. He believes that “comradery is dangerous” because it makes the confrontation of mistakes more challenging. 

The idea I found most delightful was the “idiot index.” Issacson described it as:

“the ratio of the total cost of a component to the cost of its raw materials. Something with a high idiot index—say, a component that cost $1,000 when the aluminum that composed it cost only $100—was likely to have a design that was too complex or a manufacturing process that was too inefficient. As Musk put it, ‘If the ratio is high, you’re an idiot.’”

Because so many of his companies tackle physics problems, this operating system applies to pretty much all of them. Twitter is the outlier because it is an emotional problem instead of a physics conundrum. 

Over and over again, Musk defies the odds and builds something incredible. It is not hyperbole to say that he single-handedly ignited a second space age and accelerated the electric car revolution by at least a decade. This history of success means there is at least a chance he can do the same with brain implants, social media, tunneling, and AI. The guy is relentless—sleeping on factory floors, working 100-hour weeks. He simply doesn’t quit.  

If he succeeds in just 75% of his ambition, he could be one of the most important people in human history. However, that success results in huge costs to him personally, to his employees, and to society at large.  

Unknowable Elon

Isaacson uses anecdotes from Musk’s life to force the reader to confront a central tension of greatness: would a saner person who is less of an asshole be capable of similar feats? 

If you had asked me this question 10 years ago, I would’ve wholeheartedly agreed. It is a better world if our most prominent people are moral exemplars with happy family lives. However, after a decade of meeting billionaires, reading biographies of highly successful people, and building products myself, I’ve come to accept that the opposite is probably true. The highest level of success requires wholly unreasonable people. Musk is a top .01% of entrepreneurs—of course he is a dick. 

It isn’t all his fault that he is this way. He is almost certainly neurodivergent based on Isacsson’s reporting. His father is a racist, abusive psychopath who has two children with his step-daughter. As a child Musk was bullied and beaten. During his childhood, South Africa was in the grips of apartheid, and he witnessed multiple instances of violence. 

With that context, his lack of empathy and violent mood swings are more understandable. The inner demons that drive him are likely necessary for him to live the way, and achieve the things, that he has. It does not excuse the callousness, but it does make it understandable. 

This strange concoction of nerdhood, intellect, abuse, and belief in the divine mission of technology is Elon Musk. As someone who is also intelligent and nerdy, was bullied as a child, and believes in the divine mission of tech, perhaps it isn’t surprising that I feel a perverse attraction to joining him on his quest. 

I think Issacson had similar feelings. He was embedded with Musk for two years and called it “about the most interesting thing I’ve done in my life.” The book suffers from the reality-distortion field of Musk’s bizarre charisma. Most notably, while Issacson spent time covering Musk’s cruelty toward him employees, he skipped over many of the controversies in the businesses he runs, like: 

There is likely a reasonable defense for all of these stories. But when you have years of access to the world’s most mercurial billionaire and you don’t use that time to investigate some of his most troubling behavior, I question the analytical rigor of the work. When coupled with the fact that Isaacson has already had to rescind some of his biggest claims about the Ukraine/Musk connections, it inserts doubt about the veracity of the entire analysis. Further, while he does list his sources and interviews for each chapter, Issacson does not ascribe claims to particular individuals (ironically in violation of Musk’s algorithm which demands specifically accountable individuals). Coupled with Musk’s long history of exaggeration, there’s a cloud over the book about whether to accept anything it offers up as proof—of either his greatness or awfulness. 

Musk represents a contradiction. He pushes boundaries few dare approach, tackling humanity's grandest challenges. But his ruthless drive exacts steep costs from employees, partners, and himself. Will his ends justify the extreme means? Can he temper raw ambition with compassion? For now, we must view Musk with clear eyes—lauding stunning successes while condemning callous missteps. Genius merits acclaim but not excuses.

He compels us to dream big yet retain moral autonomy. We need not fully embrace or reject him. Perhaps the best takeaway from studying his life isn’t in the acceptance or condemnation of it. Maybe it should be an inspiration to be—build something—better.

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enjoyable to read.

Dan Shipper about 1 year ago

@Zeromick glad you liked it brad!

@sarah.c about 1 year ago

I have a bit of a problem with the idea that it's his genius that lets him get away with being an asshole. If poor people break the rules and discard social norms the way rich guys like Musk do, we end up unemployed/homeless/imprisoned. It's the wealth and power that allows people to behave in this way, for good or ill, not any kind of special genius.

@alex_3418 about 1 year ago

At one end of the spectrum, he has made Incredible achievements, I couldn’t do it. At the other end, well at least he is not Charles Manson. That’s a pretty low bar, and why aren’t we digging into that? That’s what’s offering him a lot of leeway to be a childlike maniac. Lebron James has a duty to be a responsible athlete so that kids look up to him and want to be better. Why are we not talking about the utter lack of responsible leadership in tech?

@rberger about 1 year ago

@alex_3418 The fact that Musk went all fascist when he could have been one of the greatest examples of what humans could be, as a responsible technologist, is his greatest failing. Unfortunately, I think the Charles Manson comparison is apt. Musk is insane. The only real difference its that he has an insane amount of power.

George Meza about 1 year ago

I'm not an "Elon fan" and I do try to use critical thinking. So saying that "There isn’t that much of a difference between the two" Charles Manson, a serial Killer, an Elon Musk, is not only the laziest of analogies, but it demonstrates the kind of ad-hominem argumentation that eliminates the credibility of anybody making the assertion... Nuance is dead even among long-form writers. Sad state of affairs we find ourselves in.

@JCX That whole setup was lame. Why do writers try so hard to give us emotional tugs and to put smiles on our face. And please, why do we glorify financial success?!

@rberger about 1 year ago

I am concerned that Musk is the most dangerous person in the world right now. He has too much power and is too unstable. He has shown that he is a literal fascist and could easily be full Nazi. He needs to be punched.

@deleted_90053 about 1 year ago

You missed one significant superpower of Musk's - his ability to get other people to pay for his folly. The government, for example. We are all paying for this sociopath's toys. Like that other stable genius, it's all smoke and mirrors, and someday you'll be writing a mea culpa when his house of cards collapse. I look forward to reading that.

Evan Armstrong about 1 year ago

@mattlove1 thanks for the reply Matt. You could argue that some of his newer ventures are somehow subsidized by lower interest rates, but Tesla is a profitable car manufacturer valued at hundreds of billions of dollars. I suppose you could argue that the company's use of federal tax credits are wholly responsible for this success? But all his competitors have access to those subsidies too. And keep in mind those policies were put in place by Democrats, not republicans. SpaceX does receive government contracts but they won in a competitive bidding process against JPL—so if this is "folly" then it is at the level of NASA's budgeting policies. Curious if you have a specific instance in mind that I've missed?

Chris Ogunlowo about 1 year ago

I’m 40% into the book. This captures most of my impressions about the book and its subject.

jen beaven about 1 year ago

He needs to renounce his US citizenship (and government contracts and subsidies) or stop supporting the wrong side in a criminal war against a US ally. Or better yet, he should get his ass to Mars.

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