Elon Musk is the CEO of SpaceX. Chesnot via Getty Images
- Elon Musk expects full commitment from the employees of all his companies.
- Walter Isaacson’s new biography reveals how Musk pushed some SpaceX employees to their limits.
- Several employees reported pressure to meet Musk’s demands.
Several former SpaceX employees told Walter Isaacson about the impact of Elon Musk’s leadership style on his new biography.
Elon Musk is known for his intense and relentless work ethic and expects the same from his employees. Musk’s leadership style allows him to “move faster, take more risks, break rules and question requirements,” Isaacson writes in his biography published this week.
Using this approach, he has achieved impressive successes, such as sending people into space and orbit and building the world’s most successful electric vehicle manufacturer. But Musk’s “demon mode” has consequences for his employees.
“A cloud comes over and he goes into a trance and can just be tough in a cold way,” Isaacson told the Wall Street Journal.
One engineer, Kiko Dontchev, described how, having just returned to his wife after three days of work, he was told that Musk wanted him back in the hangar.
Although he started with a bottle of wine, risking his boss’s wrath wasn’t an option, he told Isaacson: “I was worried about getting pulled over for drunk driving, but that seemed like a lower risk than Elon to ignore.”
In several cases, the SpaceX CEO’s brutal leadership style and high expectations led to employees quitting.
SpaceX employees are working on the reusable Crew Dragon spacecraft. PHILIP PACHECO
Lucas Hughes started as a financial analyst at SpaceX in August 2021. He had just lost his first child when he was invited to a meeting with Musk.
When Hughes didn’t have all the component costs of a new engine part on hand, Musk told him in an emotionless, monotone, “You’d better make sure you know these things off the top of your head in the future,” Isaacson writes. “If you don’t improve, your resignation will be accepted.”
By the end of the next day, they had a roadmap to reduce engine costs from $2 million to $200,000 within 12 months.
However, Hughes left SpaceX in May 2022. “You definitely realize that you are a tool that is being used to achieve this larger goal, and that’s great. But sometimes tools wear out and.” [Musk] “I feel like he can easily replace that tool,” Hughes told Isaacson.
It’s a lesson that even senior employees at SpaceX had to learn. “I learned to never tell him no,” Tom Mueller, former propulsion chief at SpaceX, said in the biography of Musk.
“I give people hardcore feedback, mostly precise, and I try not to do it ad hominen,” Musk said when Isaacson asked if he was being too hard on employees. “I try to criticize the action, not the person.”
“Physics doesn’t care about hurt feelings. She cares about getting the rocket right,” he told Isaacson.
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