Name: Elon Musk’s CEO Playbook: Former Employees Reveal How He Led Tesla and SpaceX
Uploaded: 2022-11-30T14:01:00Z
Duration: 7 min 16 s
Description: Twitter has been in turmoil since Elon Musk took over. To get a sense of what’s going on behind the scenes, The Wall Street Journal spoke with former Tesla and SpaceX employees to better understand how Musk leads companies. Illustration: Ryan Trefes

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Twitter has been in turmoil since Elon Musk took over. To get a sense of what’s going on behind the scenes, The Wall Street Journal spoke with former Tesla and SpaceX employees to better understand how Musk leads companies. Illustration: Ryan Trefes

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Elon Musk’s CEO Playbook: Former Employees Reveal How He Led Tesla and SpaceX

If you're talking to Elon or you want to have a conversation with Elon and you get that opportunity to talk to Elon, you need to be concise, quick.

There's definitely 2:00 AM texts and 6:00 AM conference calls.

When I used to go into meetings with him, I used to always stop by our barista and I would get a couple espressos and chug that down and then go into the meetings.

He has never said this, but I've watched it. You have 30 seconds to make your point.

Narrator: Elon Musk is known by his employees to be intense. When he took over Tesla in 2008, he sent the company into crisis mode to jumpstart his vision of how to reinvent the auto industry. Now he appears to be using a similar management playbook to remake Twitter. We spoke with former Tesla and SpaceX employees to better understand how Musk became known for his cutthroat and tireless management style and what that may mean for his future employees. Step one for Musk is to rally employees around a lofty company mission. It's exactly what inspired Carl Medlock to join Tesla in 2009.

We were all so excited about the brand. I mean, we're all working 80, 100 a week. We kind of lost track of our families, our passions, our hobbies and all that stuff. But we love what we were doing. I never once had Elon or saw Elon do a rah rah meeting like that.

Narrator: Medlock now runs his own electric vehicle repair shop in Seattle. He said he was terminated from Tesla in 2013 over a misunderstanding with his direct manager. Garrett Reisman was similarly inspired by the mission of SpaceX and joined in 2011.

It's a very demanding environment, but by and large it's not because of him cracking the whip, you know, making human life multi planetary, getting to Mars, having a colony on Mars is something that motivates pretty much everybody there at SpaceX.

Narrator: Reisman left SpaceX in 2018 to teach astronomical engineering at the University of Southern California. He said that after seven years at SpaceX, he wanted to work somewhere less intense. Yet at Twitter, the mission isn't exactly saving the world.

They are talking about protecting free speech, which of course is important, but it is not as dramatic as trying to go to Mars.

Narrator: Tim Higgins is a tech and automotive reporter for the Wall Street Journal and author of "Power Play," a book that traces the rise of Tesla and Elon Musk.

Well, the challenge that Elon is going to have at Twitter is what are the stakes?

Narrator: Neither Elon Musk nor Twitter responded to requests for comment. The company's mission is what Musk hopes will drive people to be hardcore. A term he uses to describe working long hours at high intensity,

You just have to put in, you know, 80 hour, 80 to 100 hour weeks every week.

I would see people at 2:00 in the morning because we finished up an event and we're all still energized because we're having such a good time.

Narrator: And Musk has used this idea of hardcore to rally his team over the years as they approach hard challenges. For example, in 2012 when Tesla was preparing to ramp up production of the Model S luxury sedan, Musk sent his team an email with the subject line, ultra hardcore, telling them to prepare for a level of intensity that most of them had never experienced before. About three weeks after taking over at Twitter, Musk sent a similar email, but hundreds of employees opted to leave the company rather than sign up for Musk's vision of Twitter 2.0.

The challenge here is Elon has inherited a huge workforce and he has to convince them to be on Team Elon. And we're seeing him try to go through those ranks of people to find the talent that he's going to need to pivot the company to a private Twitter. And it's messy.

Narrator: Musk himself leads by hardcore example.

I sleep on the couch over there. Last time I was here I actually slept literally on the floor because the couch was too narrow.

I showed up at work early one day and it was just me and him and one security guy the entire 5.5 million square feet and I didn't know he was there, right? And at the factory when you... There's walkways and safety areas and stuff like that when nobody's there, I just got on a bicycle riding around, and here Elon is asleep on this engineer's desk.

Narrator: In November, Musk tweeted that he was sleeping at Twitter's offices in San Francisco, and it's not just his time, but his money. How much did you put into this company?

Oh man, about $55 million.

In 2008, when Tesla was at its darkest moment and he put in his personal last millions of dollars to fund it. He was even, you know, couch surfing in Menlo Park and paying my business expenses with personal credit card debt, right? His approach is to do anything required to keep his businesses competitive, and he lived that every single day when I worked for him.

Narrator: Conrad left Tesla in 2011 for Renault Nissan Mitsubishi.

They, people that I've talked to with Elon talk about how he in one hand is incredibly inspiring, but on the other hand, a lot of people will say he was also exhausting and mercurial, and after a while they just couldn't keep up with him.

Narrator: There is also a history of employees at Tesla and SpaceX alleging misconduct at the companies. Musk is also known to quickly make his companies leaner. When he became CEO of Tesla, he cut about 20% of the workforce. About a week after he took over Twitter, Musk laid off roughly 50% of the staff, according to a document seen by The Journal. And people familiar with the matter estimated that likely over 1000 have resigned. Former employees have said that this cutthroat approach instills in them this feeling that anyone working for Musk is the best of the best.

Back in the day at Tesla, Elon would often say that people who work for him are special forces.

He wants to hire a key engineer who in his mind has way more value than say 100 engineers. And to deploy those top talent on the hardest problems and be able to move faster and not have the same kind of level of bureaucracy.

Narrator: Former employees have said that Musk avoids traditional corporate hierarchy.

If Elon was interested in something you were doing, he would come and talk directly to you. He is not going to go through a bunch of different layers of management and have the information filter up.

Narrator: Musk also motivates employees to work harder by raising the financial stakes.

When Elon became CEO of Tesla, the economy was in shambles. It was the great recession, and there was huge questions about whether people were going to want to buy a luxury car and not just a luxury car, a luxury car that was electric. Similarities to Twitter today. We've got an uncertain economy. The company needs to start generating more money. It has a huge debt load. It has to find its place in this social media world that's under a lot of pressure. As the ad market kind of contracts.

Narrator: In November, Musk wrote in an email to Twitter employees that without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn. Musk is still in the early stages of setting up his strategy for Twitter and finding people he trusts to help him transform the company.

That SpaceX, if you proved yourself to be capable, innovative, especially on a technical level, then that led to very, very rapid advancement throughout the company.

If I were an employee at Twitter right now, I'd probably just do your job. Don't let them know your name.

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