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An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”

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11–20 of 77 posts

Re: An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”

#11
post #3

"Musk works about 100 hours per week at the electric carmaker" 7 / 100 = 14.3 hours a day. Or 100 / 5 = 20 hours a day. Does he not require food then? Or any non-work activities? Talk about hyperbole.

I often start at 7am and go until 10pm. My girlfriend makes me food and brings my caffeine. I have no time for "non work activities"though. I'll be in bed watching Netflix but really working on my laptop. Even when I have to goto the grocery store my mind is always on work. Being a remote employee, the line is blurred. If I'm out and about but all I can do is daydream about a new algorithm, I consider that working.

Re: An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”

#12
post #3

"Musk works about 100 hours per week at the electric carmaker" 7 / 100 = 14.3 hours a day. Or 100 / 5 = 20 hours a day. Does he not require food then? Or any non-work activities? Talk about hyperbole.

So then how many hours does he spend with SpaceX?

Close to another 100!:

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/elon-musk-goals/

The proportion of time Musk devotes to each company is derived from a description he gave at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in June 2017. "The Boring Company is maybe 2 percent of my time, Neuralink 3-5 percent, Open AI another couple percent,” Musk said. The rest is split almost evenly between Tesla and SpaceX, he said, but “slightly more Tesla—it’s like a drama magnet."

Re: An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”

#13
post #3

"Musk works about 100 hours per week at the electric carmaker" 7 / 100 = 14.3 hours a day. Or 100 / 5 = 20 hours a day. Does he not require food then? Or any non-work activities? Talk about hyperbole.

I often start at 7am and go until 10pm. My girlfriend makes me food and brings my caffeine. I have no time for "non work activities"though. I'll be in bed watching Netflix but really working on my laptop. Even when I have to goto the grocery store my mind is always on work. Being a remote employee, the line is blurred. If I'm out and about but all I can do is daydream about a new algorithm, I consider that working.

Is it a life you enjoy living? I'm just curious :)

Re: An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”

#14
post #3

"Musk works about 100 hours per week at the electric carmaker" 7 / 100 = 14.3 hours a day. Or 100 / 5 = 20 hours a day. Does he not require food then? Or any non-work activities? Talk about hyperbole.

It's not true. Easy as that.

Re: An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”

#15
post #2

I am definitely in favour of the notion of avoiding "management silos" but I would echo the sentiment left at the end that it seems to be much easier said than done in practice. "you can talk directly to a VP in another dept., you can talk to me, you can talk to anyone without anyone else's permission." I imagine someone in such a high position would then receive an influx of e-mails to the point where it is counter…

With one exception, I have only worked in companies where this has been the norm. It's never been an explicit rule. It seems to me that it happens naturally unless culture is built to prevent it.

The fact Elon decided to send an email might be an indication that one or more people implicitly or explicitly have punished others for communicating.

Re: An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”

#16

I got "in trouble" at this one company for just doing my job. I walked onto the sales floor and asked a sales person if I can silently watch over their shoulder so I can learn about how the companies CRM was used. The sales manager felt I infringed on her team and complained to the lead programmer who in turn begrudgingly "warned" me not to do that ever again. I think I lasted like another 6 weeks there before puttin…

As good as your past intentions sound, if somebody I didn't know from another department just came and sat next to me to watch me work, without me knowing it would happen beforehand, I'd put in a complaint too.

Re: An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”

#17
post #3

"Musk works about 100 hours per week at the electric carmaker" 7 / 100 = 14.3 hours a day. Or 100 / 5 = 20 hours a day. Does he not require food then? Or any non-work activities? Talk about hyperbole.

I often start at 7am and go until 10pm. My girlfriend makes me food and brings my caffeine. I have no time for "non work activities"though. I'll be in bed watching Netflix but really working on my laptop. Even when I have to goto the grocery store my mind is always on work. Being a remote employee, the line is blurred. If I'm out and about but all I can do is daydream about a new algorithm, I consider that working.

I mean this without any intention of belittling or suggestion that you should do otherwise, but why? Not that you need justify anything to me, of course.

It's so fundamentally opposite to my experience, and I'm curious about what's driving you to work like this.

Re: An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”

#18
post #3

"Musk works about 100 hours per week at the electric carmaker" 7 / 100 = 14.3 hours a day. Or 100 / 5 = 20 hours a day. Does he not require food then? Or any non-work activities? Talk about hyperbole.

A friend who works at Tesla said he has (had?) a bed in his office. So maybe he's counting the hours spent there, too?

Re: An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”

#19
post #2

I am definitely in favour of the notion of avoiding "management silos" but I would echo the sentiment left at the end that it seems to be much easier said than done in practice. "you can talk directly to a VP in another dept., you can talk to me, you can talk to anyone without anyone else's permission." I imagine someone in such a high position would then receive an influx of e-mails to the point where it is counter…

I think he is expecting people to have some critical thinking to not starting to send emails to a VP just for the sake of sending emails to a VP.

Let's say you are implementing the UI for the car's dashboard and you think it would be super cool to have the color of the cars' model in the UI matching the exact color the customer chose for the car. Maybe you could cut all the middle points of communication and directly email the guys that handle the paint job to know the exact color values that they use to paint the car.

Of course that you wouldn't email Elon himself to do this, it would be pointless.

Re: An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”

#20
post #3

"Musk works about 100 hours per week at the electric carmaker" 7 / 100 = 14.3 hours a day. Or 100 / 5 = 20 hours a day. Does he not require food then? Or any non-work activities? Talk about hyperbole.

I often start at 7am and go until 10pm. My girlfriend makes me food and brings my caffeine. I have no time for "non work activities"though. I'll be in bed watching Netflix but really working on my laptop. Even when I have to goto the grocery store my mind is always on work. Being a remote employee, the line is blurred. If I'm out and about but all I can do is daydream about a new algorithm, I consider that working.

Do you bill those hours also?
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