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

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

#21

Post by rwallace »

Jazcash wrote: post #16
joshribakoff wrote: post #9

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.

He didn't do that. He asked permission to do it. It takes a particularly shitty mindset to respond to that by sneaking around behind someone's back and complaining to his boss.

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

#22

Post by dozzie »

jacquesm wrote: post #10
dozzie wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another 80 per week. He just works quite long weeks.

With 168 hours per week that would require some rather advanced magic.

Or a company called Wells that produces time machines, like Tesla produces cars and batteries.

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

#23

Post by dingo_bat »

> By far the most common way is chain of command, which means that you always flow communication through your manager. The problem with this approach is that, while it serves to enhance the power of the manager, it fails to serve the company.

Is this common at a lot of companies? I've only worked in one company and despite its many flaws I've never hesitated to contact the relevant person directly for anything, regardless of hierarchy and geography. I do make sure to keep my manager in the loop for anything that will take up a significant portion of my time. So he knows I'm not slacking off :P

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

#24

Post by mistermann »

MarkEthan wrote: post #7
hacker_9 wrote: 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'd imagine he has an impressively comprehensive team around him ensuring he doesn't need to focus on anything other than his work. That said, working over 14 hours per day 7 days a week is implausible to me. Maybe in short bursts but I doubt he does that for any stretch of time. The Elon Musk PR machine & cult of public enthusiasm is a massive business asset. When you're in the business of selling dreams to investor…

Bill Gates was reputed to work that much as well, and I don't think anyone disputed it either.

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

#25

Post by nkoren »

CADTroy wrote: 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…

Almost a decade ago, I invited Elon to speak at a conference I was helping to organise at Oxford. Would've been very on-topic for him, but he declined with a pithy one-line reply. Was a solid enough opportunity that it was probably worth wasting a minute of his time. Had I come to him with something more trivial, I suspect the response would have been pithier and less polite.

The impression I've gotten is that Elon likes to work with smart people, and that part of being smart is being able to make good calls about when to escalate something and to whom. Escalating an issue too high (or too low) is probably not a mistake one gets to make very often.

It would be impossible to impose a discipline like this on a bunch of worker-drones. But amongst reasonably intelligent people, with honest leadership at the top levels, it seems achievable.

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

#26

Post by alexcnwy »

hacker_9 wrote: 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 doubt all that time is 100% focus - that number probably includes business lunches, driving to PR gigs (during which he might read something work related), etc.

If you count all that stuff then the average person is probably working more than 8 hours too.

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

#27

Post by trevyn »

CADTroy wrote: 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…

This is easy for the people in high positions -- the vast majority of these types of emails are simply forwarded to the appropriate underling, with only the implicit comment "please handle this".

Many senior managers are little more than human message routers.

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

#28

Post by Infinitesimus »

Jazcash wrote: post #16
joshribakoff wrote: post #9

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.

Your behavior in that case will be less than ideal. It will be better to talk to your reportee and the individual and understand what's going on if you weren't in the loop. This could have easily been the birth of a strong partnership between sales and the dev team to understand how people both really use and demo the product.

Assume positive intent. This business of putting in complaints behind someone's back (bear in mind OP asked for permission!!!) is just childish

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

#29

Post by jpatokal »

rwallace wrote: post #21
Jazcash wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He didn't do that. He asked permission to do it. It takes a particularly shitty mindset to respond to that by sneaking around behind someone's back and complaining to his boss.

Note that he asked a random salesperson for permission, and it was the salesperson's manager who reported him.

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

#30

Post by reacweb »

joshribakoff wrote: post #9

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…

Once, I had to specify HMI of air traffic controllers for a simulation. The controllers have described their hmi in meetings, then I have sent them the document to review, then I went to an ATC center to watch controllers. I was amazed by the number and importance of differences between my reviewed document and reality. Many details that seem obvious for the final user may cause drastic changes for the developer.
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