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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”

#31

Post by CADTroy »

nkoren wrote: post #25
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 l…

Yes I agree, after thinking about it a bit more and reading all of the responses I get the impression that this model works best if you are hiring people who are capable to make these judgement calls, and those who can't will likely not last very long within the company

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

#32

Post by kensai »

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.

He also flies... :-/

Elon is cool and all, but his fanboys are making the whole thing really ridiculous. Btw, it might even be true, but can we falsify it? Exactly as in religion (to give it in Karl Popper's terms).

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

#33

Post by losteverything »

dingo_bat wrote: post #23

> 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, regar…

Everyone I've been in: Fortune 5, small biz, govt monopoly, r&d lab, retail

One example: a legal department vs. Sales&marketing. Legal believes they can veto marketing decisions. A fuzzy plan to use CPMI was initiated by marketing. Legal said "you must stop"

Marketing said "buzz off, you Legal, are in the 'advice' business. We exercise our right to ignore it."

Several members in sales marketing kept in close contact with legal... Before and after... And were quickly transferred.

Btw, the decision went to the BofD who naturally gave no reason to stop.

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

#34

Post by dilemma »

mistermann wrote: post #24
MarkEthan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

self-reported and therefore not reliable.

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

#35

Post by keymone »

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.

his job there is to think, talk and send emails. that's doable 16 hours a day (minus some disruptions) for average person and i don't think Elon is average.

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

#36

Post by Shivetya »

dilemma wrote: post #34
mistermann wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

self-reported and therefore not reliable.

some executives never stop working, even when not on site they consider time spent solving problems in their head or sitting at their computer/tablet/etc as work.

myself I have been around some six to six executives who even at parties talk shop. hell we used to joke that when one went on vacation it only made his emails longer

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

#37

Post by thanksgiving »

Infinitesimus wrote: post #28
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.

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…

Something like this has never happened to me but I'll give you a less extreme example.

My manager explained the situation to me but it still doesn't make sense in hindsight.

There exists two companies in the US headquartered in two different cities. Some bankers buy both. Now the reason I bring it up is I wanted some fairly simple information about some configuration on one of the services that a team that came from the other company, based in a different city. First thing I try is message the person on Lync (imagine a shitty msn messenger). No response. I know you're online! I talked to my boss to see who else might be able to answer my question. He tried to get in touch with the other guy and cc'ed his boss. Radio silence.

A week later the other boss sends a forward. The other boss explains he had been on vacation for a week and didn't check his emails. The forward also has the answer from the other developer from a week prior.

We are not talking super secret missile launch codes. It is a fairly boring detail but the developer didn't hit reply all to the email, sending it only to his boss.

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

#38

Post by mannykannot »

jpatokal wrote: post #29
rwallace wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The manager's response is the sort of thing that would lead to him "working for a different company", according to the doctrine set out in Musk's email.

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

#39

Post by thanksgiving »

pkhamre wrote: post #13
joshribakoff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

I mean technically if you are available to answer phone calls or emails, I think we should consider you are "working". I mean it is ridiculous to pay you by the hour at that point but if I didn't have to pay you by the hour, that's the criteria I'd use.

I think I read somewhere that somewhere in France or Germany some city or some department/province said you can't require your employees to promptly respond to emails outside of their work hours (I imagine they don't have "at-will" employment).

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

#40

Post by Cthulhu_ »

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.

The Boring Company's real goal is to drill a black hole so Musk can work from a time dilation singularity.
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