If you can get a job done yesterday, then, and only then can you work with Elon Musk, founder, and CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX. For someone who is into making rockets and cars, wouldn’t his speed of work be like lightening? Musk is also the co-founder and chairman of an artificial intelligence research, non-profit company OpenAI, a tech company Neuraling and the Boring Company. How does one man manage all this efficiently when all he gets is just six hours of sleep per night? It is a question that you can answer only if you work for Elon Musk who is one of the most influential billionaires of our times.
So what does it take to work for Elon Musk?
Let’s give you a little peep into the office of SpaceX. The office cubicles are few and are open, given mostly to HR and finance people. Musk believes that doors in an office space limit communication and that is why what they have at SpaceX are little cubes that house all employees. And the best is yet to come; the meeting rooms with customers have motion sensors. So if you walk in, the otherwise transparent glass turns opaque. They make you the feel like an Avenger working in the office of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Well, almost. The guy has conference rooms named after great rocket engineers and scientists, all space related. With the cool ideas that keep popping up in Elon Musk’s head, you know there is more of such wacky stuff going to be added every day.
“The thing that drives me is that I want to be able to think about the future and feel good about that,” said Musk, at the National Governors Association. Elon Musk is like a Rubik’s Cube with every facet of the cube having an equally fascinating quality. On one side of it, there is excitement, hard work, loads of fun, crazy ideas, no fear of failure, and a never-ending energy source on the rest of the sides. An incident related to Musk has him waving around his Lady Vivamus sword while sitting in his cube. That sword was awarded to him along with the Heinlein Prize for practical accomplishments, in the field of commercial space activities. The crazy doesn’t end at Space X alone. The same thing applies to Tesla. Musk is a man that doesn’t scare easy by odds and failures. He longs for technical and capital-intensive challenges every day and tackles them head-on, expecting his workforce to stand by him with an equal or more zeal for success.
Working with Elon Musk ensures that you are pushed hard every passing minute of your life to do better than what you did yesterday. The words of Elon that do the rounds in the offices of Tesla and SpaceX are ‘Not enough of you are working on Saturdays.’ He is a boss who like a machine keeps upgrading, and anyone working with him has to adapt to his modus operandi, working their way through sweat and blood. Working with Musk presents you with ongoing excitement, challenges, and loads of discomfort. But what you also get is growth tangent that you might not get anywhere else. SpaceX has a popular motto that says, “No matter how hard you work, someone else is working harder”… words credit: Elon Musk. These are simple words spoken by a man who makes you take the simple out of your life every day.
Priya Mathur is a freelance writer and an avid blogger. An MBA in International Finance, her love for writing eclipsed her love for the corporate world. She contributes for several blogs on lifestyle, food, fashion and entertainment. When she isn’t glued to the TV, she spends her time baking, reading, and playing with her French bulldog. Watching GoT someday is at the top of her bucket list. Currently she is working on an Indian Cook Book. You can reach her at tellpriya@gmail.com
