
Ask HN: What is it like to work with Elon Musk - quietthrow
Given today, a natural curiosity remerges - how does he accomplish what he accomplishes!? Running one company and changing an industry is hard. Doing that in parallel for another industry is just incomprehensible for a layman. Would love to get people’s perspective who have worked for him&#x2F; with him.<p>If one Elon Musk can do this what if we had a hundred? Or a thousand? I think world needs to know how to be like him.
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julianeon
I worked with a PM whose husband worked at SpaceX; he'd recently left. I
checked his credentials; they were very, very impressive, far above my pay
grade, and very qualified for any kind of aerospace job. On LinkedIn he seemed
like he might qualify as a 'genius', or at any rate as a very educated person
who would be a credit to any team. He'd reached management level.

He was a little jaded about it, and told a story that seems a little familiar
from some other big names. According to him, SpaceX wasn't a great place to
work, because they pushed their employees extremely hard and didn't pay true
market rates. So when he jumped ship he immediately increased his pay by some
impressive amount - I don't know, 25% (and he probably made a multiple of my
salary going in). Bottom line: it was a bit like the games industry - why work
yourself to death when you can work for a bank for more money for less work?
There were other commercial space orgs doing good work, so he went to one of
them for an instant upgrade.

I don't know if he met Elon or not, but Elon wasn't like striding among the
rockets or anything, this guy's division had plenty of work and it sounded
like they had their noses to the grindstone with or without Elon. (To be fair,
this wasn't a criticism of Elon's leadership, just an observation about the
day to day - work, work, work).

I wasn't privy to the details, so I don't know much the equity was worth
(seems like it would be more now - this was circa 2015). But that was his
take, consistent with that of some other big name companies, where the brand
itself is a sort of 'reward' that makes up for shortcomings in other areas,
like salary.

Disclaimer: I'm not this guy, I'm just reporting on his experience, as told
secondhand by his wife. This is an accurate retelling of that assessment, not
my own.

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rvz
Maybe you could ask George Hotz (geohot), as he already has worked closely
with him? Both SpaceX and in-formerly Tesla for electronics and computer
vision. [0]

> If one Elon Musk can do this what if we had a hundred? Or a thousand? I
> think world needs to know how to be like him.

The best person you can be is yourself.

[0] [https://youtu.be/FIbvt4_InyU?t=224](https://youtu.be/FIbvt4_InyU?t=224)

~~~
quietthrow
> The best person your can be is yourself

Couldn’t agree more. But there is something to be said about learning from
others. This is not about being like him it’s more from the sentiment of
learning from him so you can be an (extremely) good version of yourself
through refined skills and thinking.

