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\t\t\tIllustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins \/ Futurism. Source: Kevin Diestch \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
As Elon Musk continues to unravel on the world stage, so does his business empire \u2014 at least if employee churn is any indication. At Tesla and xAI, the Financial Times reports<\/a>, the centibillionaire\u2019s ruthless demands, chaotic decision-making, and deteriorating public image are driving away senior leaders and rank and file talent, many of whom are fleeing to Musk\u2019s biggest rivals.<\/p>\n \u201cThe one constant in Elon\u2019s world is how quickly he burns through deputies,\u201d a Musk adviser told the paper. \u201cEven the board jokes, there\u2019s time and then there\u2019s \u2018Tesla time.\u2019 It\u2019s a 24\/7 campaign-style work ethos. Not everyone is cut out for that.\u201d<\/p>\n Many executives leave of their own accord. Most notably, Linda Yaccarino stepped down as CEO<\/a> of X in July, shortly after the site\u2019s AI chatbot Grok had a legendary meltdown<\/a> that saw it praise Nazis and call itself \u201cMechaHitler.\u201d Behind the scenes, reports suggest<\/a> Yaccarino had grown fed up with Musk slowly icing her out from making decisions and undermining her attempts to resuscitate the platform\u2019s ad revenue that had tanked after he took it over when it was still called Twitter.<\/p>\n But she\u2019s far from alone. Mike Liberatore served as chief financial officer at xAI, Musk\u2019s AI firm that now also operates X after the two merged, for just three months. He left for OpenAI \u2014 run by Musk\u2019s arch-nemesis Sam Altman \u2014 claiming he\u2019d been working more than 120 hours per week. xAI\u2019s general counsel Robert Keele quit after 16 months in August, lamenting in a tweet<\/a>: \u201cI love my two toddlers and I don\u2019t get to see them enough.\u201d<\/p>\n Not even the company\u2019s own cofounder, Igor Babuschkin, wanted to stick around. In August, he left to launch his own VC firm<\/a> focused on funding AI safety research.<\/p>\n Per the FT, X also lost two communications executives who quit to rejoin their old employers, and a host of senior engineers. Some of these engineers fled to OpenAI.<\/p>\n So many of Musk\u2019s quondam underlings have defected to OpenAI, in fact, that Musk recently sued the ChatGPT maker<\/a> for allegedly running a scheme that deliberately targets his employees in order to gain access to his company\u2019s trade secrets \u2014 something that reeks of jealousy that Musk\u2019s friend-turned-foe Altman is leading the darling of the AI industry.<\/p>\n \u201cElon\u2019s got a chip on his shoulder from ChatGPT and is spending every waking moment trying to put Sam out of business,\u201d one recent top departee told the FT.<\/p>\n How Musk treats his longtime employees does little to instill loyalty in the ranks. Last month, he ruthlessly fired 500 xAI employees on Grok\u2019s data annotation team and replaced a veteran manager who followed him from Tesla after working there for for over a decade with a kid in college<\/a>.<\/p>\n This summer, Musk also fired a longtime close confidant<\/a>, Omead Afshar, who served as Tesla\u2019s head of sales and operations in North America. The personnel change came amid plunging sales at the EV automaker. Arguably, Afshar was singled out unfairly; it was clear that Musk\u2019s controversial personal behavior and politics \u2014 ranging from backing<\/a> Donald Trump\u2019s reelection campaign, gutting the federal government through DOGE<\/a>, and performing a series of Nazi salutes<\/a> in public \u2014 were tanking his brand\u2019s image and driving its historically liberal customers away.<\/p>\n \u201cI love Tesla and my time there,\u201d another former worker told the FT. \u201cBut nobody that I know there isn\u2019t thinking about politics. Who the hell wants to put up with it?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Tangled up in that political sentiment, many employees are becoming dispirited at what they perceive as Musk abandoning the company\u2019s original eco-conscious vision in favor of robotaxis and AI. Giorgio Balestrieri, an engineer who worked for Tesla\u2019s energy division for eight years, lambasted Musk in a searing LinkedIn post<\/a> after quitting the company, accusing him of dealing \u201chuge damage to Tesla\u2019s mission\u201d and working with an administration that is \u201cslowing down the energy transition.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year, Musk tossed out plans to build an affordable, $25,000 EV that fans had long anticipated, and that many at the company saw as essential to driving up sales and further spearheading a transition to clean electric cars. After that move, several top brass left Tesla, and its director of vehicle programs Daniel Ho quit and joined its competitor Waymo. The head of Tesla\u2019s supercharger division Rebecca Tinucci left for Uber, after Musk laid off her entire team<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cElon\u2019s behavior is affecting morale, retention, and recruitment,\u201d a long-time Musk lieutenant told the FT. Musk \u201cwent from a position from where people of all stripes liked him, to only a certain section.\u201d<\/p>\n