Musk went silent. McNeill, unaware that Musk engaged in prolonged pauses and unsure whether his future boss was even still on the line, thought Musk was \u201cmega pissed\u201d.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, Musk chimed in. \u201cYou\u2019re going to fit in here just fine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Musk has a well-earned reputation as a tough person to work for, an unpredictable character prone to \u201crage firings\u201d. His companies have a reputation for executive turnover, as employees manoeuvre intense and fluctuating timelines and burnout. To many, it\u2019s worth it: working for a Musk company, some say, is a once-in-a-lifetime experience to deliver on lofty goals that would be unachievable elsewhere in the tech industry.<\/p>\n
Those who hang on long enough for their stock to vest can also be rewarded with generational wealth. Tesla is worth more than a trillion dollars and SpaceX, Musk\u2019s rocket company, is expected to publicly debut later this year at a more than US$1 trillion ($1.7t) valuation.<\/p>\n
But to thrive requires surviving drastic cuts \u2013 Musk\u2019s companies operate with extremely lean workforces \u2013 along with abrupt shifts to goals and missions.<\/p>\n
It can also require a deep understanding of your employer. In his three years working at Tesla, directly reporting to Musk, McNeill learned to live by his boss\u2019s ultimate motivation, freeing up his own time, which became a North Star.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I asked [Musk] what success looked like … he said, \u2018Success is getting me down to one day a week at Tesla so I can get back to my first love, which is rockets,\u2019\u201d McNeill said.<\/p>\n
In coming years, other companies could adopt similarly hard-charging methods, seeking to replicate Musk\u2019s success.<\/p>\n
If \u201cyou\u2019re trying to solve something that\u2019s never been solved before, there\u2019s tremendous technological or intellectual gaps in our knowledge that maybe having a less formal culture and allowing people to go off on tangents … [is] exactly the right thing to do,\u201d said David Larcker, professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution.<\/p>\n
But every company is different, he added. \u201cIf you go into a regular organisation \u2013 \u2018Don\u2019t respect the hierarchy\u2019 … can that really work?\u201d<\/p>\n
Elon Musk has a well-earned reputation as a tough person to work for. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
Musk and Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
With Musk, McNeill understood that conventional ways of thinking could land someone in hot water, while risk-taking often was rewarded. But that left executives navigating a precarious balance.<\/p>\n
Often the decisions that could lead to the biggest successes were the ones that carried a large potential downside. McNeill adopted a strategy of allowing such risks, provided they were reversible \u2013 a \u201ctwo-way door,\u201d as he put it.<\/p>\n
He had to allow that flexibility, McNeill said, because at Tesla Musk prized speed, seeking a competitive advantage through quickness.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur edge will come competitively from making decisions faster than anybody else,\u201d Musk would say, according to McNeill, who is co-founder of the venture studio DVx Ventures.<\/p>\n
That forceful Silicon Valley-esque ethos played out under Steve Jobs and was codified by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who popularised the mantra \u201cmove fast and break things\u201d.<\/p>\n
Larcker, the Stanford professor, said that hard-driving mindset attracts a certain type of employee and is not necessarily scalable.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he can be very harsh in his statements. Some people respond to that, and other people don\u2019t,\u201d Larcker said of Musk, also noting the potential for burnout. \u201cPeople self-select into these things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tesla\u2019s workplace has also faced allegations of sexual harassment and racism, detailed in lawsuits and other complaints. Musk has said Tesla would \u201cnever seek victory in a just case against us, even if we will probably win\u201d and \u201cnever surrender\/settle an unjust case against us, even if we will probably lose\u201d. The company settled separate racial discrimination lawsuits in 2024 and 2025, Reuters has reported.<\/p>\n
Working with Musk requires a degree of compartmentalisation.<\/p>\n
Musk has openly contradicted company executives at times, raising questions about job security in firms with high turnover.<\/p>\n
In McNeill\u2019s view, Musk companies operated with that style of critique. When mistakes compounded issues, however, that could force his boss\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cElon would watch the quality of decisions that were made … and he would decide whether or not he could, in his words, trust your judgment,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you were right more than you were wrong,\u201d then you were safe.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if … your mistakes were causing harm, that\u2019s when he moved super quickly,\u201d McNeill said.<\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s style of management has not always succeeded, as evidenced by Musk\u2019s US DOGE Service excursion. Initially billed as an effort to save trillions in government spending, it ended as an unpopular exercise that fell well short of its goal to make government more efficient.<\/p>\n
McNeill, who had grown up in Kearney, Nebraska, and whose path to entrepreneurship included consulting work to optimise Great Plains meatpacking plants, would go on to become Tesla\u2019s president.<\/p>\n
In his new book, The Algorithm, the onetime Tesla and Lyft executive, who serves on the boards of Lululemon and General Motors, details a set of management principles that guided Musk, who would eventually turn Tesla into the world\u2019s most valuable automaker. Among them: \u201cQuestion every requirement\u201d and \u201cDelete every possible step in the process\u201d.<\/p>\n
Musk was drawn to McNeill, the entrepreneur said, because he was not a car executive. Tesla eventually became more valuable than Toyota, Volkswagen, Ford and General Motors combined.<\/p>\n
Bureaucracy was practically non-existent. \u201cDon\u2019t respect hierarchy\u201d was a theme, according to McNeill.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I\u2019ve seen in big institutions is that they react to innovators like an external virus,\u201d McNeill said. \u201cAnd these big institutions are very effective at killing that virus and driving it out.\u201d It happens in a pedestrian way, he said: through internal politics that treat those with ideas as toxic.<\/p>\n
In contrast, when innovation thrived \u2013 even in large institutions \u2013 leaders had cleared the field for such advances to take place. Musk had a penchant for recognising those opportunities and clearing the field himself, even if it meant he was overbearing. \u201cThis weekly cadence of urgency … I describe it in the book at the secret ingredient. But it is really the core ingredient that makes the whole thing work,\u201d McNeill said.<\/p>\n
During those periods, Musk was a constant presence, holding frequent meetings, quizzing staff members, sometimes pushing up timelines.<\/p>\n
Similarly, it was crucial for those seeking to advance to make sure they were working in the areas that were central to Musk\u2019s focus.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe decides what are the two or three existential issues in the business,\u201d McNeill said. And he digs in on them, making them the subject of regular progress checks that could include probing, rapid-fire questions from a CEO who wasn\u2019t afraid to get into the weeds.<\/p>\n
For those focused on those two or three areas of the business, McNeill said, \u201cthat means you\u2019re going to spend a lot of time with Elon\u201d.<\/p>\n
Those same workers shouldn\u2019t be surprised, however, when one day, Musk\u2019s interest has moved on. McNeill knows the feeling, saying it pains him to see Tesla moving on from some of its vehicles to pursue robots.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got this sentimentality about how much blood, sweat and tears we poured into these things,\u201d McNeill said. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s got a really clinical look at cutting the past and moving to the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Musk went silent. McNeill, unaware that Musk engaged in prolonged pauses and unsure whether his future boss was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":372312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,8556,680,17448,2082,2740,692,26098,221,13637,1043,3025,17449,17444,111,139,69,2572,27302,180,2791,9348,5536,66754,19135,17450],"class_list":{"0":"post-372311","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-companies","10":"tag-demanding","11":"tag-elon","12":"tag-for","13":"tag-former","14":"tag-he","15":"tag-heres","16":"tag-how","17":"tag-hung","18":"tag-leadership","19":"tag-most","20":"tag-musk","21":"tag-musks","22":"tag-new-zealand","23":"tag-newzealand","24":"tag-nz","25":"tag-president","26":"tag-shaped","27":"tag-shares","28":"tag-style","29":"tag-survived","30":"tag-tesla","31":"tag-valuable","32":"tag-working","33":"tag-worlds"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}