> but Musk had to purge the senior leadership of both Tesla and SpaceX (and multiple times at that, I believe?) in order to achieve the innovation velocity he aimed for.
From the ex-Tesla people I worked with, I think the public narrative of Musk “purging” staff isn’t entirely true. He desperately needs top talent.
It’s more the case that his companies focus on hungry employees who want to get some success and a big company name on their resume. He can pay them mediocre compensation and work them to death with the promise of a big career win.
Once they’ve had a few years in the upper ranks of a Musk company, they can use their resume to walk into any number of easier jobs that pay better, so they leave. They are then replaced with a new generation of career climbers who can be worked to death in exchange for the resume building experience.
After having been at KSC and working around Muskrats, almost being one of them myself, this is also the impression I took away. Kind of like IB for the tech industry.
Feels kind of like he had to purge people that wouldn't go along with embezzlement and fraud like using NASA money at SpaceX to buy his own Solar City bonds as part of a rescue with high conflict of interest or using Tesla to bail out Solar City with a fake demo on the set of Desparate Housewives with non-functional solar shingles.
> Musk unveiled the Tesla solar roof in 2016 on the set of Desperate Housewives. At the time, he was trying to acquire Solar City, a solar energy company formed by his cousins. Musk was also chairman of Solar City at the time.
> The roofs he showed off at the event weren’t fully working, Fast Company later reported, and Musk allegedly had said prototypes of the tiles were a “piece of shit.”
>As SpaceX's chairman, CEO, CTO, and majority stockholder, Musk caused SpaceX to purchase $90 million in SolarCity bonds in March 2015, $75 million in June 2015, and another $90 million in March 2016. These bond purchases violated SpaceX's own internal policy, and SolarCity was the only public company in which SpaceX made any investments.
The SEC has bought into his novel legal theory that if enforcement actions could hurt shareholder value (hurting stock price due to targetting the cult of personality that is also propping them up), then they shouldn't be done. I can dig up the tweet where he said this if you want.
From the ex-Tesla people I worked with, I think the public narrative of Musk “purging” staff isn’t entirely true. He desperately needs top talent.
It’s more the case that his companies focus on hungry employees who want to get some success and a big company name on their resume. He can pay them mediocre compensation and work them to death with the promise of a big career win.
Once they’ve had a few years in the upper ranks of a Musk company, they can use their resume to walk into any number of easier jobs that pay better, so they leave. They are then replaced with a new generation of career climbers who can be worked to death in exchange for the resume building experience.