That’s my only position on this story; no matter what Musk thought he was doing, or if his intent was “honorable.” The end result is still the same.
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Totally agree. I just think it’s sad that by bungling it he destroyed a mutually valuable working relationship. It sounds like it’s a bit of a pattern in his life too.
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I remember my first engineering director telling me he assessed roles by how long it would be before you were really missed. He reckoned in his case it was 5 years, for the chief engineer 2, at my immediate boss’s level 6 months. It had taken 3 months to fill my predecessor’s role and that was about right.
If you felt you were so essential that you couldn’t be out of the office, you weren’t delegating properly.
Obviously engineering research is a bit different from, say, a call centre, but it’s close to what Musk is supposed to be doing.
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People of his level of skill are basically high functioning sociopaths. Same for Jobs, Bezos, you name it. The thing they all have in common other than having a lot of drive is being awful to their employees, exploiting those with talent, and just being overall assholes. If that’s what it takes to be successful then i do not want that level of success ever nor would i want that for the people i love in my life.
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Had she never taken a two week vacation before this!? Good grief I hope she had.
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Musk is the new Jobs. The attitude of the general public towards people with money in the US seems heavily influenced by puritan/calvinistic ideals: Someone earns/has a lot of money = he is doing something right = he is right (and his detractors are just envious and should start working harder). That’s probably also one of the reasons Trump got elected too.
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It’s the self driving AI CEOs I’m waiting for.
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My current boss is like this. He openly admits that he lacks empathy for people and basically uses it as an excuse to be an asshole.
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Aside from the generalized inhumanity here, this ignores the idea that most of the duties Musk picked up for two weeks were optimized by the person he declared non-essential. Vendors are reliable, expectations are clear, and norms are healthy? Better fire the person who did all that work then, I guess.
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- Asking for a raise.
- Boss makes her wait 2 weeks (just imagine yourself waiting day after day)
- Gets fired.
And the morale for the story is… It was her fault.
Dear worker: Be sure to shut up next time you ask for a raise. Yours truly: Capitalism
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Welcome to BoingBoing!
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How little does Musk do if he can just work as a secretary for a whole two weeks?
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I wonder how many project managers, marketing team members or hr staff are now having to book travel, manage his appointments, or edit his schedule now that the assistant is gone?
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I have always taken the position if I have to ask I will be asking elsewhere first.
Mr. Musk:
The Board of Directors has decided that the tasks performed by CEO can handled at a much lower cost by existing members of the executive staff, now lead by your former assistant. However, seeing as how you do have some talents in the field of engineering, we’d like to present to you a list of potentially rewarding alternate positions at our firm…
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I first misread that as rifle and I was like “Whoa, since when is Mister44 advocating The Revolution?”
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That’s against our employee policy.
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Oddly enough, it’s not against my lab’s policy; a shotgun is a recommended piece of equipment for taking canopy samples.
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According to my cybersecurity teacher that’s actually legally required in some fields. Specifically banking, (according to him) you’re required to take like a consecutive week or two of vacation every year to ensure that no single person is essential to the function of the company.
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Umm, NO. (Unless you’re talking about “the grays,” where the trollies hang out trying to get a rise out of the humans; I can’t vouch for the grays 'cuz I don’t kinja anymore.) But none of the the (author-/community-/mods-)approved posts take this position. There is one thread that leads off with a comment about some Facebook miscreants taking that position, but absolutely no support from other kinja users.
Read it for yourself; expand all the threads; post links to jezzies supporting the trip theory and I’ll eat your hat.
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