Elon Musk's email to an employee who missed work event to witness birth of own child

Yet another interesting example on how the Facebook commentariat is weirdly different from the local users. Should write a thesis on that sometime.

Yes, something about this sounds trumped up. Clearly there are a lot of greedy folks with big bucks who would like nothing better than to destroy him.

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I wouldnā€™t be surprised if itā€™s true. I think being a CEO of a huge or fast-growing or highly visible company takes some callousness and single-minded obsession sometimes. (Iā€™m not defending it). I often wonder if Iā€™d even want a c-level role at a large or fast-growing company. I like spending a lot of time with my kids. Itā€™s not for everyone.

Itā€™s a quote from Business Insider - not exactly a bastion of calm, objective journalism - which is quoting an anonymous person from a book about Musk. Who knows?

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Thankfully, our attention spans are shorter than ever.

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Not that itā€™s really excusable, but I think thereā€™s a subtle difference between someone like Musk pulling this versus your average CEO.

Artists, religious fanatics, people with real vision, they can have a tendency to think only in terms of the cause, and donā€™t really see things in human terms. It strikes me that Musk isnā€™t in it for money or personal gain so much as being more on a mission from god. He has a plan and a goal which he sees as bigger than himself or anyone else.

Itā€™s a little different than someone whoā€™s driven purely by money or power.

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For some reason Iā€™m remembering the 9/11 pep talk we got at a game development company. That though we might be tempted to run out and sign up for the armed forces, the work we were doing now to take peopleā€™s minds off the horror was also important.

As I recall, we all nodded gravely, in lieu of throwing up in our mouths.

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For what itā€™s worth, Musk has a very high rating on Glassdoor. Iā€™m sure thatā€™s in part due to hiring a lot of workaholics, and there are numerous comments about long hours, but it does make me doubt heā€™s really that over the top.

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I came in to mention this - my impression of Elon Musk is that he seems like one of those quasi-autistic folks who donā€™t really understand how human interactions and emotions work, and canā€™t understand how somebody would choose something emotionally driven like the birth of a child over something so fascinating or important as a milestone in your product launch.

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To be fair, he has lots of kids. Maybe the novelty has worn off?

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He wants to make a better world, but heā€™s never stopped to ask who this better world is supposed to be for.

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To be fair, heā€™s got like 97 children of his own, so by this point heā€™s totally over when a kid is born.

Itā€™s like eating a cheeseburger: the first time it is incredible, after that itā€™s all ā€œmeh.ā€

Real or not this wouldnā€™t surprise me at all. Musk might not get the ā€œaverageā€ person, but he certainly knows how the rich(er) class thinks. I mean the original Roadster is a $45k Lotus with $55k worth of electronicsā€¦ Itā€™s a great handling/performing car not because of Musk, but because itā€™s a Lotus. Donā€™t get me wrong the Model S does better represent a realistic price point, but his vision about affordable electrics in a few years seems grandiose with a touch of engineering magic will solve everything attitude.

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Two pointsā€¦
One: ā€œElon Musk is a great guyā€ doesnā€™t sell books.
Two: I love how everyone here reads a snippet quoted from an email (so we have no idea how accurate it is), out of context and immediately jump on the shame train.

Not saying heā€™s not a dick, just saying itā€™s so easy to lead people where you want them to go. And sad to see that even a community which prides itself on open mindedness and rationality salivates at the base urge to pile on with the least amount of evidence. Bag on him when you have personal experience of him being a dick to you, otherwise itā€™s just hearsay with the agenda of selling dead trees.

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We have no idea how true this is. Perhaps heā€™s a tyrant who makes cool stuff. Perhaps heā€™s a cool guy who makes cool stuff. There are certainly powerful competing interests that would be interested in planting stories that paint him as an asshole, as his public image is good for his business, and therefore bad for theirs. At the moment, heā€™s doing good for the world and until I need to know whether heā€™s an a-hole or a cool guy (like if he wanted to marry my sister) Iā€™ll leave it at that and not get exercised about 100% uncorroborated gossip.

p.s. if itā€™s true, then yes heā€™s an a-hole.

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This drivel is not a successful handwave away. Sure itā€™s possible to be or likely apocryphal, but that people ā€œwant to destroy himā€ and therefore it MUST be falseā€¦ that is completely fucking irrelevant toadying.

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Itā€™s always a strange surprise to find that highly-driven billionaires are sociopaths!

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Uhhhh . . . . Oooh . . kaaaay . . .

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And thatā€™s my cue to take advantage of the FMLA and leave for a couple weeks. Try to penalize me then and Iā€™ll kick your ass all over the courtroom.