为马斯克工作：前员工揭秘其管理策略｜WSJ

0:00If you're talking to Elon or you want to have a conversation with Elon and you get that opportunity to talk to Elon, you need to be concise, quick.

0:04There's definitely 2 AM, texts and 6 AM conference calls.

0:10When I used to go into meetings with him, I used to always stop by our barista and I would get a couple of espresso and chug that down and then go into the meetings.

0:17He's never said this, but I've watched it. You have 30 seconds to make your point.

0:21Elon Musk is known by his employees to be intense. When he took over Tesla in 2008, he sent the company into Crisis Mode to jumpstart his vision.

0:30of how to reinvent the auto industry.

0:33Now he appears to be using a similar management playbook

0:36to remake Twitter.

0:37We spoke with former Tesla and SpaceX employees

0:40to better understand how Musk became known for his cutthroat

0:43and tireless management style,

0:44and what that may mean for his future employees.

0:50Step one for Musk is to rally employees

0:52around a lofty company mission.

0:53It's exactly what inspired Carl Medlock

0:57to join Tesla in 2009.

0:59We were also excited about the brand.

1:01I mean, we all work in 80, 100 hours a week.

1:02We kind of lost track of our families, our passions,

1:05our hobbies and all that stuff, but we love what we were doing.

1:08I never once had Elon or saw Elon do a rah-rah meeting like that.

1:12Medlock now runs his own electric vehicle repair shop in Seattle.

1:16He said he was terminated from Tesla in 2013

1:18over a misunderstanding with his direct manager.

1:21Garrett Reisman was similarly inspired by the mission of SpaceX

1:25and joined in 2011.

1:26It's a very demanding environment.

1:29But by and large, it's not because of him cracking the whip,

1:32you know, making human life multi-planetary, getting to Mars,

1:35having a colony of Mars,

1:36is something that motivates pretty much everybody there at SpaceX.

1:40Reisman left SpaceX in 2018 to teach astronomical engineering

1:44at the University of Southern California.

1:46He said that after seven years at SpaceX,

1:48he wanted to work somewhere less intense.

1:51Yet at Twitter, the mission isn't exactly saving the world.

1:54They are talking about protecting free speech,

1:57which of course is important, but it is not as dramatic as trying to go to Mars.

2:02Tim Higgins is a tech and automotive reporter for The Wall Street Journal and author of Powerplay,

2:06a book that traces the rise of Tesla at Elon Musk.

2:10Well, the challenge that Elon has going to have at Twitter is what are the stakes?

2:16Neither Elon Musk nor Twitter responded to requests for comment.

2:19The company's mission is what Musk hopes will drive people to be hardcore,

2:23a term he uses to describe working long hours at high intensity.

2:27You just have to put in, you know, 80 hour, 80 to 100 hour weeks every week.

2:33Obviously people at two o'clock in the morning because we finished up an event and we were all

2:36still energized because we're having such a good time.

2:38And Musk has used this idea of hardcore to rally his team over the years as they approach hard

2:42challenges. For example, in 2012, when Tesla was preparing to ramp up production of the Model S

2:48Luxury sedan, Musk sent his team an email with a subject line ultra-hardcore, telling them to

2:53prepare for a level of intensity that most of them had never experienced before.

2:57About three weeks after taking over at Twitter, Musk sent a similar email.

3:02But hundreds of employees opted to leave the company rather than sign up for Musk's vision of Twitter 2.0.

3:08The challenge here is Elon has inherited a huge workforce and he has to convince them to be on Team Elon.

3:17And we're seeing him try to go through those ranks of people to find the talent that he's going to need,

3:23to pivot the company to a private Twitter, and it's messy.

3:26Musk himself leads by hardcore example.

3:29I sleep on the couch over there.

3:30Last time I was here I actually stepped literally on the floor

3:32because the couch was too narrow.

3:34I showed up at work early one day, and it was just me and him

3:37and one security guy, the entire 5.5 million square feet.

3:40And I didn't know he was there, right?

3:41And at the factory when you, there's walkways and safety

3:45areas and stuff like that, when nobody's there,

3:46I just got on a bicycle riding around.

3:48And here Elon is asleep on this engineer's desk.

3:51In November, Musk tweeted that he was sleeping at Twitter's offices in San Francisco.

3:55And it's not just his time, but his money.

3:58How much did you put into this company?

4:02Oh man, about $55 million.

4:04In 2008, when Tesla was at its darkest moment and he put in his personal last millions of dollars to fund it,

4:13He was even couch surfing in Menlo Park

4:17and paying my business expenses

4:20with personal credit card debt, right?

4:22His approach is to do anything required

4:26to keep his businesses competitive.

4:29And he lived that every single day when I worked for him.

4:33Conrad left Tesla in 2011 for a no Nissan Mitsubishi.

4:37They, people that I've talked to with Elon talk about

4:40how he in one hand is incredibly inspiring.

4:43But on the other hand, a lot of people will say he was also exhausting and mercurial and

4:49after a while they just couldn't keep up with him.

4:51There is also a history of employees at Tesla and SpaceX alleging this conduct at the companies.

4:57Musk is also known to quickly make his company's leaner.

5:00When he became CEO of Tesla, he cut about 20% of the workforce.

5:04About a week after he took over Twitter, Musk laid off roughly 50% of the staff according

5:09to a document seen by the journal, and people familiar with the matter, estimated that likely

5:14over 1,000 have resigned.

5:16Former employees have said that this cut-throat approach instills in them this feeling that

5:20anyone working for Musk is the best of the best.

5:23Back in the day at Tesla, Elon would often say that people who work for him are special

5:28forces.

5:29He wants to hire a key engineer who in his mind has way more value than, say, a hundred

5:35engineers and to deploy those top talent on the hardest problems and be able to move

5:40faster and not have the same kind of level of bureaucracy.

5:44Former employees have said that Musk avoids traditional corporate hierarchy.

5:48If Elon was interested in something you were doing, he would come and talk directly to

5:52you.

5:53He's not going to go through a bunch of different layers of management and have the information

5:56filter up.

5:57Musk also motivates employees to work harder by raising the financial stakes.

6:01And Elon became CEO of Tesla.

6:04The economy was in shambles.

6:06It was the great recession.

6:07And there was huge questions about whether people were going to want to buy a luxury car

6:12and not just a luxury car, a luxury car that was electric.

6:16Similarities to Twitter today, we've got an uncertain economy.

6:20The company needs to start generating more money.

6:23It has a huge debt load.

6:25It has to find its place in this social media world that's under a lot of pressure.

6:31as the ad market kind of contracts.

6:35In November, Musk wrote in an email to Twitter employees

6:38that without significant subscription revenue,

6:40there is a good chance Twitter will not survive

6:43the upcoming economic downturn.

6:45Musk is still in the early stages of setting up his strategy for Twitter

6:48and finding people he trusts to help him transform the company.

6:52That's SpaceX.

6:53If you proved yourself to be capable, innovative,

6:56especially on a technical level,

6:58then that led to very, very rapid advancement throughout the company.

7:01If I were an employee at Twitter right now, I'd probably just do your job.

7:05Don't let them know your name.