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In the race for tech dominance, finding the right workers isn\u2019t so simple, says billionaire CEO Elon Musk.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Musk is known for his micromanagement leadership style (which he has jokingly referred to as nanomanagement), and hiring is no different. In the early years of building SpaceX, he interviewed the first few thousand employees, before he no longer had enough time, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Musk now relies on his staff to find the \u201cwow\u201d factor and asks for bullet points on \u201cevidence of exceptional ability,\u201d he told Stripe cofounder John Collison and tech podcaster Dwarkesh Patel during a joint episode of their podcasts.<\/p>\n
\u201cGenerally, what I tell people\u2014I tell myself, I guess, aspirationally\u2014is, don\u2019t look at the r\u00e9sum\u00e9,\u201d he said. \u201cJust believe your interaction. The r\u00e9sum\u00e9 may seem very impressive\u2026but if the conversation after 20 minutes is not \u2018Wow,\u2019 you should believe the conversation, not the paper.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That approach paid off, and Musk added that Tesla\u2019s senior leadership now has an average tenure of 10 to 12 years. But there was a time earlier, during a more rapid-growth phase, when executive positions changed more frequently.<\/p>\n
He recalled a period when companies like Apple were \u201ccarpet bombing\u201d Tesla\u2019s leaders and engineers with recruiting calls. In 2018, Apple hired 46 former Tesla employees for its now-shuttered electric car project and other roles, according to CNBC.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said that at the time there was an idea that Tesla employees had \u201cpixie dust,\u201d or the quality to make a business successful because of their background with the company. Apple offered employees twice as much as Tesla was paying them, Musk said, explaining that poaching employees is easy in Silicon Valley because people typically don\u2019t have to relocate or change their lifestyles when they move between companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Musk, who has 200,000 employees across his five companies, admits to making some personnel mistakes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve fallen prey to the pixie dust thing as well, where it\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, we\u2019ll hire someone from Google or Apple, and they\u2019ll be immediately successful,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But strong credentials and an impressive work history don\u2019t tell the whole story, he added. Musk also puts value in a candidate\u2019s talent, drive, and trustworthiness.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think goodness of heart is important,\u201d he said. \u201cI underweighted that at one point. So, are they a good person? Trustworthy? Smart and talented and hardworking?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
More recently, Musk\u2019s companies have faced major executive losses as some employees left to build startups or take breaks, while others burned out or soured on his politics, strategic decisions, and recent layoffs.<\/p>\n
Tesla\u2019s chief information officer along with high-ranking members of the company\u2019s public affairs arm and U.S. battery and powertrain operations left the company in recent years, the <\/em>Financial Times<\/em> <\/em>reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n And Mike Liberatore, chief financial officer at Musk\u2019s xAI startup, left for OpenAI after three months, writing on LinkedIn, \u201c<\/strong>102 days \u2014 7 days per week in the office; 120+ hours per week; Wild ride to say the least.\u201d<\/p>\n Employees told FT<\/em> that Musk has put more pressure on xAI employees, which they believe stems from his competition and personal rivalry with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. <\/p>\n In August, Musk, an early investor in the company, filed an antitrust lawsuit against OpenAI and Apple for allegedly trying to limit AI competition.\u00a0OpenAI has accused Musk of harassment and attempting to slow the company\u2019s progress.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Elon #Musk #admits #hes #fallen #flashy #credentials #conversation #matters #hiring<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the race for tech dominance… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20367,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[3629,542,12418,9618,885,554,9127,12417,701,2007,5317,199,886,795,853],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20366"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}