1)
I read the book on Elon Musk. I was surprised by the attitude that he had with his employees. He was often very harsh with his employees. He has fired some people that he really should not have. Most notably was when he fired his assistant Mary Beth Brown. She was essentially the same to him as Pepper is to Tony Stark. The thing that I most admired about Elon Musk was how he never wavered no matter how bad things got. At one point he had to live at a friends house and sell his own because his businesses had drained him of all his money. What I least admire about Elon Musk is how he had treated employees. I feel that had he kept some of them and maybe a little nicer he would have others to lean on and help him on his endeavor. Elon encountered adversity at almost every single corner of his life. In South Africa, he had a rough upbringing. In America, he made successful businesses but always struggled to get them to work. The one thing that kept him going was his personal mission to truly advance humanity and innovate.
2)
Elon Musk was always very smart and absorbed information very easily. He carried that into his new businesses where he would essentially have his engineers give him an information dump relative the project they were working on. He would be able to recall the information with remarkable accuracy.
3)
The part of the reading that I found the most confusing was the part about his time in college. They left it very ambiguous and it was difficult to tell where he actually studied and for how long.
4)
I would ask Elon what he believes are the steps humanity needs to follow to become a fully space-bound species. The second question I would ask is what drove him to keep his dream alive when almost everything seemed lost. These two questions relate deep into his psyche, and I would love to know it.
5)
Elon's opinion of hard work is basically working so hard that your health starts to suffer from it. He believes working 16 hours a day is normal and what everyone should do anyway. I believe that the 16 hours alone would be plenty enough to consider hard work.
Daniel, I'm surprised that some entrepreneurs are harsh to their employees. I read about Steve Jobs for this assignment and there were moments where he was the same way to his employees. Elon Musk was very dedicated to his work, no matter how bad things got, especially when he went as far as to sell his house. His dedication is also shown in his 16 hour work days. Good Job.
ReplyDeleteHi Daniel, Great post on Elon Musk. I’ve always thought Elon was probably a little odd because of his Genius like other inventors like Nikola Tesla. It seems like Elon is very driven and probably lets his emotions get the best of him at times. I imagine that is why he treats some of his employees and coworkers poorly. He would probably benefit from some communications courses.
ReplyDelete