Silicon Valley has a lot of very bright people, but there are very few who ever reach the level of Steve Jobs. One who might come close is Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who has actually been able to use his visionary take on the future to snatch away senior execs from Apple to come and work for him.
According to a Musk employee writing on Quora, however, it’s not just employees that Elon shares in common with Apple’s late co-founder and former CEO.
Much like Jobs, Musk is described as having a ‘reality distortion field’ that helps him convince others that what they view as impossible doesn’t have to remain that way.
And it’s not always a pretty sight.
“If you want a family or hobbies or to see any other aspect of life other than the boundaries of your cubicle, SpaceX is not for you and Elon doesn’t seem to give a damn,” the anonymous SpaceX employee writes.
“This side of what it’s like to work with Elon shows that no one likes working with Elon. You can always tell when someone’s left an Elon meeting: they’re defeated. These are some of the hardest working and brightest people in the world, mind you. And they are universally defeated. At least in engineering, who knows what HR and finance does.
The reason for this is that Elon’s version of reality is highly skewed. It’s much like Steve Jobs’s ‘reality distortion field’ except Elon isn’t great at public speaking. If you believe that a task should take a year then Elon wants it done in a week. He won’t hesitate to throw out six months of work because it’s not pretty enough or it’s not ‘badass’ enough. But in so doing he doesn’t change the schedule.”
Despite this, however, Musk has previously dismissed reports that Apple could buy Tesla, saying that they are “very unlikely.” Even though Apple did once consider building an “iCar” before settling on a smartphone instead.
Of course, he’s not the only current Silicon Valley bigwig to be likened to Jobs, for better or worse.
Source: Quora
Via: BGR
