Elon Musk might seem like a cool guy to work for, but if a recent anonymous Quora topic is any indication from one of his SpaceX employees, working for the genius behind SpaceX and Tesla is not as great as it seems.
An anonymous SpaceX engineer recently answered the question "What's it like to work for Elon Musk?" as honestly as possible, painting a picture of a demanding boss with nearly impossible deadlines.
In other words, if you value your hobbies, social life, family and friends, you probably don't want to work for Musk.
SpaceX features some of the brightest minds in science and engineering, but Musk often makes these brilliant people feel overcome and never good enough.
"This side of what it's like to work with Elon shows that no one likes working with Elon," writes the engineer. "You can always tell when someone's left an Elon meeting: they're defeated."
Of course, most would counter with "Why stay if it's so difficult?" And that answer is simple: because SpaceX is doing something groundbreaking and important. Regardless of how difficult Musk is to work with, he's also brilliant and has taken the company from having less than 500 people to being a "powerhouse." In fact, the engineer admits that not only is SpaceX itself "awesome," but that there is no "cooler company in the world."
That still doesn't change the fact that Musk is demanding, but it's probably why SpaceX has made the advances that it has. The company is behind the first reusable rocket, and has already contracted with NASA on delivering goods to the International Space Station, with several such missions already under its belt. Musk is also the brains behind Tesla, the groundbreaking electric car company, and is promising a new high-speed transportation system, the Hyperloop, within the next ten years.
In innovation, Musk resembles Apple's Steve Jobs, who was also notoriously difficult to work with and demanding on his employees. But perhaps, that's what's required to push out new technology so quickly.
"If you believe that a task should take a year then Elon wants it done in a week," writes the engineer. "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."
So if you're thinking about a job with SpaceX, you might want to reconsider. It's probably not the "pie in the sky" job you've always dreamed of.
[Photo Credit: SpaceX]
