Elon Musk needs a vacation | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk needs a vacation

washingtonpost.com

123 pointscocoflunchy48 comments

Friend worked at one of the US's biggest law firms clerking for a few years. He was there during one of the largest patent suits of all time, so they were billing an insane amount of hours (he was easily putting in 100 hour weeks the six months leading up to the trial).

Anyways, case settles weeks before trial was supposed to start. Law firm gives everyone in the office a free two weeks off to unwind from such a massive stretch of work.

He enjoyed the time off, with only one minor detour to the office for like 2-3 hours one day during the time off and almost everyone above him was there working. He asked his boss what was up and the guy basically said he had nothing better to do so he just decided to work during that stretch.

I love working hard, I love being productive, but I really hope I'm never at a point in my life where I can't take two weeks off to enjoy doing something other than work. Of course I'm not inventing electric cars and space rockets, so there's that.

Interesting anecdote. Reminds me of that expression that goes something like "If you choose a career in something you love, it no longer becomes work". Pretty sure I butchered that, perhaps someone can sweep in with the proper quote

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life"

Interesting how this sometimes plays out though, a colleague of mine loves writing operating systems has found the number of people who want to do that steadily decreasing to the point where it becomes challenging to find paid work. I've suggested to him that the new "operating systems" are unikernels and microservices but he's been at it so long that he sees those as hosted applications rather than operating systems, and he has been at it so long, many of the views are ingrained deeply.

I ran into that problem with compiler development a few years back. I still love it and I'm still good at it, but there's nobody* left paying people to do it.

The funny thing about the applications vs. operating systems idea is that I think you're both right. We're just shifting the system stack over by one level of abstraction while doing the same old things we've always done and always will do: the hypervisor is the new kernel, the virtual machine is the new process, and paravirtualized PCI devices are the new POSIX.

(*I would have to be homeless and begging on the street before going back to Microsoft and Visual Studio would start to sound like a good idea, and Apple has become such a black hole that I have no idea whether they still employ compiler people or not.)

Thanks. Reading this quote and my original side by side makes me cringe. This is a great example of the importance of language and writing skills

Imagine in 30 years when the tech they are working on is common. Or imagine Woz with the Apple II. Now looking back on it, did it really matter that you put in all your waking hours into making the Apple II? Does anyone really care?

I'm not sure if I can agree with that reasoning. Sure, no-one is impressed with an Apple II now, but that doesn't degrade how significant it was then. By that measure, did the Wright bothers really need to put in all of that time since today we have 747s?

Without it Apple arguably would not be around today. In any case the people who purchased it certainly did care.

We all build upon what came before. It's hard to predict the outcome of the Apple II not existing but it would at the very least have changed the course of computing history if Apple were not around today.

Wozniak? I believe he loved every minute of it - he said it himself, he loved just building stuff. The fact that many people benefited from his tinkering is just a byproduct...

Musk talks about that in the article:

> “I have to say at times I’ve wondered,” Musk said with a laugh. “...I think there are certain important things that we must do in order for the future to be good."

If he doesn't do it, who will?

you

> If he doesn't do it, who will?

I love this myth of the one-man army.

Really, it's idolatry of single points of failure. Who would knowingly design infrastructure in the same way that these "hero CEOs" position themselves?

SpaceX and Tesla employee 16,000 total humans, and talented ones at that. Does every single day really require Musk's visionary direction? Nobody else's will do?

And just like single points of failure in infrastructure, single points of executive failure can be good for startups.

You can leverage your risk, and accomplish more in the short term, but long term, it's clearly not sustainable.

Sounds like Musk needs to learn how to pivot into "big corporate". I don't think he ever has in the past, has he?

The problem with the idea of working all the time becomes far more real once you have kids. You are doing real damage to your kids if you are not there for them as much as you are for your work.

I am not saying this from a position of moral superiority, I have been guilty of this myself during a time when, for many years, if I was awake I was working.

Ultimately a business failure forcefully knocked me out of that mode of operation. Being around a 3 and a 4 year old all day was, well, very weird. I eventually adjusted. Over time I came to understand just how valuable it is to have quality interactions with you kids. Life can't just be about work once you have kids. It doesn't matter if you enjoy the heck out of your work, you had kids and that is a responsibility you cannot outsource.

After that experience my approach to work was far different. My businesses are very important to me but my family is always first.

As a kid who grew up with an overworked dad, thank you. Well, thanks dad too for bringing enough money at home. But not having played ball at all before 6 made me a pretty isolated child, at an age where people socialize through sports. Not having much affective presence has been bad for my self-confidence, which is still a problem today. Not having enough discussion about dating girls made me isolated as a teenager and young adult. Sure that gave me plenty of time to succeed at school and I'm now sitting on a pile of money, which I can use to buy courses and any experience that I feel lacking. But there are some things that are just less painful to learn when we go through them with parents.

I'm not a father and it is up to fathers to judge whether financial safety is more or less important than affection. But there are real, palatable, eventually financial, painful consequences from not spending time with your children, so much that spending time with children is often a pretty good thing to do.

When work is a choice, it isn't really work. This guy can take a vacation whenever he likes. He doesn't have a boss that will fire him. He doesn't have to worry about making rent each month. His concept of "taking a vacation" is very different then mine, yours, or most anyone else who isn't a billionaire.

If Elon Musk is stressed, he has the option of separating himself from that stress. He works because he wants to work. Employees suffer stress from which they cannot separate themselves without, in short order, creating new stresses. Elon will not be homeless next month if he stops going to work today. A psychologist might say that his stress is therefore a product of his ego, his daily choices, rather than of his environment. It is internal to his personality. That's probably why he finds it so hard to separate.

You really think Mr. Musk could take a month off starting tomorrow with no advance notice to SpaceX or Tesla with no ramifications? These are C Corps with boards, investors, and other stakeholders that wouldn't turn a blind eye to that. Musk is not a deity who can do whatever he wants. He can be fired just like anyone else who clocks in and out of a day job--only difference is who pulls the trigger.

I did not say that. I said that it was his choice, not that such a choice would not have consequences. But he has the choice and that makes him different. The vast majority of employees do not have a choice. Elon can reduce the amount of his time spent on SpaceX or anything else without drastic impact on his person or his family. Employees cannot.

This is an oversimplification.

Being 'the boss' means you work to meet often unrealistic expectations you've set for yourself. It doesn't relieve you from stress, fear, deadlines.

Founders often perceive this feeling as a representation that they are the sole driver of the company's successes and failures. That means vacation represents a period of regression. It makes taking one essentially a nonstarter.

Worse, this behavior can be cyclical. Take a weekend off and you feel 'behind.'. Then you work twice as long next week, perceiving it as barely catching up. Then even harder to get back to the pace you thought you were on before.

Add to that the pressures of having billions of dollars and the livelihood of thousands resting on your expertise and the eyes of millions watching your every move ...

It's a hard habit to break. Even if you enjoy your job, the stress of what you believe it should be can add emotional and physical stress.

If you feel that you are the only person capable of doing a job that the future of humanity depends on -- it isn't really a choice.

Even on a slightly less dire level -- CEOs have their employees and employees' families fate resting on their shoulders. It isn't easy to trust someone else to do it right. You can't just take a month off and hope everything goes ok.

When you have a moral imperative to work it isn't so easy as taking a vacation anytime you want.

> If you feel that you are the only person capable of doing a job that the future of humanity depends on ...

That actually sounds like a messiah complex to me.

I'd call it a trump complex, a common malady of new-money billionaires.

He can't just quit like that. He has a reputation to uphold.

> Elon will not be homeless next month if he stops going to work today.

He will not be homeless next month, but he has personal debt the size of which could cause a small bank to fail that was used to fund Tesla and possibly SpaceX.

He will likely remain a very rich man, but at the moment his fortune is very much tied to the success of Tesla and SpaceX, so he also does not have as much freedom as one might expect.

He has smart lawyers all around him. He and any family members surely have access to well-funded trusts beyond the reach of any bankruptcy proceeding.

He also doesn't have someone to give him permission to take a break. Psychologically, it changes things. In the latter part of grad school, my advisor was no longer at my university, and I was working mostly by myself. I worked every day. Not only was there no one to tell me, "Hey, take a day", I also felt, sharply, that any day I took off just meant I was one day further from my goal.

Saying "he has the option of separating himself from that stress" is true, but I don't think it captures the mental trap that people feel they are in. I also don't want to ascribe it to ego, because that has negative connotations. I think of it as a combination of not having an outside party to tell you to take some time, and working towards a goal with a single-minded focus.

He does have a person. He has himself. He needs to psychologically grant himself permission. It's all in his head. Your situation was different. Your authority figure was absent. That's different situation than not having one.

My entire point is that having yourself is categorically different than having an outsider. This is one reason why even elite athletes have coaches. Many elite athletes will train too much, left to themselves - it's hard to avoid the feeling of "I have not done enough". We're more receptive to a different person, that we trust, when they say "You've done enough. More will harm. Rest."

In my case, I'm unsure if having my advisor present would have made a difference. At that point, my work was almost completely self-driven - but that's rather the point of grad school. You're supposed to get to the point that you're calling the shots; the "authority" status of your advisor is supposed to diminish over time. But I'm also not convinced that having an absent authority figure is any different than not having one be design; I don't see how I would have acted any different if for some reason I had officially no longer had an advisor.

I agree. Been freelancing for a while and I'm never able to meet my own expectations. The standards I've set for myself are way too high. It sounds like I have control over my expectations, but its not that simple.

Now I'm trying to do my own startup and its worse than ever. I'll probably go see a therapist in a week or so (when I get time!!!)

Elon Musk is incredibly attached to his companies and feels personally responsible for their success (he probably is). It doesn't help that SpaceX is arguably one of the most important human endeavors of all time (http://bigthink.com/dangerous-ideas/5-stephen-hawkings-warni...).

Having started a project that became successful for a time (though minute in comparison to Musk's projects) I can safely say that walking away when I had to was one of the hardest thing to do. There were people that counted on me, and they were really let down. It felt bad. And we're talking "fun internet community" not "future of the human race."

I thought the entire purpose of SpaceX was him wanting to take a vacation.

it's also so he can be buried in Mars - a permanent vacation.

I can't imagine the stress he goes through. Not surprised that it gets to him from time to time.

Maybe it is us who needs a change in mindset. We say he needs a vacation and he is obviously exhausted, but he is succeeding at creating a rocket company. That's right, a rocket company. Maybe more of us need to dream bigger, risk everything, and be willing to work just as hard.

> Maybe more of us need to dream bigger, risk everything, and be willing to work just as hard.

What a curious take-away. I read it as even a hardened workaholic like Musk will crack a little without taking a break.

This is the mindset I work for. I have dreams of varying size and scope, but I only let myself chase the biggest and best of those. I want my life to positively affect my friends, my family, and humanity at large.

The hardest part, in my experience, of trying to live big dreams is avoiding becoming overwhelmed. There are so many details involved and it is easy to become discouraged when you become aware of them all.

The best coping mechanism I've come up with works a lot like scrum (which is the best way to go for teams) and consists of writing a lot of to-do lists. Every week or two I review all of the lists I've made and compile a new snapshot that cuts out all of the things I now realize are unimportant or irrelevant. I feel like this encourages a nice forward-looking mindset, anchored in the present, but influenced by the past.

The key, I think, is working as hard as you can sustainably handle. Tools like scrum do a good job of helping you find that sweet spot.

I recommend reading the short book/guide The Underachiever's Manifesto as an alternative view (which someone here had suggested awhile back). Decide on the right amount of effort, place, and time to do something good instead of great. The person who will care the most about anything you do is yourself and good enough is good enough for most things in life. Especially when you're here for a short amount of time and there's so much you want to do.

I suspect these kind of articles would be more useful if they were written by or summarizing advice by former CEOs who were in a similar position (multiple companies, lots of stress, regulatory uncertainty).

My thinking is that in these cases it depends more on the individual person than their position and circumstances. Some CEOs probably really thrive by being able to take a few weeks a year off to relax on the beach, but with someone like Musk (from what I've read), I think it's likely that would not be too relaxing or productive.

Sometimes the best ideas about X pop up when you're doing Y

That's why Elon has a few companies

And running one company is like a vacation from the other.

There are different types of vacation. I don't like just laying on the beach, either. But I still take a break away from my work to be able to do other things. It's during these times I work on my other hobby projects. From the outside, it looks like I'm working, but for me, it's all fun and I'm more relaxed than I would be sitting in a hot tub somewhere.

Can I give a quick plug for Neal Stephenson's new novel, Seveneves? The character Sean Probst, an eccentric billionaire rocket entrepreneur, is very much based on Musk, and is a lot of fun.

If you're going to potentially burn out in your job, having Iron Man and a Stephenson character partially based on you is not a bad way to go.

(I also recommend the recent Ashlee Vance Musk biography.)

Ha ha - I just read Seveneves, the Probst character was quite funny. While I've enjoyed Stephenson's novels in the past, I don't think Seveneves is his best. It's a little bit formulaic, far fetched and plodding. I preferred Reamde. It's the only thing I've ever read that gave me an insight into the mindset of the mid-west gun loving conservative that seems to maintain the status quo of gun law in the US.

I think Elon needs a stellar COO to run operations for Tesla so he can focus on overall vision and product. I think he's forced to be involved in so many day-to-day operation tasks that it crowds the little time he does have.

#IStandWithElon

Reply on news.ycombinator.com