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Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

What's unfortunate is that on the other side of the coin, "rockstar CEOs" like Elon Musk claim they sleep 4 hours a night and work 90 hour weeks. I think Musk does this mostly for publicity/image reasons and not that it's actually true, but you've got plenty of wantapreneurs parroting this (imo) unhealthy lifestyle.

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With the inordinate amount of time Musk spends on Twitter, I'm gonna go ahead and assume most of those 90 hours are not productive.

Most people (and competitors) underappreciate how well Elon manages requirements over Twitter.

If you want to know why he selected the features for the Cybertruck, go back 1 year when he asked the desired features on Twitter. It's crazy how many of those small looking features (like a bed for normal sized / tall people, lighting in the back) were included in all models.

Also he's averaged about 2 tweets a day over the hols and it's often less. It's probably not a huge amount of time.

Considering the amount of publicity he gets from Twitter, they can definitely be considered productive.

I wouldn’t count it as productive when the outcome is he has to spend time in court explaining himself later. I’d venture to guess the time spends directing his employees is whether all the productivity happens.

Reddit AMA:

>How much do you sleep per night, on average?

>ElonMuskOfficial: I actually measured this with my phone! Almost exactly 6 hours on average.

The 4 hour thing seems kind of made up by journalists for clickbait as far as I can tell from a brief google. Though he was up last night working on Starship stuff that seems quite cool https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1210649166407438336

And we've seen the news stories here that his employees would hope he wouldn't "work" at their department because he'd often change things or otherwise slow them down affecting quality and quantity

> sleep 4 hours a night

This is not healthy or impressive, and it may be the first sign of dementia for many people.

He runs three companies which are changing the future of humanity though. Not some ecommerce gig. He is an outlier.

There is anecdotal information that he does indeed do what he claims. And he is the most impressive CEO in this generation, perhaps in history, so long hours must work for some people.

Or his sleep patterns are completely orthogonal to his success.

That is hard to imagine isn't it? Sleep is a pretty big deal.

CEO is different from employee with no stake in the company. Sure, he probably does spend 80+ hours on his companies, but he's enjoying it. He's not beholden to any expectations of a manager. He's spending time reading/exploring/chatting and including that as 90 hours of work. Musk has no line drawn between work and play. I think Musk flaunts this public image to encourage a breakdown of work and play, not to say you should spend 90 hours checking boxes your manager gave you.

> And he is the most impressive CEO in this generation, perhaps in history, so long hours must work for some people.

Even if we assume the first statement is true, which is a big if, it still doesn't necessarily support the idea that working long hours is good. After all, you can't tell whether he was successful because of, or despite the long hours.

I think there's something to be said for the nature of the work you are doing. If you absolutely love what you're doing, you can burn hours long and fast and hard. I think Elon gets his head wrapped around a problem and just eats lives and breathes that problem to the point that the long hours are natural. I've been there on stuff, where I have to fight to tear myself away rather than fighting to keep myself doing it. The latter sucks and will destroy you quickly, but the former isn't so bad for the psyche.

> ... he is the most impressive CEO in this generation, perhaps in history

How anyone can say this with a straight face blows my mind when even in the tech vertical he has some serious competition (are we forgetting about Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc.), let alone actual historical figures like Henry Ford, John Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, etc.

It's too early to judge. If he accomplishes his goal of establishing permanent and self-sustaining human settlements on other worlds then he may end up being the most important person ever, not just CEO.

His goals, at least, are ambitious in a way that those of the other people you mentioned aren't (except possibly Bezos, but Bezos doesn't laser focus on this stuff the same way Musk does).

There is no such thing as the most important person ever... all he did was fund some interesting ideas, which other people actually built. If we are going to single someone out for being the most important person ever, then that person would need to have some enormous achievement completed without the help of others.

>How anyone can say this with a straight face blows my mind

Elon is the only person to ever start four 1bn+ companies (paypal, tesla, SpaceX, Solarcity). He has/is driving innovation across multiple industries on a time scale that I don't think any of the people you mentioned can really touch, not to mention hyperloop and the Boring Company. Its not even debatable IMO.

> Elon is the only person to ever start four 1bn+ companies (paypal, tesla, SpaceX, Solarcity).

He didn't start Tesla. He was retroactively allowed to be called founder after being in their Series A.

He didn't start Paypal. It merged with Musk's company.

He didn't start Solarcity - Tesla acquired it 10 years after it was founded.

I'd still say that John Rockefeller is more impressive. Adjusted for inflation John Rockefeller's company Standard Oil was worth over $1 trillion.

Or Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the guy who started the Dutch East India company, which adjusted for inflation was worth over $8.2 trillion.

Modern companies have nothing on what entrepreneurs did in the past and how much money they made. It doesn't matter how many markets Elon Musk "disrupts" nothing he can do will ever match the impact that the Dutch East India company had on the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company

>I'd still say that John Rockefeller is more impressive. Adjusted for inflation John Rockefeller's company Standard Oil was worth over $1 trillion dollars. >Or Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the guy who started the Dutch East India company

Yeah, it's amazing what those guys could get away with back in the days of slavery and before regulation. /sarcasm

Yep to be clear I think Standard Oil and Dutch East India company did a lot of bad things. And that's part of the point... If you are saying Elon Musk is impressive just because he started four companies that are worth a lot of money that means nothing. There are better ways to judge a CEO, and better ways to build a company, and that's what the Shopify CEO was saying in his Twitter thread.

Standard Oil was founded in 1870, five years after the 13th amendment completely abolished slavery in the US.

Rockefeller's success is attributed to his relentless pursuit of horizontal and vertical integration, not cheap labor via slavery.

Hence the >and before regulation.

From the Wikipedia article on Dutch East India Company:

"The company has been criticised for its monopolistic policy, exploitation, colonialism, uses of violence, and slavery."

I'm pretty sure many of the today's companies would do just as well or even better if they could have their own military force and free ticket on slavery.

Microsoft and Apple are both worth over 1T at the moment.

Granted, DEIC is in a league of its own, but it was also a state sponsored company, more akin to Saudi-ARAMCO (2T).

Well sure, but these guys did not make that much money because they were better CEO's, they benefited from the context of the times. What Musk has done with Tesla and SpaceX, simultaneously is absolutely mind blowing and it is hard to imagine anyone topping that, like ever. He created incredibly successful companies in some of the most competitive, most capital intensive, most research driven businesses that exist. It is amazing to me the man is not given his proper due. What he did was super-human and, in the long, could actually put a dent in the Universe.

It is absolutely debatable. Moreover, why would you post something on a public forum like this that wasn’t debatable? This rhetoric is a bit lazy and baity.

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