Elon Musk’s Brutally Honest Management Style

I don’t know if it’s just me but I’m not really sure that anything Elon says is really honest. I suppose I think he honestly has disdain for the former Twitter staff and honestly wants people to work 90 hour weeks but almost everything else is fair game for interpretation. All of his product ideas for Twitter I take with a heaping teaspoon of salt, and I’m not sure if that’s because he’s being dishonest or things are just too in motion.

Which does interestingly I think bring up the larger point of trying to be a nice leader in a complex world. This author talks about passive aggressive leadership and withholding tips from servers (which is unquestionably wrong) but I think a lot of leaders really are torn between wanting to treat people with respect, the realities of business, and human fallibility. (FWIW I think this is a huge problem in politics, sure many politicians don’t act in good faith but the ones that do have an impossible task)

Which is why there is so many conspiracy theories out there, it’s basically impossible for a leader to be successful and also come across as consistent and fallible, just being in a position like this makes you larger than life.

I hate this use of "no BS" or "brutally honest" being applied to people who lie way more than normal just because they aren't trying to be pleasant or politically correct.

Niceness and truth are orthogonal. For some reason a lot of people conflate being an asshole with being honest.

The people who take pride in "saying it like they see it", which should be an admirable quality, seem to say the most obvious lies.

Saying "this is shit" is the easiest thing in the world to do if you're the big boss. What's more difficult is figuring out a way to fix it.

A better title IMO: Elon Musk’s Brutal Management Style