What was the message that was sent to prompt this reply? I mean he starts with 'That is no excuse' so he is clearly referring to an email sent to him and I am trusting about the general content of the email chain. But for all I know this guy just got up and left work when heard his child was being born as opposed to actually taking time off. While this is a completely invented narrative by me, it could be that it was that kind of action that can leave a lot of other people in the lurch is what there was no excuse for.
My point is simply that many people are reading things into the quote which do not seem to be explicitly stated, but are being treated as though they are.
EDIT: So, everybody was screwed then? I must have mixed anecdotes :)
- NASA Flight Controller Gene Kranz
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gene-kranzs-apollo-ves...
At least the guys in the Space Program were doing for a far more valuable reason.
"The Apollo 11 crew calculated they spent 2000 hours in simulators between their selection in January and their flight in July 1969." http://history.nasa.gov/SP-350/ch-8-3.html
And the book makes numerous references to others at NASA working long hours too.
"Apollo had become intimately interwoven in the fabric of the waking hours of my life and often caused the remaining hours to be fewer than they should have been." http://history.nasa.gov/SP-350/ch-7-1.html
"I'd be checking on alertness, especially among men who had been working long hours. Were they fatigued? Were they concentrating on the dials? Was there any unnecessary chit-chat going on?" http://history.nasa.gov/SP-350/ch-6-3.html
Agreed that you need work very hard for success. But at what cost? There is a balance. If a person can't be there for their newly born child, one might as well not have a kid at the first place.
All of us have been in situations where we had to put our head down and work marathon hours straight for days to get things done. We've also had days when we had nothing to do. We are not bots to clock $x amount of time of time everyday.
There is always time to accomodate family and other commitments.
> Not a deadline or a board presentation or an earnings report. An event.
As others said, it's not clear what the "event" was and what was the context of the message. I'd be surprised if Musk really turned out to be so inconsiderate as some people assume here.