Tesla and SpaceX Founder and real world Iron Man inspiration Elon Musk has been taking a little bit of heat and then firing back this week thanks to Ashlee Vance's new book “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,” which quotes an alleged email from Musk to an anonymous employee chastising him for missing a company event to attend the birth of his child.
“That is no excuse," Musk is alleged to have written to the employee. "I am extremely disappointed. You need to figure out where your priorities are. We’re changing the world and changing history, and you either commit or you don’t.”
In typical Muskian style, the billionaire took to
It is total BS & hurtful to claim that I told a guy to miss his child's birth just to attend a company meeting. I would never do that.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2015
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2015
Musk says he strongly supports pregnancy leave and also denied another quote from the book in which he allegedly referred to himself as a Samurai.
Whether or not Musk ever sent sent such a callous e-mail, the whole episode made me think back to a keynote talk he gave at South By Southwest in 2013. I was in the audience for that keynote, and there was lots of talk about SpaceX and
You can watch for yourself in the video below of the interview between Musk and Chris Anderson. About 34 minutes into the file, Anderson brings up the fact that Musk manages to run his companies while also being a father to five children.
The CEO responds by telling the audience "you guys should all have kids, kids are great."
Then, in a kind of sad admission, he says that he doesn't see his kids enough, but that he's able to be with them while on e-mail.
"Because they don't need constant interaction, except when we're talking directly," he explains. "I find I can be with them and still be working at the same time."
Anderson interrupts at this point, asking Musk to confirm -- "Are you saying you can do e-mail while you're with your children?"
"Yea, absolutely." Musk repeats. "I mean, not all the time, but alot of the time... in the absence of that I would not be able to get my job done."
"Wow, that's impressive," says Anderson while sort of shaking his head as the audience snickers uncomfortably. "I have five children and I can't do e-mail while I'm with my children. It's not good for the children and it's really not good for the e-mail."
Musk then says something about needing to have a nanny around before Anderson mercifully changes the topic to bail Musk out of a very uncomfortable moment. While you can hear some of it on the video, the clip doesn't completely capture all the shocked gasps and whispers going around the audience during this exchange.
It's one of the most insightful and humanizing moments I've ever seen with a member of the Silicon Valley elite.
To change the world, it seems you likely need to have a different perspective on life, apparently including family life.
Or, the more cynical take might be that the highest levels of fame, success and influence come at the expense of family -- that certainly appears to be what the author of that alleged email, fictional or not, seems to believe.
