Tesla internal employees compete with each other about the boss: Elon Musk despises employee dedication, fired because of his ‘ego’

A 2018 Tesla internal employee survey revealed their concerns about Elon Musk’s leadership.

Insider recently obtained the full survey results when it was used as a reference in a lawsuit against Elon Musk over a compensation package of more than $50 billion. In the lawsuit, a company shareholder argued that Musk and the automaker had breached their fiduciary duty by awarding Musk a payment package that “was beyond the bounds of reasonable judgment.”

Former Tesla Chief Human Resources Officer Gabrielle Toledano sent a survey to Tesla board members on March 2, 2018. In an email to compensation commissioner Ira Ehrenpreis, Toledano identified two main problems employees are facing. They are concerned about compensation and about Elon Musk’s leadership at Tesla.

As for Tesla experts, managers and executives, 65% of respondents said they trust Elon Musk and the executive team to balance the interests of employees with the interests of the company. 67% said they believe CEO Elon Musk and other executives care about company employees.

A total of 58% of senior employees said they were well rewarded for their work.

A set of responses about Elon Musk and the executive team shows employees complaining about company culture, leadership, accessibility and communication, working hours, and layoffs.

One worker in the survey knew: “ Tesla is losing brains, losing very talented, strong-minded people who truly believe in the company’s vision and hope for success. common public. Elon Musk is a qualified leader, but many see him as an ‘unapproachable tyrant’, disregarding the contributions of employees and arbitrarily firing them … “.

The employee added that Tesla failed to distinguish between technical leadership and human leadership. This person calls this an ugly side of Tesla’s culture.

Another worker wrote that they felt like they could be fired at any time . This person said that there is no intention of staying in such a toxic environment for long.

An employee said that Elon Musk needs to change his “ego”. Another said that Elon Musk is “bullying” people to make unrealistic commitments.

In 2018, when the survey was conducted, Tesla was having a hard time scaling up Model 3 production. Years later, Musk said Tesla was just weeks away from bankruptcy during tough times. .

An employee expressed disappointment that Elon Musk and the Exec team blamed lower-level engineers without accountability for poor design reviews, unrealistic planning, and under-allocation of resources. Those things make this person lose all faith in Elon Musk as the leader of the company.

Despite some negative comments about Elon Musk, 98% of employees surveyed are still proud of the impact Tesla has made on the world.

The survey results are seen as potential evidence that CEO Elon Musk is a “threat” to Tesla employees, including those in charge of approving his salary package.

Musk and a company spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.

For a long time, billionaire Elon Musk is famous for being a workaholic. At Tesla and SpaceX, he pushed lofty goals and even worked up to 120 hours a week and slept on the factory floor.

Former executives commented that Elon Musk was a difficult person to work with, easily angered and even raged with employees. Elon Musk has denied such allegations and said they are “false”. He said he only responded “clearly and frankly” to employees.

Most recently, Elon Musk fired a Twitter employee after the engineer criticized Musk’s technical knowledge.

According to BI