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Elon Musk has limited empathy, according to his brother Kimbal. That could make the Tesla and SpaceX CEO a particularly bad boss.
The 50-year-old SpaceX and Tesla CEO is a business "savant," but his "talent is not empathy with people," according to his brother and longstanding business partner Kimbal Musk, in an interview with Time magazine earlier this month.
The savant claim is difficult to refute. Both Tesla and SpaceX were significantly more likely to fail than succeed when they first debuted in the early 2000s, according to Elon Musk. Nonetheless, Tesla's market valuation is $1.1 trillion as of Monday, while SpaceX was most recently valued at $100.3 billion in October, assisting the tech billionaire in cementing his position as the world's richest person, with a net worth of $274 billion, according to Bloomberg.
However, his generosity does not appear to extend to his interpersonal abilities, a point that has been made often in recent years by friends, foes, and Musk himself.
"I revolutionized electric automobiles and I'm sending people to Mars in a rocket ship," the billionaire declared on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" in May. "Did you assume I'd be a chill, average person as well?"
Ashlee Vance, an author and journalist, produced a 400-page biography of Musk in 2015, telling Vice that Musk possesses "the strangest kind of empathy."
"He doesn't have a lot of interpersonal empathy, but he has a lot of humanity empathy," Vance explained. "I believe he has a very different set of feelings than the typical individual."
According to research, empathic supervisors may make the majority of employees feel much more productive and engaged. In a poll conducted earlier this year by the New York City-based workplace nonprofit Catalyst, 61 percent of respondents with "very empathic senior leaders" reported feeling constantly innovative at work, compared to only 13 percent of other respondents.
Similarly, 76 percent of those who claimed they had a caring supervisor reported feeling "often or always engaged" at work, compared to just 32 percent of those who felt their bosses were "less empathic."
Musk appears to fall into the latter type. For years, he has argued that space research and travel are critical to humanity's survival, and that electric vehicles may contribute in the fight against climate change. However, some employees and ex-employees claim they are compelled to work in toxic, destructive environments in order to work on potentially game-changing initiatives.
Following Musk's selection as Time's Person of the Year earlier this month, former SpaceX engineer Ashley Kosak wrote an op-ed for online journal Lioness stating that she was sexually harassed during her stay, and that Musk helped establish the working environment that enabled it.
"Elon makes promises he doesn't keep, repeatedly moves the goalposts, excessively drains resources from individuals on the verge of burnout, and then sends frightening messages to remind them that their efforts will never be enough," Kosak said.
Following the publishing of the op-ed, four other ex-SpaceX employees reported separate workplace harassment incidents to The Verge.
Similar complaints have surfaced at Tesla, where production assistant Jessica Barraza filed a lawsuit last month against her employer, alleging "rampant sexual harassment" and "nightmarish conditions" at the company's Fremont, California-based facility. According to The Washington Post, six additional women have subsequently filed similar complaints, with many of them directly blaming Musk for Tesla's working culture.
Neither SpaceX nor Tesla reacted immediately to USA GAG Make It's request for comment.
