Elon Musk (biography) by Ashlee Vance - book review

I don't know about you, but my future car will be made by a man today's book is about. Let me present (*drumroll*)... Tesla!

Ashlee Vance wrote Elon Musk's biography. Musk has a pretty weird name, but that didn't make him less famous over the years. Musk is credited with the founding of Tesla, SpaceX and PayPal. At the moment of writing, Elon's net worth is 22 billion US dollars. He also posts a lot of cringe and funny Tweets and updates us on Tesla or SpaceX news. Recently, he and singer Grimes had a baby with a name I can't pronounce. Additionally, his company SpaceX launched a rocket in spring 2020! Elon Musk is a very eccentric person but certainly an inspiring one. But that was not always the case...

Musk was born in 1971 in South Africa. As a 12-year-old kid, he wrote his first computer program for a game, that was later sold for 500$. Big money at the time! Still a teen, Elon moved to Canada and went to Queen's University. He married a woman he met there - Justine. Soon after, Musk moved to the USA, where he started his first company called Zip2. It is like Google Maps but made by Elon Musk. In a few years, he was fired from being the CEO of his own company! Then, almost the same thing happened in PayPal, which was called X.com at the time. He got kicked out as a CEO.

At the same time, Musk made a quite beautiful fortune that he invested in space and a new project. After being lied to by Russians, Elon had an idea of creating the rockets himself. Working for hours with a couple of hundred employees on some islands was, in many ways, both torturous and fun for everyone. Musk was a strict leader. He could fire anyone without regretting his decision much. I will tell you more about that a bit later.

Later, Musk got obsessed over another idea - creating an electric car that would be the best in the world. Tesla started existing. Though it was close to bankruptcy in around 2007 and 2013, the car company still attracted a lot of attention right from the beginning of its existence. Other car companies attacked it and considered Musk an amateur in building electric cars. Newspapers, press and his wife Justine, as he was going through a divorce with her, all attacked him and said what a terrible person he was, how awful his cars are and why Tesla sucks. That was on the verge of bankruptcy when the sponsors were backing away from Musk's crazy projects. Elon almost had a nervous breakdown. But as I promised, let me tell you some character traits and leadership skills Elon Musk has.

One time, Musk refused to buy an essential part for the first SpaceX rocket Falcon-1. A few days later, he purchased floor polish to "make it look prettier."

On some evenings at 8 PM, Musk sat down with his colleagues and played computer games. He crashed his employees while trash-talking to them and swearing. As some of the ex-employees say: he was alarmingly good at it.

Once, Tesla needed 30 more days than planned to launch the car, and the person who was responsible for it had odds of 95 to 5 of getting fired. And not in his favour! But once he somehow managed to convince Musk it was a good idea, he wasn't fired. The other employees were shocked and impressed with that.

When Tesla was going through a lot of pressure with the media, the manager of 'controlling-trash-reviews' had his baby born and missed 1 article. Guess what? He got fired! Here is how Musk justified his decisions: "We are creating a future. Get your priorities straight!"