= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
ChristianKl comments on Open Thread, Jun. 1 - Jun. 7, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (203)
That's a risky game. It makes the company culture less enjoyable. That makes hiring harder and can motivate people to quit. Musk can afford this because of the strength of the vision of his company, that makes people to work there but it's still not clear that it's optimal.
But it is clear that Musk isn't the only highly successful entrepreneur that used this strategy successfully Jobs was the same way.
The problem is that both Musk and Jobs likely act in a way that can't be summarized in a paragraph.
If someone tries to copy them based on the idea that his time is more important than the feeling of his employees the person is likely to mess things up.
Basically the ends don't justify the means (Among Humans). We are nowhere near smart enough to think those kinds of decisions (or any decisions really) through past all their consequences (and neither is Elon Musk).
It is possible that Musk is right and (in this specific case) it really is a net benefit to mankind to not take one minute to phrase something in a way that it is less hurtful, but in the history of mankind I would expect that the vast majority of people who believed this were actually just assholes trying to justify their behavior. And besides, how many hurt feelings are 55 seconds of Elon Musks time really worth from a utilitarian standpoint? I don't know, but I doubt Musk has done any calculations on it.
It is a risky game but there are many factors to consider. I used to work for someone who was quite similar in that they would go completely off the rails if someone underperformed (I never got yelled at, thankfully). I actually never observed resentment or quitting due to this behavior (at least, it was never the quoted reason). However, I did observe that when mistakes happened, people tended to try to hide it much harder. There also grew a culture where people would hide the mistakes of their coworkers even if the mistakes were quite serious. All in all, I don't think productivity was much higher than other workplaces I'd been in.
My story is anecdotal of course and I'd love to see actual statistics comparing 'high pressure' workplaces with those that are more lenient.