Leadership style of Elon Musk

Musk is often described as a micromanager and has called himself a nano-manager

The New York Times has characterized his approach as absolutist.

Musk does not make formal business plans instead, he prefers to approach engineering problems with an iterative design methodology and tolerance for failures.

He has forced employees to adopt the company's own jargon and launched ambitious, risky, and costly projects against his advisors' recommendations, such as removing front-facing radar from Tesla Autopilot.

His insistence on vertical integration causes his companies to move most production in-house. While this resulted in saved costs for SpaceX's rocket vertical integration has caused many usability problems for Tesla's software.

Musk's handling of employees whom he communicates with directly through mass emails has been characterized as "carrot and stick", rewarding those who offer constructive criticism while also being known to impulsively threaten, swear at, and fire his employees.

Musk said he expects his employees to work for long hours, sometimes for 80 hours per week.

He has his new employees sign strict non-disclosure agreements and often fires in sprees such as during the Model 3 "production hell" in 2018.

In 2022, Musk revealed plans to fire 10 percent of Tesla's workforce, due to his concerns about the economy. That same month, he suspended remote work at SpaceX and Tesla and threatened to fire employees who do not work 40 hours per week in the office.

Musk's leadership has been praised by some, who credit it with the success of Tesla and his other endeavors and criticized by others, who see him as callous and his managerial decisions as "show[ing] a lack of human understanding.