LEAN IN:Elon Musk Says Attending the Birth of Your Child Is ‘No Excuse’ for Missing a Work Function

[Anonymous]

He also thinks the Tony Stark-Iron Man character is based on him..........even though it pre-dates his birth.
Wackadoo.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I paid the boss back by leaning way out afterwards and doing the bare minimum until I left. I also made some crucial mistakes and made myself hard to reach at moments when he really needed me. You fuck me, I'll fuck you. Until he showed such disregard for me during my labor, I had been the type to go above and beyond and be perfectionistic about every detail.


PP here. I also didn't get a maternity leave. In hindsight, I am sure that my former boss wishes he had been more humane. He got me to work, but the work was of greatly reduced quality and I made his life hard in passive aggressive and difficult to confront ways for sheer spite.

While your boss certainly sounds awful, and I understand why you wanted to get out of the job, intentionally making crucial mistakes seems unfair to your clients.

The mistakes were more of the variety that made him look like an idiot to our clients and other partners, or at least gave everyone the impression that the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing (which was the truth anyway). He had long relied on me to cover his disorganized, ADD behind. Once I stopped doing so and even started making mistakes of my own that I knew he was too incompetent to catch, I just had to stand back and let everyone see him for what he was.

The moral of the story is that bosses like Elon Musk, who are petty and selfish and bully workers at extremely important moments that these moments will never get back, had better watch out. There are many ways to pay someone back in their own coins while appearing complaisant and hard working. When you treat people shabbily, you more than kill morale - you breed the kind of resentment that can make people deliberately undermine you.

I don't think that happens to most. Steve jobs was known to be a horrible boss and a horrible father at least in the earlier part of his life.. Steve jobs is adulated, was a huge success, had a movie made after him and will be history books as one of the fathers of computer science revolutionizing computers.

I think that people have to come to terms with the fact that the world glorifies innovation and success..even at the expense of personal familial relationships.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've known several lawyers who have attended events when their wives were due to give birth any minute (at least of few of these guys were a plane ride away). They usually make it in time. But they don't sweat it if they don't.

That's nothing. How many women (lawyers in particular) are still conducting business while in labor?

My husband took my phone away and hid it...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I paid the boss back by leaning way out afterwards and doing the bare minimum until I left. I also made some crucial mistakes and made myself hard to reach at moments when he really needed me. You fuck me, I'll fuck you. Until he showed such disregard for me during my labor, I had been the type to go above and beyond and be perfectionistic about every detail.


PP here. I also didn't get a maternity leave. In hindsight, I am sure that my former boss wishes he had been more humane. He got me to work, but the work was of greatly reduced quality and I made his life hard in passive aggressive and difficult to confront ways for sheer spite.

While your boss certainly sounds awful, and I understand why you wanted to get out of the job, intentionally making crucial mistakes seems unfair to your clients.

The mistakes were more of the variety that made him look like an idiot to our clients and other partners, or at least gave everyone the impression that the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing (which was the truth anyway). He had long relied on me to cover his disorganized, ADD behind. Once I stopped doing so and even started making mistakes of my own that I knew he was too incompetent to catch, I just had to stand back and let everyone see him for what he was.

The moral of the story is that bosses like Elon Musk, who are petty and selfish and bully workers at extremely important moments that these moments will never get back, had better watch out. There are many ways to pay someone back in their own coins while appearing complaisant and hard working. When you treat people shabbily, you more than kill morale - you breed the kind of resentment that can make people deliberately undermine you.

I don't think that happens to most. Steve jobs was known to be a horrible boss and a horrible father at least in the earlier part of his life.. Steve jobs is adulated, was a huge success, had a movie made after him and will be history books as one of the fathers of computer science revolutionizing computers.

I think that people have to come to terms with the fact that the world glorifies innovation and success..even at the expense of personal familial relationships.

Steve Jobs created a successful nexus between technology and commercial consumer markets. I doubt history will remember him as a father of computer science. He was a successful marketer.

I do fine without PayPal or tesla. His space exploration seems more vanity than reality. His batteries will fill landfills for the next millennium.

I am unimpressed by jobs and musk. They did make a lot of money though. Agree that popular culture lionizes these types. Popular culture lionizes money and shiny new things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've known several lawyers who have attended events when their wives were due to give birth any minute (at least of few of these guys were a plane ride away). They usually make it in time. But they don't sweat it if they don't.

That's nothing. How many women (lawyers in particular) are still conducting business while in labor?

My husband took my phone away and hid it...

Good for him!
Healthy boundaries are a VERY good thing.

[Anonymous]

He disputed the OP's quote but forgot to dispute this one in the same WaPo article:

15. “I would tell those people they will get to see their families a lot when we go bankrupt.” — Ryan Popple recalling Musk’s retort when an employee complained in Tesla’s early days that they were working too hard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:whats sad and depressing is our culture puts people like this on a pedestal

life on earth would be quite fine without capitalists pushing to change the world, ahem, making a lot of money for themselves.

+1000

Just amazing the character flaws (and crimes) we forgive when the subject at hand is an artist or genius.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've known several lawyers who have attended events when their wives were due to give birth any minute (at least of few of these guys were a plane ride away). They usually make it in time. But they don't sweat it if they don't.

That's nothing. How many women (lawyers in particular) are still conducting business while in labor?

My husband took my phone away and hid it...

A senior associate on one of my cases scheduled the weekly team status conference call for noon -- b/c her c-section was scheduled for 10. Made perfect sense to her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:whats sad and depressing is our culture puts people like this on a pedestal

life on earth would be quite fine without capitalists pushing to change the world, ahem, making a lot of money for themselves.

+1000

Just amazing the character flaws (and crimes) we forgive when the subject at hand is an artist or genius.

Rich and famous people get away with all sorts of things in our culture.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've known several lawyers who have attended events when their wives were due to give birth any minute (at least of few of these guys were a plane ride away). They usually make it in time. But they don't sweat it if they don't.

That's nothing. How many women (lawyers in particular) are still conducting business while in labor?

My husband took my phone away and hid it...

A senior associate on one of my cases scheduled the weekly team status conference call for noon -- b/c her c-section was scheduled for 10. Made perfect sense to her.

That is truly sad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:whats sad and depressing is our culture puts people like this on a pedestal

life on earth would be quite fine without capitalists pushing to change the world, ahem, making a lot of money for themselves.

+1000

Just amazing the character flaws (and crimes) we forgive when the subject at hand is an artist or genius.

Rich and famous people get away with all sorts of things in our culture.

Its not just rich and famous. Its also talent. Talented people get away with all sorts of things.

Just look at Frida Kahlo or Picasso. Or Sylvia Plath. Or Richard Feynman. Not exactly great family relationships and lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've known several lawyers who have attended events when their wives were due to give birth any minute (at least of few of these guys were a plane ride away). They usually make it in time. But they don't sweat it if they don't.

That's nothing. How many women (lawyers in particular) are still conducting business while in labor?

My husband took my phone away and hid it...

A senior associate on one of my cases scheduled the weekly team status conference call for noon -- b/c her c-section was scheduled for 10. Made perfect sense to her.

She would still be on morphine and probably not even in her hospital room yet...why??? Did she actually manage to make that conference call?

[Anonymous]

The name of this guy is so annoying. I mean it sounds like some bizarre cologne.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I actually had a discussion with DH about this. DH says that if you put yourself in Elon Musk's shoes...you see where he is coming from. He sees himself as advancing the future of mankind. He is putting men into space, he is coming up with innovative ways of preserving energy. If you believe that you are truly changing the world, and that is your main priority, it would come at the expense of every other thing, including work life balance. In a few hundred years, if all this suceeds, Elon Musk will be written down into the books of history just like Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Edison. Children on the other hand...that's a very personal decision and not overarching impacting mankind's future. People reproduce all over the world everyday.

Of course what Elon Musk does not understanding is many people don't think about the future of mankind, they also care about their own personal lifes and children. But if you see Elon's mindset, you can see why he would think diverting from that grand cause shows a lack of priority.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually had a discussion with DH about this. DH says that if you put yourself in Elon Musk's shoes...you see where he is coming from. He sees himself as advancing the future of mankind. He is putting men into space, he is coming up with innovative ways of preserving energy. If you believe that you are truly changing the world, and that is your main priority, it would come at the expense of every other thing, including work life balance. In a few hundred years, if all this suceeds, Elon Musk will be written down into the books of history just like Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Edison. Children on the other hand...that's a very personal decision and not overarching impacting mankind's future. People reproduce all over the world everyday.

Of course what Elon Musk does not understanding is many people don't think about the future of mankind, they also care about their own personal lifes and children. But if you see Elon's mindset, you can see why he would think diverting from that grand cause shows a lack of priority.

+1

Just because someone has the means to be a tyrannical sociopath doesn't make it okay.