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Ask HN: How is it possible to be the CEO of 5 companies at the same time?

38 points by simonkafan ↗ HN
As Elon Musk is now CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, The Boring Company and Neuralink I'm wondering: Do CEO's generally not have so much to do that they can run so many companies at the same time or is Musk an exceptional talent?

96 comments

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Finnucane
Given how things are going at Twitter so far, one might rule out the second option. And there's probably investors who are asking themselves this question too.
icapybara
It's too early to tell with Twitter.
filoleg
Agreed. But keep in mind that "too early to tell" is the perfect time period for people to project their personal biases onto the potential future outcomes. After all, there is no way to strongly disprove it.

I keep getting flashbacks to the frontpage of HN in the months after Zuck's acquisition of Instagram and Whatsapp. It was overwhelmingly flooded with posts and replies, all in consensus, and all in a very similar vein to what I see now with Elon's acquisition of Twitter. A few years later, both of those acquisitions (insta+whatsapp) were near-universally accepted as successful and forward-looking for the time.

Mind you, I am not using this example as an evidence of the Twitter acquisition turning out well. It totally can turn out terrible. We will have to wait and see. The point I am trying to make is that all these current speculations on the future of Twitter are more similar to astrology rather than anything substantial.

FlyingAvatar
There are plenty of conglomerates who are central companies who own a bunch of functionally distinct companies. Generally, each of these distinct companies have their own CEO and these CEOs will repo into the conglomerate's management structure.

I am sure in the case of Elon, there are de facto CEOs (and other leaders) at each of his orgs who effectively do the day to day management and report into Elon.

bombcar
This is the reality - conglomerates like Reliance Industries exist and have very wildly divergent business units.
PaulHoule
If you've got the right people in place, CEO could be a mostly ceremonial position.

I think though Musk seems overextended. The last two firms don't seem terribly important or difficult, but it would really be sad to see Starship fail because of problems at Twitter. If Tesla goes down, the electric car revolution is underway, but if SpaceX goes down Northrup Grumman and Boeing will have no difficulty building rockets to nowhere for a long, long, long, long time.

beardyw
Mostly:

- Employ direct reports who are very competent

- Pay them well

- Give them a steer (usually "feed me / make more money)

- Repeat

sidibe
He seems very distracted even without owning companies. He tweets as much as DJT used to in peak form, at all hours as well. I don't think he's often very focused to begin with so his companies can clearly cope.

It doesn't really matter how distracted he is though Tesla investors would be crazy to want him out, he is the reason for Tesla's valuation being so much larger than the rest of the automobile industry combined. Without him there would be a lot less reason for people to believe in it, another CEO would probably be much more sober minded and unable retain investor faith by just escalating rosy predictions and announcements of future successes after each setback

mamonster
-Tesla doesn't need his input all that much at the moment. The key strategy is set, now they just need to execute operationally.

-Twitter is what he is doing now actively.

-I'm not sure he is doing anything in the Boring Company.

-Neuralink is like an R&D outfit, what does he even need to do there beyond hiring engineers?

-No idea about SpaceX.

Also, he can be the CEO of 5 companies because only one of them is public. If you think it is too much, you can show up to the TSLA shareholder meeting and vote him out, especially since he did not protect himself with dual class shares.

eganist
Although Gwynne Shotwell manages day to day ops at SpaceX in her role as COO (including executing existing strategy), it's likely she's driving new strategy with Elon's decisionmaking where relevant, so she's essentially steering the ship at this point and has been for what, a decade? She's been at SpaceX for 20 years but at this point SpaceX is likely profitable from BAU so it's not a surprise that she's likely running nearly everything.

TL;DR: Gwynne Shotwell runs SpaceX.

filoleg
Agreed. Gwynne Shotwell's hand in SpaceX's success cannot be overstated. Seems like Musk made a very good bet on her, and their partnership keeps working rather great, even after over a decade of that. If SpaceX keeps going on its current track, my prediction is that Shotwell is only going to keep receiving more and more public recognition for her hard achievements. Which makes me happy, as she clearly deserves it.

In my eyes, just like with engineering managers and devs, the strength of an impactful CEO is in collaborating with and enabling their direct reports to deliver great results. It takes two to tango.

zeroonetwothree
I feel a light touch is best. CEOs that run just one company are always changing this and that. They should get out of the way more and let their employees do their work.
mortenjorck
Ironic indeed, given the management style Musk is infamous for.
whoknew1122
You buy or found them and make yourself CEO.

The real question is whether someone can be CEO of 5 companies and do a good job.

Personally, I think Musk is much better at being a brand than a CEO. But you can hide a lot behind smoke and mirrors if you're the richest person in the world and other rich people will throw money at you just to be your friend.

eloff
Except he was also doing a phenomenal job early in his career too. It's not all smoke and mirrors or connections.
bobkazamakis
ah yes, he famously had no connections before his career, and his parents were poor immigrants with only a few emerald mines.
joenot443
Are you suggesting most wealthy immigrants end up founding a litany of companies?

This is a bit like attributing Wayne Gretzky's success to the fact Walter was a seasoned coach and a huge hockey fan. Obviously it helps having parents to enable your talents, but it's ignorant to pretend that rich parents alone will allow you to rise to the top.

IgorPartola
Necessary but not sufficient is a phrase that comes to mind.
jackmott42
Even if we believe his dads stories, he owned less than 1 emerald mine.
filoleg
And iirc, the overall dollar value of that "less than 1 emerald mine" was barely in mid-high 5 figures. Of course, not adjusted for dollar value at the time, but that adjustment wouldn't balloon it up to 10 times that in 2022 dollars.
jollyllama
Isn't the kind of the point? Wouldn't he have had less CEO positions at that time?
wittycardio
But certainly you accept that now it's just about the brand ?
filoleg
All the FSD-overpromising tomfoolery aside (as well as a few other things that remain to be seen, like the Boring Company tunnels and Neuralink), I would say that making the first viable (and desirable; but I am ready to eat downvotes from people who will, rightfully, point out that it isn't desirable by them due to the interior not being as luxurious as similarly-priced mercedes/audi/bmw) mass-produced EV and the very recent Falcon-9 Heavy launch are kind of impossible to carry out just by the power of the brand. Especially since neither SpaceX nor Tesla had any brand power prior to actually consistently delivering the results.
eloff
For someone not on the inside to flippantly dismiss his contribution as brand only is just ignorance. There's a chance you're right, but you have no evidence to back up your assertion.
msbarnett
Like when they had to force him out of PayPal before he destroyed the company with his “rewrite the entire backend for Windows Server” mandate?
aantix
People evolve.
pc86
This isn't a question about evolution. They said he executed very well early in his career, and that's a good example of a colossal early-career fuck up (that coincidentally got him kicked out).
eloff
Because successful people never make mistakes? I'm not sure what your point is.
msbarnett
The point is that "he did a phenomenal job early in his career" rather misses that his early career is more "incredibly mixed bag containing disastrous missteps" than universally "phenomenal".
eloff
That's missing the forest for the trees, don't you think?
msbarnett
No, I don't think that at all. Clearly. The Windows mandate was a colossal, world-historic fuckup that I think is indicative of his impulsiveness and representative of his capacity for making very very poorly thought through, Company-destroying decisions.
eloff
Everyone downvoting me did worse in their career. It's easy to be a critic. But like him or hate him, you can't argue with the results that man achieved. None of us have done as much.
danaris
It's not about what he's "achieved". It's about what he started with, and the means he's used.

Most of us could "achieve" a whole lot if we were born the heirs to a massive fortune, with all the connections that implies.

eloff
Yes, I'm sure his estranged relationship with his South African father gave him such an advantage in Canada and California. All those connections! That's a low brow dismissal of his achievements.
aantix
John Carmack considers him a true engineer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQro0rkg2DE

I think Carmack would call him out (Elon) if he thought less of him. Carmack seems honest to a fault.

I don't think "smoke and mirrors" is justified.

zerohp
Carmack should read the Hyperloop paper and see if he still feels that way.
dwater
That's not the issue being discussed. His engineering capabilities are irrelevant to him running the day-to-day operations of 5 of the biggest companies in the world at once.
IgorPartola
In what universe are these the biggest companies?
dwater
They're not FAANG or JPMorgan, but he's not the CEO of Elon's Cheese Emporium on Main either. SpaceX has a market cap of $100B, Tesla $700B. That's bigger than any company I'm CEO of.

Actually, due to the downturn Netflix's market cap is only $125B, and Meta is $250B. So although they aren't all monstrously huge, I'd say Elon's companies are pretty big and require work to keep running.

jakemoshenko
Tesla is 65 on the Fortune 500, and Twitter was ~600 before the acquisition. SpaceX is also huge, but it's hard to say just how huge without it being public. The amount of commitment and work to become CEO at a company that's even 600 on the Fortune 1000 is insane. A quick google says there are 213 million companies in the world, I think having at least two in the top 1000 counts, no?
rocgf
OP did not say he is not an engineer or a fake engineer.
aantix
> But you can hide a lot behind smoke and mirrors

You're a fake engineer if you hide behind smoke and mirrors.

falcolas
This thread is about his ability to be a CEO. Which can also utilize smoke and mirrors.
aantix
He's billed as an engineer that runs engineering companies.

That's his persona.

And it appears to be true.

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yks
Musk’s thing is an ability to say things that are kinda common sense and evident to most low-level techies but which the modern corporate culture prohibits to say aloud, e.g. “lots of managers is actually bad”. Musk says that and everyone is “wow what a maverick”, some L4 eng says that and people comment how it is a loser mindset.

He may be a “true engineer” but I don’t think a particularly genius one at that.

robenkleene
Curious what you think of Google's experiment getting rid of managers in the early 2000s?

I think I originally read about this in Measure What Matters:

https://www.amazon.com/Measure-What-Matters-Google-Foundatio...

Here's a blog post that seems to summarize:

https://medium.com/illumination/google-once-fired-all-manage...

(Personally, I came away from reading about this incident thinking most organizations have an appropriate amount of managers.)

yks
I think "no managers" approach can work only for tiny organizations. Rigorously hiring self-motivated people might delay the need for managers somewhat but at some point they are inevitable. Once managerial layer is in place, it is looking to grow itself and eventually that growth becomes detrimental by slowing down the project delivery. Different corporate cultures and initial trajectories affect the speed of this evolution, but it seems like every org more or less follows this path if we're looking at the span of decades.

> most organizations have an appropriate amount of managers.

technically true, but what would be the measure? if only we could check the alternative timeline with less managers.

I would not be surprised if quantity of managers in any org is asymptotically approaching the maximum number possible while the org is still able to produce any output.

whoknew1122
I'm not an engineer, so I can't really comment on whether someone is a good engineer or not. But he's not engineering here. He's leading 5 companies.

In corporate culture there's this thought that being good at something makes you good at managing people who do that thing. But that's not true. Being an engineer and a manager of engineers requires different skill sets. And being a CEO is many levels divorced from a manager of engineers.

Elon as an engineer or coder stopped being relevant after Paypal. Now it's about Elon the executive. Which, as an outside observer, seems more to be about Elon's brand than any actual managerial genius.

cameldrv
The flip side to this is that there's a thought that you can be a good manager without being at least adequate at the task that is being managed. I've found this to be untrue, and overwhelmingly the best managers are also good at the job they're managing.

The problem for managers that don't have the domain knowledge is that they're completely reliant on others for technical judgement. If they don't have the ability to see whether what someone is proposing is reasonable technically, they also don't really have the ability to independently determine whether they should trust someone's technical judgment. This can lead to an excessive reliance on credentials, and a highly political workplace, since that becomes the main way to influence the manager's decisions from below.

BaseballPhysics
> John Carmack considers him a true engineer.

Cool. Then he should be an engineer.

But he's not. He's a CEO. Ostensibly.

And--and I really shouldn't have to say this--those are not the same job. So even if I buy that Musk is a "true engineer" (which I don't, by the way), that doesn't make him de facto a good CEO. In fact, it could just as easily be a liability.

2pEXgD0fZ5cF
Like many, I have a lot of respect for Carmack. But I'm not sure how his opinion on Musk is relevant. Nor do I see why I should take Carmack's opinions as gospel.

When it comes to Carmack's comments on large scale businesses he says a number of things nowadays that one might consider one step away from PR talk (or business diplomacy). Such statements from him might not come from a place of dishonesty, but he certainly is not "honest to a fault" either nowadays. [1]

[1]: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1348691869971185667

lokar
See “The Elon Markets Hypothesis”
varispeed
In many companies CEO is mostly a salesman and his role is to get as many investment flowing in as possible. So it means they have to be a good actor, dress nicely and go to fund raising parties. Often they are hired just for their name - so investor who knows them, feel more reassured about investing in "their" company.
dusted
Good talent combined with exceptional skill in making stuff run itself.

I'm sure many CEOs are spending a lot of time keeping things going..

I think a few (in smaller orgs) are doing busywork because they quite frankly don't know why they get so much money when the org has pretty much taken care of itself from before they came onboard..

conductr
These kinds of CEOs usually have very strong supporting staff. COO, CFO, COS, etc probably doing more day to day than Elon would care to deal with.
mkl95
Each of those companies probably has an actual CEO that goes by "VP of operations" or some similar title. And Musk mostly approves some of their decisions and gives his take.
yamtaddle
See also smaller-time founder-CEO sorts with multiple businesses going at once, a couple board seats, another on a nonprofit, an advisory role at yet another company, and periodic self-congratulatory Linkin posts about how despite being so busy and successful they manage to find time for family.

Well wouldn't you know, one of the employees at one of their 25-person companies is an executive assistant! Guess which one actually shows up more than 15 hours a week, the CEO or the "assistant"? Repeat for all other roles they "perform" that aren't expected to be very, very part-time anyway. Or if they do show up something resembling full-time they're on the phone most of the day sorting out personal stuff or dealing with their other ventures.

The answer in ~all cases like this is they don't do half as much (at any given job) as people used to working 40 hours for a living might expect them to.

mkl95
That would be my guess as well. If they were micromanaged with some ticketing system like their employees, a typical roadmap would be something like fly 1st class -> eat ice cream -> have sex with your 4th girlfriend -> swim -> eat ice cream. No blockers!
yamtaddle
I reckon it's something like the end state of that thing where the better paid you are the better treated you are and, not infrequently, the easier the work is.
theGeatZhopa
One would need compressed reports and supportive suggestions to some of the reported issues. Also, Musk isn't a one man show. He has the people.

Also, he is a very exceptional talent. He wants to know everything about the stuff his companies do in detail. By this, mostly in beginning, he lays a good base of knowledge and thus enables himself to understand the problems more faster.

The other thing is, he's working around the clock. He likes to and just do. That makes him different from us, who thinks money falls from above even when we're off to work free weekend :)

Just like my dad. Worked for 40 years 17/7. Sometimes 3 days in a row without sleeping. "You have to deliver when it's needed." (programming)

I like Musk because of this. And, I think, I would do it better ;)

@elon: I have a proposal how to extend the range of your cars

theGeatZhopa
The best about you guys is that you click on down vote without discussion or even trying to understand what others have stated. I wish you Angsthasen good luck on your further life hahhah

And @musk pls don't care about the slowdowners and the guys from yesterday, I still can help you with the range.

Yuioup
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
rchaud
Musk is a figurehead at both Tesla and SpaceX. He is too far out of the salt mines (or too impatient) to reconcile his wildly optimistic release estimates with actual engineeering reality.

Where is the Hyperloop? Where is the Cybertruck? Where's full self driving? Every single one of these is years behind the CEO's own formally stated launch dates. So who's really in charge?

It's not at all surprising that he'd install himself as interim CEO at Twitter, as it's easier to make it look like he's getting things done. Especially as he gets to play to his base of fans about 'free speech'. No word on how this is impacted by Prince Alwaleeed Bin Talal's share of the takeover, or that of the emirate of Qatar.

hedora
Also, try buying solar panels or batteries from Tesla these days.

There is a reason Enphase's stock is on a tear.

Sure, the technology is great, but Power Wall sales are Tesla's "deals to lose", and their sales team is aggressively losing them.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ENPH

GaryNumanVevo
Yep! Been on a wait list for Tesla solar tiles for 2 years now... Even the Powerwall people won't come out until I have solar (either Tesla / otherwise)
jackmott42
There has been this kind of rhetoric around Elon things a lot. "Wheres the reusuable booster?" "Where is the model 3?" "Haha the model 3 is in a tent".

Meanwhile the model 3 and Y dominate world EV sales, and the reusable boosters have become a boring part of weekly life.

I'm not sure I would interpret Elons aspirational predictions as lack of involvement. It isn't unusual to publicly push for the impossible in the hopes you get close to it. Coaches and managers all do this.

rchaud
Coaches and managers probably do not have the Mythical Man-Month on their bookshelf. Musk and his advisors almost definitely do.

In any case, coaches that make these kinds of announcements several times and fail to achieve them, do not stay in the job very long. In Musk's case, this is immaterial as he has rigged the Tesla board with loyalists and family members.

eclipxe
Most managers I know have the mythical man month in their bookshelf.
dragonwriter
> Meanwhile the model 3 and Y dominate world EV sales,

They are the top two models, but they don’t dominate the market: BYD sells more EVs (mix of PHEVs and BEVs) than Tesla, but makes mamy more models. Tesla’s models “dominate” the EV market no more than Apple’s have historically “dominated” the desktop PC market.

greenyoda
For those (like me) who had to look up "BYD":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Auto

> The company has mainly based its sales in Mainland China, but is undertaking rapid expansion into the global market, with sales hitting over 100,000 per month in March 2022, and is expecting to sell between 1.5 million to 2 million plug-in EVs in 2022, around 3 to 4 times the volume in 2021. In June 2022, BYD Auto announced that it had sold about 641,000 EVs in the first half of 2022, overtaking Tesla to become the largest EV manufacturer in the world.

nextweek2
The question is where do Mr Musks claims become similar to Ms Holmes?

He promised a lot and the team delivered part of it.

People are making investments based on him saying that he’ll have mass production of a personal robot in a few years. If that robot can’t water the plants in my house, then his recent demo was a lie.

I’m not wanting to pull him down, but Tesla is over valued and a potential house of cards. Having more realistic targets means it’s easier to beat expectations.

Herbstluft
It is possible to claim the official title of CEO and still have others actually perform the tasks traditionally associated with the role.
vadym909
It is strange how the main people running th sr companies are completely unknown and unrecognized. I don’t know if it is coincidental or by design. For most other big tech companies there is usually a lot of guessing by the media of who’s next to lead.
insane_dreamer
everyone knows who Bezos is; probably 95 out of 100 people would not be able to name the current CEO of Amazon.

another example: everyone knows the Walmart family; I'd guess 99 out of 100 people would not be able to name the Walmart CEO.

morelisp
> 95 out of 100 people would not be able to name the current CEO of Amazon.

I can confirm this; I mentioned him by name to three executives and half dozen middle managers / ICs in a meeting about AWS and nobody had a clue.

warkanlock
good book regarding this topic, it's an essay explaining exactly this: "Good to Great". Quite old but most of the concepts there are still valid nowdays
karol
Can't see why not. Musk is so famous and so many people look up to him that he turns brands into gold. Wouldn't be possible for avg no name CEO.
rr808
Being a classic CEO its difficult to run just one company, two is too much.

Richard Branson is a good example of someone who "ran" multiple companies but in reality was more of a PR genius who got lots of free advertising for his brand. However Branson was always smiling and positive, didn't annoy people the way Musk has started to do recently.

codegeek
Based on the amount of tweets he does, I doubt he actually spends time on deep operational stuff at every company. He has got people doing it for him. He does have lot of energy which keeps him going but no one can spend crazy hours on 5 companies at that scale at the same time.
lapcat
Jack Dorsey was CEO of both Twitter and Block (formerly Square), but it became pretty obvious to everyone that he was mostly a mascot at Twitter while focusing on Block, and used his Twitter account mainly to promote Bitcoin.

Steve Jobs owned Pixar while CEO of Apple, but Jobs did not participate much in the day to day operations of Pixar, leaving that to people like Edwin Catmull. He was fully focused on Apple.

runjake
From what it sounds like from press coverage of this first week of Elon's Twitter, Elon has a team of trusted advisors who all excel at their particular skills. I assume he passes a lot of executive work down to them.