When Elon Musk took over Twitter, he fired thousands of employees and instated a pretty drastic shift in the culture at the software company. Twitter's former product lead, Esther Crawford, who went viral several months ago for sleeping at the office, explained in July that Musk's management style created an aura of fear in the office.
"The challenge is his personality and demeanor can turn on a dime going from excited to angry," she wrote. "Since it was hard to read what mood he might be in and what his reaction would be to any given thing, people quickly became afraid of being called into meetings or having to share negative news with him."
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But the intensity of Musk's management style, his ex Grimes told Wired, is something she respects about him.
"He holds his people to really high standards. Watching him, I understand how difficult it is to be a great general and do something of that magnitude," Grimes said. "Elon has an old-world kind of discipline I really respect. And I think it rubs a lot of people the wrong way."
Jim Cantrell, a former VP at SpaceX, told Insider last year that Musk could be "vicious" at work. Similar to Crawford, Cantrell described a "good Elon" and a "bad Elon."
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The 'good' Musk "brought you along with his big ideas, and you got to be a part of it," Cantrell said, but "the bad Elon would yell at you, and he would be frustrated. Nobody was good enough for him; nothing was good enough for him."
The environment Musk runs across all his ventures is "hardcore," according to Grimes. And though that kind of environment doesn't work well for everyone, it's a mentality that Grimes learned a lot from.
"I’m now way tougher and smarter than I used to be," she said.
Grimes added that their three-year-old son, X, has become a miniature engineer, going with Musk to business meetings and spending plenty of time around rockets.
"When X saw Starship blow up, he had, like, a three-day PTSD meltdown," she said. "Every hour, he was waking up and going, 'Starship …' and I had to rub his back."
Grimes, who has two children with Musk, is "a little" concerned about the privilege they might have as the kids of the world's richest man.
"I think their life is gonna be pretty intense," she said. "Being Elon’s kid is not the same as being anyone’s kid."
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