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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33435382

by simonkafan • 4 years ago

38 91 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

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?

Finnucane• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

It's too early to tell with Twitter.

filoleg4• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

This is the reality - conglomerates like Reliance Industries exist and have very wildly divergent business units.

PaulHoule• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

Mostly:

- Employ direct reports who are very competent

- Pay them well

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

- Repeat

sidibe• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

-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• 4 years ago

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.

filoleg4• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

Ironic indeed, given the management style Musk is infamous for.

whoknew11222• 4 years ago

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.

eloff6• 4 years ago

Except he was also doing a phenomenal job early in his career too. It's not all smoke and mirrors or connections.

bobkazamakis• 4 years ago

ah yes, he famously had no connections before his career, and his parents were poor immigrants with only a few emerald mines.

jollyllama• 4 years ago

Isn't the kind of the point? Wouldn't he have had less CEO positions at that time?

wittycardio• 4 years ago

But certainly you accept that now it's just about the brand ?

msbarnett3• 4 years ago

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?

eloff6• 4 years ago

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.

aantix4• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

Carmack should read the Hyperloop paper and see if he still feels that way.

dwater2• 4 years ago

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.

rocgf• 4 years ago

OP did not say he is not an engineer or a fake engineer.

yks2• 4 years ago

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.

whoknew11222• 4 years ago

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.

BaseballPhysics• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

See “The Elon Markets Hypothesis”

varispeed• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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.

mkl952• 4 years ago

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.

yamtaddle2• 4 years ago

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.

mkl952• 4 years ago

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!

theGeatZhopa2• 4 years ago

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

theGeatZhopa2• 4 years ago

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.

lastofthemojito• 4 years ago

Is Wikipedia's Neuralink article out-of-date? It lists Jared Birchall as CEO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuralink

Your point stands of course - Musk's attention must be growing increasingly divided with all of these ventures, you'd think he'd run out of cycles even to delegate work.

Yuioup• 4 years ago

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

rchaud2• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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)

jackmott422• 4 years ago

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.

rchaud2• 4 years ago

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.

dragonwriter• 4 years ago

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.

nextweek2• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

It is possible to claim the official title of CEO and still have others actually perform the tasks traditionally associated with the role.

vadym909• 4 years ago

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_dreamer2• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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

philliphaydon• 4 years ago

CEO is just a title.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/07/elon-musk-ceo-is-made-up-tit...

karol• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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.

insane_dreamer2• 4 years ago

All these companies have someone(s) who actually runs them (i.e., the COO at SpaceX), leaving Musk with overall strategy/vision (though he obviously gets deeply involved too at times, at least he did with Tesla for a period.)

shadowfoxx• 4 years ago

If you own 5 companies then you're CEO of 5 companies at the same time.

Companies are just fiefdoms and 'CEO' or any other title the lord gives themselves is just that. Like Kings ruled over country, or countries, the quantity does not matter at scale. Yeah as such 1 king, sorry, 1 CEO couldn't rule over 1000 companies that were each 1 person working - that would be 1000 people reporting and asking questions of 1 person. But at scale, the people at Tesla, etc, don't report to Musk.

If anything, at the scale these companies are at a CEO is worth their connections and as one of the handful of men considered "Richest people in the world" he has access to anyone at anytime, it seems. He has access to any and all resources. So if there is a problem at any one of these companies that cannot be solved by the entire company beneath him, then Musk most likely has the access to solve it - but these issues are few and far between, realistically.

At worst, he fills his time by inserting himself into problems that he's not capable of solving (looking at you hyperloop) and at best, he spends his days chillin responding to emails, attending fancy lunches and dinners, and attending boring meetings.

Bubble_Pop_22• 4 years ago

Me thinks Musk is stacking up companies the same way the stripper in "The big short" was stacking houses.

In both cases there is tons of leverage involved. The stripper levered up using home equity to buy new apartments, whereas Musk is using political climate.

The functional companies are relying on political climate as leverage.

Tesla= Political will to do something about climate change

SpaceX= Political will to do something in space for dick measuring contest purposes

The Boring Company= hype fueled scam

Neuralink = hype fueled scam

lalos• 4 years ago

Bingo, he might be trying to spread out and "too big to fail" to ensure a bailout from the US gov or banks for that matter.

65934• 4 years ago

Bro this isn't reddit lmao, relax

Chirag• 4 years ago

I think being CEO for X number of places is more of a directions setting and "visionary" thinking if you have a strong execution layer beneath you.

Twitter just seems to be getting some attention as a recent project and will be hands-on till the actual doers are in the right places.

If you are not tasked with raising capital and hiring people, I am guessing you can be CEO in many more places. :)

juancn• 4 years ago

CEOs are mostly about vision and culture/values (with financials thrown in for good measure).

Execution falls on other executives and their orgs. If the exec team is good, it's not a hands on job unless shit hits the fan at a huge level.

twawaaay• 4 years ago

I think the mistake is assuming that there is any connection between amount of work put in and your productivity as a CEO.

Even for a developer, various people can be wildly differing in productivity, by order or more of magnitude.

When you become high level manager it is some of your key decisions that will decide how successful you (your company) are.

Those decisions do require preparatory work, but here people can really be on completely different levels. If you do it well, you can get the information fast, ask questions fast, make decisions fast, delegate the work and set up systems to get notified if something isn't working smoothly. Finding trusted people to delegate to is paramount.

It is not like Elon Musk is doing all this job himself. He decides what he wants to do himself, what is important at the moment and what can be delegated. If you are able to find trusted people to delegate stuff to and you can devour knowledge (as Musk is known to be able to do) I think there is not a huge issue in being CEO of multiple companies other than shareholders being a bit concerned that if stuff will blow up he may not be able to put multiple fires at the same time.

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

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