[toss1]

>>If I'm in a meeting with some higher-ups above my boss and I have some suggestion to a process I think may help the company out and relay my thoughts, my boss should be fired because I can think for myself? Completely idiotic.

Tho I've got very mixed assessment of Elon Musk, he's right in this case.

At the moment that you first think of the solution and mention it, your boss should not be fired.

However, this was not that situation.

But, from the above description alone, we know that there was a known problem, and that the employee had enough time to think about it and present it to Musk. One of two things happened. The manager had failed to put out a request like "we have problem X, please bring all ideas for solutions", and/or the employee had previously described the idea and been ignored up the chain of command.

Either of those are cause for a decision of "I now fail to see why we should allow you in our plant, nevermind paying you to be here.".

One of the most basic jobs as a manager is to identify problems, seek solutions and implement them. If the answer had been something like: "yes, he brought the solution to us yesterday, implementation will require P, D, and Q, and we expect to have it into production by next week", I'm sure Musk would have been fine with it.

[res0nat0r]

IMO I don't expect someone with this type of "philosophy" to be that deep of a thinker:

  "1. Email me back to explain why what I said was incorrect. Sometimes, I’m just plain wrong!
  2. Request further clarification if what I said was ambiguous.
  3. Execute the directions."
  Failure to perform one of the three actions would result in termination, Musk noted.

He's proven this over the years by getting sanctioned by the SEC for posting on Twitter over the weekend while high with his girlfriend and then being forced to step down as chairman, and also consistently shitposting on Twitter the last few years that would get any line level employee fired.

[toss1]

I saw that and thought it was a succinct, highly distilled extract showing the result of 'if I'd had more time I'd have written you a shorter letter'. While there's obviously a myriad variations on the theme and actions crossing those lines, the message and call to action is very clear — either identify and address the problems with the directive, or execute it. Punting, dithering, or ignoring it are not options.

That said, the twitter nonsense is getting a bit much. When he wanders into anything outside his zones of expertise, he's a disaster.

[inglor_cz]

Thinkers need different philosophies than executives. Getting an engineering project not to stall requires rules like these.