[MuskeuXTrump]② Work 'Hardcore'... Will It Work in Government Too?
High-Speed Drive That Defies Overwork May Cause Conflict
"We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries who are willing to work over 80 hours a week on cost-cutting tasks. The pay is zero."
Elon Musk, nominated as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in Donald Trump's second administration, posted a job announcement with this content on the 14th (local time). It was a 'bold' demand seeking applicants prepared for unpaid overtime, far from work-life balance. This is exactly the approach Musk, the 'entrepreneur,' has shown in the companies he runs, such as Tesla, SpaceX, and X (formerly Twitter). His style is to demand 'hardcore' work from employees throughout their working hours.
Musk has always personally conveyed the message that he wants employees to work in a hardcore manner. He often calls himself a workaholic in public and emphasizes that he only takes 2-3 days off per year. After acquiring Twitter in 2022, he installed beds and sleep lights in the office and was seen working late nights himself. Photos released to the media at the time, including BBC broadcasts, show that Musk placed beds in spaces used by employees outside his personal office without separate notice, silently pressuring them to work overtime. To achieve Twitter's future goals early, he bluntly told employees that "working 7 days a week, averaging 12-hour shifts per day" was necessary and asked them to prepare for working over 80 hours per week.
This approach has been Musk's work style since the early days of his startups. When Musk set up Zip2's first office in 1995, he laid a mattress on the floor and slept there. He often slept on the roof of Tesla's Nevada battery factory and under desks at the Fremont assembly plant. In 2018, when reporters asked how many hours of work were most appropriate to change the world, Musk replied, "It depends, but 80 to 100 hours a week is suitable." He also stated that he himself works 120 hours per week.
The message Musk revealed in the Department of Government Efficiency job posting can be interpreted as his intention to apply the same hardcore work style he used in business to the U.S. government. Accordingly, Musk's coercive work style is expected to inevitably clash with the civil service organizational culture. Currently, many federal employees continue to work remotely after the pandemic. The Biden administration has attempted to bring some remote workers back to the office, but employees have resisted. The number of subway passengers in Washington DC, where many civil servants are concentrated, has dropped from 700,000 per day before COVID-19 to 400,000 now, reflecting this situation.
Musk also does not hesitate to demand long working hours and pressure employees to deliver results on unrealistic schedules. Musk's close associates have dubbed this the 'surge,' meaning a sudden spike in current or voltage. It signifies Musk's style of working all-in 24 hours a day. If this Musk style is applied to the Department of Government Efficiency, conflicts are inevitable.
The biography 'Elon Musk,' published last September, introduced several cases where he set stormy schedules while running SpaceX, which aims for Mars exploration. In July 2021, feeling that preparations for Starship flights were slow, he suddenly demanded related employees to "remove the booster and second stage of Starship from the manufacturing area and stack them on the launch pad within ten days." Although the actual flight readiness was in April 2023, his idea was to make everyone tense by setting an impossible schedule. In July 2022, when employees said they needed ten days to place the booster on the launch pad for Starship engine tests, he ordered them to do it in just one day.
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
