Elon Musk says his days are 'long and complicated' splitting time between SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter

Elon Musk added to his work portfolio late final yr, when he acquired Twitter for $44 billion and appointed himself CEO. While he lately introduced a successor for that position, the job is presently nonetheless his, and he stays the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.

He talked about attempting to handle his schedule in an interview on Tuesday on the The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit.

“My days are very long and complicated as you might imagine,” Musk mentioned. “And there’s a great deal of context switching,” he mentioned, emphasizing that “switching context is is quite painful.”

Musk mentioned he usually tries to divide his schedule “so it’s predominantly one company on one day.”

But that is not at all times potential. This Tuesday was “a Tesla day,” he mentioned, however he “might end up at Twitter late tonight, and then tomorrow would be partly a Tesla day as well, half Twitter and then Thursday would be sort of a half-SpaceX, half-Tesla day.”

He described his jobs as “somewhat intertwined,” and mentioned “the time management is extremely difficult.”

The complexity hasn’t been good for his investments. Tesla shares misplaced greater than half their worth within the two months after the Twitter deal closed final yr, on concern that Musk would have much less time to give attention to the electrical automobile maker even because the market was getting extra aggressive. Meanwhile, advertisers fled or quickly suspended their campaigns on Twitter, and in March Musk marked down the worth of the corporate to $20 billion. Musk mentioned on Tuesday that many advertisers are coming again.

While different executives could outsource their calendar to a chief of workers or govt assistant, Musk mentioned he does most of his scheduling on his personal. He mentioned he has “one part-time assistant” to assist him handle his work schedule, a indisputable fact that was corroborated by a former Tesla worker.

“It’s impossible for someone else to know what the priorities are,” Musk mentioned, including that he’s often working most hours of the day, wrapping up at 2 a.m., his typical bedtime.

At Twitter, Musk now plans to shift into the position of govt chairman and know-how chief, with former NBC advert govt Linda Yaccarino slated to turn out to be CEO.

However, Twitter is primarily a know-how firm, so his ongoing job as CTO will possible be demanding.

Thorold Barker, The Wall Street Journal’s editor for Europe, Middle East and Africa, requested Musk if he has a succession plan in place at his companies.

“Succession is one of the toughest, age-old problems,” Musk mentioned. “It’s plagued countries, kings, prime ministers and presidents, and CEOs since the dawn of history.”

Musk mentioned he is advised his boards, “in all cases,” who’s his option to take over in a “worst-case scenario.” He emphasised the businesses’ boards may additionally go in one other route so far as who ought to step into his sneakers.

At Tesla, there’s been hypothesis that finance chief Zachary Kirkhorn is amongst candidates who Musk would endorse as a successor.

As CNBC beforehand reported, Musk’s corporations incessantly have interaction in associated occasion transactions, and he is confronted political strain to extra cleanly separate them.

After Musk took over Twitter, for instance, he licensed dozens of staff from Tesla, SpaceX and the Boring Co. to assist him on the social media enterprise. The “transition team” he established at Twitter was concerned in every little thing from code evaluate to personnel and facilities-related choices.

Musk was additionally a co-founding director and donor to OpenAI, a former non-profit that is now backed by Microsoft. Financial filings from 2017 for OpenAI reveal that Musk donated round $250,000 value of Tesla autos as a part of his tens of millions of {dollars} value of donations to OpenAI again in its earlier days.

Of late, Musk has been brazenly attacking OpenAI’s company construction and the quantity of possession it is bought to Microsoft. On Tuesday, Musk talked some about X.ai, a competitor he desires to develop with a view to problem OpenAI, and Google’s DeepMind.

“I don’t want to jump the gun here on announcements,” Musk mentioned. “But OpenAI has a relationship with Microsoft that seems to work fairly well, and it’s possible that X.ai and Twitter and Tesla would have something similar.”

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