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The billionaire’s hiring and firing practices at his companies have been criticized before and, in some cases, accused of being illegal.
At Tesla, Musk told his employees that he would personally approve all new hires, according to an email obtained by Business Insider.
Human resources experts said the action is not only an inefficient use of the CEO’s time but also signals distrust to employees responsible for hiring personnel.
“To have one of the most successful entrepreneurs and someone who’s running two very important organizations get down into the weeds like that is the worst use of his time,” Levenson said of Musk’s role at X and Tesla. “What that says is that you don’t trust anybody that’s sitting in management — all the layers between you and them.”
Musk is also known to have fired employees who disagreed with his decisions.
Weeks after his takeover of Twitter, now known as X, Musk had a team look through the company’s internal messages to find employees who appeared to be insubordinate and later fired those workers, The New York Times reported.
Several ex-employees who previously spoke with Business Insider’s Kali Hays also said they felt they were fired because of their thoughts on Musk.
A similar incident occurred at SpaceX when a group of employees were fired shortly after they sent an open letter in 2022 to the company’s leadership, calling Musk’s behavior “a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us.”
The National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Musk, accusing the SpaceX CEO of unlawfully firing the employees.
Levenson told BI that one way to address employee concerns or disagreements, at least within the company, is to establish open lines of communication for employees to express any internal issues.
In March, the NLRB also accused Musk’s SpaceX of forcing fired or laid-off employees to sign illegal severance agreements that barred them from speaking against the company or joining class-action lawsuits.
Musk’s management practices have also been challenged in court.
Former janitors at Twitter’s New York office sued Musk in June 2023, claiming they are owed “hundreds of thousands of dollars in back wages.”
Other former Twitter employees and executives have sued Musk, accusing him of unpaid severance pay.
“This is the Musk playbook: to keep the money he owes other people and force them to sue him,” according to a lawsuit filed by four former Twitter executives. “Even in defeat, Musk can impose delay, hassle, and expense on others less able to afford it.”
Spokespeople for Musk, Tesla, X, and SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.