Why Elon Musk is against getting an MBA: 6 steps to get hired by Musk

Elon Musk believes that CEOs can get caught in numbers and spreadsheets, ultimately losing sight of their mission.

Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter) and the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX feels that a big problem in corporate America is the presence of too many MBA graduates, and that having an MBA wouldn’t be a big advantage when he hires.

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X, formerly known as Twitter (Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters)

“I hire people in spite of an MBA, not because of one,” he said during a 2013 interview with the American Physical Society.

His views haven’t really changed much since then. “I think that there might be too many MBAs running companies,” Musk said during a 2020 WSJ CEO Summit.

Why is Elon Musk not in favour of getting an MBA?

Musk believes that the “MBA-ization of America” isn’t a good thing because he feels CEOs can get caught in numbers and spreadsheets, ultimately losing sight of their mission, which is to create “awesome” products and services.

“There should be more focus on the product or service itself, less time on board meetings, less time on financials,” he added, backing it up by saying the biggest mistake he made at both Tesla and SpaceX was spending too much time in meetings looking at PowerPoints and spreadsheets, instead of being out on the factory floor.

Musk says that the involvement of the leader in such a manner makes the team “more energized."

“Get out there on the goddamn front line and show them that you care, and that you’re not just in some plush office somewhere,” he said.

However, he faced backlash from many business-school leaders including Robert Siegel, a lecturer in management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business who highlighted that more and more students are interested in tech and entrepreneurship, rather than going to Wall Street, Glenn Hubbard, the former dean of Columbia Business School who believes an MBA gives a strong foundation for entrepreneurial success, Raj Echambadi, the dean of Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business, who questioned Musk’s views that CEOs should be less attuned to the company’s profitability, according to a WSJ report.

Musk personally has bachelor’s degrees in economics and physics from the University of Pennsylvania.

How to get hired by Musk?

A Fortune report published this January, taking inputs from an unnamed source involved in recruiting, highlighted how the hiring process at X works. Here are 6 steps to get hired by Musk, according to the report.

• X launched its own job board, so listings for open roles on LinkedIn or other job sites won’t be found.
• The application will ask you to describe “what exceptional work” you’ve done. An example response would be, instead of just saying you worked for Google, you can say how you increased the company’s revenue in Google Ads by launching a key update.
• If your application is selected, the interview process will start off with an initial contact from the recruiter, followed by technical screenings and on-site interviews.
• Interviews are not likely to follow a predetermined script as X is a company that doesn’t like red tape or bureaucracy.
• You should focus on creating big features rather than changing button colors, when it comes to creative questions.
• Musk has the final say, and he prefers candidates who haven’t had a history of being laid off.