Elon Musk can be like a 'toddler' having a 'tantrum,' Tesla's former marketing chief said. 'I was seeing this person that was taken by anger.'
- Elon Musk can be like a "toddler" having a "tantrum," Tesla's former marketing chief said.
- Colette Bridgman told a BBC documentary: "I was seeing this person that was taken by anger."
Elon Musk could be like a "toddler" having a "tantrum" when he was behaving badly, Tesla's former marketing chief said.
Colette Bridgman made the comments in an interview for a BBC documentary called "The Elon Musk Show", which examines how Musk became the world's richest person.
Musk once got "really angry ... and was yelling at me about a mistake that someone on my team made," she said. It was the third time he had done so and the incident made Bridgman decide to leave the electric car maker company in 2017 after 13 years.
"I wasn't seeing Elon – I was seeing this person that was taken by anger. It was so bizarre," Bridgman said, adding that he could be like "toddler that was having a tantrum about something, or upset about something."
"There were moments when he would definitely get upset and you heard of him firing people on the spot. All of that happened."
Sections of Bridgman's interview are featured in all three episodes of the documentary.
She also reflected on her former boss's working practices: "There were a number of times that I witnessed Elon sleeping in the factory, showing people how important it is to be focused on finding a solution. Because if Elon Musk can take the time to sleep there and be there 24 hours a day, everyone else should make the time."
SpaceX's former talent chief, Dolly Singh, was also interviewed for the documentary. She said that she took "the bad with the good" when working for Musk: "If you mess with the recipe you mess with the magic."
In the first episode broadcast on October 12, Jim Ambras, a vice-president at Musk's first venture called Zip2, said that he would "get really angry that the entire company wasn't there in the office at 9 o'clock at night" after "looking to see who was sitting at their cubes."
"The Elon Musk Show" won't be broadcast outside the UK, the BBC said, citing rights issues. The first two episodes are now available on its iPlayer streaming service.