'There wasn’t some other way to do this' — Elon Musk says 'everyone' at Tesla was working 100-hour weeks to ramp up Model 3 production (TSLA)

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November 2, 2018 2:53 PM

In Tesla's push to ramp up production of the Model 3 sedan, the company's employees and its CEO have been working absurd hours. And Musk says there's no other way they could have done it.

In
Moreover, Musk says that "everyone" at Tesla was working 100-hour weeks.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is having a particularly hard year.

"This year felt like five years of aging, frankly. The worst year of my entire career," Musk said in a new interview with Recode's Kara Swisher.

There are a lot of reasons for that, but prime among them is the absurd hours he puts in at Tesla: Upwards of 120 hours per week, and an average of 100-hours per week throughout the year.

"I haven’t counted exactly, but I would just sort of sleep for a few hours, work, sleep for a few hours, work, seven days a week," he said. "Some of those must have been 120 hours, or something nutty. You’re gonna go a little bonkers if you work 120 hours a week."

A little bonkers, you say?

For some context, working a 120-hour week is equivalent to working 17 hours on average every day without any days off. Musk would almost certainly have to sleep at the office for that to happen — something that he's known for doing.

Beyond the CEO, though, Musk said that "everyone" at Tesla was working 100-hour weeks in 2018 in an effort to ramp up production of the company's most recent car, the Model 3. Working 100 hours in a week is equivalent to 14 hours on average every day without any days off.

"There wasn’t some other way to do this," Musk said. When pushed, Musk reiterated: "There wasn’t some other way to do this, Kara."

That said, it sounds like those kind of hours have shrunken back to slightly more reasonable levels as Model 3 production has reached internal targets. "Now we’re down to 80 or 90. It’s pretty manageable," Musk said.

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