Elon gives Jeff ‘tub schlub’ drub
The world’s richest man has some advice for the world’s second-richest man: Work harder.
Elon Musk says Jeff Bezos needs to spend more time working at his space company, Blue Origin, and “less time in the hot tub” if the Amazon founder hopes to gain an edge in the billionaire space race.
“He does not seem to be willing to spend mental energy getting into the details of engineering,” Musk said in a Financial Times interview published Wednesday. “The devil’s in the details.”
While Bezos has “reasonably good engineering aptitude,” added Musk, he “does take himself a bit too seriously.”
“In some ways, I’m trying to goad him into spending more time at Blue Origin so they make more progress. As a friend of mine says, he should spend more time at Blue Origin and less time in the hot tub,” the loudmouthed Musk added.
In contrast to Bezos’ supposedly lazy lifestyle, Musk claimed that he works for seven days and 80 to 90 hours each week overseeing projects at both Tesla and SpaceX.
Musk is currently worth about $252 billion, compared with Bezos’ $195 billion, according to Forbes. Musk has teased Bezos about their standings in the past, adding a silver-medal emoji to an October tweet at Bezos.
A Bezos spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk made the comments as he accepted the Financial Times’ personof-the-year award.
Also in the interview, Musk accused the National Transportation Safety Board — which has probed Tesla crashes, fires and “self-driving” features — of unfairly singling out his company.
“I felt they pursued press headlines over real safety,” Musk said.
He also took shots at traditional carmarkers who, for a long time, he said, were “basically calling Tesla and me fools and frauds.”
They were saying electric cars wouldn’t work, you can’t achieve the range and performance. And even if you did that, nobody would buy them.”
Musk added, “We did Tesla essentially out of desperation, not because we thought it would be lucrative but just to show that it could be done.”