It doesn't sound like an upcoming biography about the life of Elon Musk is going to be a puff piece. Elon's biographer, Walter Isaacson, has released some details from his September book, describing Elon as a Jekyll and Hyde type who once attacked an employee two weeks after they had lost their child.
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Isaacson shared his observations during an event on Twitter Spaces
The biographer, who has penned books on other high-profile people, like Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci, described a "brutal" side of the CEO that was capable of a "maniacal sense of urgency" that often scared his employees and colleagues.
"He'd go dark and I'd know that he was just going to rip that person apart," Isaacson explained.
He even had a term for those moments
Musk's partner, Grimes, called these moments "demon mode," a phrase Isaacson borrowed while talking about the Twitter CEO.
The mother of two of Musk's children told the biographer that he could be "unpleasant" when he was in that mood, but that it "gets shit done." Something that may have rubbed several of his employees the wrong way, including a recently bereaved colleague.
Musk took aim at someone whose child had just died
Isaacson recalled how Musk "chewed out" someone who had lost a child just two weeks prior.
"He is just brutal. The thing that I noticed is that once he finishes doing it — and it was never physical and it was almost done in a flat monotone — but he would just really attack people and then a few days later, if they absorbed the lesson, he'd forget about it," Isaacson continued.
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That's an unusual move for someone who has lost their own child
The Twitter CEO lost a son in 2002. His ex-wife, Justine Musk, opened up about the painful loss back in 2022, describing how their little boy, Nevada Alexander Musk, passed away from sudden infant death syndrome, more commonly known as SIDS.
The baby boy was just 10 weeks old at the time.
We wonder what else Musk's book will reveal
The Twitter head has become a controversial figure in recent years, so we're sure that his book will be full of interesting revelations.
Hopefully it prompts him to apologize to that employee though. We simply cannot imagine how painful an experience that had to be while they were in such a raw emotional state.
