The Fate Of Elon Musk’s Assistant as A Cautionary Tale Gets the Moral Wrong
What women’s experience can teach all of us about healthy work environments.
International Women’s Day is almost upon us, a day originally created to advance working women’s rights to shorter working hours, better pay and the right to vote. Today the holiday gives us a chance to recognize women’s experience and what women bring to the table economically, culturally and politically.
In 2015, biographer Ashlee Vance released Elon Musk: Space Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. Based on interviews with Musk himself, as well as friends, family, employees and investors, the biography included an anecdote about Musk’s former assistant, Mary Beth Brown, that spins around the technoverse and gets recycled from time to time as a modern-day parable for start-ups and the corporate world at large.
The story goes that, after 12 years by Musk’s side as his personal assistant and contributing her own executive decisions and expertise to helping Musk’s companies grow, she asked for a raise. Musk considered her…
