Why Elon Musk Fired His Long-Term Assistant Who Asked for a Raise
Here is what you can learn from it.
It’s early 2014 — the time when Mary Beth Brown decided to ask for a raise but never thought that it would put an end to her 12-year-long professional relationship with Elon Musk.
Brown had been working for the modern-day Tony Stark Elon Musk for 12 years. She worked really hard as she would travel back and forth between Los Angeles and Silicon Valley every week, work late at night, and even on the weekends.
She used to handle Musk’s scheduling across two companies (SpaceX and Tesla), manage public relations, and often help Musk make business decisions.
She was like an extension of Musk. At least, she would feel that way.
Ashlee Vance, in his book “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,” mentioned this story and described Brown like this —
“Brown — or MB, as everyone called her — became Musk’s loyal assistant, establishing a real-life version of the relationship between Iron Man’s Tony Stark and Pepper Potts. If Musk worked a twenty-hour day, so too did Brown. Over the years, she brought Musk meals, set up his business appointments, arranged time with his children, picked out his…
