Former Tesla employee shares meeting ‘ground rules’ with Elon Musk; CEO responds

Russell Varone, former Tesla employee recently shared a post on X (formerly Twitter) sharing ground rules of meeting with CEO Elon Musk. “Every meeting I had with E had a few simple ground rules. No power points.

Only talk about what is wrong / broken / roadblock you need E to clear. Don’t bring food,” Varone wrote in the post.

“Keep it clear. Speak about action,” he added. The Tesla CEO responded candidly to the post, saying “Bringing food is fine if you haven’t eaten”.The humorous tone echoes Musk's known wit. It also aligns with Elon Musk's evolving management style, which a 2025 leaked email (reported by teamhood.com) highlights as favoring efficiency over rigid protocols, suggesting adaptability.

The response also softens strict no-food rule from Tesla meetings, reflecting a pragmatic shift possibly influenced by his own grueling work schedule, as a 2018 study in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology found that skipping meals can impair cognitive function by up to 20% in high-stress environments like Tesla.In a related news, X owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk was briefly dethroned from the world’s richest individual position by Oracle’s Larry Ellison.

The stock's explosive performance pushed Oracle's market valuation to a staggering $969 billion, briefly making co-founder Larry Ellison the wealthiest person in the world, surpassing Elon Musk. A $101 billion single-day gain pushed Ellison’s fortune to $393 billion, ahead of Musk’s $385 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.According to Bloomberg, the centerpiece of Oracle's success is a landmark deal signed earlier this summer with ChatGPT operator OpenAI. The contract, described as "unprecedented," provides OpenAI with 4.5 gigawatts of data center capacity—enough energy to power millions of American homes. Oracle also counts Nvidia and ByteDance's TikTok among its major cloud customers. In the first quarter, Oracle signed four multibillion-dollar contracts with three separate customers, CEO Safra Catz said in an earnings release on Tuesday, September 9.