The reasons for Hayek’s success have partly to do with his wife Marianne, who had always supported and encourage him. However, the greater part of his success is due to abilities as a businessman.
“Jochem Thieme, who had the opportunity to observe Hayek closely during the ca. fifteen years he worked for him, characterised him thusly: “Never have I ever encountered an individual with such a combination of attributes: highly intelligent, a memory like an elephant, extremely quick thinking, diligence, and tremendous energy combined with an almost women’s intuition”.
“Hayek is able to immediately distil the most important elements from a chaotic complex of numbers, and then draw the appropriate conclusions”.
In contrast to the often repeated figure of 350, Hayek Engineering consisted of roughly 40 employees. Hayek almost exclusively hired those who would bring a great deal experience to the table. “He preferred physicists to engineers because physicists don’t give up so quickly. They keep pushing the limits and sometimes even go beyond them”.
The working conditions at Hayek Engineering were strictly regimented. Hayek only paid the hours that someone was actually productive. Time spent travelling was not considered work time. Moreover, despite the fact that almost everyone worked a great deal of overtime, only 40 hours of work were paid. Yet, to encourage his employees to constantly strive for more, bonuses for the best employees were given at the end of the year.
All of the proposals that the employees came up with had to go through Hayek. He would look over each proposal and make notes in the margins. Hayek had to know everything that was going on in the company, and nothing left the firm without his approval. One could say that he was a bit of a ‘control freak’. For instance, once during a meeting, a client asked the advisor responsible for his contract about something and not Hayek (who was present at all meetings). Apparently this was too much for Hayek and he then loudly exclaimed that he was the boss here and not the employee – the client should speaking directly with him. Somewhat disgruntled, the employee left the room.
Hayek routinely called his employees on the phone in order to keep them on their toes. He even called his employees during holidays. He was never without a phone – even while driving.
Hayek Engineering continued to grow. In Switzerland he was able to acquire several clients and was constantly receiving inquires per telephone. The most important call, however, came from Ms. Esther Grether, owner of the Doetsch Grether AG. The company products, among other things, the well-known “Grether’s Pastilles” and is in charge of the distribution of Nivea products in Switzerland. The phone call from Ms. Grether marked another major turning point in Hayek’s life.
