Elon Musk is best known as the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX but way before his success in Silicon Valley, he worked odd jobs to get by.

At 17, Musk left his home in South Africa and headed to Canada, where he became a citizen (hismother, Maye, was born there) and stayed with his cousin, according to the book Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance.

At first, Musk worked at his cousins farm in Waldeck, Saskatchewan (a village that as of 2016 had a population offewer than 300 people), tending to vegetables and shoveling grain bins, according to the book Elon Musk.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/odd-jobs-elon-musk-had-when-he-was-younger.html

Then Musk learned to cut logs with a chainsaw in Vancouver, British Columbia, according to the book.

However, after asking at the unemployment office what jobs paid the best, Musk took on his hardest gig yet: cleaning out the boiler room of a lumber mill.

For $18 an hour, Musk said in the biography that he had to put on this hazmat suit and then shimmy through this little tunnel that you can barely fit in. Then, you have to shovel, and you take the sand and goop and other residue, which is still steaming hot, and you have to shovel it through the same hole you came in through.

There is no escape, Musk said. Someone else on the other side has to shovel it into a wheelbarrow. If you stay in there for more than 30 minutes, you get too hot and die.

Thirty people started out at the beginning of the week with Musk, according to the book. By the third day, five people were left. By the end of the week, Musk was left with only two other people to do the work.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/odd-jobs-elon-musk-had-when-he-was-younger.html?