Mercedes F1 billionaire Toto Wolff’s ‘unexpected’ first job | F1 | Sport
Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team boss Toto Wolff has exposed what his first ever job was, and fans are baffled. Billionaire, who is the team principal and CEO of Mercedes, was questioned over his first ever role as he participated on the career ladder, a TikTok video series created by Max Klymenko.
In the series, Max challenged strangers to stand on a ladder whilst attempting to guess their profession. But in the case of Toto Wolff, it would not be a challenge to ask what he does now, so Max decided to guess the Austrian’s first ever job.
After stepping onto the ladder, Toto said: “You can guess, but you’re never going to find out.” He added that the role was very different to what he does now.
Max started by asking if Toto worked as a mechanic or had something to do with cars, and while he confirmed he was interested in cars, he said it was nothing to do with his first job.
He also told Max he was a ‘drop out’ and did not have a university degree.
While answering a number of questions, Toto confirmed his first job was his own business that he started running when he was 18 or 19 years old, selling torches.
During the interview he said he worked in sales in Vienna, Austria and sold 10,000 items per day at a price of €2.50.
Toto said: “It was actually a very humanitarian thing that I did, they helped impact others lives. I bought all the torches and candles I could find around Vienna, I think it was 25,000, and we sold them on that evening, whenever that was, in Austria in the 90s.”
Fans were surprised by two things from the interview, one being Toto’s first job and the second being that he was a university drop out.
One fan said: “Toto Wolff saying “I’m a dropout” was not on my bingo.” Another said: “HE STARTED OFF BY SELLING TORCHES WHAT.”
A third said: “Bro dropped out and casually built one of the best F1 team and made a 7 time world champion.”
Max Klymenko, who is Ukrainian-born, was named Creator of the Year at the 2025 TikTok Awards UK and Ireland on Thursday, November 13. When accepting the award, he told the audience how his grandma used to log in from different TikTok accounts so it looked like he had more views.
Now with 8.5 million followers, his videos reach billions of people per year.
He said: “Thank you to my audience. I want to thank my parents for giving birth to me. My grandma, who was the first one to watch my videos.
“I’m an immigrant in this country, I feel like right now getting this award is super special to me. For your own individual career ladders, nothing is out of reach. Slava Ukraini.”
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