Elon Musk

`3:33:41`

I don't know what that is. Actually, I've never actually seen, maybe you could speak to that. He's good at finding greatness. — I don't think he's finding as much as he's attracting. He's attracting the talent because of the audacious of his goals and his mission. The clarity by which he states it. He doesn't have to go scour the earth to find the best people. The best people come to him because he is, talking about Elon here, one of the singular most invigorating figures. In both the same order of the universe here, haters and lovers, right? Like he's having such an impact at such a scale that of course he's gotta have literally millions of people think he's the worst person in the world and he's also gonna have millions of people thinking he's the greatest gift to humanity. Depending on the day. I'm somewhere in between. But I'm more on the greatest gift to humanity end of the scale than I'm on the other end of the scale. And I think that really inspires people in a way that we've almost forgotten that that level of audacity is so rare that when we see it,

`3:34:46`

we don't fully know how to analyze it. We think of Elon as finding great talent and I'm sure he is also good at that. But I also think that this beacon of the mission, we're going to fucking Mars. We're gonna transform transportation into using electricity. We're gonna cover the earth in internet is so grand that there are days where I wake up and go like, what the fuck am I doing with these to- do lists? Like Jesus, should I go sign up for something like that? Yeah, that sounds invigorating in a sense. I can only imagine like a biking back in 10, 50 going like, should we go to Normandy? You may die along the way, but oh boy, does that sound like a journey and an adventure. — There's a few components. There's one definitely this bigger than life mission and really believing it. You know, every other sentence is about Mars, like really believing it. It doesn't really matter what, like anybody else, the criticism, anything. There's a very singular focused big mission.

`3:35:49`

But I think it also has to do a bunch of the other components. Like being able to hire well once the people, once the beacon attracts. And I've just seen people that don't necessarily on paper have a resume with the track record. I've seen really who now turned out to be like legendary people. He basically like tosses 'em the ball of leadership. Sees something in them and says like, "You go." And gives them the ownership and they run with it. And that happens at every scale. That there's a real meritocracy. And like there's something, there's just like, you could see the flourishing of human intellect in these meetings, in these group getting together where they're like, the energy is palpable. It's like exciting for me to just be around that. There's not many companies I've seen that in because when a company becomes successful and larger, it somehow suffocates that energy.

`3:36:50`

I guess you see in startups at the early stages. But like it's cool to see it at a large company that's actually able to achieve scale, you know? — I think part of the secret there is that Elon actually knows things. And when you know things, you can evaluate the quality of work products. And when you can evaluate the quality of work products, you can very quickly tell who's full of shit and who will actually take you to Mars. And you can fire the people who's full of shit and you can bet on the people who get us to Mars. That capacity to directly evaluate the competency of individuals, it's actually a little bit rare. It's not widely distributed amongst managers, hiring managers. It's not something you can easily delegate to people who are not very skilled at the work itself. And Elon obviously knows a lot about a lot and he can smell who knows stuff for real.

`3:37:51`

And is this at our tiny scale, something I've tried to do in the same order where when we hire programmers, for example, it's gonna be interesting now with AI as the new challenge. But up until this point, the main pivot point for getting hired was not your resume, was not the schooling you've had, it was not your grades, was not your pedigree, it was how well you did on two things. A, your cover letter. Because I can only work with people remotely if they're good writers. So if you can't pen a proper capital letter and can't bother to put in the effort to write it specifically for us, you're out. Two, you have to be able to program really well to the degree that I can look at your code and go like, yeah, I wanna work with that person. Not only I wanna work with that person, I wanna work on that person's code when I have to see it again in five years to fix some damn bug. So we're gonna give you a programming test that simulates the way we work for real and we're gonna see how you do. And I've been surprised time and again

`3:38:53`

where I thought for sure this candidate is a shoe-in, they sound just right, the CV is just right and then you see the code getting turned in. I'm like, no way. No way are we hiring this person. And the other way has been true as well. I've go like, I don't know about this guy or this woman. Eh, I dunno. And then they turn in their coach stuff and I'm like, holy shit, can that person be on my team tomorrow, preferably? The capacity to evaluate work product is a superpower when it comes to hiring. — There's a step that I've seen Elon do really well, which is be able to show up and say, this can be done simpler. — [DHH] Yes. — But he knows what he's talking about. And then the engineer, because Elon knows enough, the engineer who's first reaction, you can kind of tell like, it's almost like rolling your eyes if your parent tells you something. This is not, no, we've I've been working on this for a month, you don't... But then when you have that conversation a little more,

`3:39:53`

you realize no, it can be done simpler. Find the way. So there's a good, when two engineers are talking, one might not have perfect information. But if the senior engineer has like good instinct that's like been battle earned, then you can say simplify. And it actually will result in simplification. — And I think this is the hallmark of the true greats. That they not only have the insight into what's required to do the work, but they also have the transcendent vision to go beyond what the engineer would do, the programmer would do. I think if we are looking at these rarities, obviously the myth of Steve Jobs was also this. Even though perhaps he was less technical than Elon is in many ways, he had the same capacity to show up to a product team and really challenge them to look harder for the simplification or for making things greater

`3:40:55`

in a way that would garner disbelief from the people who are supposed to do it. Like this guy is full of shit. Like this is crazy. We can never, and then two months later it is. So there is something of this where you need the vision, you need it anchored by the reality of knowing enough about what's possible, knowing enough about physics, knowing enough about software, that you're not just building bullshit. There are plenty of people who can tell a group of engineers. No, just do it faster. Like that's not a skill. It's gotta be anchored in something real, but it's also gonna be anchored in, it's a tired word, but a passion for the outcome to a degree where you get personally insulted if a bad job is done. This is what I've been writing about lately with Apple. They've lost that asshole who would show up and tell engineers that what they did was not good enough in ways that would actually perhaps make them feel a little small in the moment, but would spark that zest to really fix it.

`3:42:00`

Now they have a logistics person who's very good at sourcing components and lining up production Gantt charts, but you're not getting that magic. Now what's interesting with that whole scenario was I actually thought how well Tim Cook ran things and has run things at Apple for so long that maybe we were wrong. Maybe we were wrong about the criticality of Steve Jobs to the whole mission. Maybe you could get away with not having it. I think the bill was going to come later and now it has. Apple is failing in all these ways that someone who would blow up Steve's ghost and really insult him would say like, see? This is what's happening now. So the other thing here too, of course, is it's impossible to divorce. Like your perception of what's a critical component of the system and the messy reality of a million different moving parts in the reality of life. And you should be skeptical about your own analysis and your own thesis at all time.