Elon Musk

`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.