Elon Musk

`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.