December 20, 2024 • 18 mins
I dive into Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk, highlighting eight powerful learnings about Elon’s work ethic, team structure, reality distortion, and the maniacal sense of urgency that shaped his ventures. From OpenAI’s origins to "X" continuity, the insights offer an inspiring yet extreme look into innovation and grit.
(00:00) - Welcome & Intro: Learnings from Elon Musk
(00:53) - Steve Jobs Comparison: Creating Reality Distortion
(02:26) - Elon’s Childhood: Mixed Realities & Influence on Leadership
(04:05) - The Vision of X.com: From 1999 to Twitter’s Reinvention
(06:17) - Team Structuring: Why Engineers Lead at Tesla & SpaceX
(08:10) - The Urgency Principle: Unrealistic Timelines to Achieve Big
(10:37) - Success Under Insane Deadlines: The 6-Week Rocket Turnaround
(13:02) - OpenAI Origins: Elon Musk’s Early Collaboration with Sam Altman
(14:03) - The Algorithm: Musk’s Five Commandments for Success
(17:09) - The Raptor Meetings: Midnight Work Ethic & Drive to Deliver
(18:05) - Final Reflections: Insane Yet Motivational Work Ethic
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:00):
1st to the second, 12 months. Then 17 months. Then all of a sudden he goes, you know what? Yeah. We can turn the next one around in 6 weeks. 6 fucking weeks.
Man, if I was working for someone like that.
(00:22):
Woah. Welcome back, MiMortalized,
to another edition of the mere mortals book reviews. I've got lessons. I've got learnings. I've got the learnings I took away from Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. And I've tabbed through
8 specific areas here. Usually, I'm I'm gonna have to do a little bit of a detailed doco
or kind of conversation around how I actually go through and document these or detail up my learnings,
(00:48):
what I do. It's nothing impressive, but it's getting better over time. So I'll have to do that at a later time. But what you came here for is quite likely,
hey. 1, talk about Elon Musk or about the learnings of this particular book. At the very least, what is it gonna be reflective to the mere mortal at home? Well, I got you covered because we got 8 to talk through.
There there could be again, you you might take away different ones. So if you've read this book, tell tell me if there's other different stuff. Did I miss something that's interesting? Do you disagree with some of the learnings that I'm gonna pull out or the interesting points? I'm sure you do. And if you don't, you're not trying hard enough. So here's gonna be the first one of the of the 8.
(01:24):
So the first one that I'm pulling out
is
creating reality distortion
like Steve Jobs.
Now it's interesting to note that
this particular
author, whoops, hiding my face there, Walter Isaacson, he's done, autobiographies before, specifically of Elon,
(01:45):
Steve Jobs. Apologies.
So he's done a a an autobiography, which I've also read, and I've reviewed on this, podcast and, channel before. So go check that out if you want or if you've read it, also bring that into mind. But I found that there was quite a few lines through this book where,
Walter was referencing
(02:05):
Steve Jobs
in the
mind sorry, the reality distorting
field that he actually held on people, or not so much people, but the what he would kind of, like, place on the world, I'll even say, more more than anything.
The particular section that I had popped up for this one
(02:26):
ah, the one in this one was it was actually an example of Elon's stat,
Errol.
And there was a lot of
pieces of stories, I'll read you one just quickly here.
There were times when Erol would be jovial and fun, but occasionally he would become dark, be able to abusive, and possessed by fantasies and conspiracies. His mood could change on a dime.
(02:46):
Everything could be super, then within a second he would be vicious and spewing abuse.
It was almost as if he had a split personality.
One minute he would be super friendly, and the next he would be screaming at you, what's your need for hours? Literally 2 or 3 hours while they force you to just stand there calling you worthless, pathetic, making
scarring and evil comments, not allowing you to, leave. And again, there's more and more stories around the the pain, I guess, that it was growing up with Errol for for Elon. But the I guess the main call out was
(03:15):
part of that is probably what enabled and is talked about quite a lot through the book of this,
mind
reality distorting
field that Elon had, and I think it came very much directly from how his dad punished him,
subjected him to the sort of mix match of realities
(03:35):
of happiness and sadness and joy and anger
and treating him, you know, for hours on end in some of that duality.
I guess part of that was passed on to him. There's certain challenges Elon has himself,
in a fundamental perspective on that, but it was also the
the abuse the the environmental
context that set forth someone who can go and distort so heavily reality
(03:59):
to their own
ways because of what they knew and saw from the very beginning themselves as well.
The second
key one that I sort of called out or noted down as well,
was this is on page 74
where x came from. So I guess it was just this is an interesting one where all the way back in 1999, this also came up in Ashley Vance's biography as well,
(04:25):
was the whole idea around where x.com, which now we're sitting at 2024,
x.com actually exists. It's the conversion of Twitter over to x. But back in 1999,
he actually founded x.com from a friend,
from the bank, and this is,
Elon.
Now
he had
(04:45):
the yeah. Musk now had the choice he had to describe to CNN. Living life like a multi billionaire, leaving his chips on the table to fund a new enterprise. The balance he struck was to invest $12,000,000 into x.com, leaving about $4,000,000
after tax after taxes to spend on himself. The concept for x.com was grand. It would be a one stop everything store for all financial needs, banking, digital purchases, checking, credit cards, investments, and loans. Now,
(05:08):
also talked about at the very end of this book as well, around Twitter and x, and kinda the idea behind going down that path regardless.
It was awesome. Like, it was awesome to see and interesting to see that I've literally lived in that historical context where someone's, you know, trying to put together this project, this idea x.com, didn't kinda work out in 1999 or maybe it was too new for the times.
(05:31):
Fast forward 25 years,
Elon went ahead and bought out Twitter, turned it into x.com,
try or it's trying to to build it now back into that x.com idea that he had back in the day, x.
And it was it was cool to see how this
the whole chapter
of how 25 years in the past was a signal trying to be created in in a lot of detail, and how much of that carried forward 25 years later when he actually did make it happen. So that was,
(05:59):
the continuity of that was really cool to see.
Team structuring. Team structuring was the the next, little item that I kind of noted down.
And this was the,
part of the so it's still in the chapter of x.com, and it's after talking about,
PayPal.
So in this one, it was around the restructuring
(06:20):
of the company and of PayPal,
in particular. And this is around the time when x.com and PayPal was trying to merge in.
And a little quote here, Musk restructured the company so there was not a separate engineering department. Instead, engineers would team up with product managers. It was a philosophy that would carry through to Tesla, SpaceX, and then Twitter. Separating the design of a product from its engineering was a recipe for this function.
(06:44):
Designers had to feel the immediate pain of something they devised was hard to engineer.
He also had a corollary that works well for Rockets, but less so for Twitter. Engineers rather than the product managers should lead the team. So,
again,
one concept that keeps showing up through the book as well is that of, hey, engineers should be leading this, or the Velo lead,
very least, the team should be structured in a way that everyone feels
(07:07):
the pain of whatever their individual
task or individual
niche skill
brings about to the whole. I've often seen, I think personally, there's a big
separation, a big discrepancy when you kind of go your own ways, and,
I saw this in structural engineering, when you have an architect or a designer build something,
which then has to go through some sort of migration shifts into structural engineering, which then goes again when you're actually constructing the thing. Same thing goes in the technical layer.
(07:37):
And it was, again, nice to see, or interesting to see how early on in Elon's career he actually started doing that, and it is probably
one of, I'm sure, key few things
that enable things like SpaceX, like Tesla to survive,
grow,
thrive, because of
(07:57):
the persistent
slash
manic
slash incredible way to everyone be really interconnected and knowledgeable about what impacts their supply chain, creation of a product, etcetera.
And, you know, it was kind came up again and again, even at the PayPal days, and obviously throughout,
his career, an existing career for Elon.
(08:20):
The
yeah. Next one that I
ticket it down, put it upside down interestingly.
Once again, just another Steve Jobs comparison.
This was here
oh, he said, Musk insisted on setting unrealistic deadlines even when they weren't necessary.
Such as when he ordered test stands to be erected in weeks for rocket engines that had not yet been built. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. He repeatedly declared, the sense of urgency was good for its own sake.
(08:52):
Yes. Sense of urgency is our operating principle. There multiple,
multiple times, multiple stories in this book in relation to the the urgencies, the
rise of effort that Elon would deem about. Now,
parts of that, I can see that obviously successfully
made all of the various things that all of these companies sort of spit out and the individuals within it.
(09:17):
Would have created painful painful moments, and challenging moments with people working round the clock, sleeping in the,
in the warehouses, sleeping on on the job. Yeah. For sure. It's, you know,
I think most people are aware, you know, this doesn't hide it if you're working in a company with Elon Musk.
You're there to work fairly,
ridiculously hard, just because that's that's how he was always been, and he's always gonna continue to be. I'm pretty sure he still is today. In fact, you know, some of the stories are from 20 odd years plus in the past, and there was something just recently where someone mentioned that in one of his companies,
(09:51):
x AI, Elon basically held an 18 hour, like, meeting, where it was 5 minutes,
back to back with various employees of the company to understand what each of them was doing.
Nuts. Just crazy.
But, yeah, the sense of urgency pops up again, and again, and again, and again, and it was demonstrated in,
Tesla, SpaceX with, yep, you know, we wanna set up these rocket stands even though we don't need them, but let's go, let's get them done in 2 weeks, whatever it takes.
(10:19):
Part of that sense of urgency is good, part of that, it can be, demoralizing certain people.
Yeah. For him, we worked in some cases, sometimes it didn't, but it was,
interesting that it was used. The,
next item that I put down was the insane timelines,
can crash or motivate. So again, kind of following along with what we just talked about. Here's another example.
(10:42):
Musk and this is called crunch time. Musk had jolted his team right after the 3rd failed flight in August 2,000, 2008,
with his deadline of getting a new rocket to Quadra in 6 weeks. That seemed like Musk, like a Musk reality distortion ploy, it had taken them 12 months between the 1st and the second failed launches, and another 17 months between the second and the third.
But because the rocket did not need any fundamental design changes to correct the problem that caused that failure, he calculated that a 6 week deadline was doable and would energize his team. Also, given his rapid
(11:12):
cash burn, he had no other choice.
Again, the story then goes into how it came about that the 4th launch was successful. But just think about that. 1st to the second, 12 months, then 17 months, then all of a sudden he goes, you know what? Yeah. We can turn the next one around in 6 weeks. 6 fucking weeks.
Man, if I was working for someone like that,
(11:33):
I I kinda know. If I was working for me at that point, I think I would have turned around and be like like like, this is not happening.
There's no way. Like, I I can't this is not gonna happen. You can obviously tell from me, me and mortal lights. I am not in that,
level of pushing, level of,
hard yakka that I might have behind me. I just don't. Maybe some of you who are listening to this might be like, you know what? If that all is put in front of me and there was like, let's work 22 hour days and sleep 2 hours, sounds like up rally.
(12:01):
Okay. I get it. Maybe there's a few select people, and obviously the people who Elon worked with were like that. In fact,
there's some that worked with him for ages, and did that very thing until Elon basically got to a point that, like, saw in them, oh, no. You're not gonna work bloody 69 weeks anymore. See you later, Sammy Go. Tommy you for you to retire,
if you were lucky. Otherwise, he just told you to resign, which is pretty nuts, but again, just someone who's as dedicated, let's just say, to that aspect of life, to just punch the particular,
(12:31):
figure head of work. That's that's what we're doing. We're accomplishing. We're doing things. And look, he had ridiculous goals that he wanted to do. Maybe this is the only way you can achieve them, maybe. However, me
reading that, I kinda I I laughed, I went crazy, this just sounds nuts, sounds nuts.
But again, just another story, another interesting take.
The
(12:52):
OpenAI
section was very interesting one. Interesting one because if you you're not aware, and I guess if you're listening to this now, OpenAI now is freaking huge. Right?
With the usage of Chat gbt, the release of the videos with Soarer, which is not new, it's existing in a in a lot of different ways, but they're the biggest,
(13:12):
mode of usage right now, I guess, from an AI perspective across the world, as we sit today at the end of 2024.
And it was just wonderful to read around how OpenAI actually began between
Musk and Sam Altman. There was conversations with Obama. There was a lot of stuff going on even around the PayPal mafia days.
Yeah. Just just super into it. There's no particular topic there that I wanna pick up, but just to say
(13:36):
again, wow.
You wanna learn about, you know, the origin of some of these sort of things that we now use ubiquitously today,
check this book because it has a lot of that, which makes for a really interesting read.
The
second last one that I noted down, I didn't actually put that on note, but I didn't need it. It didn't need it because this one's a huge one.
I'm going to
(13:58):
just read the headlines of each one because otherwise it's probably gonna take me too long to actually read them all out. But in here, page 284, if you wanna go and check it out, is the algorithm.
And I tried to put this together in my own mind, I guess. I was reading this particular book on the way that Elon operates, but this was really nice that it,
it was put together into a little bit of a summary here by Walter. And I'm gonna read out just at the top levels. And really the algorithm is,
(14:24):
the the way that people would,
operate, I guess,
in anything product related to create something or to optimize something.
So they called it the 5 commandments.
1, question every requirement. 2, delete any part or process you can. 3, simplify and optimize.
4, accelerate cycle time. 5, automate. Now just dig that down very quickly. 1, question over a requirement.
(14:50):
Question and delete, because I guess one of the learnings that Elon found out was no point in optimizing, simplifying, automating something. You could have just gotten rid of it in the first place. Right? Ask the better question, structure the better, process, get rid of things that are not needed. In another context, you sort of said, you know, if you're not if you're not getting rid of stuff and putting having to put back 10% on things, you're not getting rid of enough stuff, which again, it's a pretty extreme example, but it's the way he worked.
(15:15):
Again, there's more breakdowns to that. And then there was a few corollaries around what it should be, and there was a lot around technical managers must have hands on experience,
be wary of camaraderie. Camaraderie is dangerous, in fact, is what was noted. It's okay to be wrong. Never ask your troops to do something you're not willing to do. Whenever there are problems to solve, don't just meet with your managers, do a skip level. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle, and the only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics.
(15:45):
Everything else is a recommendation.
And if you wanna know anything about those sort of listings there, which this book has actually quite a lot of images, then it's a picture of Elon Musk sitting at the assembly line, cross legged, probably at 2 AM, just working his fucking ass off.
Yeah. Very good. There's a lot of good takeaways around improving a product, and focusing on better questions, deleting, then automating,
(16:07):
and the maniacal sense of urgency. Again, apply that at your own risk, honestly.
The the last one, and again, just another story to make you laugh, I guess, but it's a bit of annoying. And I noted
it as crazy work.
Here we go. On the this is about called engineering mode,
it's talking about a raptor shakeup. This is in relation to SpaceX.
(16:27):
So over the previous weeks, Musk had been cycling through periods of despair and fury about the Starship's Raptor engine. It had become a complex, expensive, and difficult to manufacture. When I see a tube that cost $20,000, I want to stab my eye with a fork, he said. Going forward, he announced he would hold meetings in a SpaceX conference room with the Raptor team at 8 PM every evening, including weekends.
(16:49):
Now, you hear that, 8 PM every evening, including weekends, you go, man, what's going on? You know? Come on. I wanna have some dinner, I'll be with my family. Well, it continued to get even crazier because in that particular chapter, and it actually re referred to that particular meeting in session, was that not only did it continue to go, but it actually kept on sliding back. And I believe that meeting ended up being then daily at 10 PM, then 11 PM, and then midnight, or sometimes it'd be 2 hours. And it goes on, and on, and more, and more, and SpaceX, and Tesla, and XAI, and,
(17:20):
man, I went
holy smokes, like, the the work ethic
that or the the mindset, the drive behind what are you doing is just so out of control. It just baffles my mind.
That's why honestly, people say he's like an alien or a robot. I get it, man. Whatever built this human, obviously, the bad environment at home,
(17:41):
the type of mind that he has, it's just insane. Just absolutely insane. And there's a lot of stories and a lot of information in here that I went. There's a lot of good learnings. There's a lot of insights. There's a lot of funny stuff, at least in my mind, because I go holy heck, I I don't wanna operate in no ways.
But in other ways, interestingly, it's motivational,
weirdly, at least for me. I I I'll say I'm a little bit beyond the neutral towards a little bit more,
(18:03):
work pro.
Not Elon. Elon's, like, 11 out of 10. He, you know, again, if Elon's going to my ass in terms
of work ethic, I've just gone, like, out of my bed and jumped near the roof. Like, that's how different this is.
But that's the the 8 sort of key takeaways and insights or learning. So interesting bit bugs, pulled out from Elon Musk by Walt. Is it Isaacson? If you got any if you got any interesting notes, any comments, do all the good things, send them through. For now, I'm immortalized. I'm gonna leave you there. Be well. I'll see you on Mars. 1 out.
1st to the second, 12 months. Then 17 months. Then all of a sudden he goes, you know what? Yeah. We can turn the next one around in 6 weeks. 6 fucking weeks.
Man, if I was working for someone like that.
(00:22):
Woah. Welcome back, MiMortalized,
to another edition of the mere mortals book reviews. I've got lessons. I've got learnings. I've got the learnings I took away from Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. And I've tabbed through
8 specific areas here. Usually, I'm I'm gonna have to do a little bit of a detailed doco
or kind of conversation around how I actually go through and document these or detail up my learnings,
(00:48):
what I do. It's nothing impressive, but it's getting better over time. So I'll have to do that at a later time. But what you came here for is quite likely,
hey. 1, talk about Elon Musk or about the learnings of this particular book. At the very least, what is it gonna be reflective to the mere mortal at home? Well, I got you covered because we got 8 to talk through.
There there could be again, you you might take away different ones. So if you've read this book, tell tell me if there's other different stuff. Did I miss something that's interesting? Do you disagree with some of the learnings that I'm gonna pull out or the interesting points? I'm sure you do. And if you don't, you're not trying hard enough. So here's gonna be the first one of the of the 8.
(01:24):
So the first one that I'm pulling out
is
creating reality distortion
like Steve Jobs.
Now it's interesting to note that
this particular
author, whoops, hiding my face there, Walter Isaacson, he's done, autobiographies before, specifically of Elon,
(01:45):
Steve Jobs. Apologies.
So he's done a a an autobiography, which I've also read, and I've reviewed on this, podcast and, channel before. So go check that out if you want or if you've read it, also bring that into mind. But I found that there was quite a few lines through this book where,
Walter was referencing
(02:05):
Steve Jobs
in the
mind sorry, the reality distorting
field that he actually held on people, or not so much people, but the what he would kind of, like, place on the world, I'll even say, more more than anything.
The particular section that I had popped up for this one
(02:26):
ah, the one in this one was it was actually an example of Elon's stat,
Errol.
And there was a lot of
pieces of stories, I'll read you one just quickly here.
There were times when Erol would be jovial and fun, but occasionally he would become dark, be able to abusive, and possessed by fantasies and conspiracies. His mood could change on a dime.
(02:46):
Everything could be super, then within a second he would be vicious and spewing abuse.
It was almost as if he had a split personality.
One minute he would be super friendly, and the next he would be screaming at you, what's your need for hours? Literally 2 or 3 hours while they force you to just stand there calling you worthless, pathetic, making
scarring and evil comments, not allowing you to, leave. And again, there's more and more stories around the the pain, I guess, that it was growing up with Errol for for Elon. But the I guess the main call out was
(03:15):
part of that is probably what enabled and is talked about quite a lot through the book of this,
mind
reality distorting
field that Elon had, and I think it came very much directly from how his dad punished him,
subjected him to the sort of mix match of realities
(03:35):
of happiness and sadness and joy and anger
and treating him, you know, for hours on end in some of that duality.
I guess part of that was passed on to him. There's certain challenges Elon has himself,
in a fundamental perspective on that, but it was also the
the abuse the the environmental
context that set forth someone who can go and distort so heavily reality
(03:59):
to their own
ways because of what they knew and saw from the very beginning themselves as well.
The second
key one that I sort of called out or noted down as well,
was this is on page 74
where x came from. So I guess it was just this is an interesting one where all the way back in 1999, this also came up in Ashley Vance's biography as well,
(04:25):
was the whole idea around where x.com, which now we're sitting at 2024,
x.com actually exists. It's the conversion of Twitter over to x. But back in 1999,
he actually founded x.com from a friend,
from the bank, and this is,
Elon.
Now
he had
(04:45):
the yeah. Musk now had the choice he had to describe to CNN. Living life like a multi billionaire, leaving his chips on the table to fund a new enterprise. The balance he struck was to invest $12,000,000 into x.com, leaving about $4,000,000
after tax after taxes to spend on himself. The concept for x.com was grand. It would be a one stop everything store for all financial needs, banking, digital purchases, checking, credit cards, investments, and loans. Now,
(05:08):
also talked about at the very end of this book as well, around Twitter and x, and kinda the idea behind going down that path regardless.
It was awesome. Like, it was awesome to see and interesting to see that I've literally lived in that historical context where someone's, you know, trying to put together this project, this idea x.com, didn't kinda work out in 1999 or maybe it was too new for the times.
(05:31):
Fast forward 25 years,
Elon went ahead and bought out Twitter, turned it into x.com,
try or it's trying to to build it now back into that x.com idea that he had back in the day, x.
And it was it was cool to see how this
the whole chapter
of how 25 years in the past was a signal trying to be created in in a lot of detail, and how much of that carried forward 25 years later when he actually did make it happen. So that was,
(05:59):
the continuity of that was really cool to see.
Team structuring. Team structuring was the the next, little item that I kind of noted down.
And this was the,
part of the so it's still in the chapter of x.com, and it's after talking about,
PayPal.
So in this one, it was around the restructuring
(06:20):
of the company and of PayPal,
in particular. And this is around the time when x.com and PayPal was trying to merge in.
And a little quote here, Musk restructured the company so there was not a separate engineering department. Instead, engineers would team up with product managers. It was a philosophy that would carry through to Tesla, SpaceX, and then Twitter. Separating the design of a product from its engineering was a recipe for this function.
(06:44):
Designers had to feel the immediate pain of something they devised was hard to engineer.
He also had a corollary that works well for Rockets, but less so for Twitter. Engineers rather than the product managers should lead the team. So,
again,
one concept that keeps showing up through the book as well is that of, hey, engineers should be leading this, or the Velo lead,
very least, the team should be structured in a way that everyone feels
(07:07):
the pain of whatever their individual
task or individual
niche skill
brings about to the whole. I've often seen, I think personally, there's a big
separation, a big discrepancy when you kind of go your own ways, and,
I saw this in structural engineering, when you have an architect or a designer build something,
which then has to go through some sort of migration shifts into structural engineering, which then goes again when you're actually constructing the thing. Same thing goes in the technical layer.
(07:37):
And it was, again, nice to see, or interesting to see how early on in Elon's career he actually started doing that, and it is probably
one of, I'm sure, key few things
that enable things like SpaceX, like Tesla to survive,
grow,
thrive, because of
(07:57):
the persistent
slash
manic
slash incredible way to everyone be really interconnected and knowledgeable about what impacts their supply chain, creation of a product, etcetera.
And, you know, it was kind came up again and again, even at the PayPal days, and obviously throughout,
his career, an existing career for Elon.
(08:20):
The
yeah. Next one that I
ticket it down, put it upside down interestingly.
Once again, just another Steve Jobs comparison.
This was here
oh, he said, Musk insisted on setting unrealistic deadlines even when they weren't necessary.
Such as when he ordered test stands to be erected in weeks for rocket engines that had not yet been built. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. He repeatedly declared, the sense of urgency was good for its own sake.
(08:52):
Yes. Sense of urgency is our operating principle. There multiple,
multiple times, multiple stories in this book in relation to the the urgencies, the
rise of effort that Elon would deem about. Now,
parts of that, I can see that obviously successfully
made all of the various things that all of these companies sort of spit out and the individuals within it.
(09:17):
Would have created painful painful moments, and challenging moments with people working round the clock, sleeping in the,
in the warehouses, sleeping on on the job. Yeah. For sure. It's, you know,
I think most people are aware, you know, this doesn't hide it if you're working in a company with Elon Musk.
You're there to work fairly,
ridiculously hard, just because that's that's how he was always been, and he's always gonna continue to be. I'm pretty sure he still is today. In fact, you know, some of the stories are from 20 odd years plus in the past, and there was something just recently where someone mentioned that in one of his companies,
(09:51):
x AI, Elon basically held an 18 hour, like, meeting, where it was 5 minutes,
back to back with various employees of the company to understand what each of them was doing.
Nuts. Just crazy.
But, yeah, the sense of urgency pops up again, and again, and again, and again, and it was demonstrated in,
Tesla, SpaceX with, yep, you know, we wanna set up these rocket stands even though we don't need them, but let's go, let's get them done in 2 weeks, whatever it takes.
(10:19):
Part of that sense of urgency is good, part of that, it can be, demoralizing certain people.
Yeah. For him, we worked in some cases, sometimes it didn't, but it was,
interesting that it was used. The,
next item that I put down was the insane timelines,
can crash or motivate. So again, kind of following along with what we just talked about. Here's another example.
(10:42):
Musk and this is called crunch time. Musk had jolted his team right after the 3rd failed flight in August 2,000, 2008,
with his deadline of getting a new rocket to Quadra in 6 weeks. That seemed like Musk, like a Musk reality distortion ploy, it had taken them 12 months between the 1st and the second failed launches, and another 17 months between the second and the third.
But because the rocket did not need any fundamental design changes to correct the problem that caused that failure, he calculated that a 6 week deadline was doable and would energize his team. Also, given his rapid
(11:12):
cash burn, he had no other choice.
Again, the story then goes into how it came about that the 4th launch was successful. But just think about that. 1st to the second, 12 months, then 17 months, then all of a sudden he goes, you know what? Yeah. We can turn the next one around in 6 weeks. 6 fucking weeks.
Man, if I was working for someone like that,
(11:33):
I I kinda know. If I was working for me at that point, I think I would have turned around and be like like like, this is not happening.
There's no way. Like, I I can't this is not gonna happen. You can obviously tell from me, me and mortal lights. I am not in that,
level of pushing, level of,
hard yakka that I might have behind me. I just don't. Maybe some of you who are listening to this might be like, you know what? If that all is put in front of me and there was like, let's work 22 hour days and sleep 2 hours, sounds like up rally.
(12:01):
Okay. I get it. Maybe there's a few select people, and obviously the people who Elon worked with were like that. In fact,
there's some that worked with him for ages, and did that very thing until Elon basically got to a point that, like, saw in them, oh, no. You're not gonna work bloody 69 weeks anymore. See you later, Sammy Go. Tommy you for you to retire,
if you were lucky. Otherwise, he just told you to resign, which is pretty nuts, but again, just someone who's as dedicated, let's just say, to that aspect of life, to just punch the particular,
(12:31):
figure head of work. That's that's what we're doing. We're accomplishing. We're doing things. And look, he had ridiculous goals that he wanted to do. Maybe this is the only way you can achieve them, maybe. However, me
reading that, I kinda I I laughed, I went crazy, this just sounds nuts, sounds nuts.
But again, just another story, another interesting take.
The
(12:52):
OpenAI
section was very interesting one. Interesting one because if you you're not aware, and I guess if you're listening to this now, OpenAI now is freaking huge. Right?
With the usage of Chat gbt, the release of the videos with Soarer, which is not new, it's existing in a in a lot of different ways, but they're the biggest,
(13:12):
mode of usage right now, I guess, from an AI perspective across the world, as we sit today at the end of 2024.
And it was just wonderful to read around how OpenAI actually began between
Musk and Sam Altman. There was conversations with Obama. There was a lot of stuff going on even around the PayPal mafia days.
Yeah. Just just super into it. There's no particular topic there that I wanna pick up, but just to say
(13:36):
again, wow.
You wanna learn about, you know, the origin of some of these sort of things that we now use ubiquitously today,
check this book because it has a lot of that, which makes for a really interesting read.
The
second last one that I noted down, I didn't actually put that on note, but I didn't need it. It didn't need it because this one's a huge one.
I'm going to
(13:58):
just read the headlines of each one because otherwise it's probably gonna take me too long to actually read them all out. But in here, page 284, if you wanna go and check it out, is the algorithm.
And I tried to put this together in my own mind, I guess. I was reading this particular book on the way that Elon operates, but this was really nice that it,
it was put together into a little bit of a summary here by Walter. And I'm gonna read out just at the top levels. And really the algorithm is,
(14:24):
the the way that people would,
operate, I guess,
in anything product related to create something or to optimize something.
So they called it the 5 commandments.
1, question every requirement. 2, delete any part or process you can. 3, simplify and optimize.
4, accelerate cycle time. 5, automate. Now just dig that down very quickly. 1, question over a requirement.
(14:50):
Question and delete, because I guess one of the learnings that Elon found out was no point in optimizing, simplifying, automating something. You could have just gotten rid of it in the first place. Right? Ask the better question, structure the better, process, get rid of things that are not needed. In another context, you sort of said, you know, if you're not if you're not getting rid of stuff and putting having to put back 10% on things, you're not getting rid of enough stuff, which again, it's a pretty extreme example, but it's the way he worked.
(15:15):
Again, there's more breakdowns to that. And then there was a few corollaries around what it should be, and there was a lot around technical managers must have hands on experience,
be wary of camaraderie. Camaraderie is dangerous, in fact, is what was noted. It's okay to be wrong. Never ask your troops to do something you're not willing to do. Whenever there are problems to solve, don't just meet with your managers, do a skip level. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle, and the only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics.
(15:45):
Everything else is a recommendation.
And if you wanna know anything about those sort of listings there, which this book has actually quite a lot of images, then it's a picture of Elon Musk sitting at the assembly line, cross legged, probably at 2 AM, just working his fucking ass off.
Yeah. Very good. There's a lot of good takeaways around improving a product, and focusing on better questions, deleting, then automating,
(16:07):
and the maniacal sense of urgency. Again, apply that at your own risk, honestly.
The the last one, and again, just another story to make you laugh, I guess, but it's a bit of annoying. And I noted
it as crazy work.
Here we go. On the this is about called engineering mode,
it's talking about a raptor shakeup. This is in relation to SpaceX.
(16:27):
So over the previous weeks, Musk had been cycling through periods of despair and fury about the Starship's Raptor engine. It had become a complex, expensive, and difficult to manufacture. When I see a tube that cost $20,000, I want to stab my eye with a fork, he said. Going forward, he announced he would hold meetings in a SpaceX conference room with the Raptor team at 8 PM every evening, including weekends.
(16:49):
Now, you hear that, 8 PM every evening, including weekends, you go, man, what's going on? You know? Come on. I wanna have some dinner, I'll be with my family. Well, it continued to get even crazier because in that particular chapter, and it actually re referred to that particular meeting in session, was that not only did it continue to go, but it actually kept on sliding back. And I believe that meeting ended up being then daily at 10 PM, then 11 PM, and then midnight, or sometimes it'd be 2 hours. And it goes on, and on, and more, and more, and SpaceX, and Tesla, and XAI, and,
(17:20):
man, I went
holy smokes, like, the the work ethic
that or the the mindset, the drive behind what are you doing is just so out of control. It just baffles my mind.
That's why honestly, people say he's like an alien or a robot. I get it, man. Whatever built this human, obviously, the bad environment at home,
(17:41):
the type of mind that he has, it's just insane. Just absolutely insane. And there's a lot of stories and a lot of information in here that I went. There's a lot of good learnings. There's a lot of insights. There's a lot of funny stuff, at least in my mind, because I go holy heck, I I don't wanna operate in no ways.
But in other ways, interestingly, it's motivational,
weirdly, at least for me. I I I'll say I'm a little bit beyond the neutral towards a little bit more,
(18:03):
work pro.
Not Elon. Elon's, like, 11 out of 10. He, you know, again, if Elon's going to my ass in terms
of work ethic, I've just gone, like, out of my bed and jumped near the roof. Like, that's how different this is.
But that's the the 8 sort of key takeaways and insights or learning. So interesting bit bugs, pulled out from Elon Musk by Walt. Is it Isaacson? If you got any if you got any interesting notes, any comments, do all the good things, send them through. For now, I'm immortalized. I'm gonna leave you there. Be well. I'll see you on Mars. 1 out.
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