Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees
themindsetapp.com
themindsetapp.com
Btw, here are a few productivity recommendations:
– Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over
time. Please get of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to
the whole audience, in which case keep them very short.
– Also get rid of frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent
matter. Meeting frequency should drop rapidly once the urgent matter is resolved.
– Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding
value. It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time.
– Don’t use acronyms or nonsense words for objects, software or processes at Tesla.
In general, anything that requires an explanation inhibits communication. We don’t want
people to have to memorize a glossary just to function at Tesla.
– Communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done,
not through the “chain of command”. Any manager who attempts to enforce chain of command
communication will soon find themselves working elsewhere.
– A major source of issues is poor communication between depts. The way to solve this
is allow free flow of information between all levels. If, in order to get something done
between depts, an individual contributor has to talk to their manager, who talks to a
director, who talks to a VP, who talks to another VP, who talks to a director, who talks
to a manager, who talks to someone doing the actual work, then super dumb things will
happen. It must be ok for people to talk directly and just make the right thing happen.
– In general, always pick common sense as your guide. If following a “company rule”
is obviously ridiculous in a particular situation, such that it would make for a great
Dilbert cartoon, then the rule should change.| "Touch UI" | "Mobile UI" | "Everywhere UI" | "Fisher-Price UI" |
... or my personal favorite...
| "Mega-Bloks" |
For internal processes, this is fair enough. But anything that will be exposed to an end-user should be simple without shorthand.
For your example, just call it touchscreen mode.
Say a document talks about “the new windows UI” and there were like 5 different versions of “new ui” during the lifetime of the project. Which version is the document talking about?
- Communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done
This sounds like a great idea, however it can lead to things like the CEO pinging engineers to fix problems he doesn't fully understand. I've seen this happen often, and it's really annoying how often we have to tell the CEO he can't do this (extremely important people have already quit because of it).
I love the idea about walking out of meetings though, and just minimizing them as much as possible.
For a CEO, VP, or other "executive" type, practicing seagull management is time inefficient for them in any regards. They should be delegating tasks, and trusting their reports to handle the issue.
Of course, sometimes one must become the executive who gets in the weeds as Musk is doing, but that is because the reports have failed in some crucial aspects and one must unfuck the situation.
Isn't it just another part of the job? Obviously a person doing the actual work is supposed to explain what is and isn't possible, no?
How many CEOs will respond well when an employee does push back against their directions?
There are good reasons that most companies don’t operate this way.
Therefore, there is no evidence, just suspicion he is not doing the actual engineering work himself.
As an engineer, my time is limited. I simply do not have time to immidietly deal with every problem that anyone wants dealt with.
The general rule we settled on where I work is to ask the relevant project manager first. If the project manager gives the okay, you can talk directly to the relevant engineer. Otherwise, your request will go on a list and be dealt with "at some point".
Of course, in an emergency, you can still go straight to the relevant person. And everything is always an emergency...
Even if every employee would be good at everything that anyone in the company does — which obviously isn't and cannot be the case — communications aren't this wholly rational process that benefits the company proportionally to how it benefits the agents, and it's unlikely that "factor of ten better precision" could be born as a result of important design decisions taken by some random pairs of lowest-level workers in private discussions, without informing anyone else involved (simply because they don't really understand how anyone is involved/affected by their clever decision).
Long story short, even given all this not-entirely-serious image of Musk, I'm kinda surprised to hear so naïve statements from him. He's in business long enough to know already that some idealistic visions just don't work in the real wordld, and it's one thing to tell them to your buyers and inverstors, and another — to your actual employees.
However, at my current job we frequently have little meetings here and there post-standup for clarification, discussions, analysis, of issues, etc. Frequently they do not apply, but I do not find myself willing to leave despite explicitly being told I do not have to be there.
It's hard to walk out of a meeting, when you know how it looks, because your manager is the one to handle everything from vacation requests to promotions. Building up "social credit" greases the wheels later on when you are the one who needs something. Unless your manager is a proponent of the policy, you're fighting the tide.
Maybe I'm not picking a good term / elucidating properly, but the second type of "social credit" is the fostering of a favorable view, building good rapport with your manager. Your manager does not put you in a meeting for shits-and-giggles, either because there is a real need or as some impotent display of power. For the latter, when you walk out you're making some strife and come salary review time, vacation request time, etc. it can bite you in the ass.
This can and will have a chilling effect on the efficacy of the "Fuck Meetings" rule. However, it does make clear the culture and expectations of the organization, so hopefully those managers would eventually shape up or ship out.
I get what you're saying and not sure what the right word for it is. Basically, it's showing them 'respect' or whatever for their position so that eventually when you have to have something that matters to you signed off on, you get it. I think social credit is a decent phrase though there might be a better one out there.
There is 0 chance in any scenario that a net benefit would come out of that.
Media queries seem straightforward enough.
This is par for the course in most other forums.
(The mobile formatting issue wouldn't happen but for a few rare crazies who attempt to hijack the wrong syntax.)
"Btw, here are a few productivity recommendations:"
– Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time. Please get of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short.
– Also get rid of frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency should drop rapidly once the urgent matter is resolved.
– Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding value. It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time.
– Don’t use acronyms or nonsense words for objects, software or processes at Tesla. In general, anything that requires an explanation inhibits communication. We don’t want people to have to memorize a glossary just to function at Tesla.
– Communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done, not through the “chain of command”. Any manager who attempts to enforce chain of command communication will soon find themselves working elsewhere.
– A major source of issues is poor communication between depts. The way to solve this is allow free flow of information between all levels. If, in order to get something done between depts, an individual contributor has to talk to their manager, who talks to a director, who talks to a VP, who talks to another VP, who talks to a director, who talks to a manager, who talks to someone doing the actual work, then super dumb things will happen. It must be ok for people to talk directly and just make the right thing happen.
– In general, always pick common sense as your guide. If following a “company rule” is obviously ridiculous in a particular situation, such that it would make for a great Dilbert cartoon, then the rule should change. reply
You have to put a lot of faith into your workforce to allow so much freedom in their operation.
If your company is running with scissors you need every individual to be a top performer who knows exactly what they are doing at all times. That is hard to guarantee when you start scaling up your headcount.
Rules of the game change very often, sometimes super liberal like "ya ran out of disk space? Just rip it off someone who doesn't need it" then blaming you for the chaos and rushed decisions because a developer made the error of exiting a meeting before listening to an important point by field ops which they could not have foreseen.
Autopilot, Supercharger, or even name of Tesla Inc. itself. Your number-one choice for AC electrical coils?
And what do they say when discussing LIDAR sensors, for example? "We need to select a vendor for the laser-imaging-detection-and-ranging sensor". "Well Bob I propose the Bosch laser-imaging-detection-and-ranging sensor which runs on 28 volt direct-current". Not conducive to more efficient meetings.
Acronyms and codewords serve a purpose in any context that involves repetition.
If I were Mr Musk I'd be less concerned about the mental burden of acronyms and more worried about the physical strain and injury on the shop floor. But the latter can't be 'fixed' with an e-mail missive.
- they didn't invent the LIDAR, and it is the widely used name for this device so if course they must use it. This recomandation just advise not creating new acronyms inside the company. (A better example would be the BFR but that's kind of a joke) Better to choose a small name than an acronym
> "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation"
Acronyms have their place, and can be more descriptive than, say, project Glorfindel.
I like this. Crucially, it's not “ignore the rule”; it's “fix the rule”.
Yes, communication should travel thru the shortest path, but it needs to go thru channels at some point, once the initial contact is made, otherwise the layers in the reporting structure are never aware of any extra hours spent reporting a problem. In this same vein, avoid manager-telephone-game when possible, but still keep everyone in the loop.
Common sense is great, provided it results in process being changed, not just ignored.
Sometimes jargon is a needed thing, if you have many many subsystems and objects in play, you may need jargon rather than a long form description of what the thing does "alternator" versus "alternating current power generation device".
Sometimes meetings are the last resort when all other communication mediums have failed, and often in that case a long meeting is the only possible solution, while regular meetings should never be considered beneficial, putting a kibosh on all meetings will do more harm than good.
is this widespread or just symptoms of top heavy companies? while I nod my head at most of what Musk relayed far too much seems to be just speaking to head nodding supporters. Many of know this, the question is how to communicate it to those who need to understand they are the issue
This is where ticketing systems come in handy. They both track the work performed as well as the time spent - many (Zendesk and Service Now at least) have a timer that starts when you open the ticket in the web client, and records that time whenever you submit an update. The mantra is "if it's not in a ticket, then it didn't happen".
Between a kanban/scrum planning system and the ticket system, your people managers should be drowning in data about what you're doing and how long it's taking. Zendesk has a full section of its site to analyze metrics, and at my last job individual engineers discussed their metrics daily.
This eliminates the need to CC your manager while obviating that whole communication. The hard part is keeping everyone in the system, and constantly pulling people back from email to tickets. Having a pretty web interface helps a lot.
The part about the midnight oil doesn't even make sense and seems to celebrate excessively hard work which I can't believe is a good thing - the studies I've seen seem to point to anything more than a 7 hour day being counter-productive.
Additionally some of the things he has written seem to smack of inexperience. Yeah hierarchies can be annoying but presumably they are there to serve a purpose (after all he set it up!).
Can't disagree with what he says about meetings though!
Looking forwards Tesla will settle into a much gentler pace, and it will become the same old incremental production cycle plant mentality thats shared by so many. But right now it must be amazing to be on the floor, even if it is exhausting.
Sincere questions for Musk would be:
How are you supporting your management team when you've asked their subordinates to bypass them with good ideas for exposure, leaving them only to provide risks and bad news their subordinates didn't want to bring forward?
How do local team leaders take risks when their team is encouraged to defect and draw in the exec at the first sign of controversy, or just opportunistically?
How do your teams commit to shared outcomes when an arbitrary member can call in a veto from the top?
How do you as the owner not become the bottleneck (and blocker) while everyone clambers to have your support their pet issue because they know nothing is going to get traction without your royal assent?
How do managers not just fire people who call in your air support for things they are in fact wrong about, and how do managers trust those people to be a part of the team after?
His company, his rules. But having seen this kind of naive abdication of responsibility for effective delegation in practice, it is reasonable to ask how this thing scales when you add the uncertainty of a random super veto, and encourage and reward transgression.
edit: better link to "The Asshole Filter," article.
"If you tell people "the only way to contact me is to break a rule" you will only be contacted by rule-breakers.
But wait, it can get worse. If, despite telling everyone to use the departmental email address, Fred personally handles – expedites – the requests of people who email him at his personal email account, he is now rewarding those who transgress.
So far, I've been talking about being an asshole (or not) – that is, transgressiveness – as a fixed trait. But that's not how personality works, even assuming it is a personality trait. If it is a personality trait then it's more like a "set point" for something that varies with circumstances.
Which means if you reward it, you will get more of it."
Workaholism isn’t fun nor is it healthy. Maybe for single people it can work but if you give a damn about family or friends it will slowly destroy your life.
>If somebody else is working 50 hours and you are working 100. You get twice as done - as much done, in the course of a year as the other company.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX7I_Rw8Q0I&#t=4m54
Also, there are a few interviews where he says that [sometimes] he works that much despite being incredible painful.
It's cute lines like this that make the fanboys love Musk. Myself included.
And in the same email he says they’re going to ruthlessly cut costs. Is there some supply-chain advantage that arises from super tight tolerances that I’m not seeing? As far as I can tell this raises costs, and makes you more vulnerable to supply-chain disruption since fewer suppliers can keep up.
He offers no justification, other than some hypothetical obsessive Tesla owner being impressed.
[1] https://metalcutting.com/your-tight-tolerance-could-be-serio...
If the cars are designed so that there is some genuine need or benefit from general extra tight tolerancing, then the issue is way way worse than merely tolerancing out of ignorance. In that case the design work is going to result in high workload in assembly in addition of high workload in fabrication.
I sincerely hope it was just a cheap marketing stunt aimed at consumers.
Semiconductor plants often shut down over July 4th or Christmas for maintenance. You were compelled to take vacation when that happened or you were on unpaid leave.
In practice, where I worked, most managers generally worked it out informally if you didn't have enough vacation days.
And this is in an industry (auto) that actually has organized labor in the US?
What did the auto unions actually accomplish in the last 3-4 decades?
Survival.
When you are the target of a very well-funded propaganda campaign to delegitimize your very existence, what do you expect?
People in the US are so stupid that they denigrate the very unions that stood in front of guns and bullets in order to get them the 40 hour work week, child labor laws, pensions, and health care to name just a few accomplishments.
It's beginning to turn (see the recent teacher walkouts--most of which are illegal in the eyes of the law, by the way), but it's very slow.
This is toxic tone. Waving a baseball bat at your team shows— and instills— a mutual lack of trust. Simply lay out the standards of behavior clearly and frequently, and outwardly show that you trust in the team's good faith and desire to adhere to them. Most of the time, if you have hired well, you'll be right.
Discuss individual shortcomings frankly, but do it behind closed doors. Dispatch corrections behind closed doors too. Simply calling out a mistake and making clear what's expected is often enough to incite a change in behavior. It's much healthier for culture, it's much better for retaining knowledge and talent, and it's much cheaper than hiring and firing with a hair trigger. If the person doesn't respond to corrections, or is acting in bad faith and not merely making a mistake, THEN you fire without hesitation. And you do it quickly, quietly, and without drama. Those kinds of cases are (ideally rare) pockets of toxicity, and they are the last kind of picture you want to paint in your team's mind of their workplace by broadcasting it across the company.
Examples:
BAD: "Any manager who attempts to enforce chain of command communication will soon find themselves working elsewhere."
BETTER: "If you find your management is stifiling the free flow of communication, either intentionally or inadvertantly, please escalate this upward and we will support you, and get your team pointed in the right direction."
What you're trying to do:
- communicate to employees not to put up with stifiling managers
- communicate to managers that stifling communication will make them look bad and get them reprimanded
- encourage problem areas to actually be identified and corrected
- make everyone feel good about all of the above so that the actually want partake in it
- make it socially safe to change course
BAD: "All contracting companies should consider the coming week to be a final opportunity to demonstrate excellence. Any that fail to meet the Tesla standard of excellence will have their contracts ended on Monday."
BETTER: "Most large supply chains are ripe with waste and overspending, often brought about by backwards incentives to inflate costs. At Tesla we do not put up with this, nor cynically accept it as inevitable. Avoiding this kind of behavior requires the Tesla standard of good faith and efficiency at all levels. If you suspect cost inflation or task bloat, please call it out immediately and escalate it. We'll be paying close attention to this over the next week."
What you're trying to do:
- dispel complacency about cost bloat and gouging
- reinforce the requirement / community standard to be honest and efficient
- make people feel comfortable / emboldened to fight bad-faith behavior
- let bad-faith contractors know you are watching them
- make everyone feel united by this goal, instead of mistrustful and cynical about each other
If you're walking down a road and you see a man angrily beating his horse, who's wrong? The man or the horse? Leaders that threaten fire and brimstone beyond the natural consequences of failure conjure the image of the horse-beater, for me. If you resort to flogging your labor, then the shortcoming is yours in failing to understand how to motivate and empathize; how to make the horse want to do the right thing on its own.
I like to minimize use pronouns like "it" or "that" in a technical discussion.
Communication becomes so much clearer by expanding "it" into something more descriptive and explicit.
Also minimize number of words, and complexity of words.
"Except I'm still on this meeting or it's a call with me" I guess?
Sure, a few of the proposals are aimed at fixing sloppy management...but where do you think the extra cars come from?
If you want an example, look at the epitome of production line efficiency that is the Toyota Production System: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System
I'm sure there are many more ways. Source: I made this up. I don't work in the auto industry.
Here's a simple example I learned from my dad, cutting firewood, that consistently surprises people. If you're not familiar with cutting firewood, it usually comes tree-length, and you've got to work it down to the length that fits in your stove with a chainsaw. You want it to all be the same length, within an inch or so, so that it stacks more consistently, and erring shorter is better than longer. Some people eyeball it. Some people take a tape and a crayon and mark every cut out. Some people even take a tape and measure every cut. But the easiest way is to cut a small pinky-thick stick the right length; then you go right along the pile with your measuring stick, cutting as you go. Simple, but it saves a ton of time and effort over the course of a day.