If I thought this about SpaceX management and ex employees was representative of the culture as a whole,I would throw out all the modern books on managing tech organizations and go all Taylor immediately.
I could see being part of that ultimate goal as being a motivation to work for the aliens from the Simpsons (don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos!)
But given the progressive nature of the projects and “for all of humanity” vision that was presented, I have always been disappointed to hear these things about the operation. I’m glad I didn’t sign up, and it was tempting.
Look at outcomes. The whole thing was _actually_ about cornering access to LEO, the whole time. And it largely worked.
I guess around the time some of these crunchtimes have been reported, I was in some other crunchtime too!
My bias: “hey remember when we sat around and played foosball for lunch? We actually got a lot done anyway”
"The only thing that matters is product-market fit" -- Marc Andreesen
Being in a good market with the first product that can satisfy that market solves all sorts of management sins. Look at Twitter, Zenefits, Uber, WeWork, Zynga, Digg, etc. Or for that matter - how do you think Boeing, Lockheed, and NASA started looking like jokers?
Dominance in a market is usually an anti-signal for management quality, because it means you can get away with stuff that you couldn't in more competitive markets.
The baby version of this was 15 years ago, when Jobs was Musk and being an asshole was the main/only feature visionary executives emulated.
Maybe the lesson is that we're bad at lessons.
* Figure out what the product must look like early, and keep your vision consistent for a long time.
* Dive into the details of the product, and try to get quality at the lowest levels.
* Hire great and motivated people.
* Remove roadblocks that prevent people from moving quickly.
Those are the real lessons.
My current job does all of these, and doesn't do the "Treat people like shit," thing that is the core culture of Elon's companies. We move faster than the Elonverse companies, while working on a problem of similar difficulty.
I’ve come to learn that if you do the things on your list well, some people are going to see that as being an asshole.
Clearing roadblocks quickly ( and nearly all roadblocks are made of people-problems after about 50+), insisting on certain aspects of a product vision for years, and engaging in someone else’s details are all strongly correlated with annoying someone.
I also learned that the assholes I knew were just the usual mean, dunning Kruger style people that exist everywhere. Those traits ultimately meant their inner circle perpetually excludes the kind of really great people you’d want to surround yourself with.
As as a software engineer, I'd rather buy my next car from an engineer who designed it rather than anyone else in the chain. Not because we speak similar languages but because I know that engineer will happily list ever bit of that makes them feel uncomfortable.
Engineers main task is to physically make something.
Even in software engineering something is being physically built up to run the software. We decided to call this the cloud because we let sales people define it. It ain't a cloud, you cannot fly a plane through it.
Construction is the one step that cannot be easily cheated. The machinery we build today is massive and complex so while the bureaucracy prevents a single engineer from addressing the issues, they are position to see see it.
My first question for a rocket company isn't the CEO's confidence. It is, would engineer #134 use this product with their families? Would you entrust the lives of our children to what you've built?
This is a great quote, btw.
But would they be able to code a single HTML page on their own? I doubt it. They definitely know how to spec one down to the last detail, but alas there's a distinction here. And I would also argue Tom might be a little biased in his opinion. I don't particularly have anything against Elon but I'm not surprised certain type of people with personality faults gravitate towards him.
Sure, I agree. However, there are many other examples that you can easily look up. But I do find the by amount of mental gymnastics in your response interesting.
I think it's fair to say that the opinion of those who have worked with Elon closely for many years hold the most weight. Compared to outsiders who just speculate on the internet.