Kali's Journal: 2023

Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb.
Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough.
Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist.
Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps.
Automate. That comes last.

All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword.
Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided.
It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and 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, where you meet with the level right below your managers.
When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant.
A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle.
The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation.

Empathy is not an asset.
Play life like a game.
Do not fear losing. “You will lose,” Musk says. “It will hurt the first fifty times. When you get used to losing, you will play each game with less emotion.” You will be more fearless, take more risks.
Be proactive.
Optimize every turn. In Polytopia, you get only thirty turns, so you need to optimize each one. “Like in Polytopia, you only get a set number of turns in life,” Musk says. “If we let a few of them slide, we will never get to Mars.”
Double down.
Pick your battles.

"The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation."
“Wanting to be everyone’s friend leads you to care too much about the emotions of the individual in front of you rather than caring about the success of the whole enterprise—an approach that can lead to a far greater number of people being hurt."
"Precision is not expensive. It’s mostly about caring. Do you care to make it precise? Then you can make it precise.”
“You have to have fear and love for the leader. Both.”
“I’m a big believer that a small number of exceptional people who are highly motivated can do better than a large number of people who are pretty good and moderately motivated,”
“This is how civilizations decline. They quit taking risks. And when they quit taking risks, their arteries harden. Every year there are more referees and fewer doers. When you’ve had success for too long, you lose the desire to take risks.”
He would often go into "surge mode". The goal was to shake things up and “extrude shit out of the system,” as he put it. “There’s no forcing function to succeed other than us.”
"It's not the product that leads to success. It's the ability to make the product efficiently. It's about building the machine that builds the machine. In other words, how do you design the factory?"

Kali's Journal