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Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees
- mikevm 9y agoQuoting from the article: 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.
- bagacrap 9y agoThe part about nonsense words is great (one of my pet peeves) but how do you accomplish that in practice? Everything has to have a name. For example, when you're developing Windows 8 what would you call Metro Mode? "Alternate touch optimized desktop UI" is a bit of a mouthful.
- whatshisface 9y agoI'd call it the Touch UI, the others could be Windowed and Mobile.
- xarball 9y agoMetro's branding was a failure of imagination and a failure to properly capture and convey intent. There are many other options out there: | "Touch UI" | "Mobile UI" | "Everywhere UI" | "Fisher-Price UI" | ... or my personal favorite... | "Mega-Bloks" |
- simplicio 9y agoI think pretty much every industry and field quickly develops it's own stock of acronyms, nicknames, jargon etc. This can feel alienating to "outsiders", which is why people don't like it, but I think its pretty necessary (and inevitable). If you're working with a set of concepts, processes, software everyday, developing a shorthand way of talking (and thinking) about them is a big timesaver both in terms of communication and mental effort.
- gregknicholson 9y ago> If you're working with a set of concepts, processes, software everyday, developing a shorthand way of talking (and thinking) about them is a big timesaver both in terms of communication and mental effort. For internal processes, this is fair enough. But anything that will be exposed to an end-user should be simple without shorthand.
- ScottBurson 9y agoMaybe just try really hard to maintain a centralized glossary, that people actually use and keep up to date.
- manigandham 9y agoAs usual, common sense applies. The issue is regarding unnecessary names. If it's really a product name or industry wide then use it, but many companies tend to come up with acronyms that are only used internally or within a single team and this hurts communication. For your example, just call it touchscreen mode.
- Judgmentality 9y agoSome of these I really like, and some of them are well-intentioned but seem disconnected from reality. - 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.
- slededit 9y agoI think he was speaking more from the Individual Contributor level here.
- mieseratte 9y agoThat was my impression as well. No better way to GSD than talk to your counterpart on the other side of the aisle and figure out a solution. 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.
- antris 9y ago> it's really annoying how often we have to tell the CEO he can't do this 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?
- Merad 9y agoHow many average workers are willing to push back when the CEO tells them to do something? 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.
- mieseratte 9y agoHaving worked at companies with a 6+ hour long retrospective, planning meeting that was almost entirely useless - I would love the idea. 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.
- Consultant32452 9y agoI feel like you have cause and effect backwards. Being in the meeting is not what gives you social credit, having social credit is what causes people to want to keep you in the meetings. There are generally three main types of problems: social, political, and technical. Once you're known as a person who solves those three, you won't be able to escape the meetings.
- mieseratte 9y agoYou're not wrong, I end up becoming "the guy" at most places I've worked because I not only have the technical wherewithal, but can put blend in and socialize, and have no qualms about engaging in a political dog-fight when there is a need for it. Thusly, I end up being volunteered or asked to be in most meetings, social committees, etc. because my team trusts me to handle whatever happens and my manager knows I will handle it competently. 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.
- corey_moncure 9y agoThis is the exact opposite of the last corporate workplace I was in. Ceaseless meetings (programmers often spending the whole day away from their desk), pointless meetings, jargon, all decisions must be approved by the manager, all communication flows through the manager.
- sowbug 9y agoThis is what code-quoted non-code HN text looks like on a narrow screen: http://imgur.com/LYwZWbT http://imgur.com/LYwZWbT
- mikevm 9y agoWoops. Sorry about that. Don't know if there's a proper way of quoting text on HN.
- sowbug 9y agoSince we have this discussion every time a top-voted comment does this, and nobody has ever suggested a solution that I've seen, I don't think it can be done. Just throw a > or two in there and we'll figure it out.
- tyingq 9y ago"nobody has ever suggested a solution that I've seen" Media queries seem straightforward enough.
- sowbug 9y agoI mean for content contributors. I'm sure an HN code change could make the site smarter. * Asterisks work for italics * (remove inner spaces), but they seem to crap out for a passage longer than about a line, making them tedious for block quotes.
- tyingq 9y agoYes, makes sense. HN could use a few minor tweaks and upgrades.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoThere isn't. No one knows why.
- germinalphrase 9y ago
- tyingq 9y agoGreat excerpts. Reposting them as more hn-mobile friendly. "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
- allthenews 9y agoI worry that many of these well meaning deregulations may not scale indefinitely, both as the company grows and the working population evolves. I understand the premise, but many of the processes and red tape, while admittedly frustrating, probably did not arise out of desire for limitation. You have to put a lot of faith into your workforce to allow so much freedom in their operation.
- matte_black 9y agoAgreed, the benefit of having some bureaucratic processes is that it makes them way more tolerant of low competency individuals within the system. There’s filters at many levels that prevent someone from fucking things up too badly. 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.
- gregknicholson 9y ago> 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. I like this. Crucially, it's not “ignore the rule”; it's “fix the rule”.
- Aloha 9y agoI'd agree with most of this.. but.. 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.
- Shivetya 9y agoI am not sure how widespread it is, but I have encountered far too many manager/directors who put forth meetings in order to boost their presence if not stoke their own egos. executives holding a company hostage effectively for 90 minute meetings so they can tell their direction, strategy, and more, and witnessed development staffs with far more time in meetings the producing deliverables. 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
- stephengillie 8y ago> 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. 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.
- internetman55 8y agowow, i like these!
- Ryan1516 9y agoI'm pleasantly surprised by these rules
- wmeredith 9y agoI really like the tips themselves. Though, I must admit I do get a chuckle out of taking productivity tips from someone notorious for working 80 hours a week. Not that my accomplishments hold a candle to his. It's just funny in some part of my brain.
- dkasper 9y agoCEO is often an 80 hour per week job during critical phases. Acting as CEO of two companies in only 80 hours per week is pretty impressive.
- Robotbeat 9y agoLike 4 companies, actually (although admittedly the other two are low effort compared to Tesla and SpaceX).
- tehlike 9y agoProbably this is how he can manage this situation.
- garmaine 8y agoComparing productivity to hours worked is a type error.
- minimaxir 9y agoThis is blogspam of Musk’s email from the original source: https://electrek.co/2018/04/17/tesla-model-3-production-goal-6000-units-per-week/ https://electrek.co/2018/04/17/tesla-model-3-production-goal...
- mikevm 9y agoI wouldn't mind if a moderator would replace the original link with the one you provided.
- supermdguy 9y agoWorse, it's used as content marketing and without any attribution.
- isuckatcoding 9y agoI’m a fan of Elon as much as much as any other person but I think a lot of this only works for someone like Elon. 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.
- tprice7 9y agoWhich one of the recommendations given here do you think would entail workaholism?
- yoshuaw 9y agoJust guessing here, but perhaps it might be the bit where it's claimed he works 100 hours a week?
- tprice7 9y agoTHat's not one of the recommendations he gives. That's not even part of the email itself.
- Rzor 8y agoPerhaps not in this letter, but it sounds exactly like that in this video: >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 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.
- angersock 9y agoHow does this increased productivity benefit the workers? Are they getting any personal upside for working harder, I wonder?
- manigandham 9y agoProductivity is about efficiency, not working harder. Getting more done in a normal work-week benefits everyone, and I'm sure all those employees would prefer a company that is in business to continue paying their salaries, bonuses and increasing their stock value.
- angersock 9y agoHow does more get done in a normal workweek but by greater exertion of workers? This is literally factory work. Sure, a few of the proposals are aimed at fixing sloppy management...but where do you think the extra cars come from?
- manigandham 9y agoAs already answered, you get more done by being more efficient with the given effort. It doesn't matter whether it's factory work or CEO level. Increasing productivity usually leads to a decrease in net effort by workers. 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System
- jpindar 9y agoIf you don't think any factory has processes that can be improved, I'd like to know which factories you've worked at, and are they hiring?
- sowbug 9y agoLess rework. Moving shorter distances. Reordering steps to defer work until it can be done more cheaply. Batching similar operations to reduce tool changes. I'm sure there are many more ways. Source: I made this up. I don't work in the auto industry.
- alkonaut 9y agoWere the rumors true that workers were unpaid for this "process upgrade" shutdown?
- kathe-rine 9y agoIf so, that would align with standard practice in the American automotive industry. The unions only require workers be paid for shut-downs of over 10 working days.
- bsder 9y agoThis is generally Standard Operating Procedure in a manufacturing facility. 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.
- alkonaut 8y agoWow. So not only do workers not have a reasonable number of vacation days (say 20-25 for a new employee), they also arent free to choose when to use those they do get? 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?
- bsder 8y ago> 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.
- presidente20 9y agoDoesn't sound like a great company to work for. Insane production targets coupled with 'by the way we're examining all costs under a microscope'. 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!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- freedomfries 9y agoIf you are working 7 hour work days, then I am coming for your company and for your job. It will happen sometime in the next 10 years but you will be unemployed and replaced by much more productive and engaged fellows.
- guntars 9y agoUntil the more productive and engaged fellows start questioning what exactly are they working overtime for or simply burn out, then they're replaced by fresher more productive fellows and the cycle continues. Best way to break it is to have balance from the beginning, not after you burn out a few times and form the company culture that supports it.
- ovao 9y agoProductivity and number of hours worked are orthogonal.
- therealdrag0 8y agoThere's diminishing returns, but they are definitely correlated.
- stormking 9y ago
- mabbo 9y ago> Our car needs to be designed and built with such accuracy and precision that, if an owner measures dimensions, panel gaps and flushness, and their measurements don’t match the Model 3 specs, it just means that their measuring tape is wrong. It's cute lines like this that make the fanboys love Musk. Myself included.
- neilk 9y agoThis really didn’t make sense to me. Every 10x increase in precision surely causes a huge jump in price. I don’t know anything about mechanical engineering but this is one of those things that is true across disciplines. This blog seems to confirm that guess.[1] 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-seriously-affecting-part-cost/ https://metalcutting.com/your-tight-tolerance-could-be-serio...
- vlehto 8y agoI know something about mechanical engineering and doing away with needlessly tight tolerances is one of the most efficient ways to cut costs. 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.
- motohagiography 9y agoOne hopes he has read this, a classic slate star codex post on leadership: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1209794.html#cutid1 https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1209794.html#cutid1 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.
- netsharc 9y agoOh man the first paragraphs of that article contains so many instances of the word "asshole(s)" that it's having that effect of ehen you repeat a word so nany times where it just becomes noise without meaning.
- motohagiography 9y agoIt's a bit pedantic at the beginning, but when he defines it as "transgressiveness or willingness to transgress," it becomes much more clear. That's the trouble with great ideas in blogs. Here's the essence of it: "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."
- viach 9y ago> Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding value. "Except I'm still on this meeting or it's a call with me" I guess?
- DerSaidin 9y ago– Don’t use acronyms or nonsense words for objects, software or processes at Tesla. 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.
- spyspy 9y agoI notice this a lot in RFCs within my company. Teams will put out architectures for new systems that contain massive amounts of acronyms and jargon for the system they're building and/or replacing it's insanely frustrating. It doesn't help when the last system was named something completely arbitrary and is being replaced by a new system with an equally arbitrary new code name. ("Flywheel has served us well for years but due to limitations on the XCGA middleware we believe Project Kegerator is the future...")
- quelltext 8y agoWhat are the situations where you'd still use "it" or "that"?
- tbabb 9y agoMany good tips, but IMO the "...or else!" style threats are poor leadership. Examples: "All you contractors better shape up or you'll be fired on monday!" or "managers will be insta-fired if they enforce chain-of-command communication!" 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.
- eric24234 8y agoWho leaked the email ?.