What is it Like to Work for Elon Musk?

Now what is the timeline in terms of like does SpaceX have a multiple stage timeline like a timeline for incorporating the Dragon crew and then a timeline for the Starhopper and then a timeline for additional projects in the future like is he thinking along these lines of like charted out progress? Oh yeah, yeah. He's in fact he measures pretty much every major decision by whether or not it brings the day when we have a self-sustainable colony on Mars sooner or later. That's the prism by which he makes every like every single decision he makes he makes it through that prism. Jesus. Yeah. So he's got an idea and he'll keep pushing and you know he gives us aggressive timelines that we have to work to and we work really hard to try to try to meet him. It's hard when you're doing stuff that this is complicated to predict exactly how long it's going to take so you know we end up often falling a little bit behind but we do our best. That's the case though with everything that's that crazy right? Yeah. I mean no I mean especially Elon he's never writing his predictions all his wacky inventions they're always a little off you know. But what do you think? But he's so driven you know and he's such a smart guy and he's the most he's really the most driven person I think I've ever met. I'll give you a story that kind of illustrated. Once when I first got hired by SpaceX we did an interview with 60 Minutes and they interviewed Elon and myself and Scott Pelley was the anchor he talked to us and he said to me why did you leave NASA and come work for SpaceX? You had like the best gig in the world you know going up on rockets and stuff why would you do that? And I said well if you can go back in time and you're a young engineer and you had the opportunity to like get in on the ground floor and work with Howard Hughes when he was like doing all the crazy stuff he was doing in his day wouldn't you want to be a part of that? Scott Pelley looked at me like with a deer in the headlights because I don't think he knew what I was talking about but I was like that's but then I realized as soon as I said that like oh my god I just made a terrible strategic error I compared my boss to Howard Hughes and you know things didn't end up that well for Howard you know. He went crazy right? He went kind of crazy. He washed his hands too much. And germaphobe he was peeing in jars and like his fingernails grew out like. Hmm yeah. And I was like oh no I really kind of stepped in it right? You don't want to say that about the boss. So it took a while it was like months later we were driving in a rental car just the two of us in Florida we had a meeting at NASA and we were driving back to the airport to get on his airplane to come back to LA and I'm driving the car he's sitting in the passenger seat and I said hey boss remember that time we were on TV and I compared to that Howard Hughes you know I just want you to know I was comparing you to the young dashing star lit dating Howard Hughes not the old decrepit peeing in jars fingernail guy. It's all about the timeline. Yeah. And I was and all I got back was silence. And now I'm really scared right? And I'm sitting there like waiting for him to say something and Elon will do this and he did this on your show right? He kind of like if you if you pose to him a serious question he'll consider it and he'll kind of go into this I almost like a trance I'll stare off into spaces and you can see the wheels turning he's like focusing all of his intellect which is considerable on this one question and that's what was happening so I waited and then he turned back to me he said you know Garrett I don't think it's an apt comparison. I said oh okay good good why I'm curious why do you think that? And he said well none of Howard's designs as brilliant as they were ended up really changing the way we live our lives. So we don't send like he made the Disprose Goose which is an incredible airplane was all wood you know trying to solve the problem during the war of rationing. He said we don't send our goods across the oceans and giant wooden airplanes we don't do that. The H1 racer was a beautiful airplane but it was a one-off it never really led to a large designs that changed the way people live their lives. So that was his objection was not that like I was comparing him to some creep but that he wants it's really important to him to have the legacy of drastically impacting the way all of us live our lives. So kind of the way Steve Jobs did or others that really move the ball down field for humanity. That's what's driving it. He's such an unusual human I mean there's very few people that you could make any kind of rational comparison to other than maybe Nikola Tesla. Will you really stop and think what he's done? Yeah. The fact that he does them all simultaneously that he's involved in the boring project he's involved in Tesla and SpaceX all simultaneously and Tesla home solar all the solar panels and the making solar tiles for roofs and he's doing so many different things at the same time it it's it's almost impossible like it I don't understand how he does it. Yeah I've seen him do it and I still don't understand it you know it's like I kind of burned myself out just trying to do one of those things. Yeah. He does all of them and and I mean he does have all the advantages of wealth which helps you know so like he'll have meetings with us and he'll walk out of his last meeting and he'll walk across the street to Hawthorne Airport hop on his jet and he's at Palo Alto in a couple hours and he can be first thing in the morning at Tesla. Right. And he's got a staff to help some and you know he's got those advantages but he he that isn't in any way describe what he or that doesn't explain why he's able to do what he does. I don't know how he does it to be honest. Well he's the next stage of humanity. Yeah. If people are evolving he's he's like looking at us from the next spot he's like hey guys I've got some ideas. Yeah I mean he's just an idea factory and and he his what's really remarkable to me is is the breadth of his knowledge. I mean I've met a lot of super super smart people but they're usually super super smart on one thing and he's able to have conversations with our top engineers about the software and you know the most arcane aspects of that and then he'll turn to our manufacturing engineers and have discussions about some really esoteric welding process for some crazy alloy and and he'll just go back and forth and his ability to do that across all the different technologies that go into rockets and cars and everything else he does that's what really impresses me. Well also the lack of burnout because he's been doing it at this incredible rate 16 hours a day for how long? His whole life I think. That's nuts. I know. And he's still hungry for it and he's still taking on these new projects and new ideas and. Yeah you know at that pace seven years was about as like as much as I could take. I was like I need to do something else. I just don't I you know I mean I'm very happy he exists you know. Yeah. But he's very confusing to me. I just feel so stupid when I'm around him you know. The conversations I've had with him like god damn I'm dumb. No no. You gotta do what you gotta do with what you got. I won't go that far. So his ultimate goal is to create some sort of a colony on Mars but he believes that this technology will continue to expand to the point where we will be leaving our solar system. We will be making human trips into other solar systems into actual deep space. Yeah I mean certainly hopefully that's you know at some point if we're going to survive you take the really long view you know the solar system is not going to last forever. It's going to last plenty long and if my kids are listening at home don't worry. They're freaking out right now. Especially a two year old. Oh no daddy said we're going to die. No we got plenty of time. Couple billion years kids relax it's not in our lifetime. They're so funny but but eventually we're going to have to find a new home if we're going to last forever and we all hope that we last forever as a species right so. At least most of us do so yeah eventually we got to get there but we got plenty of time. In the short term the important thing is at least getting out so not in just one place in the solar system because this you know something bad could happen to this planet and we've got no backup. Right and particularly if there is a natural situation super volcano. Super volcano. Asteroid impact. Or you know we're doing a pretty good job at trashing this place all on our own. Yes. We don't really need an asteroid to hit us. We're kind of going down the road of making this place uninhabitable. Well what we need is someone like Elon who concentrates on the solutions. I mean he's always obviously got a full plate. Many full plates but someone like him to concentrate on solutions to some of the environmental problems that we've created for ourselves here. That's really that's that was the thought behind Tesla. I mean so so Tesla is kind of like plan A save this planet and SpaceX is kind of plan B. If you look at it that way. It's just so weird to have a guy like that amongst us. Yeah. Especially having him as your boss. It's really weird. Have you talked to him at all about simulation theory? We never the thing is when every time I talk to him we focused on and this is what he does. You know he focuses on the thing that we are working on. So he just that's one of the ways he does his time management. That's one of the ways he is able to do all these things. It's like he doesn't sit around and and and and and BS with you about like what's going on with the was a Nora link the company was making the chips that go in your head. That's right. I forgot about that. That's the other thing he does that one. He doesn't change in the way humans interface with data. He never said to me like Garrett what do you think about having a chip in your head that they never he doesn't do that. He talks to the people who really know about chips and people and putting chips in people's head. He talks to them about it. So you're going to sign up for that. No. Your face. The expression you made. You're like no. My website got hacked and it freaked me out. Well they they're going to put wires in your head. Yeah right. That's the idea behind it. Christ. It's probably going to be inevitable. Once it happens. I mean I don't want to be an early adopter but once it does happen and it really does remarkably increase your your ability to interface with data. Because that's the idea right. So it ramps up the bandwidth in which people can access ideas and information and it's going to change the way we interface. Yeah I mean I could see it being kind of an extreme have and have not situation like you think about how how far behind you are today how left behind you are if you have no internet access. Right. And then this will be kind of this could be like another level of that. Yeah I'm worried. I'm worried about that. Yeah I got other things that keep me up at night. I got. Yeah I mean what is it going to crazy nine year old and. Real real world problems.