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Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

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Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#61

Post by allthenews »

sowbug wrote: post #25
mikevm wrote: post #2

Quoting 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 s…

This is what code-quoted non-code HN text looks like on a narrow screen: http://imgur.com/LYwZWbT

Every time! Even in landscape! On a tech central website! What gives? Is there some kind of weird technical limitation?

Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#62

Post by motohagiography »

One hopes he has read this, a classic slate star codex post on leadership: 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.

Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#64

Post by germinalphrase »

mikevm wrote: post #30
sowbug wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what code-quoted non-code HN text looks like on a narrow screen: http://imgur.com/LYwZWbT

Woops. Sorry about that. Don't know if there's a proper way of quoting text on HN.

Judging by the frequency with which this issue is complained about, it is -- apparently -- an impossible problem to solve.

Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#65

Post by allthenews »

tyingq wrote: post #35
mikevm wrote: post #2

Quoting 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 s…

Great 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…

I 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.

Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#66

Post by typon »

freedomfries wrote: post #41
presidente20 wrote: post #29

Doesn'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 h…

If 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.

This is why everyone in countries like France, Germany, Sweden, etc. is unemployed.

Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#67

Post by netsharc »

motohagiography wrote: post #62

One hopes he has read this, a classic slate star codex post on leadership: 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 ris…

Oh 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.

Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#68

Post by DerSaidin »

– 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.

Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#69

Post by motohagiography »

netsharc wrote: post #67
motohagiography wrote: post #62

One hopes he has read this, a classic slate star codex post on leadership: 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 ris…

Oh 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.

It'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."

Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#70

Post by trendoid »

motohagiography wrote: post #62

One hopes he has read this, a classic slate star codex post on leadership: 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 ris…

Can you also share the slatestarcodex link if that was a different post?
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