For several consecutive nights, I finished reading the biography of Elon Musk. I had initially thought it would be a book of flattery, but instead, I gained a lot of inspiration. This book showcases the wisdom of a great engineer in setting goals, managing teams, and viewing and solving problems. Here are the contents in the book that touched me, presented in their original form:
Elon Musk is well aware that taking risks has risks and hidden dangers, but risks also give him passion and motivation. He is unwilling to waste energy on meaningless things and would rather read books or play video games. One of his management strategies is to set almost impossible deadlines to push his colleagues to achieve their goals. He believes that life should pursue great dreams, something that can make people wake up from sleep and welcome a new day.
Facing entrepreneurial risks, Musk is firm in his determination. He loves risks and believes that even if he may lose everything, he cannot just watch space exploration make no progress. At SpaceX, Mueller asked to have his two-year salary placed in escrow. After Musk agreed, he still thought that Mueller could only be an employee and not a co-founder. He insists that to become a founder, one must be deeply involved, invest money and wisdom in the company and take risks.
Musk adopts a five-step work method. The first step is “questioning.” When an engineer does something on the grounds of a certain “requirement,” Musk will ask who made the requirement. He treats all requirements as suggestions, and only those under the constraints of the laws of physics are unchangeable golden rules.
He adopts an iterative design method, quickly making prototypes, testing, blowing up, modifying, and trying again until something usable is made. At SpaceX, constantly trying new ideas and being ready to blow up finished products has become a manufacturing model. Local residents have become accustomed to explosions, but cows have not.
Musk’s important decision for Tesla is that the car company should produce key components by itself as much as possible and control its destiny, quality, and cost through vertical integration. Although his specialty is software, he still spends a lot of time studying automotive design aesthetics. He learned a lesson from venture capital cases and believes that what makes a company successful is not the product itself, but the ability to efficiently manufacture products, that is, the ability to design factories.
Musk’s team is small. They design the entire system from scratch with almost no outsourcing. The funds mainly come from himself. They only get paid after a successful launch after signing a contract.
The five-step work method includes questioning every requirement, deleting removable parts and processes, simplifying and optimizing, speeding up turnaround time, and automating. It also derives some inferences. For example, technical managers should have practical experience and not just talk without doing; avoid the dangerous tendency of “everyone is good”; it’s not terrible to make mistakes, but it’s not okay to not correct them; recruitment should hire people with a positive attitude; leaders should have a crazy sense of urgency; the only rule to follow is the rule derived from the laws of physics.
The book also mentions some other contents, such as some people doing things that go beyond their comfort zones in order to go to the moon and Mars; Musk believes that there should be a digital public space with strong inclusiveness and even campaigns for Trump; at Twitter, he asked engineers to search for those who wrote the code and planned to lay off most of the engineers and leave only those who are outstanding, trustworthy, and self-driven; he believes that Twitter should be a software engineering company and leaders should be familiar with program codes.
Musk laments that the decline of civilization is due to the abandonment of risk-taking, the reduction of doers, and the increase of referees. As a result, the United States cannot build high-speed railways and moon rockets. When making rockets, he adopts a “fail fast” mechanism, is willing to take risks, and reflects and corrects after explosions. Finally, a question is raised: Can a more restrained and cautious Musk still achieve as much as the unrestrained him? Great innovators may dance with risks. They may be hasty and reckless and cause crises, but they may also be crazy enough to change the world. My favorite quote is “Adventure is the fuel of life.” Let’s encourage each other.
Published on December 25, 2024, at 1:35:11 AM, Wednesday.
