The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:15:52 · Justin Lopas
[00:15:52] S1: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. High high school senior year and a freshman of college, I worked at what's now called Rocket Mortgage, but it was Quicken Loans at the time. Was just a direct based company. They're the largest home lender in The US on some like, I would say like software, quite remedial softwares like VBA and Excel, but they had me doing some like data analytics stuff. And I was like, okay, this is interesting. I'm terrible at software, but I do like data and engineering and sort of technical stuff and that's why part of the reason I went into engineering. Yeah. Then I was at SpaceX, Baker Hughes, Timken, and Apple. Timken is a big automotive supplier. I was in Ohio. Baker Hughes is a big oil and gas services company. Those two, would categorize as not tech, big, slow, boring, and, yeah, I mean, not to be rude to people that work there. It's just, like, not a good place for me to work. I mean, it did did not fit my my my personality or desires. And then SpaceX and Apple, while very different companies doing very different things, Apple is big. I was working on I can't say this publicly, but I was working on a secret project that never ended up going anywhere that was oriented towards what I was interested in at the time. And I was like, okay, this is cool. It's like a startup within Apple basically that I was working at. And it's like, this is exciting. You can build new technology and you can be really interested in what you're working on. And then I would say the same thing with SpaceX, so that's why I chose to... Those were the two companies I was looking at when I graduated. It's like, probably not Timken, definitely not Baker Hughes, rocking mortgage, Quicken Loans doesn't really make sense. And so... But I was very fortunate to have had these... A bunch of these internships to look at the cultures of the companies and then also the, disciplines. Like, I really liked big heavy industry and Baker Hughes and Timken had that. Timken's a steel manufacturer. And so it's like going into a steel mill is like the coolest thing ever. And so I was like, I love that, but I really don't like the culture and the method of working. And so when I was leaving Michigan, University of Michigan, I was deciding between Apple and SpaceX and ultimately chose on SpaceX.
00:17:45 · Vidit Agarwal, Justin Lopas
[00:17:45] S0: And I noticed in my research, correct me if this is not true, did you have a break in between Apple and SpaceX? Because I think you finished Apple in mid twenty fifteen and then you started at SpaceX in mid twenty sixteen. Is that right? [00:17:56] S1: No. I had... No. I had a... Yeah. No. Apple was... This a is long time ago. Apple was, like, my junior year, and then SpaceX, I started after my senior year. I did do... So the SpaceX internship, I took a semester off of college. And so Right. It was the second semester of my freshman year that was with SpaceX. [00:18:12] S0: Right. Got it. So as a SpaceX, I mean, now people know SpaceX like globally, right? It's a very mainstream company. But let's go into 2016. Wanna spend a bit of time in SpaceX, bit of time in Andrew, and then we'll come to base because I feel those two would have shaped you with a lot of your beliefs and ways of working now at base perhaps yeah 2016 take me until you've just joined SpaceX like tell me about what was in the air what was in the water what was in the conversations at that point that that made you go, this company might be different?
00:18:44 · Justin Lopas
[00:18:44] S1: Yeah. I mean, definitely would not have seen where SpaceX has gotten in the last ten years when I first started there and definitely when I was... 2013 as an intern was like, it was the sixth flight of Falcon nine. It was the first, I think one of the first memory serves, like commercial, real commercial flights on on the the Block four design. When I went there, what all I knew was like, there are clearly really good engineers here. This is like elite engineering. This is like clearly where the best engineers go. And I totally felt like a fish out of water because like, I was not a good engineer in the like very technical traditional sense. I thought it was like okay operationally and sort of program management y, but not in the technical sense, but I wanted to work around the the best of best. And that's what I thought SpaceX and I found out that SpaceX had to offer me. I'll be honest with you. I like didn't think that rockets were super cool growing up. I was not like one of those kids that like played with toy planes and rockets. I was like, I was a car guy and like through and through, still am frankly, but enjoy cars, but I was like, I can't ride on it. The launches are twice a year. And so I was just like, but I was there because I really loved the people and the mission and the sort of technicality of the work. And then as I got further into the organization, was like, wow, this is really good. Because I had the comparables from Appletonkin, Baker Hughes, etcetera. And I was like, man, this is a very unique culture and an extremely high talent density. When you walk in the door and you like meet people for the first few weeks, you're like, wow, literally everyone is extremely smart and extremely hardworking. And this is like a combination that you do not find almost anywhere. And taking that fast forwarding, I know we'll get to base power. But, like, if there's one thing that I took away from the SpaceX experience and really want to apply here, it is talent density. It's smart, hardworking, good to work with. Those are, like, the three things that, you know, matter basically at the end of the day, and SpaceX, like, almost everyone had all three in spades. Well,
00:20:39 · Vidit Agarwal
[00:20:39] S0: I mean, people say all the time, like, SpaceX folks, if they don't know the answer, they'll say, don't know the answer. And maybe that's the Elon influence where you don't want to stand in front of him and BS because he would probably rip you apart, I would assume. But I mean, one of the things people said in my research is they said, you've taken a lot of the SpaceX isms to base, but then you've also created a psychological safety, which I thought was like a really interesting comment, like maybe reflective of like some of the SpaceX culture. Again, we don't have to go into the critiques about SpaceX, but I'm curious how did you learn to filter talent because it's the best of the best at SpaceX, right? Like the 1% off the 1%. Do you differentiate that and then how have you taken that into
00:21:23 · Justin Lopas
[00:21:23] S1: base? Yeah, mean, would break it out in basically the sort of more traditional nature versus nurture. There are some things... I am a big nurture believer. I think there are, say, average people that that would... In an average organization would perform average, but that same exact person could be extremely high performing in an organization like SpaceX or like I would hope you could say SpacePower is. And so when you're interviewing someone, you're looking at nature, not energy. Right? What they are today because that's all you have to go off of. And there's a few different traits, but the... Honestly, the the main one that matters to me the most is do you really care about what you're doing? Are you genuinely interested in your craft? If your craft is accounting or it's manufacturing engineering or it's IT or whatever, it's like, you interested in it? Do you think about it outside of work? Have... Do you have examples of thing... Projects that you've built personally? If you haven't done that, then you just think about your work as a job. I'm not interested in having you on the team, honestly. If you're like, man, I... We hire folks to do algorithm development and it's... Was... Did math competitions in high school or whatever else. You just have some indication that you care and that you're genuinely interested in the craft. That that goes a super long way. Then there's some other stuff. There's obviously examples of strong work ethic that obviously oftentimes comes sort of downstream of the first one. Are you smart and can think on your feet and can solve really hard problems? Are you optimistic? Are you good to work with? Like, all these things obviously matter. Those are more traditional traits, and the... And a big trait that really matters to me is is do you really care and you're genuinely interested in your craft, whatever your craft is?
00:23:01 · Vidit Agarwal
[00:23:01] S0: Well, I've I've heard you say in a lot of the other interviews that I listened to as prep for this is you were given quite a bit of responsibility as a relatively junior inexperienced engineer, I think those were your words. Can you reflect on that? Like how did you stand out from your peers in a very performance driven culture, and, like, how did your managers or people like Elon, what did they see in you that gave you their responsibility early on?