00:46:58 · Ty Morse
[00:46:58] S0: What role does fear play in, like, being someone that others fear?
00:47:02 · Eric Jorgenson
[00:47:02] S1: It's a good question. I... And the the Machiavelli quote, right, about, like, you could be feared or loved and, you know, fear is more reliable or something like that. I think there is probably a mythos around Elon and, like, an Elon meeting and the fear of being, you know, fired on the spot, because you weren't prepared is is a real thing. You know, I think there's you can be motivated by carrot and stick, and the combination is the most effective. You know, you're working on a grand, beautiful mission. You're being pushed. You're being held to a high bar, and you can get the most out of yourself when you've got something that you're like, I really... I know I wanna clear that bar, and I know the stakes for not clearing that bar are high. I think Elon would say and has said, like, I try to give people... I give people hardcore feedback. Right? But he also says I try to do it about the the action, not the person, which is a very important distinction. And he's been on the receiving end of that, you know, himself. Like, he seeks negative feedback. He says that's a very important part to close the iteration loop. You know, and there's stories from the Isaacson book that I'm sure, you know, we we've both read many times. It's like, you know, you failed quite badly in this meeting. You should know all your parts, you know, in order by their idiot index. And if you don't, you're gone. If you don't, you're gone. I expect improvement or your resignation will be accepted. I'll see you tomorrow. Like, this is what I expect, and this is when I expect it. Let's see it. And, you know, the person that that story is about showed up and crossed the bar tomorrow, and it was like, I am a different and better person now as a result of being held to that, and I understand things and do things that I didn't before.
00:48:38 · Ty Morse, Eric Jorgenson
[00:48:38] S0: I don't know that I've seen this other organizations, but there is this constant idea of churn. As soon as you join an Elon company, you're just running down a clock and who knows exactly how long that clock is. Like, was listening to the biography from Walter Isaacson, and a lot of people inside of the organizations that Elon runs don't even necessarily like that he's fired a lot of the people that he's fired. [00:49:02] S1: Yeah. [00:49:03] S0: And yet he keeps on doing it. And so I almost feel like it's having some result that they don't necessarily understand. Like it forces... It does force some fear. It forces like some urgency. If you don't have your shit together, you might be exited at any given moment. What do think the benefits are?
00:49:19 · Eric Jorgenson
[00:49:19] S1: Churn is a frame that's kind of used usually for, like, customers quitting a product. And so it's it's sort of an inherently negative frame. And I'm not sure that that's totally the right frame. Right? People are the right people for different companies at different times. And one of the things Elon's point out is like, you generally turn a whole company over at each order of magnitude or 80% or something like that. And companies like Tesla and SpaceX are growing so quickly that in particular in leadership positions, the the person to take the company from a 100,000,000 to a billion is a different, you know, VP than the person who's gonna take the company from a billion to 10,000,000,000. And a two year tenure looks short at a typical company, but a two year tenure where you covered an order of magnitude is a great tour of duty, especially if it's one where your lifestyle is completely compromised as the employee, right, where you're like, you know, I I seven. Yeah. Or working twenty four seven or or living on Quatch or, you know, if your family's in LA and you're working at Starbase, that's not a a situation that people necessarily wanna be in for ten or fifteen years, and there's not an inherent moral good to working at one place for twenty years. I feel like that's a pretty kind of outdated idea. But I think I think, you know, fresh new talent, the ability to rise quickly, the ability to prove yourself quickly, and understanding that you have a relatively short period of underperformance before you'd be pushed out of an organization is a way to keep the bar really high.
00:50:50 · Ty Morse
[00:50:50] S0: On the idea of ruthlessness and being willing to be disliked, I think Elon doesn't actually like people not liking him, even though he is willing to be disliked. If you look at the people that he surrounds himself with, they typically don't voice, at least publicly, any feelings that they have that are not positive. And if they do, then they are no longer in his inner circle very quickly. Let's talk about, like, his willingness to kind of be disliked and and kind of be ruthless.
00:51:19 · Eric Jorgenson
[00:51:19] S1: It is interesting that at the same time, he, sort says empathy is not an asset, and he has the willingness to be disliked, which I think is true. Like, I think you could not have done what he's done if you didn't have the ability to put sort of the mission ahead of how someone feels about you. Like, he's had to run through wall after wall. He's, had to do so many difficult things and have so many difficult conversations over the course of what he's done, that I think it's... I think it is true that he has, at least in many ways, steeled himself to being disliked, preventing him from getting something done that needs to get done. So I... That... I take that as the frame for kind of the empathy is not an asset, like the willingness to be disliked as an advantage, in particular, if you're trying to do something innovative, in particular, if you're trying to... If you're taking on an industry, of course, that industry is gonna, attack you in any way that it possibly can. So one of the other things that he's doing at the same time, though, is also sort of running a pretty public campaign about, hey, I'm not a bad billionaire. Like, I sold all my stuff. I don't want these, like, attack vectors of being overly materialistic. I want it to be clear that I'm not sitting on billions of dollars in a bank account not doing anything. Like, he has a high net worth that comes from stock, which comes from controlling the companies that he's in control of, that he started or funded. So he he does really... I think it matters to him, to not be unfairly characterized. Like