Small Teams by Force
Karpathy: Elon runs his companies in an extremely unique style. I don't actually think that people appreciate how unique it is. You sort of read about it, but you don't understand it.
Karpathy: He likes very small, strong, highly technical teams. At companies by default, the teams grow and they get large. Elon was always a force against growth. I would have to work and expend efforts to hire people. I would have to basically plead to hire people.
Karpathy: At big companies, it's really hard to get rid of low performers. Elon is very friendly to by default getting rid of low performers. I actually had to fight for people to keep them on the team, because he would by default want to remove people.
I would have to basically plead to hire people. He would by default want to remove people.
No Stagnation Allowed
Karpathy: When he walks into the office, he wants it to be a vibrant place. People are walking around, pacing around, working on exciting stuff, charting something, coding. He doesn't like stagnation.
Karpathy: He doesn't like large meetings. He always encourages people to leave meetings if they're not being useful. If you're not contributing and you're not learning, just walk out. This is fully encouraged. I think this is something you don't normally see.
If you're not contributing and you're not learning, just walk out. This is fully encouraged.
Skip the VPs, Talk to Engineers
Karpathy: Usually a CEO is a remote person, five layers up, who talks to their VPs who talk to their reports and directors. That's not how Elon's companies run.
Karpathy: Normally people spend like 99% of the time talking to the VPs. He spends maybe 50% of the time talking directly to the engineers. If the team is small and strong, then engineers and the code are the source of truth. Not some manager. He wants to talk to them to understand the actual state of things.
Engineers and the code are the source of truth. Not some manager.
The Bottleneck Hammer
Karpathy: If he talks to the engineers and they say, 'What's blocking you? I just don't have enough GPUs to run my thing' -- and he hears that twice, he's going to say, 'Okay, this is a problem. What is our timeline?'
Karpathy: And when you don't have satisfying answers, he says, 'I want to talk to the person in charge of the GPU cluster.' Someone dials the phone. He says, 'Double the cluster right now. Send me daily updates until the cluster is twice the size.' And when they push back with a procurement timeline -- six months -- he gets a rise of an eyebrow and says, 'I want to talk to Jensen.'
Karpathy: He just removes bottlenecks. The extent to which he's extremely involved and places the hammer -- I don't think that's appreciated.
He just removes bottlenecks. He places the hammer. The extent to which he's involved is not appreciated.