Andrej Karpathy, Who Worked Directly Under Elon, Explains 4 Ways Elon Runs His Companies Differently
Elon Musk fired 80% of Twitter (6500 people) and everyone thought that Twitter was doomed.
He was right. Everyone was wrong.
It’s the management masterclass of the decade and every entrepreneur must understand why it worked 🧵:
Disclaimer: The intention of this thread is not to support layoffs. They suck for everyone involved, especially those who are let go.
Rather, my objective is to show that often it’s best to zig when everyone else is zagging.
And that smaller teams often perform best.
After the right-sizing, Twitter has rolled out more features than they ever could before.
Andrej Karpathy, who worked directly under Elon, explains 4 ways Elon runs his companies differently 👇 pic.twitter.com/0ib6ecBi52
1. Small, strong, and highly technical teams
Elon is against large teams. To give you a context, look at the people he has fired over time.
Why? Because he understands Parkinson’s Law pretty well.
Let me explain:
Parkinson’s law states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
So no matter how many people you allocate to a task, they will feel busy.
Due to the excess of time, they’ll start focusing on less important tasks.
Small teams help you avoid that.
2. Wants the workplace to be vibrant
Elon wants to nurture activity and people doing their best work.
So people are always pacing around, coding, and prioritizing getting real work done.
There’s not much pampering – you’re simply expected to do great technical work. pic.twitter.com/7i7teU085c
There are also NO large meetings.
Anyone can walk out of a meeting if they’re not contributing or don’t feel they need to be there.
According to Elon, small teams make quick and independent decisions.
Look at the email he wrote to employees 👇
3. Skip layers and stay ultra-connected to the teams
Companies have different layers you need to cross to get in touch w/ the CEO.
But Elon knows that only the person working on the project knows it best.
So he spends 99% of the time talking to them. Not to VPs/Directors. pic.twitter.com/aEQtUWanU1
4. Remove bottlenecks wherever possible
Elon is so involved that he removes bottlenecks as soon as he learns about them.
A company usually goes through tons of exercises and documented procedures to solve an issue.
But when Elon learns of them, he tries to solve immediately. pic.twitter.com/ClR3kqVyL1
RT the first tweet if you found this thread valuable.
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Elon Musk fired 80% of Twitter (6500 people) and everyone thought that Twitter was doomed.
He was right. Everyone was wrong.
It’s the management masterclass of the decade and every entrepreneur must understand why it worked 🧵:
A bit about me:
20 years ago, I was a broke biomedical engineering college student trying to get my first biz off the ground.
Since then, I’ve grown six 7-figure businesses, three 8-figure businesses & raised $50M+ in VC. I’m also a General Partner at The Family Fund.
And I do all of this while prioritizing my health, traveling for fun every month & not grinding 247.
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