Andrej Karpathy on how Elon Musk runs his companies October 29, 2022 Tesla's former AI director describes Elon Musk's management style from the inside: small teams of strong engineers, a hatred of bureaucracy, fast iteration and a permanent sense of urgency.
Tesla's former AI director describes Elon Musk's management style from the inside: small teams of strong engineers, a hatred of bureaucracy, fast iteration and a permanent sense of urgency.
Transcript Lex Fridman
What did you learn about machine learning, about engineering, about life, about yourself as one human being from working with Elon Musk?
Andrej Karpathy
I think the most I've learned is about how to sort of run organizations efficiently and how to create efficient organizations and how to fight entropy in an organization. So human engineering
Lex Fridman
in the fight against entropy.
Andrej Karpathy
Yeah, I think Elon is a very efficient warrior in the fight against entropy in organizations.
Lex Fridman
What does entropy in an organization look like
Andrej Karpathy
exactly? It's process. It's process and
Lex Fridman
inefficiencies in the form of meetings and that kind of stuff.
Andrej Karpathy
Yeah, meetings. He hates meetings. He keeps telling people to skip meetings if they're not useful. He basically runs the world's biggest startups. I would say Tesla, SpaceX are the world's biggest startups. Tesla actually is multiple startups. I think it's better to look at it that way. And so I think he's extremely good at that. And yeah, he has a very good intuition for streamlining processes, making everything efficient. Best part is no part simplifying, focusing and just kind of removing barriers, moving very quickly, making big moves. All this is very startup Y sort of seeming things, but at scale.
Lex Fridman
So strong drive to simplify from you, from your perspective. I mean that, that also probably applies to just designing systems and machine learning and otherwise. Like simplify, Simplify,
Lex Fridman
What do you think is the secret to maintaining the startup culture in a company that grows? Is there. Can you introspect that?
Andrej Karpathy
I do think you need someone in a powerful position with a big hammer, like Elon, who's like the cheerleader for that idea and ruthlessly, ruthlessly pursues it. If no one has a big enough hammer, everything turns into committees. Democracy within the company process, talking to stakeholders, decision making, just. Everything just crumbles. If you have a big person who is also really smart and has a big hammer, things move