Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
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Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q So both Broadcom and SpaceX are having a bit of a moment right now. I guess if we look back at Broadcom to your point, you helped scale that company up and it reached a massive inflection point. So what were the biggest lessons that you learned there?
A Yeah. The biggest lessons is each size you are as you grow requires a different behavior from the company. When you're 10 people, It's a network of us just talking to each other. I need very little processor systems. It's smart people just doing the right thing. You get to a hundred and you need a little more process, but not too much. And then you get to a thousand and you need more process. But again, not too much because you can like constrain a company by putting too much process in too early and stunt the growth. So you always have to assume smart people, stupid systems, let the right people do the right thing in the moment. But track them, how they're doing it, what they're doing, and make sure they're accountable for the actions they're taking. And then you get the 5010 thousand. It's like everyone knows the piece they know, but they don't understand how a whole business works. But bringing that information together and presenting it to the top level people so they can understand how the whole company's operating together is kind of the focus. And that was both Broadcom's growth path. And when I joined SpaceX, it was again about a thousand employees producing about one booster a year. And through the years of growing up Warp Drive, the custom platform we built there, we scaled it up to 40 boosters a year and 9000 employees across multiple locations, and it was just that …
AI assessment note: “The biggest lessons is each size you are as you grow requires a different behavior”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q significantly changed with AI and automation, the way you scale businesses now is dramatically different than before, throwing more headcount at it, but now we're Throwing really talented head count at it, and then also automating some of that back end with, you know, technology, AI, all this kind of stuff that's happening. So how do you imagine companies now scaling up with this new mix versus just purely people?
A Yeah, yeah. Something like SpaceX and Broadcom, AI didn't exist, and so it just took longer, and it was harder to build the systems and the documentation. And figuring out where the automation opportunities were, and to digest the data to figure out where the trends were. Like, uh, at SpaceX, I had grown up to having a team the size of about a 175, building the core platforms. I've got a team of six here. I don't really think it's going to scale much more than maybe one or two more people, and I think I'll be able to do exactly what I did at SpaceX with only six, because AI, It drives most of what we're doing, and AI is now starting to enable things we weren't even capable of doing while at SpaceX. So that's one of the areas, and then you just look at machine automation or robotics and the ability to cost-effectively apply it. Like, AI is just driving the cost down and the speed up associated with finding unique ways to apply technology to help humans do what they're great at and getting the mundane, boring tasks out of the work that we do.
AI assessment note: “I'll be able to do exactly what I did at SpaceX with only six”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q How did you make the decision to go to Broadcom to SpaceX?
A Broadcom to SpaceX. So Broadcom to SpaceX was a pretty simple one. The company had gotten big enough that it wasn't really innovating anymore. It was kind of just operating and I get bored in those situations. I'm not really a true, just run the system about continuously improving the system. And the CFO at Broadcom was at SpaceX was an ex-Broadcomer that I knew. He invited me up one day to just do a tour of the factory. I wasn't looking for a job, but he invited me up. I did this tour of the factory, which is In Hawthorne, downtown LA-ish, and here they are building big metal objects. It's supposedly cheaper than anyone else in the world in downtown LA, and I'm like, well, this is crazy, but I have manufacturing in my blood. My entire career has been in manufacturing. I'm like, this is a pretty interesting place. I have no idea who they are. I don't know what they do for a living because SpaceX wasn't a name back in those days, and they're an hour at least away from where I live. So he offered me a job, and I'm like, I don't know. I don't want to drive an hour up to this place, but It was such an interesting story that Elon was going to save humanity from itself by colonizing another planet, because we're going to screw this one up, and we need to keep humankind going. And it was another scaling opportunity, so I thought about it, talked to my wife, and in the end decided to b…
AI assessment note: “So Broadcom to SpaceX was a pretty simple one. The company had gotten big enough”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q What was the day to day like? I just can't even imagine.
A They started at five o'clock in the morning, driving up to Hawthorne, trying to miss the crowd, getting in by six, and then working with all the various groups in the organization to define how they were operating and making sure we were not only collecting the information, but we were presenting like The design changes they were making up front and their impact on operations and making it very apparent very early what was going on so that you didn't get to a certain point and go, like, that design change just cost us five million dollars to implement. They knew as it was going through, so it was a very tightly coupled system that kept everyone working together and then just trying to scale the business. And Elon had hired me because they had a visual, a purchased application he wanted to build. The digital nervous system for the 21st century rocket company, and I'm like, I started that way at AT&T early, early in my career building, because no purchase software existed. And the opportunity to build it again, I'm like, this is either the smartest thing or the stupidest thing we've ever done, and I have no idea right now whether this is smart or stupid. And I'd say for the first two years, I didn't think it was such a smart idea. By year three, when we really had the software working well and the company was really using, and I'm like, this man is a genius. He figured out what w…
AI assessment note: “They started at five o'clock in the morning, driving up to Hawthorne”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q What do you think the key components of Elon's magic is?
A Number one is first principles thinking eliminate before automation is clear to what he's saying and, uh, remove before automate is an activity and then just holding people really accountable. Accountable and driving them. The whole concept of a responsible engineer is what I learned there, and that person owned that part from first requirements all the way through to post-flight. There were no handoffs. There's no finger pointing. Either you got it done or you are no longer employed, and like that kind of accountability and that everyone else is serving you getting your part through the process really created ownership. Like, and the people there worked 10:12 hours a day, and didn't think about it. Like, it wasn't like we were required. It's just like, you're looking around at seven o'clock at night, and like, nobody's left yet. Like, I'm not gonna leave yet. I need to still finish the thing I'm working on. And so, long hours, but really committed to the mission, and Elon was really good about keeping the mission as a forefront focus for what we were doing, and just kind of energized everyone to get it done.
AI assessment note: “Number one is first principles thinking eliminate before automation is clear to what he's saying”
Answered raw tape
D 4 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.30
Q What was it like? What are the biggest lessons that you learned from her?
A So, so Gwen was to Elon what Henry was to Nick at Broadcon. Like, Nick was the aggressive, make it happen, drive people to the very last ounce of juice they had, and Henry was pick up the mess that gets created, help people figure out really what they're trying to do, make sure everyone's Safe as they go forward. I'd say Gwen is exactly the same thing for Elon. Elon is just very driven, very focused, very motivated, very, uh, hard to work for. Never worked harder in my life than when I worked for him, and Gwen was as driven as Elon, but in a nicer Way that helped the company keep moving forward and not just burn everyone out as they went, uh, but brilliant, brilliant. Knew where to focus, what to do, kept things going when Elon would go up and focus on Tesla, the boring company, and that kind of activity, and she was like the glue that held it all together.
AI assessment note: “Gwen was as driven as Elon, but in a nicer Way”
