What Elon SaidAn archive of questions answered

Subjects / Work Ethic

Work Ethic

62 answers

Opinion

Could you imagine the five frontier models yours and the others just getting together once a week and saying all right how are we going to save humanity from ourselves?

“I've recommended that we do that exactly I think because there's a lot of talk of having a regulatory agency, but I the problem the thing is that regulatory agencies, it takes a long time to get one established and their rule making is very slow.”

— Elon Musk, 20 October 2026 · Watch: Elon Musk: "Humans Won't Be in Control" When AI Becomes Smarter Than Us · 9:17 ↗ · In the archive

Opinion

What should America look for in immigrants?

“America does not have “magic ground” that fundamentally changes who people are when they arrive here. If we filter for high work ethic, talent & trustworthiness, we will get that. If we don’t, we will inherit all the problems of the countries those people are leaving. The end.”

— Elon Musk, 16 March 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Opinion

Why did you do DOGE and what did it achieve?

“Very true! Many times, the @DOGE team has found excellent people at the working level in government who want to do the right thing, but have been prevented from doing so by prior management. Treasury is a great example. If we just empower them to make the sensible decisions they’ve always wanted to make, the reduction in fraud & waste would be massive! Moreover, we should REWARD those in government who do the right thing for the American people as a whole!”

— Elon Musk, 10 February 2025 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Opinion

What should people study?

“People should study engineering. That is the closest thing to magic that exists in the real world. I studied physics out of curiosity about the nature of the universe, but with many engineering classes mixed in.”

— Elon Musk, 28 December 2024 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Opinion

What should the H-1B program be for?

“The H1-B program should be reserved for people who would address an important shortfall of domestic expertise. There is some degree of fraud and considerable incompetence in every government program and H1-B is no exception. That fraud and incompetence need to be fixed throughout the government.”

— Elon Musk, 27 December 2024 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Fact

What is first-principles thinking?

“I just recommend studying physics, you know, and the tools of physics, sort of the thinking tools that it's not just a bunch of. What matters is not remembering a bunch of formulas. What matters is the thinking process that led to the discovery of those formulas. It's sort of critical thinking, first principles, analysis, trying to understand what is true at a most fundamental level and then reasoning up from there and testing your conclusions against the most fundamental truth in any given arena. This is how you can figure out whether something is more likely to be true or not.”

— Elon Musk, 26 October 2024 · Watch: America PAC Town Hall — Lancaster, PA (2024) · 1:11:16 ↗ · In the archive

Opinion

What's your relationship with Trump / why support him?

“For one, I endorsed Trump and they know it all too well, so that statement from “Kamala Wins” is deliberately misleading. Second, very few corporate CEOs ever endorse a Presidential candidate, so any implication that the rest of the Fortune 100 supports Kamala is false. Overwhelmingly, the corporate CEOs tell me privately that they support Trump, not Kamala. From Wikipedia, which is very left-leaning, here is a partial list of those who have publicly endorsed Trump: Steve Schwarzman is a de facto top 5 CEO, given that he controls $1 trillion in assets.”

— Elon Musk, 18 September 2024 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Fact

Did you step down as head of Twitter?

“Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll. I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.”

— Elon Musk, 18 December 2022 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Fact

What is first-principles thinking?

“…well I've got this like first principles algorithm that I find to be very helpful in and any in the design and manufacturing of anything and people here may find it helpful the first thing you should do is make the requirements that you've been given a less dumb whatever constraints and requirements were given there were some degree down and you want to make them less dumb…”

— Elon Musk, 4 November 2022 · Watch: Elon Musk at the 2022 Baron Investment Conference · 11:01 ↗ · In the archive

Opinion

Do you still think we're approaching a recession?

“Yes, but this is actually a good thing. It has been raining money on fools for too long. Some bankruptcies need to happen. Also, all the Covid stay-at-home stuff has tricked people into thinking that you don’t actually need to work hard. Rude awakening inbound!”

— Elon Musk, 27 May 2022 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Fact

What is your five-step engineering process?

“First make your requirements less dumb, your requirements are definitely dumb. It does not matter who gave them to you. Whatever requirement or constraint you have, it must come with a name, not a department. Step two, delete the part or process step… if you’re not adding things back in 10% of the time, you’re clearly not deleting enough. The reason it’s the third step is ’cause it’s very common, possibly the most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize the thing that should not exist. Accelerate cycle time. You’re moving too slowly, go faster, but don’t go faster until you’ve worked on the other three things first. …don’t dig it faster, stop digging your grave. The final step is automate. And now I have personally made the mistake of going backwards on all five steps multiple times. …literally I automated, accelerated, simplified and then deleted.”

— Elon Musk, August 2021 · Watch: Everyday Astronaut video 13:36 ↗ · In the archive

Opinion

Why do you work so much? How many hours is enough?

“There are way easier places to work, but nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week. Varies per person, but about 80 sustained, peaking above 100 at times. Pain level increases exponentially above 80. But if you love what you do, it (mostly) doesn’t feel like work.”

— Elon Musk, 26 November 2018 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Fact

What is first-principles thinking?

“…like on rockets for example one could say oh you know that you could Reason by analogy and say the Rocket's going to cost a certain amount because that's what prior Rockets have cost or you can say well what is a rocket made of what the material constituents what are those M what do they weigh what's the cost per unit mass and that sets the limit ASM totically for what a rocket can be so if you can figure out some creative way to rearrange those elements into a rocket shape then you can achieve a much better outcome that's the first principles approach…”

— Elon Musk, 8 October 2014 · Watch: Elon Musk | Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit 2014 · 30:06 ↗ · In the archive