Inside Elon Musk’s “Agile” Empire: In-Depth Talk with Joe Justice

Introduction to agile hardware and the Musk method

Wiktor Żołnowski: Our guest is no one else but Joe Justice. It’s a great pleasure to have you here. I was amazed that you agreed to join us today and to talk about your recent experiences. I’ve been observing your career since I believe 2014 or ’13, since we met for the first time, and I heard about WikiSpeed. Then, I was amused by what you achieved with WikiSpeed, but the things that you’ve been doing later on make me more impressed, and I’m really, really excited to speak to you here today.

Joe Justice: It’s my honor to be in Poland, and it’s my honor to be collaborating with you right now, Wiktor. Thank you so much.

Wiktor Żołnowski: So, Joe, I know you, but some of our people who will be watching this or listening to the podcast later on may not recognize you or may not know who you are. So please, tell us, who is Joe Justice and what is your story?

Joe Justice: A lot of people think of me as the agile hardware person: agile project management for hardware design and manufacturing. I started as a software developer. I had a very lucky break working for Bill Gates directly, working with Bill Gates on an agile project. I was a Scrum Master at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and that was some software but also social projects like vaccine deployments and trying to make the world a better place. I started a car company in 2006 using agile methods, Team WikiSpeed, and it was successful. We set four world records. Working for Bill and then learning a lot with my own car company created a consulting career, and I worked as a consultant in many companies like Amazon and spoke at Google and got to learn a lot from some very skillful people. For this story, ultimately, that got me a job at Tesla. And that’s why I’m lucky enough to be here with you in Wrocław, to talk about my time as an employee at Tesla and when I visited SpaceX as an employee, and what I learned about the way they work.

The story of WikiSpeed
Wiktor Żołnowski: That’s an amazing story, and as I said, I’m truly impressed by your story. Let’s jump into the stories that you already mentioned. Let’s start from the beginning. Let’s start with WikiSpeed. I remember that that was quite a recognizable story, how you managed to develop a car and release it into production in a very, very short cycle. Tell us more about it.

Joe Justice: I had a goal of trying to test and learn in one-week chunks. In the beginning, it wasn’t any formal agile method. I didn’t have a product owner or a Scrum Master, but I was trying to iterate quickly. I was not able to release a drivable car in a week, but I did in 12 weeks, and that was a world record. And that still is, actually, a world record from design, nothing existing, to road-legal, approved by the government with a license plate on it: 12 weeks. And I attempted once every week, which I think is why it went as quickly as it did, because the learning cycle was fast. In one-week attempted increments, they started and ended each Thursday. And in the beginning, it was only me, and I’m not a mechanical engineer; I was a software developer.

Joe Justice: …saying, “Well, why haven’t you done this really basic thing?” Thank you for saying that. And these are internet trolls: “I can’t believe this person is doing this really wrong thing.” And I’d say, “Thank you,” because you have no choice but to be humble when you’re at the bottom, I believe.

Wiktor Żołnowski: It was also a world record of monetizing the internet trolls.

Joe Justice: Maybe, maybe also. And then, WikiSpeed is what that car company became named when it legally incorporated in 2006. The name was for Wikipedia, and the idea was I knew I didn’t have almost any money, and I knew I didn’t have enough skill and experience to make this work. So I knew I had to welcome anyone who would give me any of their time. And I thought maybe how Wikipedia authors can just join an article if they’ve signed some basic code of ethics stuff to be a Wikipedia author. So I made a one-page promise, “I will try to be ethical,” and said if you’ll sign this, that’s it. Then anything you want to do, you can use my tools, you can use the materials I have, but please sign this one-page waiver. And 4,000 people signed it in, I think I’ve said in previous talks, 28 countries. Now, I’m not sure. It was a while ago when it was at its peak. And people just started building cars and car parts. In fact, I’ve gone on to go to different companies. I haven’t attended a WikiSpeed standup in a few years now. I still love it, but I prioritize my time other places. People still keep building cars. I think it maybe can’t die. It’s too fun, maybe. And the project, the website is full of broken links. It’s really a tragedy; I’ve neglected that too. There’s still at least one new sign-up, signing the online version of the waiver, if they can even find it. There’s no direct link to it anymore. About once a week. It continues to have passionate interest. I hope to figure out how to plug myself back into it at some point.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Okay, great. And so, how did you end up at Tesla? How did it happen? Okay, WikiSpeed, and then Bill Gates, and then Tesla, Elon Musk.

Joe Justice: So, COVID happened. I’d been teaching project management classes and agile classes in person and loving it, loving meeting people who were interested in quick iterations. I was specializing in agile hardware, and in-person work went to zero right away during COVID. So I had no work. Like a lot of people, what was I going to do? I’d been fascinated by how quickly Tesla released new product, and I’d consulted for Tesla since 2010, so I had a relationship. I applied as a normal person to a posted job position on careers.tesla.com. And I really want to say this is my proud moment in my life: I was told I’m the best interview they ever had. I was thrilled.

Wiktor Żołnowski: I can imagine that.

The pace of innovation at Tesla vs. traditional automakers
Wiktor Żołnowski: We used to work with clients who were in manufacturing or some industry or something like this, and they were saying that it’s not possible to iterate in this environment, that it’s not possible to introduce changes. I show them a few interviews with Elon; I show them a few movies, documentaries about Tesla and SpaceX as well. So please, tell us more, how did it look from your perspective?

Joe Justice: I’ve worked in, I think, all of the large automakers worldwide now: Volkswagen, including Porsche and Lamborghini; Toyota is my client now; previously Nissan, Honda, Mitsubishi, and their subsidiaries like Denso; then Mercedes-Benz, BMW. And they all have multi-year planning, then multi-year execution, and then large testing at the end, which is what we agile people would call waterfall, the cascading multi-year project.

Wiktor Żołnowski: There in three days? Come on. I don’t know. Okay, and maybe fans follow the podcast already, but maybe what they want to do is introduce this to someone, to share the topic with someone who’s way outside the realm.

Joe Justice: So truly, Tesla, all the Musk companies, are doing in less than a day what most companies do in about five years, truly. And the reason that happens is Elon’s operating method is: pace of innovation is the only thing that matters in the long run. Whereas for every other of the companies I just mentioned, it’s shareholder value. And then in some companies, it’s also intentionally delaying innovation to prevent upsetting their market. So that leads to a different management style, a much slower management style. And the best-selling car in the world is now a Tesla, the Tesla Model Y. So we see that Elon’s theory is working, at least for this part.

Wiktor Żołnowski: I’m pretty sure that the best-selling space-traveling company is also SpaceX.

Common patterns in the Musk empire
Wiktor Żołnowski: I know you already did this research and analysis of all of these companies, and I know that you already spoke a few times about the common patterns that you noticed there. So could you also share with our viewers what are the common success factors for all of these Musk companies, this Musk empire?

Joe Justice: And no one sees better. Elon would always say, “You have no boss; your boss is data.” So as a result, the companies are very nearly completely flat. There’s Elon as your administrator, kind of, and then you’re sort of in an open-world, role-playing game where your only class, your only job, is engineer in this open world. Wow.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Okay, so do you think that this–I don’t want to call it a process or framework or whatever–what Tesla, SpaceX, and other Musk companies are doing, do you think that this is something that someone could copy?

Joe Justice: Okay, yeah, I do.

Wiktor Żołnowski: So, how to copy that?

Joe Justice: Elon is not writing a book, and I hope someday in the future he will, so someone else has got to figure out what it is. I’ve got an understanding of 12 practices that each seem to reinforce each other, and I’ll try to summarize all 12 today in the session. After this, I added a chapter to my book, *Scrum Master*, which was already 20 chapters, *Aspects of Scrum Mastery*. And then I went to Tesla, and I added chapter 21. Okay, forget everything I wrote before; this is much better. And it lists those 12 and has some description. I actually think it’s enough to start implementing. I did make an online course that’s been very popular. How to find this? Hashtag JoeDX. JoeDX, DX for digitalization. Joe, because I don’t think I understand all of what Elon is doing yet. I want to call it the Musk model, and that sounds right; I think it’d be marketable. But I don’t think I got all of it. So I’m limiting it by as much of it as I got right now, which is Jodex. If I ever really get it.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Elon did retweet it, yes. I was about to mention that. I saw it one day.

Joe Justice: He retweeted it. So, what does it mean? Did he agree with it? He didn’t say okay, but he didn’t say no to anything. What he did is amplify the point that everyone’s a worker. There’s no two-class system of managers and employees. And there are no separate bathrooms or kitchens or separate parking for any group. Everyone eats in the same areas, uses the same bathroom, fights for the same parking, period. And everyone’s a worker; there are no positions that aren’t working. That’s what he said replying to my talk, which was amplifying it.

Wiktor Żołnowski: So, I’ll take that as a strong endorsement. He didn’t say, “Actually, Joe, you’re wrong about these points,” which would have been great if he did, but he amplified it. So I’ll take that as an endorsement. Great, awesome.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Anyone who wants to learn more and wants to copy it, #Jodex is the thing that you’re looking for if you want to be like SpaceX and Tesla as well. So, from a few interviews or a few documentaries about Tesla, especially about SpaceX, there was one thing that made me very curious, and I would love to hear more about it from you. Elon says once that they are working in a way that they are removing stuff from the processes, from the tools they use, from the components. They were removing all the time. And what they are aiming for is to get to the point where they would have to bring some things back to the process or to the tools or components that they build the rocket from, etc. Is this something that is very important, crucial, or is this just a side effect of all of the principles that you described?

Joe Justice: “I haven’t been playing these political games for the last 10 years to come back to engineering.” No, “But I’m a king in my area now, and I’m aiming to be an even bigger king.” So because of that, the ability to delete parts, delete processes, there’s not resistance to it. In fact, maybe there’s even momentum. Maybe there’s cheering for it, right?

The critical role of an inspiring vision
Wiktor Żołnowski: Don’t you think that–because you were talking about the structure of those companies, how they are very, very flat and people are mostly responsible to each other for taking ownership, taking responsibility for what they are doing as you described, and taking ownership from the beginning till the end of the process, going to production, legalizing it, etc.–don’t you think that there is a correlation between this and those 1,000-year goals that you mentioned, or just the broad vision of the companies? The visions that are usually very attractive for the employees. So, many companies that would like to try to copy that will most probably fail because of a lack of this kind of vision or a lack of the general purpose that Musk companies have in this case. Don’t you think that there is a correlation between that?

Joe Justice: I completely agree with you, Wiktor. I think Wiktor actually just hit the critical point for all of us. I experienced working in a Musk company as Elon being a very talented engineer and extremely inspiring, extremely motivating, because of the ability to very succinctly articulate a clear, inspiring, meaningful vision. And most companies and products don’t have anything like that.

Wiktor Żołnowski: You started a topic for us and for our audience about “could other companies do this?” and then clearly stated that it’ll be difficult for most companies to have an inspiring goal and actually prioritize that goal, right? So…

The future of work, UBI, and purpose
Joe Justice: Yes, in Tesla you get four days off one week and three days off the next, but you work 12-hour shifts. Not everyone has that level of energy. So I would hope it’s a remote work model where you determine how much time you put in and are paid accordingly, using those methods, but you determine your level of intensity. And intentionally allowing people of any age to participate. I don’t know, in some countries maybe you’re allowed to work when you’re seven, but if you’re not allowed to work where you are, then respecting the laws. But people of any age, 80, 90, 100 years old, if they want to participate and they have a good hour a day of very clear thinking, welcome, welcome. There’s work for you. Something I’m experiencing right now in Japan with an aging population is a lot of people trying to find a sense of purpose after a certain age and trying to find value after a certain age. That’s actually my social good I’d like to pursue: giving meaningful, collaborative, paying work to anyone who wants it, provided they’re willing to act ethically.

Wiktor Żołnowski: I will try to challenge that a little bit, if I may. So do you think that work, a job, is the only way you can assure that?

Joe Justice: No, no, no. So Elon is an advocate of Universal Basic Income. If you look at Tesla Bot as a unit of work, a human-sized, human-ish shape, roughly physically human equivalent is the goal unit of work. If you believe it could ramp in production to as much as there is work, then humans have a choice: do I work or does the Tesla Bot work? And employers have a choice which or which blend is useful for the way they want to run a business. And if you look at what ChatGPT, Google Bard, Microsoft Bing, or xAI are aspiring to do and already doing, it’s already very useful in many domains, and the utility seems to just be going up. So at some point, at the limit, humans are not more valuable than Tesla Bot Optimus and an AI stack. At some point. So what do we do then? Well, then likely Universal Basic Income. And I don’t know how soon that is, so I’ll attempt to make something in the meantime. Now, even if it does come, likely people still want to feel value and contribution. So maybe it’s not anything about pay anymore, but maybe it’s still about value and contribution. So maybe that’s still an aspiration I can participate in.

Wiktor Żołnowski: I think that, like the universe from Star Trek movies where humanity, humankind, just got rid of money and everyone has everything what they want, what they need because of the replicators and other real technologies, and people actually found another purpose. They are searching for purpose, like growing themselves for discovery, communication, exploration, etc. I believe that there is a huge chance that our generation will get there.

Joe Justice: I’m excited to say I think it’s possible too. All right. Now we’re here in Poland. Currently, I live in Japan, and before that, I’m from the United States. I grew up reading a lot of biographies, and many of the top contributors to science were what could have been the idle rich throughout history. And most of those that were written about in English were in Europe. Now, there are many that were written about in Mandarin and Cantonese; my Mandarin skill is super low. But in English, many of them are European. I’m a huge fan of Darwin, for example. It seemed like Darwin was genuinely likable and lovely, as far as people write, loved kids and then played with all kinds of animals in a friendly way. These people chose to take their access to their own time and use it for exploration, discovery, clarification, sharing information with other people, even taking years to polish and refine an idea against possible rebuttal, possible attacks, to make an extremely clear, logical argument for something that’d be very difficult, which is what Darwin did. So there’s a chance that with this idle time, we wouldn’t all just be drinking beer, which is not so good. It’s not bad.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Some great ideas came after the alcohol as well. No, we don’t recommend drinking alcohol.

Joe Justice: I love the theory of Enlightenment, that it’s the switch from a beer-based culture to a coffee-based culture, changing from the Dark Ages to the era of Enlightenment. I love this. That said, I’m sure there’s a room for beer.

The impact of AI on business and development
Wiktor Żołnowski: What do you think will be the impact of AI? We already spoke about it, but what will be the impact of AI on businesses such as SpaceX, Tesla, these kinds of companies, and especially the companies that are in the same industries but are not Tesla or SpaceX?

Wiktor Żołnowski: I will put it in the link. It was about training AI. I’ve heard from many company founders and CEOs, here in Poland but also abroad, that they are preparing for using AI. And by preparing, they usually mean that they are building data lakes, collecting data, etc. But what you just said is that might not even be enough because they don’t know how they should prepare the data for the AI, right? So they should actually start by using AI, even if they don’t have data yet, just on a small set of data, and feed the data to the AI. That’s the agile mindset, right?

Joe Justice: It sounds like some CEOs with a waterfall mindset: gather the data, introduce the AI, get the result. Right? Whereas an agile mindset is, let’s get a complete feedback loop as fast as we can so that we learn what we really need to do.

Wiktor Żołnowski: And it does look like if you’re using someone else’s money, a waterfall mindset is rewarded. To give money to someone, you want these promises of future returns that are specific, date-driven, they have a number attached to them that they’re committed to. You might have to self-fund to actually be an agilist, which is what Elon did. This actually answers a lot of questions that we’ve tried to ask many times, for example, how to use AI. You just simply answered that in one sentence. Come on.

Joe Justice: Really? I think that this is the best answer I ever heard: keep the feedback loop as short and as fast as possible.

Wiktor Żołnowski: And go to production, test it, and then again, again, again, again. And then figure out and improve in small steps, improvement to the moment when you get where you want to be. That’s the same with manufacturing and anything else that most companies are doing.

Future plans and a call for collaboration
Wiktor Żołnowski: Okay, Joe, is there anything else that we should talk about today? Any other topics aside from Tesla, SpaceX, WikiSpeed, and your future plans for your next big company that will give a job to everyone else?

Joe Justice: If you’re interested in helping construct the legal entities around the world that could allow 9 billion people to have, I hope, meaningful, safe, aspirational, enjoyable employment, email me, or better yet, tweet/X me, because then everybody can see and they can join in that conversation if they want. @JoeJustice on X/Twitter.

Joe Justice: I’d love to collaborate with you. Elon focuses in recruitment events on what you’re actually going to be doing. So he says, “Look, it’s hardcore engineering. We don’t have management positions. We don’t have presentations.” Right? “So do you like engineering? Because that’s what you’re going to be doing. Please show me the engineering you’ve done.” Right? So my request is, in the beginning, it’s going to be paperwork filing and researching different types of employment structures globally. And some countries, you still need to go into offices physically and make appointments, bizarrely. You can’t do it all online in some places. So if that’s what you’re willing and interested to do, then that’s the stage this is at. It’s creating the structures globally so a company could grow towards 9 billion people. Currently, what, 7.8, 8.2 billion? But you know, give some headroom. Right? So yes, please, I’m at Joe Justice on X. Priority will be given to verified subscribers because that’s one way to reduce the amount of bots, but I’ll try to read everything. Another is about AI. I don’t remember who said this, but I love it. I do use AI in collaborative work every day, mob AI. And sometimes the recommendations are still really weird and not useful, so you can’t just do anything that is recommended. The quotation that sums up this state in AI I love, and I don’t remember who said it: “Your job will not be taken by AI. Your job will be taken by a human using AI.” So your job’s gone, but not to AI; it’s to another human who’s using it.

Joe Justice: Balance, always be trying to split more parallel executable projects at the rate that you can attract more execution capability, and keep those as in sync as possible for optimum flow. Then we can use mob AI, mob group work assisted by an in-house AI, I hope, to execute each of those in parallel. And you’ve come very close to a Musk company, as long as you have an inspiring goal.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Yes, yes. About failing–failing fast, failing safely–what about that? How to assure that? Wow, yes.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Without customer payload and with no human involved around. Elon will very often say, “This is a launch with customer payload. This is a launch with humans. It is as safe as things in the world can be. This launch has no customer payload, has no humans. It has approximately a 50% chance of exploding. We’re trying a lot of new things.” So those are done all the time. That constant investment, which also is exciting, it makes for some great YouTube footage.

Wiktor Żołnowski: So it’s also about making the testing process like any other process. You are simplifying it, speeding it up, removing things that are not needed. And actually, this is the way to assure safety.

Joe Justice: What I think I experienced is that the tools for test and the tools to design were the same tools; they weren’t different. I also remember how it was more than 10 years ago I spoke to Bob Martin, Robert Martin, and he said… I remember that someone in your room said that, “Oh, there is a testing code and the production code.” I said, “No, testing code is a part of a production code.” And the same here.

Joe Justice: Software companies, not all of them are so quick, but many really get it. The idea of DevOps and CI/CD is the state-of-the-art. Someone asked on X two weeks ago, “My company has great CI/CD. We can test and release multiple times a day. What should we do next?” And the best answer I had was, “Well, then focus on doing work worth doing.” You have a great process; that’s what companies want. So now it’s not about process optimization. Are you building something that is useful to the world? They said, “I’m in game development, but entertainment is kind of valuable, right?” And yes, it is, especially in the topic that we spoke about before.

Wiktor Żołnowski: That people will know maybe in the near future they won’t need to work anymore, so leisure and entertainment will be one of the things that will provide some purpose for people, maybe. Okay.

Final advice for leaders
Wiktor Żołnowski: So, let’s try to wrap up all the things that we spoke about. If you could give one piece of advice to the leaders of organizations–founders, C-level, etc.–something that will change the way they are thinking right now, maybe not doing anything yet, but thinking in a way that will, let’s say, improve the world. Let’s think big. Wow, okay.

Joe Justice: If this person, this group of people, can choose the goal of the company that actually prioritizes where the money is spent, making that a worthwhile, inspiring goal would be the thing. I mean, that’s it. Let’s colonize another planet. Let’s have a higher bandwidth communication pathway to AI, which is what Neuralink is about. Let’s solve quadriplegic problems, which is the near-term goal of Neuralink. Do that, right? Well, not everybody that’s listening can set the mission and goal and then align funding to it. So then, also hugely impactful, and maybe a wider group of people could do it: attempt to have a shorter budgeting cycle. If you have a nine-year budgeting cycle like Volkswagen Group has, and you learn something new, all the engineers get depressed because they can’t implement any of it on company time and definitely not sell any of it for nine years on average. Try to make it eight years. If you’re at a one-year budgeting cycle, can you do quarterly? The shorter the checking, “Should we change budget?” without penalty, without an elaborate change request process and penalty, the more agile the financially backed change of the company is, and fundamentally, the more exciting the workplace is for people who like to innovate. And if pace of innovation is the only thing that matters, then the budget length becomes enormously important as a bottlenecking factor. So even if you can’t choose the company mission and you’re just making something uninspiring, at least try to make innovation possible by shortening the budget cycle. And then anybody, please start asking any question that you would ask your manager, or if you are a manager, since most companies are hierarchical, any questions someone asks you as their manager, start also trying to ask that to some AI, because the answer is probably as good or maybe better than the one you would have gotten or the one you would have given. And cut yourself out of that management conversation so you can focus on engineering. And you can do that even if you’re in a waterfall company. Pure-play waterfall, you can at least start redirecting any approval request or managing question to basically automate it to AI. We can all do mob AI. We can all do group work that’s AI-assisted, even if we’re not using any agile. And then the agile frameworks, man, they’ve been replaced. You don’t need any sprint planning. You definitely don’t need big room planning. You don’t need a PI, if you’re doing AI-assisted group work. That all becomes overhead, 100% overhead. You don’t need a Scrum Master; you don’t need a Product Owner. That gets fully replaced by mob AI.

Wiktor Żołnowski: And what’s more important, that already happened. It’s not a prediction, it’s not the future. Those are the things that already happened. Okay. Whoa, that was a great discussion. Thank you very much. It was a great pleasure to talk to you here.

Wiktor Żołnowski: I’m sure that people will enjoy it as soon as we release it. So thank you very much again, and I hope to have a chance to speak to you again someday.

Joe Justice: My pleasure. Next time, let’s do many next times. And maybe when I haven’t just changed time zones halfway. Hopefully, I can be an even better participant with a stable sleep schedule.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Come on, come on, you were great! You were awesome. We are awesome. You are awesome. We are awesome. Awesome! Yes, thank you very much. Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel. Don’t forget to follow Joe Justice in social media, on X, and many other places that you are publishing.

Joe Justice: If you’re in Poland, I am lucky enough to be here in person because of a Kraków-based company, ProCognita. And if you’re in Poland, many of you probably know ProCognita. They are an absolutely nationwide and actually internationally well-known agile provider, training, coaching provider. And I’ve had the chance to work with the ProCognita team many times, and I highly recommend them. If you’re in Poland, that’s an easy way to find whatever I’m lucky enough to get to do in Poland.

Wiktor Żołnowski: And by the way, Tomasz Wykowski, who is the founder of ProCognita, was a guest for one of the previous episodes where we talked about scaling companies and introducing AI to bigger companies. Also, feel invited to watch this video as well. Thank you very much.

Wiktor Żołnowski: Pragmatic Talks is delivered to you by Pragmatic Coders, the first-choice software development partner for startup founders. Be sure to catch all new episodes. Subscribe to our YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcast channels. And if you are thinking about building your own startup or struggling with product development, contact us and find out what we can do together.