"The most common mistake of smart engineers is to optimize a thing that should not exist."
"I have this very basic first principles algorithm that I run as a mantra."
Elon breaks it down:
Step 1: Question the requirements.
"Make the requirements less dumb. The requirements are always dumb to some degree, no matter how smart the person who gave you those requirements. You have to start there, because otherwise you could get the perfect answer to the wrong question."
Step 2: Try to delete it.
"Try to delete the part or the process step entirely. If you're not forced to put back at least 10% of what you delete, you're not deleting enough. Most people feel like they've succeeded if they haven't been forced to put things back in. But actually they haven't, they've been overly conservative and left things in that shouldn't be there."
Step 3: Optimize or simplify.
"The most common mistake of smart engineers is to optimize a thing that should not exist. So you don't optimize until after you've tried to delete."
Step 4: Speed it up.
"Any given thing can be done faster than you think. But you shouldn't speed things up until you've tried to delete it and optimize it otherwise, you're speeding up something that shouldn't exist."
Step 5: Automate.
"And then the fifth thing is to automate it."
Elon explains why the order matters:
"I've gone backwards so many times where I've automated something, sped it up, simplified it, and then deleted it. I got tired of doing that. So that's why I have this mantra."
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