Hidden behind what sound like individually interesting ideas is a whole lot of exhortation to do early optimization. That is seldom if ever more productive<p>If you click through to the interview with Elon, he cites the elimination of a fiberglass mat in the Tesla battery pack. He makes it sound clever, but the fact a mat without a clear purpose was there to begin with was a failure to manage specs. Nobody knew who specified it. Obv someone did. But when you lose knowledge like that, you're not clever for fixing it later.<p>Elon's anecdote also points to chaos and turnover as causes for losing that knowledge. If you work for a mercurial manager who fires people on a whim, how likely are you to observe proper change management in the spec process instead of hoarding knowledge for your own job security?<p>Elon is reinventing processes that have better existing instatiations.