# SpaceX gives proven hires hard problems and clears their path Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/spacex-gives-proven-hires-hard-problems-and-clears-their/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy. - Speaker: [Gwynne Shotwell](https://realalpha.app/builders/gwynne-shotwell/) · President & COO, SpaceX · SpaceX's president and chief operating officer since 2008, who runs the company day to day. - Host: [Chamath Palihapitiya](https://realalpha.app/people/chamath-palihapitiya/) · Founder & CEO, Social Capital · Led Facebook's growth team; his firm backed Slack and AI chipmaker Groq. - Host: [Jason Calacanis](https://realalpha.app/people/jason-calacanis/) · Founder & CEO, LAUNCH · Early Uber angel; sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL; hosts This Week in Startups. - Host: [David Sacks](https://realalpha.app/people/david-sacks/) · Co-founder & partner, Craft Ventures · PayPal's first COO, founded Yammer; White House AI & crypto czar 2025–26. - Host: [David Friedberg](https://realalpha.app/people/david-friedberg/) · CEO, Ohalo · Founded The Climate Corporation, sold to Monsanto for about $1.1B in 2013. - Show: All-In - Episode: [Elon Musk & Gwynne Shotwell on AI Risks and Peer Review, Starship, Terafab, SpaceX/Tesla Merger](https://realalpha.app/v/iwBOQeFPAwg/), Sep 15, 2026 - Moment: 21:58 to 27:05 of the episode (5 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/spacex-gives-proven-hires-hard-problems-and-clears-their/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/iwBOQeFPAwg/?t=1318 ## Quote > “we hire **the best people**, not the best people that we can, but the best people.” > — [Gwynne Shotwell](https://realalpha.app/builders/gwynne-shotwell/) at [23:52](https://realalpha.app/v/iwBOQeFPAwg/?t=1432) · All-In ## Takeaways 1. Hire people with demonstrated success, then give them hard projects. 2. Managers should clear friction and still understand the work. 3. Move people across teams when urgent projects need help. ## About this segment Gwynne Shotwell describes hiring people with a record of success, giving them hard problems and removing friction so they can focus. SpaceX also moves people between projects when urgent needs arise. From “Elon Musk & Gwynne Shotwell on AI Risks and Peer Review, Starship, Terafab, SpaceX/Tesla Merger”, Sep 15, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/iwBOQeFPAwg/) ## Transcript Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there. [22:10](https://realalpha.app/v/iwBOQeFPAwg/?t=1330) Are you in that stuff with him? Sometimes. I wish, I actually, I'm an engineer and I wish, I miss it. Yeah. I really miss that kind of, that critical, well, you can still critically think even if you're not working on engineering problems, but. And he's not a big fan of the management layer. It's engineers working together. Signal to noise. Yes. Signal is engineering. Noise is the rest. Yeah. So I have to do some engineering or I'm just all noise. [22:29](https://realalpha.app/v/iwBOQeFPAwg/?t=1349) Got it. But I was talking about just generally in the company management. Everybody does a thing, not just manage. Right. That's very, expectations are separate. Player coaches. No such thing as just a manager. You got to do the thing that you're managing. Got it. You have to be a player coach. You have to be. And the reason for that is managers are annoying and they slow things down. Yeah. For the most part. [22:55](https://realalpha.app/v/iwBOQeFPAwg/?t=1375) But I mean, great managers can really leverage the talent, right? It's really managing the vector. You make sure people are pointed in the right direction and you try to make the vector as large as possible. What's the secret in terms of management and Elon's playbook there? I mean, I've gotten to sit in some meetings and it's pretty magical to see. but maybe you could reveal a little bit about how he convinces the most talented people to come work at this company, how you convince them, and how you actually get such amazing work out of these extremely talented people. So I don't think it's magic, although when I look at this particular team, they are so good. The results are magic. SpaceX, they're so good. We're tough on people in interviews, you really want to make sure that they've experienced success or demonstrated [23:48](https://realalpha.app/v/iwBOQeFPAwg/?t=1428) success in prior lives. It's hard to demonstrate if you haven't felt success or been successful in this environment. It's because it's a lot like we're all really busy. It's hard to be successful. unless you had kind of tasted it before. So you really want to grow people on that. So we hire the best people, not the best people that we can, but the best people. And then we give them really hard projects, really hard engineering problems, and let them fly. [24:18](https://realalpha.app/v/iwBOQeFPAwg/?t=1458) And you give high expectations, really hard problems, and then management job is to clear the chaff and the friction from their day so that engineers actually get to engineer 10 hours a day instead of two hours a day. Like there's always this joke, you know, most big companies, especially ones that work for the government, you get to work about two hours a day and the rest is full of chaff and crap. [24:43](https://realalpha.app/v/iwBOQeFPAwg/?t=1483) So really it's my job and everybody that manages people to make sure there's no crap in their way and let people do their great job. One way of doing that is not giving them any time to get it done. Like I think we handed the finance team, it's not all about engineers, even though engineers are great. We handed the finance team to get an IPO done, largest ever in less than six months. What's the talent condition like post-IPO, run-up in valuation, people are suddenly looking at their stock options, they're worth a lot. [25:10](https://realalpha.app/v/iwBOQeFPAwg/?t=1510) Is that a risk at all? You know, everyone was worried, not everyone at SpaceX. People come to SpaceX to work on these cool projects and have meaningful work and be part of the incredible successes. I wasn't worried about it. I didn't think we'd have mass exodus, and it turns out we didn't. Yeah. And as you kind of think about keeping people engaged over time, obviously great companies always have new things for high-talented people to work on. [25:39](https://realalpha.app/v/iwBOQeFPAwg/?t=1539) I'm assuming there's a – I'm just really interested in the management model. Are people actively rotated onto new projects? How do you think about keeping people, you know, kind of not necessarily needing to progress in a career up a management ladder, but to keep engaged on new projects? Is that active for you? We definitely move people around a lot. Hopefully it's a volunteer, not a voluntold. But, well, for instance, the compute centers, you know, we need a lot of help really quickly. [26:07](https://realalpha.app/v/iwBOQeFPAwg/?t=1567) And so we've got, you know, folks from launch helping. We've got folks from other areas helping, just like some SpaceX engineers helped on the AI front with the models. I mean, is it as simple as, like, really smart people just love working on really hard problems? Yes. It's literally that simple. It's literally that simple. And so the rest of us just... As long as they get the time to do it and they don't have a bunch of BS in the way. [26:28](https://realalpha.app/v/iwBOQeFPAwg/?t=1588) Yeah, so the rest of us just get, we just let the BS get in the way too much. Yep. BS is terrible. And then all of a sudden, A's recruit A's and other A's recruit A's and A pluses. It's literally that virtuous cycle if you can just keep focused on the thing that's hard. Yes. And so then the audacity becomes a feature, not a bug. It is a feature. Yeah. Not a bug. It's a feature. It keeps people motivated. [26:52](https://realalpha.app/v/iwBOQeFPAwg/?t=1612) Right. These problems seem impossible.