Walter van der Wal

Dutch Bangkokian. Dad. Insurance Expert in Thailand, Chief Entropy Officer at VanderSure Co Ltd @vandersure

[Walter van der Wal @WaltervdWal]

Finally proud of Holland again👍🧡

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

Approval has been so many years in the making that it's pretty surreal to see some Tesla owners in Europe (Netherlands) finally being able to use FSD (Supervised) on their own cars.

European roads present their own set of complexities, and FSD handles them very well:

[Walter van der Wal @WaltervdWal]

@OwnersTeslaThai @Tesla @tesla_thailand Wow

[Walter van der Wal @WaltervdWal]

@ING_Deutschland @maxico86 @TeslaBoomerMama @SawyerMerritt @Tesla What an idiots haha

[Vandersure @Vandersure]

Very important, you have to go through a process 👌 #healthinsurance #vandersure

[Tesla Owners Thailand @OwnersTeslaThai]

Tesla fan waiting for more affordable models? 😍🤣💪💪

[Nelis 🇳🇱🇦🇹 @NielsHonkoop]

America did not build New York. The Netherlands did.

America did not pay for New York. The Netherlands did.

America did not bring thousands of settlers to live in New York. The Netherlands did.

It is perfectly fair for the Netherlands to be raising questions about New York.

🇳🇱🇳🇱🇳🇱

[Walter van der Wal @WaltervdWal]

Do you remember when you joined X? I do! #MyXAnniversary

[Walter van der Wal @WaltervdWal]

@SawyerMerritt You can also clean it with water and drain it 👌

[Walter van der Wal @WaltervdWal]

@JohnLeFevre Hahahaha where the heck have you been in Thailand😂😂😂

[Walter van der Wal @WaltervdWal]

@WR4NYGov 🇳🇱🇳🇱💪💪

[Walter van der Wal @WaltervdWal]

@stevenmarkryan Literally panic buying, I was like fack all, the world is wrong I’m right 🤣🤣

[Walter van der Wal @WaltervdWal]

@WR4NYGov Hua Hin is the best, wait untill high season. November untill March, very lifely place! Our favorite place to go in Thailand 🙏

[Walter van der Wal @WaltervdWal]

@JoshuaLivestro Zo zie je maar weer dat er in die andere landen de crisis vele malen groter is

[Walter van der Wal @WaltervdWal]

@jasondebolt @TeslaAndDoge Very true, lived in Shanghai for 5 years and now 7 years in bangkok. Both places are a lot more peaceful than the Netherlands. However China made a U turn 2/3 years ago, it’s a lot less free now than it was 10 years ago…

[Walter van der Wal @WaltervdWal]

@Ajarncom Hi Phil, long time no speak! Hope all is well!! Very happy to help you again if you like? How can I reach you? My number is [phone] 🙏🙏

[Walter van der Wal @WaltervdWal]

So true 🫶🏼

[ELON CLIPS @ElonClipsX]

Elon Musk: Kids let you experience the world anew.

[Walter van der Wal @WaltervdWal]

💪💪🚀🚀

[Larry Goldberg @TeslaLarry]

A friend whose judgement I trust wrote to me recently that he was getting concerned about Elon stretching himself too thin across all the companies in which he was involved. I gave this some thought, particularly as many have expressed this concern on X. Here are the thoughts that I put into my reply (TL/DR: Elon is not likely "stretched too thin" across his multiple companies due to his hiring practices and operating methods):

On the matter of Elon, your concern about him stretching himself thin is shared by many. There are, I would suggest, many mitigating factors you should consider. I will detail those that come to mind.

Firstly, and this may be among the most important, he has a very strong track record for hiring outstanding people.

This is partly explained by the enormous talent pool he has available - his companies attract many, many millions of applicants - each of the Elon companies are perennially at the top of the list of companies receiving the most engineering/science based applications every year. He, and his companies have proved amazingly adept at choosing from among those the best of the best in terms of not only skill but temperament (i.e. the ability to work under the pressure which his methods impose!)

If you watched last year's Investor Day presentation, you will have seen twenty of the top Tesla managers present their operations, and you would have understood the quality and depth of which I speak.

Secondly, his management, engineering and design approach is to set the methods, the design, the parameters, and then measure results, and this scales very significantly. You should read Walter Isaacson's biography of Musk to understand just how simple are his methods: Elon sums them up in 5 points:

1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb.

2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough.

3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist.

4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted.

5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out.

He adds the following corollaries:

1. All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword.

2. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided.

3. It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong.

4. Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do.

5. Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers.

6. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant.

7. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle.

8. The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation.

The result is that his companies have an amazing depth of talent, and the people have incredible commitment to success, are generally entirely self-motivated, and extremely productive.

It is also true that there is a consistent turnover of people, driven by Musk’s maniacal cost cutting as well as employee burn-out. The methods and consistent turnover conspire to maintain a rhythm, a counterpoint of experience and fresh re-thinking.

The 20 execs that presented on Investor Day had been with the company for 9 years on average. Since that day, 15 months ago, several of those execs have left the company and been replaced (by other experienced people).

But to understand the employees outlook at Elon companies, I will append a post that was made this morning:. It is written by a US Army vet., who is in charge of “Booster Integration” at the Boca Chica Texas factory/launch site for the giant new rocket SpaceX are developing. He ends the post with this: “We are on the brink of something monumental, and together, we will make history.”

It’s the kind of refrain I hear everywhere I go in visiting Musk companies. Few Investment Analysts understand the power of this passion.

That’s why I am sanguine about Musk “stretching himself thin”. Currently he employs, across all his companies, about 110,000 people, across 5 principal business entities.

On the other hand, Amazon, for example, employs 1.5m, Berkshire Hathaway 396,000. Both have many more businesses than the 5 Elon covers, and the diversity of those two behemoths is much greater – to an extreme degree – than the diversity of Elon’s businesses.

Other than Boring Company, there is a very strong relationship between the companies, and their core competencies are in compute and AI dependence, automated manufacturing design and build skills.

I Hope that gives you hope.

https://t.co/s0erw03552.

[Walter van der Wal @WaltervdWal]

@TeslaBoomerMama @RemyAlidarso @DEGIRO @Tesla @MartinViecha @elonmusk 💪💪👍👍

[Walter van der Wal @WaltervdWal]

@unnamed_coder @CuriousPejjy This is exactly what I did

[Walter van der Wal @WaltervdWal]

@ErikStuyver @OwnersTeslaThai Imagine if you know someone that had the chance to buy that one, but instead went with a 10 year old Porsche?