Matt Wallington

Rip City didn't disappoint with Dame's ovation

BREAKING: New York City to ban elementary & middle school students from using AI, while also prohibiting teachers from using AI to grade assignments.

A Tesla employee once described what happens when Elon Musk walks out of a meeting. Mid sentence. While someone is still talking. Elon has told his teams explicitly: "Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren't adding value. It is not rude to leave. It is rude to waste people's time." The employee said the first time he saw it happen the room froze. A senior vice president was presenting a quarterly update and Elon simply stood up, nodded slightly, and left. No explanation. No "excuse me." The presentation continued but nobody was listening anymore. They were all processing what just happened. Over time the employee said it became normal. People understood the rule. If Elon leaves it means one of two things: the meeting doesn't need him, or the meeting shouldn't exist. Both are useful signals. The meetings got shorter. The presentations got sharper. People stopped scheduling meetings to feel productive and started scheduling them only when a decision needed to be made. He said the rule sounds brutal in theory but in practice it created the most efficient meeting culture he'd ever experienced. Nobody rambles when the CEO might stand up and leave. Nobody pads a presentation with filler when the audience includes someone who values his time in 5-minute increments. Most companies worship the appearance of collaboration. Elon worships the elimination of wasted time. And the difference between the two is why Tesla moves faster than companies ten times its size. The discomfort of watching someone leave your meeting is smaller than the cost of keeping someone in a meeting they don't need to be in. Most leaders aren't willing to make others uncomfortable to save time. Elon considers it a moral obligation.