5 Lessons from xAI
Insights Over the Past One and a Half Years
Friday was my last day at xAI.
I’ve grown a lot since I first left a trading firm—my first full time job out of university—and joined the controversial social media and AI company.
These are the 5 lessons I learned and operationalized during my time there.
Seek Glass Shattering Moments
Glass shattering moments are when common uninformed narratives from which we base our opinions are disproved by actual experience.
None of my jobs thus far lived up to the hype of my expectations prior to joining; each of them served as distinct glass shattering experiences. xAI is no different.
I see two very distinct benefits from glass shattering.
The first is having a much clearer resolution of the world and my interests.
I’m no longer caught up in the mystique that comes with prestigious companies, titles, catered meals, and high TCs.
I also don’t feel much envy nor see others as pretentious when people talk about their lives, accomplishments, and money.
After finding it anticlimactic after getting typically sought after things, I can assert with more confidence that curiosity and self discovery are what I’m optimizing for; everything else, while welcomed, is just noise.
The second is operationalizing previously bundled and mysterious terms.
I find many things are wrapped in this hullabaloo that make them appear as these crazy things only geniuses can pull off.
Previously, I didn’t really know what “business partnerships” meant—I saw it as an amorphous thing that occurred between CEOs in a penthouse conference room.
Instead, it consisted literally of just some person calling some other person several times, legal paper work copy pasted from a template in Google Docs, and a newly created shared Slack channel.
There’s nothing inherently special in “business partnerships” or any other terms like “networking,” “marketing,” “product design,” etc. These are just a series of unsexy concrete actions performed for some desired outcome.
Only obtainable through actual experience, glass shattering moments removes all the preconceived notions and ignorant judgements for what something appears to be, replacing it with what it actually is.
To learn about the world and yourself, seek glass shattering moments.
Everyone is Human
Whenever I say “I had a meeting with Elon,” the question I inevitably get asked is “what is he like?”
Under all the headlines, he appears as this larger than life figure—a sort of demigod only found in Greek myths. It makes sense why I always get asked “what is he like”.
To the letdown of everyone who asks, my answer is always the same: “he’s just another human.”
This was another one of those glass shattering moments in which uninformed expectations and ignorant imagination buckle under the ordinary-ness of reality.
I first saw him when I nervously entered the meeting room with my team. In that instant, all the narratives, influence, power, and $800B fortune coalesced into a guy in a t-shirt sitting in the corner on his phone drinking a Diet Coke.
And when the meeting started, he made eye contact, nodded, asked probing questions, cracked jokes, and extended guidance.
This is not to say all the narratives of him are not accurate. Maybe they are. Maybe they aren’t. That’s not my place to comment.
What is my place to comment is what underpins all these narratives is simply another human being.
There’s no mystique or magic to it. It’s just another human being.
The implications of this are twofold.
Firstly, there shouldn’t be any fear meeting anyone.
No one I interact with in the future will probably be as powerful, influential, polarizing, famous, or as rich as Elon. And if meeting him was pretty normal (albeit very cool), then meeting anyone else should be pretty normal as well.
Secondly, if he has accomplished all that as a human, than I too can accomplish plenty as a human as well.
There is no barrier to entry that allows only Gods. It’s all achievable if I’m willing to make the required tradeoffs (whether I want to do that is another story).
Everyone is human.
Work is 100s of Golden BBs
This lesson is operationalized from Alex Hormozi:
There is a prevalent romanticization of what life looks like for someone pursuing something.
Years of life are depicted with this romanticized narrative in which everyday consists solely of highlights, that every moment is purposeful or is a cool story.
In reality, day to day life when pursuing something is fairly boring.
During the half year when I was building out handles.x.com, I would catch up with friends and be invariably asked “What’s new with you?”
I would always feel the same sense of shame bubble up.
While I listened to people living up their 20s, I had no new hobbies, made no new friends, travelled to no new places, and experienced no new things.
Things were exactly the same since I was last asked that question.
Life pursuing something wasn’t that glorious crusade that was commonly depicted online and I felt I was living life wrong.
Everything in my life revolved around work. And it wasn’t exciting work.
Each piece of work was insignificant on its own. None moved the needle and I usually didn’t learn anything new doing them.
However, these pieces came together to be an achievement I am now proud of.
When I was asked “What’s new with you?” shortly after handles.x.com launched, I responded with a slew of cool stories: presenting to Elon, going viral on X, being covered by news outlets, executing 7 figure sales, etc.
The stories, lessons, and growth from the past year are all outcomes from the drudgery in crafting each individual golden BB.
Work is 100s of golden BBs and not 1 silver bullet.
Feelings Don’t Care About Your Facts
Ben Shapiro is famous for saying “Facts don’t care about your feelings.”
The inverse is also true: “feelings don’t care about your facts.”
In the end, a lot of decisions really just comes down to vibes: how does it feel?
This pertains to making major decisions and building products.
I am no stranger to noodling several frameworks on making important decisions; I wrote about my favorites here: 14 Mental Models for Decision Making.
Increasingly, I find a lot of decisions centered around already having a feeling and using logic to validate that feeling.
Sometimes evidence overrides that feeling; usually it doesn’t.
If major decisions already are largely based from feelings, more inconsequential ones lean purely on vibes.
Take picking which LLM model to use for example.
At the time launch in July 2025, Grok 4 was top 3 in overall ranking on LMArena (community driven website for testing AI models), coming first in math and second in coding, creative writing, and instruction following categories.
Yet, everyone I’ve talked to still used other LLM models which were ranked lower, having never even heard of Grok or xAI.
The few people who knew of Grok only knew it for its controversies (entirely valid) and were not only driven away from using it, but actively judged others for using it.
In a world where different AI models leap frog over each other every couple of months, it appears to me that objective improvement does not lead to subjective improvement.
Improvement needs to be so great such that it shifts the vibes that anchor behavior, overriding habits, popular perception, old headlines, and social judgement.
Products cannot just be undisputedly superior. They need to feel undisputedly superior.
Feelings don’t care about your facts.
Don’t Forget About Morale
Elon companies are quite unique due to his polarizing personality.
Even though there is a large segment of the population who dislike him, there will always be a very small percentage of people who will travel to Mars and back for him (quite literally).
This naturally makes the morale of his companies (at least at xAI) very strong.
Good morale acts as this performance enhancing drug that makes the labour crafting each individual golden BB exciting.
Tim Ferris says
“In the short term, your success depends on your intensity. In the long term, your success depends on your consistency”
Good morale increases both the capacity for intensity and the duration in which that intensity can be beared.
Following the same theme of “feelings don’t care about your facts,” I find good morale is based on vibes.
Good quantifiable metrics like increasing revenue and user growth are beneficial for morale; however, if I don’t inherently feel optimistic, then no metric can convince me otherwise.
This translates to the onus being on employers to maintain good morale in employees.
Once morale is gone, it’s very difficult to get back, which is especially important for high performers who have plenty opportunities and can leave whenever they want.
Here are a list of things that have affected my morale over the time at xAI. From these experiences, I have theories in building organizations (theories since I haven’t done it yet):
Unmet expectations: Nothing sucks more than being told one thing, only to find that it’s completely inaccurate (ie: promotions, raises, nature of work). Ruses may work in the short term but will damage trust in the long term.
Unaligned incentives: People may subconsciously optimize for their own well meaning incentives while blocking other people, benefiting themselves and harming the entire organization.
Lack of Transparency: If people are going to sacrifice for intense work, they better buy into the underlying reason why they must do so. Having more transparency reduces uncertainty and possibility of unmet expectations.
Lack of Management: Moving fast is not an excuse to have no management. People need to know contacts, available resources, expectations, and requirements to be rewarded. Good will only goes so far.
Don’t forget about morale