Machine Shop Mastery
75. I’ve Seen It All: From Apprentice to Cars, Rockets, Implants & Robots – Jim Cooney
How do you go from being the kid who couldn’t sit still in class to leading the machine shop for one of Elon Musk’s most ambitious ventures?
In this gripping and often jaw-dropping episode, I sit down with Jim Cooney—Head of the Machine Shop at Neuralink—for a raw and refreshingly honest conversation about resilience, reinvention, and the unconventional road to mastery in machining.
While Jim isn’t a shop owner (my usual guest profile), his story offers every bit of the leadership lessons, grit, and insight that Machine Shop Mastery is known for.
From his humble beginnings as a high school co-op student in Canada, Jim details how a lack of direction became fuel for a deeply hands-on journey into the world of machining. With stories of brutal old-school shop cultures, tools thrown across the room, and managers who trained with tough love (and zero patience), Jim paints a vivid picture of how adversity shaped his technical excellence and emotional resilience.
But what really sets this episode apart is Jim’s transition from traditional tool & die work to the heart of Silicon Valley innovation. His career path took him from automotive stamping in Ontario to leading critical manufacturing efforts at Tesla, Apollo Fusion, and now Neuralink. He shares what it’s like building high-stakes, high-tech parts under pressure—and how working insane hours during Tesla’s “production hell” made him sharper, faster, and more adaptable.
If you want a peek into the mindset and muscle it takes to thrive in a fast-paced, bleeding-edge manufacturing environment—or you're looking for inspiration on how to grow through adversity—this episode delivers in spades.
You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in…- (0:00) Jim kicks off with a fun story about getting a missile export license
- (0:14) Why you should complete the Modern Machine Shops Top Shops Survey
- (1:42) Learn about Jim Cooney and his unique journey in manufacturing
- (4:35) Jim shares how struggling in school led him to discover machining
- (8:00) Stories from his early days in tough, old-school Canadian machine shops
- (10:44) Jim explains Canada’s apprenticeship system and earning his Red Seal
- (14:19) Jim’s first exposure to CNC and CAM at Massiv Die Form
- (20:04) Why Jim quit on the spot after being massively undervalued
- (22:13) How Jim moved into machining instruction at a college
- (25:46) How teaching machining and coaching hockey built his leadership skills
- (28:27) A surprise text leads Jim to Tesla during “production hell”
- (31:17) Wild stories from Tesla’s stamping department and nonstop chaos
- (34:21) Navigating the die process at Tesla (repair work)
- (38:15) Creating a game-changing apprenticeship program inside Tesla
- (40:41) Moving into the startup world with Apollo Fusion and later Astra
- (46:00) Facing burnout, broken promises, and the tough side of acquisitions
- (48:58) Quitting Astro and joining Neuralink the day he got his green card
- (51:49) Jim’s experience working at Neuralink (and their trajectory)
- (57:12) Jim’s process choosing the machinery they needed
- (1:00:15) Building and growing a team with a high standard of excellence
- (1:03:37) Skills to acquire if you aspire to be in leadership
- (1:06:33) Why you need to check out the Lights Out podcast
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