Elon Musk: Why He Now Fires Employees Almost Every Day
Twitter is f*cked
There are so many questions now that Elon owns Twitter.
Like is he making money off this or is it just an impulse buy like how my Aunt bought a Peloton for Christmas?
A better question is: what’s next for the platform and the people that work there?
After all, this Elon guy once said:
“There are too many MBAs running America”
— Elon Musk
Twitter has over 5,500 employees. Correction. Twitter had over 5,500 employees.
If we look at how Elon has treated employees in the past, this is what’s in store for the rest of the workers at Twitter.
Elon Asks One Question to Spot Liars
Elon Musk has allegedly interviewed every employee working at SpaceX and Twitter.
(I wonder if that includes the janitor?)
He asks every candidate the same question: What’s the story of your life?
I know. Kind of lame.
It seems like it would be the ending to a 90s melodrama where the main character answers, “Well, it’s a long story…” [Slow fade to credits]
Thankfully Elon has a better follow-up question that does give us some insight into his character: “What’s the hardest problem you have ever solved?”
Elon Musk is infamous for being a cutthroat boss who’s prone to occasional rage-outs. Among all his different companies it's even reported that he averages firing someone once a day (although that work is done for him by lower-ranked managers).
His approach, however, does get results.
Elon infamously fired the managers of SpaceX’s Starlink project for being too slow. Jeff Bezos quickly hired them. Starlink now has 1600+ satellites in orbit and is ready to start providing global internet service while Jeff Bezos is still years away from launching a single satellite.
It makes sense why Bezos threw some shade over the recent Twitter deal.
Twitter Infighting and Subversion
I don’t even like Twitter.
But apparently the people that work there do.
Right now Twitter company morale is so low it’s bordering on sabotage.
Things are so crazy over there that an employee even deleted the official algorithm repository months ago. It wouldn’t surprise me if more documentation, versioning, and configurations went missing during the Elon transition.
Ultimately, Elon might be in charge of a complete fucking disaster that requires a lot of reverse engineering.
You can’t blame these Twitter folk for how they feel. I was part of a company buyout when I worked as a journalist and nearly 50% of the staff was furloughed. They replaced those workers' desks with ping-pong tables to make the office more “fun.” It actually was a lot of fun.
But not for those people, of course.
So with a ruthless savage like Elon still controlling Twitter, he’s sure to continue gutting it like a fish and replace them with employees that he trusts.
I’d be scared if I worked there too.
Just don’t believe the hype that this is a political battle.
While the Right is championing this as a victory for free speech— even though Elon wasn’t a republican until recent — and the Left is saying Elon is destroying democracy, I’d argue that both sides even out with pros and cons.
For instance:
How GOP Lost: Elon Musk trashed Donald Trump and his social platform “Truth Social.” Elon said it was a dumb name. It is. Now Trump, who’s still the face of the Republican party, is faced with staying on his own platform which is losing momentum or being Elon’s bitch and coming back. Either way, Trump is getting plenty egg on his face during this cooldown.
How Dems Lost: Democrats need to chill out for once and play it cool. But they can’t. They’re screaming that Elon’s destroying democracy, whatever that means. It’s weird because all my liberal friends drive Teslas so I’m sure they feel the most conflicted. If Dems didn’t overreact — because Elon hasn’t even done anything yet — they wouldn’t keep alienating moderates as they are currently doing.
Elon Musk is an Asshole
Every ex-girlfriend, SpaceX engineer, and Tesla higher-up can attest to this.
But Elon does get results. He keeps on winning.
And it's not like Elon is 100% asshole. There are countless stories of SpaceX employees saying they’d rather work for nobody else in the world.
At the moment, however, Twitter feels like it could go bankrupt at any moment from marauding employees dressed in “Mad Max” gear.
It’s a shame because I’m finally starting to like Twitter.
So, we shall see—won’t we?
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The fact he is a self-aggrsndizing asshole suffices.
Being an asshole might get better results in many business situations and sometimes not. It’s a matter of values and treating people with dignity should be on the top of the list even if hard choices have to be made.