What Elon Musk Is Doing to Twitter Is What He Did at Tesla and SpaceX

NYT TECHNOLOGY: What Elon Musk Is Doing to Twitter Is What He Did at Tesla and SpaceX
By Ryan Mac and Jack Ewing
Section: Technology
Source: New York Times
Published Date: November 21, 2022 at 02:00AM

Firing people. Talking of bankruptcy. Telling workers to be “hard core.” Mr. Musk has repeatedly used those tactics at many of his companies.

Elon Musk was sleeping at the office. He dismissed employees and executives at will. And he lamented his company was on the verge of bankruptcy.
That was back in 2018 and the company was Tesla, as Mr. Musk’s electric automaker struggled to build its mass-market vehicle, the Model 3.
“It was excruciating,” he told The New York Times at the time. “There were times when I didn’t leave the factory for three or four days — days when I didn’t go outside.”
The billionaire’s experience with what he called Tesla’s “production hell” has become a blueprint for the crisis he has created at Twitter, which he bought for $44 billion last month. Over the years, Mr. Musk has developed a playbook for managing his companies — including Tesla and the rocket manufacturer SpaceX — through periods of pain, employing shock treatment and alarmism and pushing his workers and himself to put aside their families and friends to spend all their energy on his mission.
At Twitter, Mr. Musk has used many of those same tactics to upend the social media company in just a few weeks.
Since late last month, the 51-year-old has laid off 50 percent of Twitter’s 7,500 employees and accepted the resignations of 1,200 or more. On Monday, he began another round of layoffs, two people said. He tweeted that he was sleeping at Twitter’s offices in San Francisco. And he has applied mission-driven language, telling Twitter’s workers that the company could go bankrupt if he wasn’t able to turn it around. Those who want to work on “Twitter 2.0” must commit to his “hard core” vision in writing, he has said.
David Deak, who worked at Tesla from 2014 to 2016 as a senior engineering manager overseeing a supply chain for battery materials, said Mr. Musk “clearly thrives in existential circumstances.” He added, “He quasi creates them to light the fire under everybody.”
The similarities between Mr. Musk’s approach to Twitter and what he did at Tesla and SpaceX are evident, added Tammy Madsen, a management professor at Santa Clara University. But it’s unclear if he will find the means to motivate employees at a social media company as he did with workers whose quests were to move people away from gas-powered cars or send humans into space.
“At Tesla and SpaceX, the approach has always been high risk, high reward,” Dr. Madsen said. “Twitter has been high risk, but the question is: What is the reward that comes out of it?”
Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
On Sunday, Mr. Musk held a meeting with Twitter’s sales employees, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Then on Monday, he laid off employees in the sales department, they said. Late last week, Mr. Musk fired Robin Wheeler, a top sales executive, they added. Bloomberg earlier reported that more layoffs might be coming.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/technology/elon-musk-twitter-management.html