Elon Musk’s reputation precedes him.
The apparently impulsive and demanding boss of SpaceX and Tesla is known to give importance to the product above all else. And whether the employees who build the products agree with how he plans to achieve his ambitions, or with the same ambition, they are often expected to go above and beyond (sometimes sleeping on the company floor) to do reality, or
While there is some precedent for the billionaire’s initial acts as head of Twitter, little could have prepared the social media platform’s employees for what happened in the first month of its takeover.
Twitter employees preparing for what would happen under Musk’s leadership got a glimpse of what kind of boss he would be after years of Tesla and SpaceX coverage and numerous lawsuits.
For example, in June, after Musk laid off about 500 workers at Tesla’s Giga factory in Sparks, Nevada, two former employees sued the company under the California Warn Act (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification), which requires a 60 days notice as well as payment. and benefits for this period. In 2017, Musk announced that soon-to-be-launched Tesla vehicles would have hardware that would eventually allow the cars to drive themselves, surprising and frustrating some of the company’s own engineers. Musk also said he expected Tesla employees to work 100-hour weeks in the lead-up to the Model 3 launch. And in 2020, Tesla famously disbanded its public relations department.
Workers wait in line for a shuttle on May 12, 2020 at Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California, after CEO Elon Musk announced he was defying local officials’ Covid-19 restrictions. Photograph: Stephen Lam/Reuters
At Twitter, days after the billionaire’s helm, employees saw similar patterns. In the second week, nearly half of the company’s workforce was laid off with little notice, prompting some to preemptively file a class-action lawsuit alleging Musk violated California labor laws. Among the layoffs was the company’s communications department, which made Twitter without a PR team. Twitter is also facing a second lawsuit filed on behalf of a group of contractors who also allege they were not notified before they were terminated.
Meanwhile, Musk made product change announcements, or statements, on Twitter, and his new employees rushed to make them, tweeting pictures of their sleeping bags on the floor. But as soon as he got employees to implement new features, such as the paid-for-verification Twitter Blue membership, he had them revert due to numerous problems, including accounts impersonating brands and characters audiences that were verified.
But some of what he has done has gone beyond what has been reported or leaked into the public realm at Musk’s other companies. Part of this is by design. After a series of employee leaks, Tesla asked its employees to “renew their vows” and sign new non-disclosure agreements in 2018 that prevented them from speaking to the media. The nondisclosure agreement was the subject of a legal challenge by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for violating workers’ rights.
On Twitter, where the pre-Musk culture allowed some degree of public pushback or criticism of company policy, employees — or now former employees — also find their voices stifled. Several employees who publicly tweeted corrections or rejected Musk’s claims were fired. In one instance, Musk publicly announced the termination of an engineer named Eric Frohnhoefer, tweeting “fired” in response to Frohnhoefer’s tweet correcting an assessment Musk made about why the site was so slow. Musk later deleted the tweet. Tesla’s CEO then made light of the terminations. Musk is also firing employees who have criticized him on Slack, the third-party messaging service they use internally.
As for productivity, Musk has asked employees to decide whether they’re willing to work long hours “at high intensity” or quit and take three months of severance, the New York Times reported. The deadline for their decision was Thursday evening. Many employees—some reports estimate 1,000 to 1,200 of the remaining employees—opted for layoffs leaving some critical roles and equipment with a skeleton crew.
“Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade,” the letter he wrote to employees said.
Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney representing Twitter employees and contractors who have been fired, said her office has been “receiving calls from Twitter employees seeking clarity on their rights.” Liss-Riordan filed a new lawsuit Thursday, ahead of the deadline, alleging that the company’s requirement to come into the office and put in long hours at a high intensity violates the federal North – Americans with Disabilities (ADA). The proposed class action was filed on behalf of an engineering manager who said he was fired for refusing to report to the office because of a disability that puts him at risk of suffer from Covid-19.
“Since taking control of Twitter, Elon Musk has put the company’s workers through a tremendous amount of pain and uncertainty in such a short amount of time,” Liss-Riordan said in a statement. “His latest midnight ultimatum to employees who must decide tomorrow if they want to be part of the ‘new Twitter’ has put them in an incredibly difficult position.”
Musk’s behavior may come as a shock to many, but to former Tesla and SpaceX employees it’s not entirely surprising. At SpaceX, eight former employees allege a similar culture of retaliation and filed a complaint with the NLRB on Thursday alleging they were fired for challenging Musk in an open letter written in June. “Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment to us,” the letter said.
At Tesla, former employees said Musk cared about little more than the product, and that negotiating disagreements with the billionaire requires a certain amount of goodwill that is typically developed by creating or helping to launch Tesla products. success. Working long hours is also inevitable, a former Tesla employee said, so people have to decide how sustainable it is for them.
Musk’s management style and decisions on Twitter are likely to remain public due to the nature of the company and the new social media executive’s propensity and inability to resist tweeting. By the end of the first week of November, Musk was on pace to tweet more than 25 times a day. But it’s unclear how long Musk plans to remain at the helm of the now-embattled platform. In a November 16 trial challenging how the Tesla chief executive secured a $52bn (£44bn) compensation package approved by the board, Musk said he eventually planned to hand over the reins of Twitter.
“I hope to reduce my time on Twitter and find someone else to run Twitter over time,” he said.