You don't want to work for Elon Musk. He is impulsive and a micromanager.
Mary Beth Brown worked for Elon Musk for 12 years as his personal assistant. She was his most loyal employee. She prepared his meals, set up his business appointments, arranged a time with his children, chose his clothes, and managed his media appearances. Her dedication to him made her one of the important people in Musk's inner circle.
In 2014, Mary Beth Brown asked for a raise. Instead of saying yes, Musk asked Brown to take a couple of weeks off so that he would realize the value of Brown's responsibilities (in her absence). Actually, Musk wanted to see if he could function without Mary Brown.
After two weeks, when Brown came to the office, Musk told her he didn't need her service anymore. According to Ashlee Vance, this horrible event struck people inside SpaceX and Tesla and confirmed the belief around Musk's cruel stoicism and lack of empathy.
The above example undoubtedly proves that Musk is a very demanding leader. However, given his goals' grandiosity and incredible achievements, that shouldn't surprise you. It also shouldn't surprise you that the man works more than 80 hours per week.
In a 2010 interview, Musk advised others to be "Extremely tenacious and then just work like hell. You just have to put in 80 to 100-hour per week."
He added, "If other people are putting in 40-hour workweeks and you're putting in 100-hour workweeks, then even if you're doing the same thing, you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve."
So, if you plan to work for Musk, be ready to work hard, be very efficient, be able to add tons of value, and risk your personal relationships.
Elon Musk requires his employees to work as hard.
Just four days after Tesla CEO Elon Musk took over Twitter, a Twitter employee shared a photo showing his boss, Esther Crawford, asleep on the office floor.
Crawford, product manager at the company, says, "When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines, sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork."
Crawford agrees with Elon Musk that doing hard things requires huge sacrifices. However, she believes that almost all employees at Twitter are working around the clock to bring something new to life.
If you agree with Musk's approach or not, his approach works. He is able to create great things because he is willing to do the work and sacrifice his life to obtain success.
That's why his first move at Twitter was to fire most of his employees. So, if you still think you can work for him, think again.
Musk will let more than 50% of Twitter's staff go home.
Twitter is a company that hasn't changed since 2009. The platform looks the same and feels the same. So, Musk is unhappy about the lack of innovation and the number of employees at the company.
After his initial investigation, Musk discovered that Twitter employs 7,500. So, his first move was to send more than 50% of them home. Many outlets verified this. Bloomberg reported that Musk fired 3,700 in one day.
Some software experts say that Tech companies aren't designed to lose 50% of their staff and continue to function. But unfortunately, these experts know little about Elon Musk's work ethic and business vision.
I said in the beginning that most people aren't made to work for or with Elon Musk. He is impulsive and makes decisions with little knowledge, but I'm still betting my money on him. So, if you think you can work for him, keep reading.
Twitter doesn’t have a monetization strategy
Twitter was created without a monetization strategy for crowd-sourced content, and Twitter executives haven't been able to monetize most of its content.
However, Weibo was considered the knock-off of Twitter, and the company founders were able to monetize everything from day one. So, Twitter executives have no justification for why they haven't been able to monetize their platform.
Weibo leaders have been charging people to unlock certain functions, including the edit feature. Now Twitter seems to be copying Weibo back. I don't understand why companies that were able to acquire 100M to billions of users primarily make their money by selling ads instead of monetizing why their users use them.
Musk wants only hungry people to work for him.
Musk laid off Twitter CEO because he believes people lose the desire to work once they become wealthy.
He emphasized his point by saying, "So as a company has prosperity and then people become wealthy, then for many people once they become independently wealthy they just can't bring themselves to work, or they just don't want to work."
Musk doesn't hold that against people. Many of his friends are extremely talented, and they had some success earlier in life, and they just decided they didn't need to work anymore. So, for the coming few weeks, he will talk to executives at Twitter to see if they desire to work more than 80 hours per week, add more value than they take, and continue to be the hungriest people in the world.
If not, he will ask them to resign or fire them.
Musk differs from you.
Most people who criticize Elon Musk have no idea what it takes to build a successful and profitable business.
When I got my MBA, we had different weekly speakers to talk about leadership and business. One of the most successful people in North Texas said that his success cost him two marriages, and he doesn't have a healthy relationship with his kids.
The professor asked him, "Was your success worth it?" The speaker responded, "Yes." He added that society needs people like him to progress, and he mentioned names such as Steve Jobs, whose professional success came at the expense of his personal life.
Elon Musk is like Steve Jobs; he is a visionary human being and can see the future better than most of us.
Jobs imagined the iPad years before it became a reality, and he dreamed of Toy Story animation as a young adult, decades before he oversaw the movie creation at Pixar.
These founders' vision pushes them to surround themselves with people who can help build their dream. But unfortunately, most of the time, they don't see their family as a priority because they are 100 % devoted and committed to bringing their vision to life.
Most people are not willing to push their families to the side to work for a company, but Elon Musk does. Therefore, he pulled over 50 Tesla employees to help him build a better Twitter. These employees are 100 % loyal to Musk and committed to bringing his vision to life.
This approach cost Elon Musk more than two marriages, but if you ask him, "Was it worth it?" His answer would be "Yes." So, don't work for Musk if you want a balanced life. He doesn't care about balance. He cares about success.
By the way, if you ever work for a person like Musk, your perspective on life and work changes forever. However, don't expect to be friends with them. They don't care about that. Instead, they want to develop and create a better future even if it costs them their relationships.
Elon Musk is a ‘brutalist decision-maker: Twitter employees are flooding Blind with bad reviews
Twitter employees are flooding the employee forum Blind with bad — and some good — reviews about the company and its new CEO, Elon Musk.
Insiders trawled through the community app, where employees can anonymously write reviews and post about their workplaces, to see what Twitter staff are saying about the company.
Twitter laid off thousands of employees on Friday when Elon Musk completed his $44 billion takeover of the platform. After axing nearly half of the Twitter workforce, Musk tweeted on Friday that there was "no choice" as the company was losing more than $4 million a day.
Blind requires that users give their work email address, the company they work for, and their job title when they sign up. The site does not verify employment but requests that people use their work email to "gauge the professional status" of users, Blind's website states.
Users have posted a total of 953 Twitter reviews to the site since 2020 and the company has an overall star rating of 3.8 out of 5 stars. Each poster adds a star rating to its review. Some of the reviews were posted the day some staff members learned of the mass layoffs the next morning, but the majority are from earlier.
One poster who described themself as an engineering manager said on Wednesday: "Brutalist decision-maker at the helm. Emergency-driven work is exciting for those who like thrills. Pay is no longer tied to the stock market fluctuations."
The anonymous poster, who gave Twitter a two-star rating, added: "The absolute and swift destruction of a compassionate, human-first corporate culture is leaving Tweeps feeling like we've lost our family."
Another user, who posted the day the company sent staff a memo announcing layoffs, said it "was good until Elon take over."
The self-described senior software developer listed getting to "work for Elon" as a "pro" of working at the company, then put being treated as a "labor robot" on an accompanying list of "cons."
"Sense of achievement on delivering mission-critical projects with 24/7 working and sleeping at the office," the post said.
A Twitter employee tweeted a picture of a manager sleeping at the office this week after Musk took over. Musk announced plans to launch new product features, including a verification subscription for $8.
A software engineer said on November 2 that before the company was made private, it was an "incredible" place to work.
They added: "Elon mother flipping Musk and his ego the size of mars. Twitter is already chaos, but come layoffs Friday, it will a massive dumpster fire. The man has no idea what he's doing and I'd bet $8 Twitter won't be around or relevant in a couple years."
It is not possible to tell which of these posters, if any, had been laid off.
Another Blind user wrote on Thursday that the management changes are creating "stress" as a result of people being fired or quitting.
Elon Musk's quest to lay off about half of Twitter's workforce may not be going entirely according to plan.
The company has already asked some Tweeps to return, according to posts on the Blind app and Insider sources, including one who also shared a screenshot of confirmation from a Twitter employee.
A person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named to protect others' identities, told Insider that five employees had been invited back: "These individuals are essential for Twitter's ecosystem to function. Goons quickly realized and are asking them back."
One of the sources said that a worker who Twitter asked to return rejected the offer because they felt "used, and think they will be fired again soon."
Casey Newton, a contributing editor for The Verge and the founder of the tech-and-democracy-focused Platformer newsletter, tweeted late Saturday that multiple sources had told him that Twitter has contacted some former employees and asked them to return.
The insider also surveyed the Blind app, a professional community where verified employees have anonymous conversations, and found posts indicating Twitter employees who the company had laid off had been asked to come back.
One user wrote: "It's true. I was asked to come back Saturday morning," while another simply said: "Can confirm."