87. All In

In the tumul­tuous peri­od of Novem­ber 10–18, 2022, Twit­ter faced sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges as Elon Musk aimed to trans­form the com­pa­ny into a com­pet­i­tive and high­ly effi­cient orga­ni­za­tion. Fol­low­ing the sus­pen­sion of Twit­ter Blue’s roll­out and the per­sis­tent decline in ad sales, Musk planned fur­ther staff reduc­tions, empha­siz­ing the need for a small, excep­tion­al­ly skilled, and moti­vat­ed team to sur­pass a larg­er, mod­er­ate­ly moti­vat­ed work­force.

Reflect­ing Musk’s belief in lead­ing by exam­ple, he decid­ed to demon­strate his com­mit­ment by spend­ing nights at Twit­ter’s head­quar­ters, a prac­tice he had adopt­ed dur­ing crit­i­cal times at his oth­er com­pa­nies. This move was part of his broad­er strat­e­gy to instill a ‘hard­core’ work eth­ic among the remain­ing staff. Musk, along with a core group of trust­ed indi­vid­u­als includ­ing his cousins James and Andrew, Ross Nordeen, Steve Davis, and oth­ers, began a rig­or­ous eval­u­a­tion of Twit­ter’s engi­neer­ing team to iden­ti­fy the most capa­ble and loy­al employ­ees. This eval­u­a­tion involved scru­ti­niz­ing pub­lic Slack mes­sages and social media posts of staff, aim­ing to weed out those per­ceived as untrust­wor­thy or not ful­ly aligned with Musk’s vision for the com­pa­ny.

Their efforts iden­ti­fied indi­vid­u­als per­ceived as threats or not fit­ting the ide­al of excel­lence, trust­wor­thi­ness, and dri­ve Musk sought. This led to a sub­stan­tial reduc­tion in the work­force, focus­ing on retain­ing only those who met these cri­te­ria. Musk’s method empha­sized a stark choice for employ­ees: ful­ly com­mit to the demand­ing expec­ta­tions of the ‘new Twit­ter’ or leave the com­pa­ny with sev­er­ance. This approach cul­mi­nat­ed in an opt-in form for employ­ees to declare their will­ing­ness to embrace Musk’s hard­core work eth­ic, a move that fur­ther solid­i­fied the trans­for­ma­tion Musk envi­sioned for Twit­ter, aim­ing for a lean­er, more ded­i­cat­ed team ready to tack­le the chal­lenges of a high­ly com­pet­i­tive dig­i­tal land­scape.