92. Christmas Capers

In Decem­ber 2022, at Twit­ter’s head­quar­ters, Elon Musk faced Twit­ter infra­struc­ture man­agers to dis­cuss the urgent relo­ca­tion of servers from a Sacra­men­to facil­i­ty, cost­ing over $100 mil­lion annu­al­ly, to Port­land, Ore­gon. Musk was informed that the planned order­ly tran­si­tion in 2023 was jeop­ar­dized by the data-ser­vices com­pa­ny doubt­ing Twit­ter’s finan­cial via­bil­i­ty, prompt­ing an imme­di­ate need for action. Despite expla­na­tions of logis­ti­cal chal­lenges affect­ing the time­line, Musk insist­ed on a 90-day win­dow for the move, threat­en­ing res­ig­na­tion for non-com­pli­ance.

Musk’s impa­tience and demand for rapid action led to a spon­ta­neous expe­di­tion to Sacra­men­to, where he, along with his entourage, eval­u­at­ed the fea­si­bil­i­ty of mov­ing the servers. Despite logis­ti­cal and tech­ni­cal con­straints, Musk’s hands-on approach demon­strat­ed his deter­mi­na­tion to expe­dite the process. This was fol­lowed by a makeshift oper­a­tion over Christ­mas Eve, involv­ing the pur­chase of tools and the man­u­al mobi­liza­tion of serv­er racks, show­cas­ing Musk’s pen­chant for direct, action-ori­ent­ed prob­lem-solv­ing.

Amidst these tense pro­fes­sion­al endeav­ors, Musk’s per­son­al life inter­twined with his pro­fes­sion­al deci­sions. A planned fam­i­ly Christ­mas was dis­rupt­ed, lead­ing to a last-minute change of plans. This peri­od also allowed for can­did fam­i­ly inter­ac­tions, reveal­ing con­cerns about Musk’s approach to his busi­ness­es and per­son­al con­duct on social media. Despite famil­ial advice and reflec­tions on regrets, Musk’s con­vic­tions remained stead­fast.

The nar­ra­tive jux­ta­pos­es Musk’s ambi­tious and uncon­ven­tion­al approach­es to busi­ness with the per­son­al and inter­per­son­al chal­lenges that accom­pa­ny such endeav­ors. The chap­ter under­scores the com­plex­i­ties of Musk’s char­ac­ter, com­bin­ing a relent­less pur­suit of inno­va­tion with a propen­si­ty for con­tentious deci­sion-mak­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. This blend of pro­fes­sion­al audac­i­ty and per­son­al exam­i­na­tion illus­trates the mul­ti­fac­eted nature of lead­er­ship under Musk’s stew­ard­ship, marked by both remark­able achieve­ments and con­tro­ver­sial tac­tics.