Elon Musk’s crazy 50 years old: Self-destructive career with a $44 billion mistake, the situation is ‘terrible, difficult, painful’ than when Tesla was in danger of bankruptcy

Elon Musk is in the darkest period of his career, worse than when Tesla was in danger of bankruptcy.

These days, outside Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, USA, some Tesla employees are working here at Elon Musk’s orders, often repeating the same chorus: ” The situation is worse than the whole year. 2018 ”.

As everyone knows, the 2018 milestone mentioned above is a famous anecdote in Tesla’s history. It was the year that Elon Musk later called “terrible”, “the most difficult and painful” of his entire career. At that time, Tesla was on the verge of bankruptcy, struggling to find ways to increase production. Not stopping there, Musk’s tweet about the company’s privatization has initiated an SEC investigation and a related lawsuit that will not end until this year (i.e. 2023).

Now, according to three company insiders, the situation and mood at Twitter, which Musk paid $44 billion to acquire at the end of October last year, is reminiscent of tough times at Tesla. “People who worked with Musk at Tesla as of 2018 now say they’ve never seen him so bad. Obviously he’s very stressed.” However, another person continued to reveal that there is “no talk” about a new CEO who will replace Musk.

There are some similarities between Musk at Tesla back in 2018 and Twitter now. He often sleeps at the Twitter office in San Francisco. He also publicly left open the possibility of the company going bankrupt. He works long hours and asks those who want to stay on Twitter to do the same.

Many engineers constantly have to work up to 80 hours a week and often “wake up at night” to keep the website up and up to Musk’s requirements. Musk will quickly get angry and fire people, a style that has stuck with him for many years. Musk also mentioned “pain” during his three months as the owner of Twitter.

The difference between the two times is probably Musk’s obsession with loyalty. He is known to “run into rage” at people he considers not working hard enough or who question his demands. At Twitter, employees are still fired at the slightest hint of political or personal dissent, even if it’s based on internal research, as happened with a lead engineer last week.

Musk’s mantra for Twitter employees is said to be “Careful, Excellent and Loyal”. Because that was the only type of person he wanted at the company. Continuity work regulations have reduced Twitter’s overall number of engineers to about 500, from about 600 at the end of last year and several thousand before Musk took over.

The number of principal engineers, a title usually attained after years of experience at a company, has dropped from at least 30 to just 1. Total staff is now thought to be around 2,000 and is likely to decline. further as offices continue to close and intermittent layoffs take place. Twitter’s website has become glitchy and unreliable, with a critical crash last week that shut down all core functions for several hours.

When Musk is around and walking around in Twitter’s office, he often asks people at random what they’re up to. It’s like the firing test. “You have to figure out how to answer the question so you don’t get fired,” one person revealed.

An employee narrowly escaped death. During a recent meeting about ongoing product changes, Musk asked about the status of a proposed change. A project manager had just started answering when he was stopped because Musk became angry, he asked “Who gave you permission to speak?”. Then he “banned” all project managers from speaking in meetings. One person at Twitter lamented: “He’s completely out of his mind.”

The source told BusinessInsider that Musk’s overall mood at Twitter appeared to start to deteriorate late last year. Problems with the platform, investor complaints, and costs just kept piling up.

One source said he was “relentlessly concerned that the economy was getting worse”, frequently bringing the issue up in meetings and conversations. In a planning meeting a few weeks ago, he suggested a few ways to cut costs at Twitter that some in the meeting called “crazy” such as: Turn all of Twitter into a subscription product, sell usernames or limit the service to users in the US and Japan only, since that’s where Twitter is most popular.

While none of these proposals have materialized, there are plenty of other big cuts, from features being dropped to the sudden closure of the big data center over Christmas. The latter move appeared to be the reason why Benham Rezaei, who was leading the entire engineering department under Musk, abruptly resigned in early January.

The rest of Twitter employees know that things can change quickly. In the early days when Musk took over, he wanted more creator tools on the site and wanted to focus more on video, so people scrambled to recommend them and form teams to get the job done. . Currently none of those tools are active.

Instead, Musk is demanding changes that appear to be profitable for Twitter. The latest fix on his own engagement metrics or the view counter now showing on Twitter, is said to be part of that because showing increased engagement is how Twitter can charge more for advertising. According to Platformer, Musk repeatedly uses his own account as a test case, even forcing engineers this week to increase the visibility of his tweets.

One employee said: “He really just wanted people to talk about him.”

Source: BusinessInsider