Elon Musk was sleeping on the workplace. He dismissed workers and executives at will. And he lamented his firm was on the verge of chapter.
That was again in 2018 and the corporate was Tesla, as Mr. Musk’s electrical automaker struggled to construct its mass market automobile, the Mannequin 3.
“It was excruciating,” he advised The New York Instances on the time. “There have been instances after I didn’t depart the manufacturing facility for 3 or 4 days — days after I didn’t go outdoors.”
The billionaire’s expertise with what he known as Tesla’s “manufacturing hell” has turn out to be a blueprint for the disaster he has created at Twitter, which he purchased for $44 billion final month. Over time, Mr. Musk has developed a playbook for managing his firms — together with Tesla and the rocket producer SpaceX — by way of intervals of ache, using shock remedy, alarmism and pushing his employees and himself to place apart their households and pals to spend all their vitality on his mission.
At Twitter, Mr. Musk has used a lot of those self same ways to upend the social media firm in only a few weeks.
Since late final month, the 51-year-old has laid off 50 p.c of Twitter’s 7,500 workers and accepted the resignations of 1,200 or extra. On Monday, he started one other spherical of layoffs, two individuals mentioned. He tweeted that he was sleeping at Twitter’s workplaces in San Francisco. And he has utilized mission-driven language, telling Twitter’s employees that the corporate might go bankrupt if he wasn’t in a position to flip it round. Those that wish to work on “Twitter 2.0” should decide to his “exhausting core” imaginative and prescient in writing, he has mentioned.
David Deak, who labored at Tesla from 2014 to 2016 as a senior engineering supervisor overseeing a provide chain for battery supplies, mentioned Mr. Musk “clearly thrives in existential circumstances.” He added, “He quasi creates them to mild the hearth beneath all people.”
The similarities between Mr. Musk’s strategy to Twitter and what he did at Tesla and SpaceX are evident, added Tammy Madsen, a administration professor at Santa Clara College. But it surely’s unclear if he’ll discover the means to inspire workers at a social media firm as he did with employees whose quests it was to maneuver individuals away from gas-powered vehicles or ship people into house.
“At Tesla and SpaceX, the strategy has all the time been excessive danger, excessive reward,” Dr. Madsen mentioned. “Twitter has been excessive danger, however the query is: What’s the reward that comes out of it?”
Mr. Musk didn’t reply to a request for remark.
On Sunday, Mr. Musk held a gathering with Twitter’s gross sales workers, in response to two individuals with data of the matter. Then on Monday, he laid off workers within the gross sales division, they mentioned. Late final week, Mr. Musk fired Robin Wheeler, a prime gross sales govt, they added. Bloomberg earlier reported that extra layoffs is likely to be coming. Twitter can also be reaching out to some engineers who give up to ask them to return, the individuals mentioned.
At firms led by Mr. Musk, the sample of claiming that the corporations are getting ready to a possible chapter have come up usually. At Tesla in December 2008, through the depths of the monetary disaster, Mr. Musk mentioned he closed a $50 million funding spherical from Daimler on the “final hour of final day attainable or payroll would’ve bounced 2 days later.”
He has mentioned the identical about SpaceX, as soon as noting that each SpaceX and Tesla had a greater than 90 p.c likelihood that they “would be worth $0” of their early days.
For 2017, Mr. Musk mentioned, SpaceX needed to carry out rocket launches as soon as each two weeks or face chapter, recalled one former SpaceX govt, who spoke on the situation of anonymity for worry of retribution. At an organization that was pushed by a purpose to make life “multiplanetary,” the specter of chapter was a motivating issue, the previous govt mentioned.
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SpaceX has since efficiently despatched many rockets into house and safely landed them once more on Earth. However Mr. Musk has returned to his favourite stick, tweeting final 12 months that if a “extreme international recession” have been to dry up capital, chapter on the rocket maker was “not inconceivable.”
“Solely the paranoid survive,” he wrote, quoting Andy Grove, the previous chief govt of Intel.
A disaster ambiance and self-imposed austerity offers Mr. Musk the duvet to make dramatic modifications and fireplace prime managers or remove giant swaths of employees, two former Tesla executives mentioned. It additionally prepares those that stay to work beneath excessive circumstances to result in Mr. Musk’s wishes, they mentioned.
The strategy at Twitter, the place Mr. Musk has laid off hundreds of workers, “is typical Elon,” Mr. Deak mentioned.
The chaos on the social media firm is acquainted to individuals who labored at Tesla when the corporate was struggling to ramp up manufacturing of the Mannequin 3, which went on sale in 2017. In Could of that 12 months, Mr. Musk despatched an e-mail to the employees that echoed a few of the language he has since used with Twitter workers.
“Tesla must be hardcore and demanding,” he wrote. “The passing grade at Tesla is excellence, as a result of it must be.”
Within the 12 months that adopted, Mr. Musk famously slept on the ground in a Tesla manufacturing facility’s convention rooms, fired the vp of engineering, and labored 120-hour weeks to deal with a lag within the manufacturing of Mannequin 3s. Members of Tesla’s board fearful about Mr. Musk’s workload and his use of Ambien to attempt to sleep.
Foreshadowing the turmoil at Twitter, Mr. Musk spent a part of 2018 on the social media service, antagonizing lawmakers and regulators, together with the Securities and Trade Fee. The S.E.C. later sued Mr. Musk for tweeting that he had the “funding secured” to take Tesla personal, regardless that the billionaire by no means adopted by way of and settled with the company. This summer season, he spent months and hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in authorized charges to again out of his deal to purchase Twitter.
Testifying in Delaware final week in a lawsuit about his Tesla pay package deal, Mr. Musk acknowledged that his penchant for performing unilaterally can get him in bother. “Once I make choices with out consulting individuals,” he mentioned, “the chance that these choices can be fallacious is greater.”
In Delaware, Mr. Musk additionally downplayed comparisons between what he was doing at Twitter with the Mannequin 3 ramp-up, saying on his approach into the courtroom that what was occurring on the social media service was “simpler.”
A few of Mr. Musk’s former workers query whether or not his administration ways will finally work at Twitter. Tesla and SpaceX have been in earlier levels of development when their boss whipped out his powerful language and advised everybody they needed to go full tilt. However Twitter is a extra mature firm that has carried out inconsistently for years.
Mr. Musk’s administration strategies are “good start-up and development technique, however it isn’t good for constructing a secure firm,” Mr. Deak mentioned.
Mr. Musk’s all-in dedication to an organization is commonly inspirational, however can even flip poisonous and engender a tradition of worry and scapegoating, three former Tesla and SpaceX managers mentioned.
And for Mr. Musk, remaking Twitter is barely a part-time job. He stays chief govt of Tesla, which he mentioned in courtroom he continues to guide, and SpaceX, the place he mentioned he focuses on designing rockets moderately than administration.
Mr. Musk additionally leads the Boring Firm, a tunneling start-up, and Neuralink, a brain-computer interface know-how agency. He has mentioned his long-term purpose was to avoid wasting humanity by creating know-how for house journey, or, in his phrases, by “making life multiplanetary with the intention to make sure the long-term survival of consciousness.”
The multitasking has turn out to be a problem in a lawsuit filed by Tesla shareholders who objected to the pay package deal that made Mr. Musk the world’s richest particular person. Final week in Delaware, beneath questioning by a lawyer representing shareholders who’ve accused Mr. Musk of neglecting his duties at Tesla, the billionaire mentioned his intense involvement in Twitter was short-term.
“There was an preliminary burst of exercise to reorganize the corporate,” he mentioned final Wednesday, including, “I anticipate to cut back my time at Twitter.”
Mike Isaac contributed reporting.