By Tom Pittman in TomPittman.Blog — Nov 18, 2022

Elon Musk's "High Intensity" Mismanagement

The weirdest week in Silicon Valley history just happened, and the crazy is not over yet by a long shot!

The great philosopher, Anonymous, once said, "The beatings will continue until morale improves."

I cannot think of a better phrase to describe Elon Musk's management style.

Sunday, November 13, 2022

Elon Musk posted the following tweet to Twitter:

Btw, I’d like to apologize for Twitter being super slow in many countries. App is doing >1000 poorly batched RPCs just to render a home timeline!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2022

Musk's tweet makes no sense because, according to current and former Twitter engineers, Twitter does not use RPC, it uses GraphQL.

Eight-year Twitter employee, Eric Frohnhoefer, corrected Musk in a reply tweet.

(Let me interject: correcting your notoriously egotistical boss in front of the world is extremely poor judgment, in my opinion.)

Speaking of poor judgement, in front of the whole world, Elon Musk argued for hours on Twitter with Eric Frohnhoefer. Later that day, Musk announced on Twitter (in a now-deleted tweet) that he had fired the Frohnhoefer.

Frohnhoefer's Twitter account vanished soon after.

No one from Twitter informed the Eric Frohnhoefer, though; his company-issued laptop just suddenly locked down. It wasn't until the press contacted him about his firing that he learned he was fired.

As of today, Friday, November 18, Eric Frohnhoefer Twitter account is still deleted.

Ironically, today Elon Musk bragged about how Twitter's new policy is freedom of speech.

New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.

Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.

You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022

By the way, I'm guessing lawsuits are coming over Musk's "freedom of reach" policy. People are going to object to Twitter's decisions on which tweets should be "max deboosted" and claim partisanship or other forms of prejudice.

Also, Tonight Show host, Jimmy Fallon, publicly called on Elon Musk to take down a Twitter hashtag being used to spread the fake news that Fallon had died (#RIPJimmyFallon).

Elon, can you fix this? #RIPJimmyFallon
— Jimmy Fallon (@jimmyfallon) November 16, 2022

Musk responded with:

Fix what?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 16, 2022

And has been mocking Jimmy Fallon ever since.

How does Elon Musk find the time to waste in petty arguments all the time? Doesn't this guy ever work?

Even sadder, for some reason Elon Musk is adored by hyper-politicized right-wing extremists, and they are rallying to Musk's support:

@jimmyfallon is liberal extremist, and literally no one understands how or why his show is still running. Ive never met anyone in my life that watches it, or thinks hes funny
— Gmak (@Radcoinz) November 16, 2022

Monday, November 14, 2022

On Monday, Musk fired Ben Leib and Sasha Solomon, two Twitter employees who, on Twitter, verified the narrative of Eric Frohnhoefer who Musk fired on Sunday.

These firings for telling the truth to power caused current Twitter employees to criticize Musk on Slack, a communication platform some companies use instead of email for internal communications.

If you worked at Twitter right now, how likely would it be that you would start a job search so you could escape that toxic environment?

Also on Monday, tech blogging site Platformer reported that on November 1, 2022, that Twitter's "Trust and Safety Team" presented Elon Musk — and many other Twitter executives — with a document of an internal study detailing how the proposed "Blue" subscription could be abused. It clearly laid out how Twitter customers and advertisers could be harmed.

Nevertheless, Musk would not listen and insisted the program be rushed to market — only to have it withdrawn when the warnings of the document turned out to all be true. And advertisers dropped Twitter.

But the big news of the day is this:

The European Union says Twitter is in violation of its obligations to qualify for streamlined regulatory administration, a problem that has major ramifications for the company.

In order to do business in the EU, American companies have to follow strict rules and maintain a major business presence in the EU to comply with the EU's data requirements.

However, crucial employees required to maintain that status are no longer with the company — including its chief privacy officer, data protection officer, and chief compliance officer.

Twitter is in danger of "crashing out of the OSS" which means the EU will directly oversee Twitter's business in the EU.

Probes and massive fines will certainly follow.

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

Platformer reported that 10 to 20 Twitter employees had been fired for criticizing Musk on Slack. Twitter suspended Platformer's Twitter account.

So much for Twitter's "freedom of speech" policy.

To get the story out, Platformer employees started tweeting links to the story via their personal Twitter accounts.

When Musk saw this, he mocked the fired employees with this tweet:

"I would like to apologize for firing these geniuses. Their immense talent will no doubt be of great use elsewhere."

What was once a story confined to tech industry publications now caught the attention of the media giants, and they started to report on the weekend firings as well.

The mainstream media also reported that the FTC has issued a "sharp warning" about problems with Twitter's new verified account policy.

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

On Wednesday, November 16, 2022, Elon Musk gave Twitter employees an ultimatum: sign a "long hours at high intensity" pledge by 5 PM Thursday, or be fired with three months severance pay.

Also, in a meeting, Elon Musk said he is looking for someone to be the permanent CEO of Twitter.

This caused Alex Zay to tweet to former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: "@jack would you accept position as CEO of Twitter?"

Within minutes, Dorsey responded: "nope".

nope
— jack (@jack) November 17, 2022

Thursday, November 17, 2022

Hundreds of Twitter employees opted for the three months severance pay, then walked out.

Observers say as many as 75% of Twitter employees opted out of taking Elon Musk's hard-core loyalty pledge and have quit. Hundreds of Twitter employees resigned overnight via the company's Slack channel, and on Twitter itself.

Of the 1,000 or so Twitter employees that intend to continue with the company, nearly all of them are legally obligated to remain due to the work visas they got to enter the country.

Musk has suspended all keycard access to all Twitter buildings, thus locking out all remaining employees except for the custodial staff.

All Twitter offices are currently closed now.

And according to tech industry observers, it is not yet clear if Twitter has the employees to sustain longterm operations.

The website "DownDetector" is reporting a significant spike in reports of problems with Twitter.

Friday, November 18, 2022

This morning Elon Musk sent an email to employees, saying: "Anyone who actually writes software, please report to the 10th floor at 2 p.m. today."

Keep in mind that all employees are banned from all buildings, so someone had to meet these people in the lobby to let them in.

The email also asked all code writers who weren't in San Francisco to "hop on a plane as soon" as they could, and meet with Musk in person.

Shockingly, Musk also wrote in the email that he wants people who can help him "better understand the Twitter tech stack"!

In other words, Elon Musk spent $44 billion for a company, and he still doesn't know the basics of how the product works!

By Friday afternoon, an additional 1,200 Twitter employees quit, according to the New York Times.

Doing the math based on trustworthy news reports, it appears as if Twitter now has about 2,300 employees, and about 1,000 of them are foreign nationals who are legally obligated to work at Twitter due to their work visas.

Ten days ago, Twitter had nearly 8,000 employees. Today it has an estimated 2,300.

By the way, you have to admire the courage of these people who just quit.

This is NOT a good time for tech workers to be looking for a job. In the last two weeks, the following companies have laid off tech workers:

. Meta/Facebook cut 11,000 employees
. Amazon cut 10,000
. Twitter cut 3,700
. Stripe cut 1,100
. Snap cut more than 1,000
. Coinbase cut 1,100
. Shopify cut 1,000
. Netflix cut 450
. Microsoft cut about 900
. Lyft cut 700
. Tesla cut 10% of salaried employees
. Robinhood laid off 31% of its staff
. Chime cut 160

Imagine how bad things would have to be to willingly join those thousands looking for jobs in the tech industry!

In Conclusion

Gilbert K. Chesterton wisely advised, "Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up."

If I were Elon Musk, my highest priority for Twitter would have been UNDERSTANDING IT!

Once you understand it, THEN by all means, make changes. But not before.

My first executive-level job was as Chief Technology Officer of the Tlingit Haidia Indian Tribes of Alaska.

It was obvious on day one that the tribal government need to make radical changes in its use of technology, but I also knew it would be foolish to begin making those changes until I had:

a. Built relationships of trust and mutual respect with all key stake holders, and

b. Achieved a thorough understanding of the current situation, and each department's needs and goals.

A few years into my tenure, the Tribe was nominated for an award from the Robert Wood Johnson foundation. As part of their process, they interviewed every single employee of the tribe — hundreds of us.

When I went to sign up for my interview, the men doing the interviewing told me that they would come looking for me when they were ready to interview me.

Finally, at the very end of their process, two men in suits sat themselves in the guest chairs of my office and smiled.

They told me that as they started the interviews, they noticed that EVERY employee of the Tribe mentioned me in their interview. This intrigued them. No one was prompted about me, they volunteered an opinion about me and what I was doing.

So they decided to interview me at the very last, to see if it worked out that 100% of all employees mentioned me in their interviews. And they did. Even the employees in remote cities and villages and not at the headquarters office where I worked.

The gentlemen told me that in the history of the foundation, this had never happen before.

Shell-shocked, I asked sheepishly, "Well, what did they say about me?"

They laughed and said, "They said that not long after Tom got here, this place 'exploded' into change. Things got so much better." Then people would detail the changes that impacted their work and made things better for them.

The men teased me that I have a job with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation if I ever wanted one.

Say you went into your optometrist and told them you can't see well. And say he went to a drawer, pulled out a pair of glasses, and handed them to you, and said, "That will be $220. Please pay the woman at the desk."

You'd think the man was a nut job.

"Aren't you going to at least examine me?" you ask.

"I don't need to!" he replies. "This prescription has worked perfectly for me for years, so I know it will for you too."

The only conclusion you could draw from this is that, whever this man's past accomplishments might be, right now he is frighteningly incompetent.

That's the only conclusion I can draw about Elon Musk, based on the past 10 days of mayhem at Twitter.

This emperor has no clothes.

Thanks for listening.