“You just need to work hard and code and be good at coding and solving problems and putting fires out fast. You didn’t have to look over your shoulder. Whenever you make a change, and it’s not good, you’re like, oh, someone’s gonna get fired over it. People care more about the work, but they also stress more about it. The culture itself has changed drastically. Like, on Wednesdays or Thursdays, a lot of people stay there till nine or 10 or even later. people stay as late as their managers, or if Elon’s there and their meeting gets pushed, and they have to stay there. You constantly, constantly see people staying late, especially in S.F. People used to go home at like five or four, whatever. ![]() “I think he doesn’t believe in work-life balance. He himself doesn’t have work-life balance, so why would he?” Former executive The cult of ‘hard-core’ “I think he doesn’t believe in work-life balance. He himself doesn’t have work-life balance, so why would he?” - Former executive Let’s bring Vine back.’” -Former engineer 2 And so it was the easiest things they could find, like, ‘Oh, well, we have all the Vine videos. And it was a period where the only thing that was special about it was basically all of the Elon believers who were trying to figure out how to pump their status with him. “ sent out an email that was like, ‘We need to find new projects.’ Like, if you have any ideas, send them my way and Elon will evaluate them … Somebody was like, let’s bring back Vine … Somebody wanted to bring back Twitter Music. The first few months, it was crazy.” -X employee 1 You still see that every now and then, but not as often. That looked like a lot of people literally bootlicking, proposing changes that were very, very unrealistic. Impressing Elon “You could already see people being savages, trying to climb up the ladders. The flow of information just simply stopped.” -Former engineer 1 I certainly hope I never go through anything like that again. “The last two weeks were some of the most unpleasant experiences I think I’ve ever had in my career. We didn’t know where we were supposed to focus our energy and our budget … I’m sure some of the leadership had a small sense of that, but none of that trickled down because they probably didn’t have a very clear direction either.” -Former HR employee We didn’t know what the strategic directive was. “Even up until the last, I would say, three days… we didn’t know how many people were going to be let go.” Former executiveįlying blind “It was like picking up the pieces for a few days because we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. We didn’t know how many people were going to be let go.” - Former executive “Even up until the last, I would say, three days, we didn’t actually know exactly how many people we didn’t know where he was going to cut the line. ![]() Literally, it was like searching through the wreckage, trying to see who’s here physically in the office and who is actually still online on Slack.” -Former HR employee But at the same time, it was also like shock … maybe there is PTSD from this experience, but it’s like, there was trauma for sure … It was just crazy. “I was just thinking, what the hell is tomorrow going to be? It was a mix of minor relief that I still had a job, I still was going to get a paycheck, I could delay figuring out what the hell to do next. It showed-not just from an attitude perspective and the potential callousness of the new leadership-but it was also just the chaos of it. People became a lot more guarded.” -Former HR employeeīrace for layoffs “The night of the layoffs, no one really had any idea what was going on, and people were just starting to say, like, ‘I’m locked out of my machine.’ It was such a harbinger of things to come. You weren’t sure who was part of the gestapo and who wasn’t, like who was reporting you to Elon for saying X, Y, and Z. “We had a Tesla channel in Slack, and people were starting to say dumb things like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna get Teslas now’ or whatever.” X employee 1 And just a very, very low minority were excited.” -X employee 1 They were worried for their culture and the environment. ![]() But the consensus was that most people weren’t happy. “We had a Tesla channel in Slack, and people were starting to say dumb things like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna get Teslas now’ or whatever. All of these were things that moved exceptionally quickly, and employees were just sort of like, huh, okay, I guess that’s happening now.” -Yoel Roth, former head of trust and safety The first days “So much of what was going on we learned as it happened on the service, right? Musk showing up at the office, the sink thing, that moment where he was milling around the coffee bar.
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