The announcements of massive industry layoffs, especially in the tech sector, have arrived with an alarming frequency just as the world of work seems ready to leave the pandemic behind.
From the "Great Resignation" to "quiet quitting," "hybrid work," and "work from anywhere," the theme of "employee experience comes first" has dominated the post-pandemic headlines. It appears the employment contract has been redrawn in favor of employees. The question today is whether the next economic stress test will expose the weak links in the employee-centric management model.
Can the notion of "stakeholder capitalism" withstand the slowing economy and the looming recession, which are forcing companies and their leaders to make difficult decisions and bring back austerity tactics? Everyone is carefully watching how far the pendulum of change will swing in that direction. No matter the prevailing HR convention or rhetoric around best practices, business disruption can force divergent responses to change.
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Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter serves as a reminder that the arc of management history does not always bend in the direction of progress. Musk's disregard of 21st-century norms around good management and building a healthy workplace is a function of a deeper cultural phenomenon—America's fetishization of the technology CEOs. On that front, Musk is in the company of Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes and FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried. Given this trifecta of cases, could we also be experiencing a crisis of leadership all at once?
It is too early to offer a full accounting of Twitter's post-acquisition turmoil, but a few preliminary observations could be instructive for leaders, managers, and HR. After the first two months of Musk's leadership, the state of Twitter speaks for itself. Two-thirds of Twitter employees have either resigned or been laid off. Most members of the senior management team were fired. More than half of Twitter's top advertisers—including Merck, GM, and Citigroup—suspended their accounts. And more than a million users deleted their accounts, while thousands of formerly suspended extremists were invited back.
It is worth shining light on the what, the how, and the why of Musk's management playbook.
What: The Twitter acquisition is officially about making the platform a profitable business. The richest man in the world had been vetted as the business leader who could fix the poorly managed social network. Musk showed up with the bathroom sink at headquarters on the day the acquisition was completed. "Let it sink in" was his message.
But if Musk's tactics work for his engineering businesses, they quickly proved a poor fit for a complex social media business such as Twitter. The non-engineering staff, including senior management, legal, HR, and compliance, were laid off right away. This first round of layoffs was carried out by email, followed immediately by a Slack broadcast giving remaining employees, mostly engineers, an ultimatum of "hard-core work ethic, or else." The response was a mass resignation of employees refusing to submit to "modern-day slavery."
Will this high-intensity work ethic rise again, as it did at Tesla and SpaceX? The jury is still out there, as the hashtags #RIPTwitter, #ElonDestroyingTwitter, and #ElonMuskIsATroll started to trend on the platform. I am reminded of Mike Tyson's pithy comment: "Everyone has a plan: until they get punched in the face."
How: Elon Musk's approach is "shock therapy," his take on Andy Grove's "only the paranoid survive." Unfortunately for Musk, Twitter employees "don't want to sacrifice their mental health and family lives to make the richest man in the world richer," as a newly laid-off Twitter employee told CNN.
Another trending hashtag among the remaining Twitter employees was #SleepWhereYouWork, with pictures of employees sleeping on the floor of their offices. Twitter users are departing in the thousands and uniting under the hashtag #TwitterRefugees.
Why: The new Twitter reality is a reminder of Louis IV's apocryphal saying "L'etat, c'est moi," which translates to "I am the state." A single-minded CEO is reshaping the company by his sheer willpower and genius, regardless of whether that approach results in trespassing laws, crushing traditions, disrupting lives, and destroying reputations.
In Musk's vision for Twitter, there is no "we," nor "the team," "the company," nor even "a community." Communication is flowing in one direction only.
In the words of one Twitter employee referring to Musk's posture: "It felt like a punch in the gut because no matter how you felt about wanting to stay or wanting to go, you were forced to make a decision and feel like you're up against the time clock to make the best decision for you and your family."
A good measure of a company's culture is how it treats people on the way out. Musk has spectacularly failed that test. Reading ex-Twitter employees' testimonials, one begins to wonder who will be left to rebuild after the dust of the shock therapy settles.
Dr. Anna Tavis is a researcher, global educator and coach focusing on HR and the future of work.
Opinions expressed here are the author's own.
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