Since taking over Twitter in late October, Elon Musk has laid off more than half his staff, ousted many of his top advertisers, made (and undone) changes to his verification program, angered regulators and politicians. with erratic and offensive tweets, declared a short-lived war against Apple, initiated a “Twitter Files” disclosure, stopped paying rent on Twitter’s offices, and falsely accused the company’s former head of trust and security of supporting the pedophilia. He recently said that he would resign as director when he found “someone foolish enough to take the job.” His fortune has been reduced by billions of dollars.
Things don’t seem to be going well. But one group is still firmly on Musk’s side: the bosses. Recently, many tech executives, founders, and investors have expressed their admiration for Musk.
Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix, called Musk “the bravest and most creative person on the planet” at a New York Times DealBook conference in November. And several partners at Andreessen Horowitz, the influential venture capital firm, have tweeted similar praise for Musk’s management style.
Some of the elite cheering probably boils down to class solidarity or economic self-interest. (Andreessen Horowitz, for example, invested $400 million in Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.) And part of that may reflect goodwill for Musk’s successes at Tesla and SpaceX.
But Musk’s defenders point out that Twitter has not collapsed or gone online despite losing thousands of employees, as some critics predicted. They see your steely management style as a necessary corrective, and they believe you’ll end up rewarded for cutting costs and bringing order.
“He says the things that a lot of CEOs wish they could say, and then he executes on them,” said Roy Bahat, a venture capitalist at Bloomberg Beta.
Some tech elites see Musk as the champion of a worldview they hope will take hold in Silicon Valley.
Writer John Ganz has called this worldview “jephism”—the belief that the people who build and run major tech companies have ceded too much power to lazy, self-righteous, overly “aware” people who work for themselves. them, and they need to start getting it back.
Many of Musk’s elite fans adhere to a brand of classic jephism, straight out of business school. They admire him for ruling Twitter with an iron fist and taking actions that tech executives have resisted for fear of alienating workers — cutting jobs, cutting benefits, punishing internal mavericks, resisting diversity and inclusion efforts, and force employees to return to the office.
These bosses believe that over the past decade, a booming tech industry and a shortage of talent have forced many executives to make unreasonable concessions. They pampered workers with benefits like fancy meals. They agreed to use workplace chat apps like Slack, which gave young workers a way to directly challenge leadership. They gave in to the demands of the workers—diversity, equity and inclusion workshops; flexible remote work policies; company wellness days—to keep them happy and prevent them from going to a competitor.
Musk then refused to do any of that. He fired many Twitter employees and challenged the rest to resign — forcing them to show they were “extremely committed” if they wanted to keep their jobs.
Twitter’s former leaders had allowed an atmosphere of open debate and discussion, but Musk replaced that with a culture of utter loyalty. He was dismissive of the company’s diversity and inclusion efforts — mocking an old “Stay Woke” T-shirt he found in a closet on Twitter and disbanding the company’s employee resource groups (including groups for black, LGBTQ and female employees).
Many bosses think Musk is right about the big picture: Tech companies are bloated and unproductive. Workers should stop being activists and focus on their jobs.
For the first time in nearly 20 years, companies that once cut corners to keep workers happy are cutting costs and laying off workers. Workers who might have threatened to quit their jobs for others a year ago are now holding on by claws.
Perhaps Musk picked the right time to start a revolution in management. Now, the question is: How many bosses will follow him?
By: KEVIN ROOSE
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6509162, IMPORTING DATE: 2022-12-27 21:30:08
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