This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? .

Advertisement

When Musk took over Twitter in 2022, he ended the company's remote work policy and free office lunches.

Weeks after acquiring Twitter, which he later rebranded as X, Musk sent an email at around 2:30 a.m. in November 2022 announcing the end of remote work at the company, writing that "the road ahead is arduous and will require intense work to succeed."

Musk also required employees to start paying for office lunches that had previously been free, told employees to expect 80-hour workweeks, and urged them to approach their jobs with "a maniacal sense of urgency."

Advertisement

Musk cut around 50% of Twitter's staff and set an expectation for those who remained to "work 24/7."

In November 2022, Musk laid off around half of Twitter's approximately 7,500 employees.

Business Insider previously reported that some laid-off employees were asked to return to work the day after the sweeping cuts, but some refused.

In a midnight email obtained by Business Insider, Musk issued an ultimatum for those who remained: commit to an "extremely hardcore" work schedule with "long hours at a high intensity," or get fired and receive three months of severance.

When Twitter employees criticized Musk's leadership on the online platform and in internal Slack messages, Musk fired them.

Representatives for Twitter did not respond to a previous request for comment.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Musk has been known to sleep on Tesla's factory floor and said he once lived at Tesla's factories for "three years straight" to inspire his workers.

In 2018, Musk said he spent nights sleeping on a couch and the floor at Tesla factories while the company ramped up production on the Model 3 sedan.

"The reason I slept on the floor was not because I couldn't go across the road and be at a hotel," he told Bloomberg. "It was because I wanted my circumstances to be worse than anyone else at the company. Whenever they felt pain, I wanted mine to be worse."

At the 2022 Annual Baron Investment Conference, Musk said that he lived at Tesla factories in California and Nevada "for three years straight" to inspire employees to "give it their all" and show them that he was working just as hard.

Advertisement

In April, Tesla laid off 10% of its workforce as Musk said the company needed to be "absolutely hard core about headcount and cost reduction."

In a late-night companywide email announcing the layoffs, Musk also called for the resignation of any Tesla executive with more than three direct reports who "don't obviously pass the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test."

The staff reductions occurred after Tesla reported an 8.7% year-over-year revenue drop.

Advertisement

SpaceX's reusable Starship rocket aims to make rocket launches cheaper and more efficient.

As part of Musk's future goal of colonizing Mars, SpaceX is working to build the first fully reusable rocket system, which would make rocket launches 10 times cheaper.

In October, during the Starship rocket's fifth test flight, the Super Heavy booster successfully flew back to the launch site and the Starship vehicle made a controlled landing in the Indian Ocean, a huge step toward reducing the cost of space travel.

Advertisement

Former SpaceX employees also describe a work environment where efficiency reigns supreme.

In 2019, Musk laid off 10% of SpaceX employees in order to "become a leaner company," a SpaceX spokesperson previously told Business Insider.

In an as-told-to essay for Business Insider, Vincent Peters, a former SpaceX employee, described the work culture as "ruthlessly efficient" where people were encouraged to walk out of meetings they weren't adding value to.

"In one instance, a government customer came in with a 50-slide deck," Peters said. "Six slides into the presentation, 75% of the room had walked out. I had to tell him that if he didn't get to the point, I'd be the only person left in the room — and only because I had to walk him out. He skipped ahead to his last five slides. That kind of environment makes you much more efficient."

Jim Cantrell, who worked as SpaceX's vice president of business development in the early 2000s, said that Musk could be "vicious."

"If you are aligned with his vision and immune to a very strong boss who's very demanding of your time and your thoughts, then it's going to be a very fun ride," Cantrell said of working for Musk in an essay for Business Insider.

Read next

Elon Musk SpaceX Tesla

More...

Advertisement