Déjà Vu: Elon Musk takes its Twitter takeover strategy to Washington

Email landed in the inbox of employees landed along the line: “Thorn in the road.” The message in the email was Stark: Accept a broad set of workplace changes or resignations.

it was Note Millions of federal employees received that millions of federal employees at around 5 pm on Tuesday. A similar message was echoed that thousands of workers on Twitter met Elon Musk at the end of 2022 after purchasing the company.

Mr. Musk has brought its acquisition strategy from Twitter to the federal government, where he has become a close advisor to President Trump and is running a cost-cutting initiative called the government’s efficiency department. The administration is already ending the diversity initiative, testing engineering skills and demanding federal employee loyalty, the maneuver Mr. Musk hugged his social media company to reduce the budget and operation of his social media company. .

Tuesday’s email sent by the Personnel Management Office was the latest example of the billionaire fingers, below the subject line – similar to their 2022 purchase proposal for Twitter employees.

Former Twitter Executive Officer Rumman Chaudhary said, “This is a knife-your-throat feeling, which left the company, which is now known as X after the acquisition of Mr. Musk.” Uncertainty is wild. . “

A spokesman for the initiative to cut Mr. Musk and his government cost did not immediately respond to the requests of comments.

Mr. Musk has earlier said that he is expected to have a deficiency of $ 2 trillion from the federal budget. 5 to 10 percent of federal workers were expected to accept the exhaust packages offered on Tuesday, “which could be around $ 100 billion in savings,” Sri Musk’s political action committee, US PAC said in one post. X,

Mr. Musk, who leads Tesla and SpaceX, listed the help of a team of loyalists to assess and cut the agencies, the same work they did during the Twitter takeover.

Steve Davis, head of Boring Company, Mr. Musk’s tunling startup, helped to take care of the cost-cutting on Twitter and now led Dogi. A long -term human resource executive Brian Bezelde, who also helped during Twitter takeover, is now advisors to the Personnel Management Office.

Michael Grims, a top banker from Morgan Stanley, who helped Mr. Musk’s Twitter acquisition, is expected to take a senior job in the Department of Commerce.

Tesla, one of Sri Musk’s software engineers at Thomas Shed was nominated to “Technology Change Services” in General Services Administration, which helps manage federal agencies. Mr. Shed immediately appointed a musk strategy: The engineers were asking for evidence of technical chops.

Mr. Shed asked the engineers to sign up for sessions, in which they can share “recent personal technical victories” and were seen by the Times as per an email sent to more than 700 employees on Tuesday night.

Mr. Shed said in his email, “This session has an opportunity to understand more deeply expertise,”

Just a day after receiving Twitter, Mr. Musk sought to print out the engineers and shared the shared code that he wrote for various products of the company.

Mr. Musk also quickly worked for the initiative of diversity in the social media company – the echo of the order of the first week of order to the post of executive of Mr. Trump, which ended the diversity and inclusion efforts in the federal government.

According to the email sent to the federal workers viewed by the Times, “these programs divided Americans from the race, ruined the taxpayer dollar, and resulted in shameful discrimination.”

After purchasing Twitter, Mr. Musk shared a video and slammed the previous management efforts to promote diversity, in which a video was shared They made fun of the shirt Made for the black employee group of the company. Under his leadership, the company cut funding for employee resource groups, and according to two former employees, took a mural picture celebrating the Black Live Matter Movement at its San Francisco office.

One of Mr. Musk’s Go-to-Tactics was reducing the company’s real estate footprint for cost cuts on Twitter. He stopped paying rent for various office places around the world, ousting several facilities including Seattle and Boulder, Kolo.

General service administration is also targeting immovable property for cost cuts. Stephen Ehikian, a former tech executive and appointment of Trump, told the workers in an email on Tuesday that it was seen by the Times that the agency’s two properties would be listed for sale while three leases were finished. The step would save about $ 11 million and according to the email, the “first step” was to reduce real estate expenditure.

While Mr. Musk eventually replaced Twitter, reduced employees by 80 percent, and its business has declined, reducing the footprint of his real estate. Advertisers have left the site in the draw, and at least one investor, Fidelity, estimates that the company is now 72 percent less than the company paid for it.

“Our user growth is stable, revenue is ineffective and we are barely broken,” Mr. Musk wrote to X employees earlier this month, which was seen by New York Times and reported earlier Was The Wall Street Journal“We need to focus rapidly, more innovative and tirelessly.”

Mr. Musk revives on Tuesday evening One of his 2024 posts on XFor federal employees, the “thorn in the road” appears to refer to email, which demanded that they “tried for” reliable, loyal, reliable “and” excellence. “

Some government workers are looking at former Twitter employees for guidance.

Many federal employees broadcast Online post Dr. Chaudhary offered advice to respond to a musk acquisition. Others contacted an employment lawyer Shannon Lis-Rordon, who is sueing Mr. Musk on behalf of former Twitter workers.

“Elon clearly thinks that he learned from Twitter how to reduce a workplace and he is trying to roll out the same playbook with the federal government,” said Ms. Lis-Rordon.

Theodore shlifer, Ana Swanson And Mareen Fareel Contribution reporting.