Elon Musk Is Bad at This
By: Charlie Warzel (The Atlantic)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The Musk era of Twitter has so far been defined by unhinged tweets, fleeing advertisers, and botched layoffs.
By Charlie Warzel Getty; The Atlantic November 7, 2022, 5:58 PM ETShare
Updated at 6:55 p.m. ET on November 7, 2022
Elon Musk has spent the past 12 years tweeting whatever comes into his mind, often without major negative consequences. That was before he owned the place. Now, less than two weeks after his $44 billion purchase, the world's richest man is finding that his actions—which recently included tweeting a baseless conspiracy theory to Hillary Clinton about the assault on Paul Pelosi—may actually have consequences. Advertisers are fleeing, the employees remaining after a round of mass layoffs are alienated, and onlookers are completely vexed by a freewheeling approach that has coincided with a rise in hate speech on the platform, among other problems.
Musk's fans see the billionaire as a visionary, but it's worth noting that many casual observers—people whose only real understanding of Musk is as the guy who put the fancy electric cars on their streets—have also internalized the heuristic that he is Good at Business and the type of man who spends his waking moments dreaming of how to save humanity from its existential problems. But what the past two weeks demonstrate is that Musk is, at best, a mediocre executive—and undoubtedly a terrible, distracted manager.
Musk is obviously wildly financially successful, and the companies he owns have a reputation for taking futuristic-sounding ideas and dragging them into the present. But what Musk is showing us in real time is the folly of equating financial success with intellect, managerial savvy, and good judgment. I reached out to some experts to see if I was possibly missing something about Musk's performance so far. Given Musk's current focus on advertisers leaving the platform, I called up Rick Webb, the COO of Timehop and a co-founder of the Barbarian Group, a major digital-ad agency. Webb also served as a marketing and sales consultant for Tumblr during its heyday. I asked him to assess Musk's first few days on the job, and he did not mince words.
"The advertisers are gone because of his awful tweets," Webb told me. "There's no room for debate. He stated his intentions up front. He cared about advertisers and didn't want them to leave and then he told us they've left." Webb suggested to me that Musk's now-deleted Paul Pelosi tweet was perhaps the most expensive tweet ever: It may have cost Twitter billions in advertising revenue. Companies including General Mills, Audi, and Pfizer are pulling their marketing from Twitter because they likely don't want their brands to be associated with anything remotely scandalous. High-level executives—CMO types—are the ones ultimately deciding what these brands spend on Twitter, and "those people are, to a T, conflict-avoidant," Webb said.
Musk seems to understand this—according to reporting from Kara Swisher, he realized that ad execs were freaking out and tried to quell concerns on a conference call last week. It did not go well. "There were CMOs who literally paused/shifted budgets DURING the call because of the uncertainty," Swisher tweeted. Worse yet, Musk has either alienated or fired some of the employees—such as Twitter's chief customer officer—who maintain crucial brand and agency relationships.
As bad as that sounds, Webb argues that the reality is worse: "What people might not understand is that the advertisers don't need Twitter. They barely cared about it at all before Musk. The only reason those people cared about Twitter ads is because they had personal relationships with members of Twitter's marketing team or because there are hundreds of Twitter account reps making them pay. And Elon may have fired those people." Twitter is much smaller than rivals like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, after all.
Read: How Elon Musk could actually kill Twitter
With each passing day, Musk seems to be digging a deeper hole. This morning, to the dismay of many brand advertisers who strive to be apolitical, Musk used his 114-million-follower platform to endorse the Republican slate of candidates for tomorrow's midterm elections. "The dude could've napped and saved billions of dollars," Webb said. "Every decision he's made has lost him money. It's astonishing."
Musk's marketing debacles are not the stuff of visionaries, but they pale in comparison to his management skills. Here's a brief summary of how he has steered the company so far.
Before assuming control of Twitter, the billionaire reportedly floated the idea that he could gut the company's workforce by nearly 75 percent, which created a sense of low-grade panic inside the company. Despite the specter of mass layoffs, Musk walked into Twitter headquarters like a court jester, filming content for his own Twitter feed. In his first hours, Musk fired some well-liked executives and, on his first full day, pompously asked engineers to print out their code so Tesla staffers could review it. (Later, he reversed course and asked staffers to shred their printed code.) When it came time for layoffs, he cut nearly half of the company via email (though word leaked beforehand and left many employees wondering about their fate) and, in an act of extreme cowardice, didn't even sign his name. Many staffers found out about their termination ahead of time, when their work accounts stopped functioning. The cuts—which hit or completely destroyed big chunks of the trust-and-safety, policy, machine-learning, social-good, accessibility, communications, ethical-AI, data-science, and research teams—caused realconcern that the company may now be especially vulnerable to outages and attacks, which could be particularly dangerous during the midterms. Inside the company, managers scrambled. They told employees to work 80-hour weeks to build products for Musk (lest they be terminated too) and instructed employees to come up with ideas to tantalize their mercurial new owner. The vibe was like "hack week, but with a gun to your head," a Twitter employee told the New YorkTimes podcast Hard Fork.
This is awful, chaotic management. Johnathan and Melissa Nightingale, who run the Raw Signal Group, a consultancy that focuses on coaching managers in the technology industry, told me that Musk is putting on a master class in what not to do to run an effective organization. "Absolutely nothing he's doing is cultivating an environment that helps people be creative, consistent, and innovative," Melissa Nightingale said. For the employees who remain, Musk has created an atmosphere of panic and uncertainty, which destroys trust and leads to employee resentment. Musk has created a vast network of ex-employees who will go on to talk trash and share nightmare stories about Twitter. This is already backfiring spectacularly: Some of the employees had skills necessary to build products Musk actually wants to launch and were terminated by mistake, Bloomberg reported, and the company is trying to lure them back.
Had Musk listened to people with experience running social networks (like those I cited in this magazine two weeks ago), he might have understood that they are complex, fragile systems and that staff reductions must be managed carefully. But instead, Musk surrounded himself with a group of yes-men advisers, many of whom also lack specific expertise. These men and Musk all operate under a hyper-rationalist managerial framework: They appear to have reasoned that Twitter was bloated and losing money on payroll, that change needed to come quickly, and that layoffs are naturally messy, so there's no need to handle them with care. That lack of care in particular is a hallmark of bad, shortsighted management, the Nightingales told me.
"When we say 'care,' we mean it both in an empathetic sense, but also in a professional, attention-to-detail sense," Melissa Nightingale said. The pair argued that Musk's haphazard cuts and alienation of his employees may work in the short term by balancing the company's budget, but disaster might soon follow. "If you start looking long term and evaluating his decisions by metrics like How many labor-discrimination suits will he face? or How many people will work for him again?, it looks different."
The Nightingales argued that Musk's managerial decisions show a lack of human understanding that is key to running any business—and especially a business like Twitter. "He may really understand things from an engineering perspective," Johnathan Nightingale said. "But humans are different. And care is a major input in creating a human system."
Read: Elon Musk's texts shatter the myth of the tech genius
Unfortunately for Musk, Twitter is less of an engineered machine and more of a chaotic collection of humans. "He loves to talk about Twitter as a great public square," Johnathan Nightingale told me.* "But public squares are built with care. They are not machines … Public squares are for humans and designed by humans. And Musk has just fired half of them."
There is always a chance that this somehow all works out for Musk (The Vergereported Monday afternoon that user growth is currently at an all time high) and an even greater chance that his confident, unapologetic, and wrongheaded style will only endear him to his fans. But even if he does manage to salvage part of his $44 billion investment, what we are seeing is the opposite of a business mastermind at work. Musk is not leading Twitter with careful vision, and he is certainly not dragging us all into the future with him. He's bumbling his way through a job he's unqualified for. He's treating a human problem like an engineering problem, torching bridges and embarrassing himself in the process. As Melissa Nightingale put it, "The entire history of capitalism is a lesson that you can be very successful and also very terrible." In this sense, Musk is an excellent teacher.
This article previously misattributed a quote from Johnathan Nightingale to Melissa, and vice versa.
Tags
Who is online
41 visitors
Has she shared any thoughts on the entire history of communism?
She obviously prefers to write about something she knows nothing about.
Or feudalism?
Those that can do and make billions(Musk); those that can't, are jealous twits, and wannabes (Charlie Warzel Getty) write articles criticizing him.
I will take Musk's record over those criticizing him any day of the damn week. The man is still a multi billionaire. He just acquired Twitter. Changes are going to take time. As for those advertisers fleeing- so the fuck what? How many more will replace them just because of Musk's name being the owner?
None.
Nothing is funnier than a worthless group of liberal morons who never created anything in their lives criticizing perhaps the most successful businessman of our time business decisions. Jack Dorsey the creator of Twitter reinvested his entire payout back into Twitter as an investor!
But hey maybe the worthless pos who penned this article knows more about business than Musk, what exactly did the author create?
Charlie Warzel, a Montana-based Opinion writer at large for New York Times, covers technology, media, politics and online extremism.
So he has created nothing and makes a living off others who are more accomplished than him in every way. What kind of idiot puts any stock in his BS?
I will say it again, Jack Dorsey, the man who created Twitter put his entire payout back into Musks Twitter! That says more to an intelligent unbiased person than all the words this low functioning retard has to say.
Who are they?
1. He writes a column on technology, which last I checked encompasses Twitter.
2. He names the experts he interviewed for the article.
3. You are free to disagree with him.
3. You are free to disagree with him
That’s very generous of you, but more important than me disagreeing with him, people who know better than this doucebag have invested billions with him. But hey, every asshole reporter has an opinion on Musks abilities, and all of them can only write, none of them have ever actually done anything. So considering the source of this opinion. He’s dismissed as another unsuccessful wannabe.
The article is about Twitter, not your admiration of Musk. The article quotes people who have expertise in advertising on social media saying he fucked it up.
Your response is to mention how much money he has.
Actually, the people he contacted are experts in their field and have run companies.
How many are as successful as Musk? Is there a PayPal? Tesla? SpaceX in any of their resumes? But hey, even ignorant fools are allowed to have opinions.
No, my response is about building successful companies. That employ thousands, these ignorant fools have created nothing.
Established X.com, one of the first online banks, which then with Confinity became PayPal
Manufactures in the US, a residential solar energy product, Solar Roof, Tesla sells Solar Roof with a price match guarantee against other residential solar vendors
Launched Neuralink, to create brain-machine interfaces to help people with paralysis to regain independence through the control of computers and mobile devices
What's he really accomplished?
As I look at the list, I see that you're right, not so much really in 23 years.
Negates a lot of what? His lack of real accomplishments?
The article is about your hatred of Musk.
Why is everything you dont like the result of someone "hating" ? lol.
Not a lot of people are as successful but then again it depends on the parameters. And they certainly can voice their opinion of him and his company.
If we follow your train of thought then no one that is very successful can be reviewed or critiqued by anyone but someone as or more successful.
So you can't bad mouth, Geo. Soros, Jeff Bezos, et al or most anyone on NT because they could be more successful than you are, George.
Just noticing your patterns.
I sure wouldn’t be arrogant or stupid enough to question there business skills.
Just like I wouldn’t question Tyson about astrophysics, or my heart surgeon on the best technique to correct a micro valve prolapse. But some are definitely know it all doucebags who think they can.
Wierd that nobody was questioned Jack Dorsey’s business skills? How much was Twitter losing a day before Musk bought it? I guess that’s because he is a liberal so he automatically comes with low expectations.
You are right, there was no stupid response.
Oops. Twitter is already trying to rehire workers Elon Musk fired days ago, sources say
elon-musk-fired-days-ago-sources-say/
Seems that the termination was not only rushed but without the knowledge of who was really important to the company.
Perhaps it was a message.......................
Or perhaps the multi billionaire was right and Twitter has incompetent management, Musk specifically asked managers to name the deadwood to let go, those managers obviously failed at this simple task making it easier for Musk to do the next round of layoffs. Haters are going to hate!
More than likely a fuck up on twitter part.
Yes, I'm sure that the ticket. LMAO
What's so hard to believe about............
???
If you want to accept that then it could signify that Musk doesn't know how to pick his managers or the fact that it was rushed without much forethought.
He inherited the managers FFS. You think he should have cleaned the place out and started all over? If anything, it shows the incompetence that former upper management put up with and also showed him as it turns out
Musk didn’t pick those managers, [Deleted]
It amazing how hate an ignorance makes people post some really stupid shit. Next thing you know they’ll blame musk for slavery.
Well he is South African,
No he didn't but he also didn't put his own people in before the mass firing.
That is generally something that is done in a corporate takeover
You should know that with all of your expertise.
Seed 3.1.12
They're fascists who identify as Nazis, you bigot.
Not at the worker supervisor level, but hey, keep telling the most successful businessman of our time he doesn’t know what he is doing, [Deleted]
Obviously a racist who supports apartheid. That’s no more ridiculous than anything else we’ve seen here attacking Misk.
Yes he is, but I understand perfectly why you wouldn’t think so.
My character has nothing to do with this, George. Sadly instead of presenting a good debatable response, you resort to name-calling and assumptions, That certainly says everything about your inability to defend your position with anything other than a kindergarten response.
BTW, I didn't say Musk didn't know what he was doing, but that the firing decision was done too fast without the proper review or that he depended on manager's that he has said was incompetent to do the firing which was botched.
Cheers.
200 billion says you are wrong.
No... quite.
A random list from a random blog does not override the numbers.
It’s always amazing how people allow others to make their opinions for them.
People on internet forums tend to comment on other member's comments. It's pretty commonplace on sites like this one.
[Deleted]
If it wasn’t for Musk, Biden would still be jerking Putin off for rides to the ISS.
Because you have to kill the old toxic culture before you can establish the new.
Only a complete moron would say this about Musk.
"Absolutely nothing he's doing is cultivating an environment that helps people be creative, consistent, and innovative,"
He has made his fortune by pushing people to be creative, consistent and innovative.
Meh. It's a religious thing.
We're generally talking about people who use liberal political ideology as their moral compass. It's their substitute for religion.
Musk has spoken openly against some of the tenets of the faith...specifically the idea that they are entitled to unlimited amounts of the money he's worked 20-hour days to accumulate, and the idea that contradiction of their ideology constitutes "hate speech" and should be censored.
In doing so, he became (in many of their minds) the world's most famous liberal apostate. He has rejected the true faith and sided with the infidels.
Now, he has invaded and conquered one of their most strategically important fortresses like he's Mehmed II conquering Constantinople.
So anything he does will be met with criticism, derision, mockery, and condemnation. Whether any of that makes any sense or not is utterly beside the point.
That's quite the assumption. Why would these people need a substitute for religion, perhaps they already have a religion or they don't need one or want one. Their moral compass doesn't need religion for guidance. I doubt that religion is the arbitrator of who has a moral compass.
Musk has spoken openly against some of the tenets of the faith...specifically the idea that they are entitled to unlimited amounts of the money he's worked 20-hour days to accumulate, and the idea that contradiction of their ideology constitutes "hate speech" and should be censored.
A lot of people have spoken against some or all tenets of the faith. I don't see where this is of any importance.
What is the ''true faith'' and who are the other famous liberal apostates?
Now that is colorful and dramatic. Twitter as a fortress is stretching it can you just imagine Elon Musk with his army of IT people defending the fortress against the likes of pissed-off non-religious folks with no moral compass? It's like ''Barbarians at the Gate''....
We know that is false since there are a number of Musk defenders in this article. My criticism was his firing half the company without doing some due diligence. The proof is that they are trying to re-hire some of them back.
I don't use Twitter nor do I have any plans to do so, so that is a non-starter for me. I do like his Starlink system which is helping people as we speak. I also like to watch his rockets blast off from the Space Coast. I'm not sold on the Telsa auto, too much money currently but his development of heavy-duty electric-powered trucks is an exciting development.
The word is observation.
Whatever defines your moral compass is your "religion".
The "true faith" is whatever the prevailing liberal ideology is at the time. Other famous apostates include Bill Maher and Dave Chappelle.
Twitter was a place where liberal participants could count on the platform to censor and/or ban people who posted things liberals found offensive. Not actual hate speech, but simply anything they complained about. That protection is gone, removed by a former Democrat who finally had enough of their oppressive tactics and had the money to do something about it.
Most Twitter users actually Tweet very little. For the majority of Twitter users, the platform functions as their custom curated news feed. Constantinople was important because of the traffic lanes in controlled. Same thing for Twitter.
Which of course does not at all prove that there are not Musk haters in this article.
Which you made assumptions about.
Since many people don't need a religion to define their compass and many need a religion to define theirs you could say that religion falls to those that need someone or something to tell them that they are moral no matter how immoral the someone or something is.
Is it only a liberal ideology that is ''true faith''. There must be a conservative ideology as well that would be their ''true faith'' much like the followers of an ex president that still lies that he won.
Ah, the old conservative canard, free speech. Except that it's privately owned and that ''free speech'' thing doesn't apply. The best advice is if you don't like it don't use it. We shall see if it's really open to free speech or something other than free speech.
What it does do is discredit your original comment and show that there are ''both sides'' on the article.
It seems that the tech industry is in a meltdown. Facebook announced a layoff of 11,000 people due to misreading the economy. When you bet the farm on continuing growth in your business based on, in this case, the pandemic, you open yourself up to what we are seeing today.
Musk made his second large sale of stock, this time $4 billion which has driven their overall value down and has investors upset. I would guess that these stock sales are to help finance the Twitter deal. Now speaking of Twitter they have been bleeding advertisers which has Musk threatening them with his ''name and shame'' program of all of these major players. It is a sales tact that I don't believe I've seen used before. He is having a meeting with many of them and the outcome should be quite interesting.
As a side note, Amazon is the first publicly traded company to lose $1 Trillion in market value.