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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

Whether or not he succeeds, I can see that the approach is worth trying. It takes some balls, but coming out and saying, ok, who wants to get serious and work, otherwise leave, is a great way to get at a committed core team. There are huge risks (too many actually good people leaving) but it also solves one of the biggest problems in tech right now which is a coddled workforce that only wants to do what they want. It had to end at some point, and just ripping off the bandaid is as good a thing to try as any.

Edit: I agree with the other post that there should be a clear upside for those who stay, not just keeping their jobs. I don't know enough about what was offered to comment myself

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"I can see that the approach is worth trying" - It's been tried since forever and literally goes back to the beginning of slavery.

I have walked away from several employers who berated their employees. And I didn't wait for them to berate me. I wouldn't never put up with any kind of strong arm tactic that threatens me. I would always make the choice to leave as soon as that was attempted.

I would probably walk away from an employer that treated me in a way I didn't like as well. But we are not their target audience. I'd also be unsuitable anywhere that had a rigid authority structure, like the military. That doesn't make it a universally bad model, just one that automatically selects for a certain type of person. As a deliberate bet by leadrship, such selection could be worth trying.

I'd have to agree that may be a good model for some endeavors and the military is a very good example. I have doubts about it being good for Twitter, but maybe aspects of SpaceX would work well with it.

I think the approach was poor. Laying off half the company then trying this is a recipe for disaster. If at first, instead of laying off half the company he had said "Look, the company is in rough shape, we are going to turn it around, here is the vision... It's going to get hard but you can leave now" then I could get behind it. But this is just insane, you'll just end up with people who can't leave.

Except that it comes off not so much as ‘who wants to do serious work’ as ‘who wants to work in Musk’s sweatshop for the glory of Musk?’

You basically end up with a bunch of employees who don’t have other options.

Why would employees who do have options voluntarily take on that abuse.

I'm not sure I'd personally get behind Elon Musk as a leader, but people respond to vision and are willing to put in work and ensure hardship, to be part of a compelling vision. Not everybody is just going to work to collect their pay cheques.

Capricious firings and public beratings are certainly one kind of vision.

Have you at any point seen Elon provide anything close to a compelling vision for Twitter? I haven't.

Other than trollish comments about free speech that he's since walked back, he's given no sign of having any coherent vision whatsoever.

The problem here isn't just that he's a terrible person; it's that it becomes clearer by the day that he's really just winging it. Smart, capable people don't want to work around that.

What vision?

All I see is, "I'm the new king here - drop everything and come on bended knee to show me how all this shit works at 1am or you're fired".

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