“New management” is double speak.

Do you have any examples of this happening in corporate America outside of the Twitter takeover?

I have never heard of this approach. I’ve heard of new management coming in with a strong opinion and firing people, or new management spending some time understanding the situation up close.

Also: Corporations don’t have a mandate to serve the public writ large. A corporation imploding itself through dramatic reinvention every 4 years is perfectly fine. A government doing this type of purge every 4 years is obviously fucking insane, though I assume you’re operating under the assumption that the other side can’t/won’t/shouldn’t conduct ideological purges when they get into power?

Most administrations know there are people with varying levels of ideological commitment to their causes and they accept this friction because relative operational stability is a feature of a democratic government, not a bug.

That’s because you know the people you work with and trust them (hopefully well placed) to have the same incentives you do.

If you had more experience in large organizations with political dynamics other than the success of your as-of-yet unproven business (things change when people aren’t worried about going out of business if they play hardball with some other part of the organization - most startup people know they can’t afford to shoot holes in the boat), you’d understand the traction: for example, if you worked at a Fortune 500 and some McKinsey consultant sent out an email demanding you explain what you work on, most people would correctly interpret that as “senior management wants to fire as many of you as possible”.

Doing this on the scale of a couple of million people, with incredibly diverse roles is very different to a startup. That said as someone who spent a bunch of time working in companies and startups this isn't a technique any new management has ever thought appropriate in my experience, especially coupled with an ultimatum.

If you never ask you will end up thinking highly productive employees are the same as those not doing any work at all. It means the productive ones should quit asap.

You should watch office space, specifically the 2 Bobs. Now replace them with a fraternity bro or an "AI system".

How would you feel if your startup got bought by a new PE firm and they decided if you stayed or went based on "justify your existence in a text message no longer than 200 characters"?

It would be far more humane to do this how corporations do it, which is tell departments "you need to cut by X% - go do it". I've never seen or heard of the new CEO deciding on an individual case-by-case basis, depending on what each person puts into a status update email"

An email like that in any organization is unacceptable. It shows complete disrespect for the individual and is a clear demonstration of toxic leadership. You likely work in startups for the opportunity to work on exciting new things, have a high salary with potential for a big pay day which as part of that you accept the stress and the risk. A lot of people work in government jobs for the stability and consistency of the work, as part of that they accept lower pay than the private sector. Their work I would argue is far more valuable to society than any startup and should not be devalued by people who have contributed virtually nothing to society by asking them to justify their jobs.

I work for an American mega corp, though not in the US.

I like to consider myself a high value employee - my pay check certainly thinks I am.

If whoever was in charge started pulling shit like this, I would quit immediately and start working for the competition.

> an email from the new management asking people to justify their jobs that wouldn’t even make the news if it happened in corporate America

This exact crap made the news repeatedly when Musk was pulling it at Twitter. It was considered heavy-handed, authoritarian, and intentionally traumatizing.