Musk used 'What did you get done this week?' tactic at Twitter
Elon Musk is again using tactics that he has employed at his company X and trying to apply it to the federal government.
The line he’s using on federal workers to justify their employment -- “What did you get done this week?” -- is the same message he sent to the then-CEO of Twitter, now X, Parag Agrawal before Musk bought the company.
Musk sent the text in 2022 when he was fighting with Agrawal, who had asked Musk to stop posting criticisms about Twitter, saying it was distracting the staff.
Agrawal wrote a long message that ended with: “I’d like the company to get to a place where we are more resilient and don’t get distracted, but we aren’t there right now.”
In response, Musk wrote: “What did you get done this week” and said he would make an offer to buy Twitter.
Those text messages came out in later court filings.
Musk ultimately purchased Twitter for $44 billion. He fired Agrawal, who later sued Musk alongside other executives who accused Musk of withholding severance payment. After the acquisition, Musk reportedly told employees to print out the code they had recently written to show the work they had done and justify their employment.
The value of X is estimated to have dropped dramatically since Musk took it private. Fidelity believes Twitter is now worth 71.5% less than when Musk bought the social media company.
Musk even pointed out how the situation resembles what he did at Twitter, posting overnight: “Parag got nothing done. Parag was fired.”
Musk is bringing the same chaos and confusion he brought to Twitter to the federal government. After buying Twitter, Musk swiftly fired top executives, laid off thousands of employees, and ordered workers return to the office.
Some former Twitter employees are sharing advice with federal workers on how to deal with Musk. One of them, Yao Yue, posted on X:
“Use Signal or other secure chats to build trusted groups and talk to each other. Exchange info, check in on the vulnerable, offer help. An event like this is extremely emotionally taxing…Record things, safely. Take notes. Take voice memos. Take pictures of your screen, emails, or documents using your own device and stash them away in a safe location. They may or may not matter in the end, but if they do, once you lose access there’s no way to ever get it.”
