Saving Every Penny
On a Saturday morning in December 2022, Elon Musk summoned Twitter’s finance executives—the social network he had acquired only six weeks earlier—to scrutinize the company’s spending.
According to The New York Times (NYT), Elon Musk was infuriated even though Twitter had already reduced its staff by over three-quarters, from 8,000 to just 1,500 employees. Yet, the company’s spending still did not meet the expectations of its new owner.
For six hours straight, the world’s richest man, with a net worth of over $300 billion, reviewed each line of the spending spreadsheet, demanding explanations from staff for each expense.
From there, Musk ordered cuts on many expenditures, such as luxury car rentals for Twitter executives. He even got into a direct argument with an employee overseeing a multi-million dollar web security contract.
According to NYT, this is just one example of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting work culture.
The success in tightening expenses has been Musk’s key strategy for success at Tesla and SpaceX. Now, this approach is being applied to Twitter-X, and it could potentially be implemented in the U.S. government as “Minister” of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
In nearly 30 years as an entrepreneur, Musk has sharpened his frugality by diving deep into details and cutting costs as much as possible.
The Tesla CEO’s view is that it’s better to cut too much than to fire too little.
NYT reports that Musk is entirely indifferent to layoffs, ignoring norms, conventions, and employees’ hardships, focusing solely on efficiency.
According to NYT, the tech billionaire is willing to cut costs so deeply that it sometimes disrupts operations or safety standards due to a lack of manpower.
But Musk doesn’t care, as he believes anyone can be fired and everything can be fixed afterward. This has contributed to the early chaos at Twitter-X under his leadership.
Even with suppliers, Musk doesn’t shy away from being blunt or coercive to negotiate better prices. If he doesn’t get the desired rate, he’ll look for ways to produce it himself or find cheaper alternatives.
“Elon Musk is a businessman, and he wants to cut everything to the bone,” said Jim Cantrell, the first VP of Business Development at SpaceX.
Now, Musk is expected to bring this penny-pinching, “fire first, fix later” culture to the U.S. government.
Streamlining Like Twitter-X
Donald Trump has announced that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will drastically reshape the U.S. government by significantly downsizing bloated agencies, with Elon Musk leading the charge.
The world’s wealthiest man is excited about this role, frequently posting on Twitter-X about how the U.S. government is wasting taxpayer money.
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