Elon Musk Is Wrong. Sleeping on the Floor Isn’t How You Fix a Company

lon Musk has an interesting way of making sure the world knows exactly how hard he’s working. On Monday, he tweeted that he would be working and sleeping at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters until the “org is fixed.” I guess he thinks the ultimate measure of dedication to your work is that you never leave the office–not even to sleep.

I’ve been at Twitter SF HQ all night. Will be working & sleeping here until org is fixed.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 14, 2022

Maybe that’s just how Musk likes to work. Perhaps it makes him feel like he’s getting things done, or that there’s too much to do to waste time sleeping. After the chaotic last few weeks, I think he could use a good night’s sleep. It might help him reconsider a few of his worst ideas for the $44 billion toy he now controls.

It’s not the first time Musk has felt like it was important to make sure people know he sleeps at the office. When Tesla was trying to launch the Model 3, Musk said he slept on the factory floor during what he has described as the most difficult period of his life. I would agree that sleeping on a factory floor would be less than enjoyable.

The thing is, Musk seems to think that “working all the time” is the same as “making it better.” I think we can all agree that’s not always true. Doing lots of things is not necessarily the same as doing the right things. So far, I think many people outside of Musk’s inner circle would say Twitter is not “better” than the day he bought it.

Yes, Twitter was kind of a mess under the previous owners, and it has never been a particularly good business. It’s small, relative to its social-media peers, and it doesn’t make very much money (about $4 billion a year compared to Facebook’s $117 billion last year). But it wasn’t at imminent risk of going bankrupt, something Musk now says is on the table.

Perhaps Musk is trying to motivate Twitter’s remaining employees to double down on his vision for the company. The thing is, it’s not clear anyone has any idea what Musk’s vision is for Twitter. Aside from changing what seem to be Musk’s personal pet peeves with the platform, there is no coherent strategy to turn it into something better.

Musk has said the reason he wanted to buy Twitter in the first place was to fix the problem with bots and spam. Instead, he just sold a blue check mark to any troll willing to pay $8. Also — and this is the most important point — sleeping on the floor isn’t going to fix any of what’s wrong with Twitter.

Look, I think that there is a period in the life of every startup where the founder spends an unhealthy amount of time willing his or her company to survive by the sheer force of his or her own determination. They give up sleep and showers and eating because they are all-in on building a company. There is something admirable about the level of dedication and perseverance that comes with turning an idea into a business.

Twitter, however, is not a startup. It’s a 16-year-old company with a few thousand employees. And it’s now owned by the wealthiest man on earth. It might not be profitable, but it’s far from the sleep-on-the-floor stage. If Musk’s goal is to motivate his employees with a sense of urgency, he’d be better off rallying them around some kind of vision.

Actually, the thing that Musk could do right now to make Twitter better, both for the users as well as the people who work there, is to simply stop making it worse. Stop with the crazy timelines to ship features that haven’t been thought through to their logical conclusion.

Stop trying to recoup all of the money you blew on your new toy with one major change. Stop threatening to fire people if they don’t meet your unreasonable deadlines. Stop firing the people who actually understand how to run, well, Twitter.

The things that have gotten worse under Musk’s leadership are all in service of a problem he created. He’s tried a number of things–like selling the blue check–none of which have made Twitter any better, and none of which have actually worked to do what Musk says he wants to do, which is to generate more revenue to pay the massive amount of debt he took on when he overpaid for the company last month.

Also, there’s the fact that Musk is the CEO of three other companies, one of which is publicly traded, which means Musk has an obligation to shareholders. Spending all night playing with his new toy is probably not the best way to fulfill that obligation.