Flipping the Bird: Elon vs Twitter| Extremely Hardcore | 4

Summary

Business Wars: Flipping the Bird – Elon vs. Twitter | Extremely Hardcore | Episode 4

Released: July 16, 2025 | Hosted by David Brown

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Introduction

In the fourth episode of Business Wars' series Flipping the Bird: Elon vs. Twitter, host David Brown delves deep into the tumultuous aftermath of Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter. This episode, titled Extremely Hardcore, captures the seismic shifts within the company, exploring the impact on employees, the controversial changes implemented by Musk, and the broader implications for Twitter's future.

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Elon Musk's Acquisition and Initial Reactions

The episode opens with the unsettling transition period following Musk's takeover of Twitter. Jim Redmond, a Twitter employee responsible for incident management, reflects on the uncertainty gripping the company:

Jim Redmond [00:45]: "Does kind of remind me of just seeing storm clouds on the horizon, knowing that something's coming. We just don't know how bad it's going to be yet."

As rumors of the acquisition intensified, thousands of employees anxiously awaited the inevitable changes.

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Mass Layoffs: A Devastating Blow

By the afternoon, tensions peaked as Twitter employees gathered in the iconic 200-year-old homesteader cabin, known as the Lodge. It was here that the announcement of mass layoffs was delivered via a chilling email:

Layoff Email [02:29]: "In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce by 9am Pacific Standard Time on Friday, November 4. Everyone will receive an individual email with the subject line, your role at Twitter."

The response was immediate and visceral. Employees shared their shock and grief on Slack, flooding channels with salute emojis as a sign of respect and farewell.

Jim Redmond [04:29]: "People were just kind of expressing their appreciation for each other. You know, I respect you. I thank you for your service and all you've done for us, for me personally and for the company and for our team."

By day's end, 3,700 employees—half of Twitter's workforce—were laid off overnight, leaving the company reeling.

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The New Regime: Survival of the Fittest

Jim Redmond found himself among the survivors tasked with stabilizing the beleaguered platform. However, this role was fraught with challenges as the remaining staff grappled with uncertainty and Musk's unpredictable leadership style.

Jim Redmond [05:45]: "I was a bit relieved that I wasn't initially laid off. I was also sad for the people who had been let go because their lives had been upended very, very abruptly... I would think of this as like the aftermath of a battle, like seeing who survived, who's still around, who should we mourn?"

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Elon Musk's Leadership Style and Vision

Elon's approach to leadership and his vision for Twitter became apparent during a pivotal all-hands meeting. Employees described his communication as disorganized and disconnected from the company's immediate needs.

Jim Redmond [15:07]: "This was very, very, very sudden. It was this brand new person out of nowhere just materialized and was answering questions."

Musk emphasized a "hardcore" work ethic, drawing parallels to his other ventures like Tesla and SpaceX. However, his directives often lacked clarity, leaving employees unsure of their priorities.

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Twitter Blue 2.0: A Risky Revenue Shift

A significant portion of the episode focuses on Musk's push to transform Twitter's revenue model by introducing Twitter Blue 2.0, a paid verification system. Despite internal warnings about potential pitfalls, Musk pressed forward, believing it would reduce dependence on ad revenue.

Zoe Schiffer [23:10]: "The trust and safety team wrote up this seven-page document laying out all of the risks for allowing people to pay for verification... But Elon forged ahead."

The rollout was catastrophically flawed. Within hours, the platform was inundated with impersonation accounts, causing widespread misinformation and eroding user trust.

Zoe Schiffer [26:35]: "That tweet went completely viral and Eli Lilly's stock dropped, and the executives at that big pharma company were calling Twitter, begging them to take down the tweet."

The backlash was swift, leading to the suspension of several high-profile advertisers and forcing Musk to temporarily retract the Twitter Blue initiative.

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Internal Conflict and Employee Firings

The episode highlights the growing discord between Musk and his employees. A pivotal moment occurred when Eric Fraunhofer, a Twitter engineer, publicly challenged Musk's assertions about the platform's performance:

Eric Fraunhofer [29:07]: "I have spent around six years working on Twitter for Android and can say this is wrong."

Despite his expertise, Fraunhofer's candid critique on Twitter led to his immediate termination after Musk responded aggressively to his feedback.

Eric Fraunhofer [31:26]: "I said, he's fired. You know, your heart kind of sinks a little bit, like, this is the end of eight years. This is how this ride's gonna end."

Similarly, Sasha Solomon, another key employee, voiced her frustrations publicly and faced the same fate, signaling a toxic work environment where dissent was swiftly crushed.

Sasha Solomon [34:24]: "I said it before and I'll say it again. Kiss my ass Elon."

These incidents underscore the precarious position of remaining employees and Musk's intolerance for criticism.

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Conclusion: A Rocky Road Ahead

As the episode wraps up, David Brown reflects on the dire state of Twitter under Musk's leadership. The relentless cost-cutting measures and unstable revenue strategies have placed the platform in jeopardy, with dwindling user trust and advertiser support.

David Brown [32:47]: "Elon's first two weeks as chief twit had been a disaster. Haphazard, embarrassing, ineffective."

The episode leaves listeners contemplating the future of Twitter and whether Musk's aggressive strategies can redeem the beleaguered social media giant.

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Key Takeaways

• Mass Layoffs: Musk's acquisition led to unprecedented layoffs, destabilizing Twitter's workforce and morale.
• Leadership Challenges: Musk's erratic leadership style and lack of clear communication exacerbated internal chaos.
• Twitter Blue Flop: The flawed implementation of a paid verification system damaged Twitter's reputation and revenue streams.
• Employee Dissent: Public challenges to Musk's policies resulted in firings, highlighting a toxic work culture.
• Future Uncertainty: Twitter's path forward remains uncertain as the platform grapples with financial instability and loss of user trust.

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This episode of Business Wars offers a gripping inside look into the clash of titans between Elon Musk and Twitter, illustrating the high-stakes battle for control, profit, and the very soul of a major social media platform.

Transcript

[David Brown]

This is Business War's Flipping the Bird. Episodes will drop Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. For the next two weeks, Wondery subscribers can binge the entire season of Business Wars Flipping the Bird right now. Start your free trial in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Jim Redman's job at Twitter included incident management. He helped the site handle things when a big moment happened. Now, in the days following Elon Musk's acquisition, Twitter itself was the incident. And Jim had no way to manage.

[Jim Redmond]

Does kind of remind me of just seeing storm clouds on the horizon, knowing that something's coming. We just don't know how bad it's going to be yet.

[David Brown]

Jim and his more than 7,000 fellow employees were staring up at the sky, waiting for the storm to roll in.

[Jim Redmond]

The rumor mill was pretty strong. People understood pretty well that, yeah, this is going to happen probably today.

[David Brown]

He went into the Cave, the windowless room where he and his colleagues kept the site going. But it was hard to focus.

[Jim Redmond]

There were a lot of people who were kind of wandering around, checking in on the friends they had made, the people they had worked with, and exchanging contact information.

[David Brown]

By the afternoon, Twitter employees started gathering in a space called the Lodge. It was an actual 200 year old homesteader cabin from Montana that Twitter's architects had found on Craigslist and integrated into the fifth floor. It was one of the most popular spaces in hq. Employees could gather in booths to work on projects together, or when they got bored, could take a break and watch sports on the large screen mounted onto the wall.

[Jim Redmond]

But today people are sitting around having a snack, maybe having something to drink, just kind of being as social as possible. Someone described it as like the last day of camp vibes.

[David Brown]

And then Jim and the other Twitter employees who were gathered in the lodge started getting the email.

[Jim Redmond]

Someone pull their phone out and look at it and they gasped. Or they'd have a little shocked reaction on their face and everyone around them would immediately notice, reach in their pocket, pull out their own phone and they'd gasp. Or they have a shocked reaction on their face and it just kind of spread across the room like ripples. People started getting the email that, yes, we are going to have layoffs and this is how it's going to go.

[David Brown]

Down, the email read. In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce by 9am Pacific Standard Time on Friday, November 4, everyone will receive an individual email with the subject line, your role at Twitter. It was signed simply Twitter.

[Jim Redmond]

That email was Terrifying.

[David Brown]

Before long, security guards swept through Twitter headquarters, demanding everyone clear the building immediately. Elon and his advisors were worried that a laid off employee might try some kind of sabotage against the company. Jim and the others in the lodge gathered their belongings and headed downstairs, looking around the lobby, knowing it might be for the last time. Everyone had to spend one more night awaiting their fate. I literally woke up to the email. The sound went off on my phone. Nya was in South Carolina at her mom's house that morning. A lot of us that worked in sales, we were afraid of losing our jobs because we knew that he wasn't the biggest fan of the ads model and just of ads in general. You know who she means by he. 90% of Twitter's revenue was from ads, and Nya was a good seller, making her targets quarter after quarter. I brought in a million dollars in revenue. A million dollars just in the last year, like new revenue. That wasn't enough. I woke up to the email and it was like, your role at Twitter. Nyah finished reading the email and went into her mom's room. She says, do you still have a job? And I said, no. Employees, bracing for getting fired, started posting on Slack with the salute emoji.

[Jim Redmond]

Person after person, just thousands upon thousands of salute emoji just filling the channel. People were just kind of expressing their appreciation for each other. You know, I respect you. I thank you for your service and all you've done for us, for me personally and for the company and for our team. It was a bit heartbreaking, but also a bit heartening, if that makes any sense.

[David Brown]

Some went on Twitter to say their goodbyes. Well, my entire team just got locked out. Love you all my little birds, the dream job and the dream team. Grateful to have been on this ride. Bird gang forever, y'. All. Some users responded with a photo of Twitter's iconic bird, but upside down and with the words RIP Twitter above. The layoffs spread across the people who moderated the content, wrote the code that kept the site running, who sold the ads that paid the bills. Many employees didn't even get an email confirming they'd been let go before. They were simply locked out of their work accounts. By the day's end, 3,700 employees, half of Twitter's entire workforce, were let go in a single day. Jim Redmond was not fired that day.

[Jim Redmond]

I was a bit relieved that I wasn't initially laid off. I was also. I was sad for the people who had been let go because their lives had been upended very, very abruptly when I found out about specific people. I was angry because this is a good engineer and you're letting them go for some, for some terrible reason that you're not telling us. I would think of this as like the aftermath of a battle, like seeing who survived, who's still around, who should we mourn?

[David Brown]

Jim was one of the employees left behind, part of the new regime with the job of keeping Twitter going, arguably a fate worse than being fired?

[Zoe Schiffer]

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[David Brown]

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[Jim Redmond]

Tell me I'm exceptional.

[David Brown]

I promise to exploit you. Nearly everyone expected lots of people would lose their jobs at Twitter. In a tweet on the day of the mass layoffs, Elon tried to explain this inevitability regarding Twitter's reduction in force. Unfortunately, there is no choice when the company is losing over $4 million a day. Everyone exited was offered three months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had advocated for Elon to get involved with Twitter. Now he Put the blame for the carnage on himself. I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation. I grew the company size too quickly. I apologize for that. Zoe Schiffer of Platformer has been one of the reporters who broke many of the twists and turns of Elon's takeover of Twitter.

[Zoe Schiffer]

There was no doubt in really anyone's mind that the company needed to lay off a sizable portion of the staff.

[David Brown]

Twitter had been losing money for years. On top of that, Elon had grossly overpaid at $44 billion. And the interest on the loans to buy the company at that inflated price was astronomical. More than a billion dollars annually that Twitter would have to pay. Elon had to cut costs. So he took a massive axe and swung it through Twitter's workforce. But the size, speed, and the way it went down. Well, it didn't have to be that way.

[Zoe Schiffer]

The way that Elon Musk conducted the layoffs, that was so problematic. It was haphazard.

[David Brown]

Elon Musk might have saved himself a whole lot of payroll costs, but he also put the site at risk.

[Zoe Schiffer]

You had entire critical engineering teams that had one to two people. Some of them had no people on them overnight.

[David Brown]

One of the biggest shocks to Twitter's employees was that Elon didn't seem to have much of a plan for how to run the company with half the people. And if he did well, the tweeps hadn't heard anything about it. Communication at Twitter was basically non existent. Sasha Solomon was one of the remaining. She worked in infrastructure, one of those key divisions that keeps Twitter functioning for its hundreds of millions of users.

[Sasha Solomon]

It was like basically my entire team was gone, and a bunch of teams that, like, were related to my team were also gone. Most of infrastructure was just completely gutted. I was one of two managers left. Myself and the other person were kept because we used to be engineers before, so we were technical enough to remain.

[David Brown]

Sasha figured she was kept on for her engineering skills, but she didn't even know who she reported to now or what she was expected to be doing.

[Sasha Solomon]

It was like, I hear Elon's gonna work on this. Like, he wants us to work on this project. Nothing's planned for. It's just kind of like at, you know, his whim, he'll like, tweet a thing, and then everyone's like, we gotta work on that now, because he tweeted it.

[David Brown]

Twitter rank and file employees who were left at the company who wanted to understand what Elon's plans were, they were directed to an unexpected source of information. A Podcast. Some of Elon's closest friends in Silicon Valley had started a tech bro hangout pod during the pandemic called the all in podcast with Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sachs, and David Friedberg. Two of the four hosts, Jason Calacanis and David Sachs, were part of Elon's inner circle at Twitter. And as the layoff drama unfolded, all in became a place where they would share some of what was happening behind the scenes, where the insiders hung out. So I guess we can talk about it now. Elon has closed the deal. I guess we can talk about it now. In an episode recorded hours after the deal had closed, Jason and David offered some clear insight into what they and Elon were thinking and professed an almost messianic faith in Elon's ability to lead Twitter to a new promised land.

[Jim Redmond]

What's cool about what Elon is doing is he's starting with this mission of restoring Twitter to being a free speech platform, of being the town square it.

[David Brown]

Was always meant to be. There's no doubt that I think Elon can turn this around pretty quickly and make it massively profitable, I think, and clean up the bot problem very quickly. This isn't rocket science, and Elon's done rocket science, so I think he's gonna figure it out. To Elon's inner circle, he was a level 99 mage who had conquered space, time, and electricity. As far as their opinions on how things worked at old Twitter, well, it was no secret that Elon and his advisors didn't believe Twitter's workforce was particularly hardcore. I'm looking forward to some tofu salads and meditation. Namaste. Literally. I think 8,000 square feet is meditation. Rooms that haven't been used in five years. The Oatley has left the building. Let's just leave it at that. Twitter employees were dealing with the aftermath of a mass layoff event, and two of Elon's closest advisors were gleefully mocking them. But there were a growing number of Twitter employees who seized on the opportunity to get on board with Elon and embrace their new boss. No one quite as publicly as product manager Esther Crawford. On November 2, Esther tweeted a photo of herself in a sleeping bag with an eye mask for added effect.

[Zoe Schiffer]

The message, when your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines, sometimes.

[David Brown]

You hashtag sleepwhereyou work. Esther was working on a high value project, one that Elon had tasked her with launching. The photo was a not so subtle signal that she was all in to Sasha, Esther's post felt like it went beyond just poor work life balance.

[Sasha Solomon]

It also feels very performative. I mean, I didn't work with Esther, but a few people may be similar to Esther that you're like, wow, I thought I kind of like knew you or like knew what you were about. And they're kind of just like flipping, I don't know, like backstabbing to like climb the little corporate ladder.

[David Brown]

Jim Redmond saw it too. Aside from Esther, a handful of other employees were fawning over Elon on slack, defending the layoffs and posing for selfies with him around the office.

[Jim Redmond]

I think a lot of the people who chose to be very vocally pro Elon, they wanted his attention. They wanted that kind of afterglow. Basking in the in the light of.

[David Brown]

Elon, Musk, tweeps were falling into two camps. Those who still saw him as an invader and those who were excited about being part of Elon's Twitter. But what was Elon's Twitter? It didn't matter which camp you were in, neither side had the answer. Two weeks after Elon closed the deal to buy Twitter, and a week after Elon had decimated the workforce, Jim was just going about his business. He'd woken up that morning to his first email from Twitter's new boss announcing that work from home was over. Now Jim heard from him again. Elon was holding in all hands in 20 minutes.

[Jim Redmond]

It didn't say it was mandatory, but that was pretty implicit that you needed to be there.

[David Brown]

This was the first time Elon was addressing his remaining employees since buying the company. Anyone in HQ that day? Packed into a large meeting room, Jim and the rest of the Twitter employees working from home joined a live stream. Once again, Elon strolled in, fashionably late.

[Jim Redmond]

We were all waiting and waiting and waiting. About 10 to 15 minutes after the alleged start time, he finally shows up, grabs a microphone, and is walking around the front of the room.

[David Brown]

Elon began with niceties. He told his new employees that he believed Twitter could be the town square where people exchange ideas and where once in a while they change their mind. Then he opened it up to questions. Many employees wanted to know about what their futures would look like. The last seven months had upended most everything they knew and gutted their company. The moderator asked Elon how he was going to bring people together and get everyone focused on the big vision. I can tell you, like, philosophically, what works at SpaceX and Tesla is people being in the office and being hardcore. And a small number of People can get a tremendous amount done in that situation. It was a Twitter all hands. But Elon just kept right on talking about Tesla and SpaceX. He credited Tesla's AI Autopilot team with just 150 engineers for outperforming 3,000 person teams. He acknowledged that Tesla and SpaceX were companies that manufacture hardware, but claimed their excellent software made him fully understand what Twitter needed. And Jim heard the message of what, according to Elon, Twitter needed.

[Jim Redmond]

We really need to be hardcore, we need to push, we need to work really hard to make this work.

[David Brown]

But it wasn't clear what this was. The more Elon spoke, the less it looked like he had a real plan. He said Twitter should be more like YouTube or TikTok or that Twitter should offer bank accounts. Whatever trust and goodwill still existed among Twitter ranks was quickly crumbling. Jim tweeted out his frustration.

[Jim Redmond]

I'm not sure I've ever been to a worse meeting than this rambling, unfocused bullshit buffet.

[David Brown]

One employee brought the conversation back to return to office. Elon had sent a middle of the night email the night before, killing work from home. Now the employee wanted to know why Elon was asking for this. If teams are spread out around the globe, Elon just doubled down on the demand.

[Jim Redmond]

The person who asked the question basically interrupted him to say, that is not an answer to my question.

[David Brown]

Even if people return to the office, the offices are separate offices.

[Sasha Solomon]

We won't be in person anyways.

[Jim Redmond]

You could tell that this annoyed him very, very much.

[David Brown]

Yes, but you can still maximize the amount of in person activity. Tesla is not one place either, but you know, it's basically if you don't, if you can't show up at an office and you do not show up at the office, resignation accepted, end of story.

[Jim Redmond]

It was like flipping a switch. It went from easygoing conversational to, you know, it's a very stark change and very sudden. I don't know that I'd go so far as to say it's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Because that seemed like it would be a lot more gradual of a change. This was very, very, very sudden. It was this brand new person out of nowhere just materialized and was answering questions.

[David Brown]

The all hands ended and the employees returned to work. But it wasn't yet clear what they should be prioritizing. Elon had cut costs in the form of layoffs. Now he needed how Twitter would make more money. Elon and his team had one priority over everything else, charging users to get verified. And pretty soon the entire site would be singing the Twitter blues. You know, hiring used to mean endless resumes, missed connections, precious time wasted. Then Indeed change the game. Here's the thing about Indeed. It's not just another job site. It's your complete hiring solution. Imagine your job post actually reaching the right people instead of disappearing into the digital void. That's what Indeed's Sponsored Jobs do. They push your listing to the top of the search results, putting it right in front of qualified candidates who match what you're looking for. And the numbers, well, they speak for themselves. Indeed's data shows that sponsored jobs gets 45% more applications than standard listings. That's nearly double your chances of finding the right person fast. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and Business wars listeners will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more [e-mail] BW just go to indeed.com BW right now and support Business wars by saying you heard about Indeed right here on this podcast. That's indeed.com terms and conditions apply. So you hiring Indeed is all you need.

[Zoe Schiffer]

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[David Brown]

Thanks.

[Zoe Schiffer]

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[David Brown]

As Elon Musk entered his second week as the owner of Twitter, the pressure was on to make money. And his plan was to get people to pay $8 a month for Twitter's most valuable status symbol, the blue check mark. A check mark on a Twitter account meant the account holder had proved that they were the companies or people they said they were. It could also be a sign that the person behind the account mattered. Elon's friends and advisors were all in on the idea of getting people to pay for this privilege. As they discussed on the all in podcast, if people are opting in to putting themselves into the top class of verified users, well, that's a revenue stream, right? And so all of a sudden, you know, I don't know how many millions of people would instantly say, I'll pay for this for five or ten bucks a month verified.

[Zoe Schiffer]

To him, I think it was like evening the playing field. While also Bumping up Twitter's revenue and critically shifting it away from being so dependent on ads.

[David Brown]

Zoe Schiffer covers tech for Platformer.

[Zoe Schiffer]

He put the fear of God in employees. He was saying things like, if this doesn't roll out on schedule, everyone's fired.

[David Brown]

But many employees had concerns about Elon's grand vision.

[Zoe Schiffer]

The trust and safety team wrote up this seven page document laying out all of the risks for allowing people to pay for verification. Things like people will impersonate brands, and that'll create PR disasters for those brands. People will impersonate world leaders and spread misinformation, and that will be very bad for everyone.

[David Brown]

But Elon forged ahead. Two weeks after Elon's takeover, Twitter Blue 2.0 was released.

[Zoe Schiffer]

And almost everything that employees were very nervous about happened. And it happened within like 48 hours of launch.

[David Brown]

Immediately, users timelines were filled with celebrity imposters. Someone pretending to be LeBron James demanded a trade to another team. A fake Lockheed Martin announced they would stop selling weapons to the United States. Sean Morrow, a reporter and activist with an odd sense of humor, was sitting on Amtrak, scrolling through Twitter.

[Sean Morrow]

I was watching people making accounts of, you know, Mario flipping the bird or Joe Biden saying he can do lewd acts or other just completely absurd things. And I was like, oh, that's kind of funny. I should maybe do something along those lines. I considered some absurd things like saying I'm Subway and saying our footlongs are now 14 inches long, or that I'm Ted Danson and that Becker is coming back on the air something super silly.

[David Brown]

But then he realized something.

[Sean Morrow]

I thought to myself, there's possibly real power here. And I wanted to do something that would have an impact.

[David Brown]

He decided to take aim at the high cost of pharmaceuticals. He picked his target, Eli Lilly, one of the top insulin producers in the United States. Now all he needed was a blue check mark.

[Sean Morrow]

I found that to verify an account, you need to have an account that lasted over a certain amount of days.

[David Brown]

Sean had that. He paid his $8 and got to work, if you can call it that. It was shockingly easy to set up an account that looked just like Eli Lilly's real account.

[Sean Morrow]

I go to Eli Lilly's own Twitter. I do a little right click, download their logo, the profile picture, download their header image.

[David Brown]

He uploaded them to his impostor account and filled out the bio pharmaceutical company.

[Sean Morrow]

But then I also write satire in all caps a bunch of times. I set the location to Parody City.

[David Brown]

Now to tweet. He knew exactly what he needed. To do to cause Eli Lilly maximum embarrassment.

[Sean Morrow]

Write something that sounds enough like corporate speak and is promising to do something good. If you're promising to do something good, you're putting the company in a position where they have to admit, no, we would never do that.

[David Brown]

He played around with it for a few minutes before he landed on the perfect phrasing. We are excited to announce that insulin is free now, which sounds just professional.

[Sean Morrow]

Enough to kind of be how they.

[David Brown]

Would really do it. He hit send and watched it spread.

[Sean Morrow]

You started to see people like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez or Senator Bernie Sanders tweeting out, yes, Insulin should be free.

[Zoe Schiffer]

That tweet went completely viral and Eli Lilly's stock dropped, and the executives at the company at this big pharma company were calling Twitter, begging them to take down the tweet.

[David Brown]

It wasn't just that only a few people were paying the $8. It was also decimating their other existing revenue stream. Advertising advertisers had already been fleeing the site since the acquisition, worried about a rise in misinformation and toxic content. Elon himself had been alternating between being hostile to them and trying to win them over. Four days after the deal closed, Elon had shown up in New York with his mother in tow to meet with advertisers. He was there to reassure them that Twitter would not become a free free for all hellscape. They asked the obvious question, Would Elon reinstate Donald Trump's account? Elon immediately began typing on his phone. It was a tweet. If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if Trump is coming back on this platform, Twitter would be minting money. He showed it to the room and asked if he should post it. One of Twitter's ad execs, who knew it would undo any progress that had been made in that meeting, emphatically told him no. Elon posted his tweet as his mother and the CEO of one of the most powerful ad agencies in the world looked on and then fired his ad exec later that week, Elon couldn't help but continue to destroy the trust he kept asking advertisers to have in him. With every dick butt, meme or masturbation joke or outright threat to God nuclear on advertisers, he was costing himself and Twitter. General Mills, General Motors and Audi of America had already paused their ads on Twitter. After the Twitter blue debacle, more blue chip companies joined them. Elon had to walk back Twitter blue, at least for the moment. Elon wasn't listening to the people who'd been doing this for a while, and sometimes it seemed like he didn't even respect them. On a Sunday afternoon, just a few days after walking back Twitter blue, Elon tweeted about the app being, quote, super slow in many countries, app is doing more than 1,000 poorly batched RPCs just to render a home timeline. Twitter engineer Eric Fraunhofer was at home scrolling through Twitter when he saw the tweet.

[Eric Fraunhofer]

And I looked at it for a while. My, this doesn't make sense.

[David Brown]

Eric disagreed with Elon's assessment, so he drafted a reply. I have spent around six years working on Twitter for Android and can say this is wrong. But then he sat there for a second.

[Eric Fraunhofer]

So I type out my tweet and I think, this is where poor impulse control comes in. You know, just like, I'm just gonna do it. And then just before I click send tweet, I was like, should I quote tweet this or not? I was like, he has 120 million followers. He's not going to see my tweet anyways. I was being a little spicy.

[David Brown]

Eric hit send and went to get a coffee.

[Eric Fraunhofer]

So I grabbed the dog and we walked up to Starbucks.

[David Brown]

When he returned, Elon had replied to him then, please correct me, what is the right number? Twitter is super slow on Android. What have you done to fix that? Eric's colleagues asked him what he was going to do.

[Eric Fraunhofer]

I think I only have one choice is to reply. I thought it was like, hey, this is the time to shine, you know, and share a bit about how Twitter works and share a bit about Twitter for Android and share about, like, my work and the work of my team.

[David Brown]

I think there are three reasons the app is slow. First, it's bloated with features that get little usage.

[Eric Fraunhofer]

I continue to engage Elon directly and give him information, like factual information about how Twitter works.

[David Brown]

Second, we have accumulated years of tech debt as we have traded velocity and features over perf. Third, we spend a lot of time waiting for network responses, and I continue.

[Eric Fraunhofer]

To kind of poke fun at some of his trolls.

[David Brown]

So the guy who owns Twitter and has access to the entire system is wrong. But random Internet dude is right. You know, you are the random Internet dude, right? I actually helped build this thing. Eric put down his phone and went to bed. When he woke up, he was overwhelmed with all the replies, thousands and thousands of them. For the first time, Eric understood what it was like to be a celebrity on Twitter, what it was like to be Elon. On the site. It was a rush, and he got caught up in the whirlwind of it. The exchanges with his boss's fans got a bit testy.

[Eric Fraunhofer]

Ultimately, someone said something to the effect of like, why don't you guys just take this internal?

[David Brown]

I've been a developer for 20 years, and I can tell you that as the domain expert here, you should inform your boss privately.

[Eric Fraunhofer]

And my reply was, he knows where to find me.

[David Brown]

Maybe he should ask questions privately, maybe using Slack or email shrug emoji.

[Eric Fraunhofer]

And then someone says, oh, that's pretty rude. Are you gonna take that Elon from him? And that's when he said, he's fired. You know, your heart kind of sinks a little bit, like, this is the end of eight years. This is how this ride's gonna end.

[David Brown]

A few hours later, Eric's access to his work computer was turned turned off. He posted the salute emoji on Twitter to signal that his time with the company was up. Once the adrenaline wore off from publicly tangling with one of the world's most powerful people, and his boss to boot, he started to feel some regret.

[Eric Fraunhofer]

Maybe not that tweet, maybe been a little less spicy about it, maybe not engaged some of the trolls.

[David Brown]

But one thing he didn't regret was telling the truth. Jim Redmond was watching the back and forth play out.

[Jim Redmond]

I was excited to see this whole response from him, basically explaining in great detail why Elon was wrong and doing it publicly. I was excited because it was someone pushing back on the kind of nonsense that was getting pitched from the top level.

[David Brown]

Jim liked Eric's tweet and a bunch of others that were critical of Elon. When he woke up a few days later, he was the one flooded with messages and notifications, and they said, oh.

[Jim Redmond]

My God, you've been fired. What's going on? Are you okay? And this was news to me. I did not know anything about this, so I checked my email, and sure enough, I had a message from Twitter HR saying that I had been fired, that my behavior had violated company policy.

[David Brown]

Twitter didn't specify which behavior or which policy.

[Jim Redmond]

I knew that this was a likelihood of being critical of Elon.

[David Brown]

Sasha Solomon was also frustrated by Elon's tweet about the slowness of the site.

[Sasha Solomon]

He could have talked to anyone about how this works, and he didn't. So I was just like, this is just so ridiculous. It's like, you know, he can't be bothered to talk to us internally about anything, but he's just going to tweet stuff out and you know, badmouth stuff that my team works on. So so I was just mad about the whole thing. I quote tweeted him and said you did not just lay off almost all of infra and then make some sassy remark about how we do batching. Did you even bother to learn how GraphQL works? You don't know what the f it does while you're also scrambling to rehire folks you laid off.

[David Brown]

The next day she got an email like Jim's she was fired.

[Sasha Solomon]

I tweeted the ball got fired for shitposting. Followed up by the I said it before and I'll say it again. Kiss my ass Elon. And then the kissy face emoji.

[David Brown]

Twitter, by the way, responded to our questions about these terminations with a poop emoji. Elon's first two weeks as chief twit had been a disaster. Haphazard, embarrassing, ineffective. The critics reviews were in. Elon had cut costs, but if his goal was to make money, he needed people to help him accomplish that goal. Elon decided what he needed from Twitter's employees and was greater commitment and loyalty. In the middle of the night on November 16, an email from Elon hit the inboxes of all employees going forward to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade. If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below. Anyone who has not done so by 5:00pm Eastern Time tomorrow will receive three months of severance. Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful. Elon employees had until the end of the next day to decide if they were in or they were out.

[Zoe Schiffer]

If you're trying to rally the troops, to me, this is just so not the way to do it.

[David Brown]

That's on the next episode of Flipping the Bird from Wondery. This is episode four of six of Flipping the Elon versus Twitter. I'm your host David Brown. Austin Rachlis wrote this story. Our producers are Nika Singh and Dave Schilling. Julia Lowery Henderson and Karen Lowe are our senior producers, reporting by Emily Corwin, production assistance by Emily Locke and Mariah Dennis. Fact checking by Nawal Anjani Voice acting by Emily Frost. Consultant is Kurt Wagner, Bloomberg journalist and author of an upcoming book about Twitter and Elon Musk. Sound design by Kyle Randall. Music supervisor is so Scott Velasquez for Frisson Sync Senior Managing Producer is Latha Pandya Managing Producer is Olivia Weber Coordinating Producer is Heather Baloga Executive producers are Jenny Lauer, Beckman, George Lavender, Marshall Louie and Jen Sargent For Wondery behind the.

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