🧠 What made Elon change his mind? | Ep15 OoO

👁️‍🗨️ Bloomberg: Elon recognizes the hardcore perils of RTO

🤷‍♂️ Bloomberg: Musk’s ultimatum does or doesn’t go to plan

🤡 The Next Web: Apple loses Ian Goodfellow over WFH

Hey! Welcome Back -

It’s episode 15 and this week I’m shaken to my core over major changes whistling through the business world.

It’s as if we wished upon a star and now business leaders, Silicon Valley and our favorite mogul Elon Musk are finally softening their WFH policies.

This is hardcore change and I’m living for it.

Let’s find out what happened –

Elon Musk: A Hardcore Change

Remember a few weeks ago, we took a pragmatic look at how Elon’s war on remote work was starting to resemble a slow-motion car crash at Twitter?

I spoke to him directly about the dangers. And while he may never have seen episode 13, he has done a whiplash-styled 180 on RTO.

🧾 Twitter’s new new work policy is:

“If your manager says you’re making an excellent contribution, you’re ok.”

Twitter managers now get to decide if their people are excellent enough for Elon.

Granted, he made the change a few weeks ago.

Cancelling remote work was definitely a dumb move, so it’s good to see that he can U-turn when needed. Then again, the email puts Twitter Managers on the chopping block if their view of ‘excellent’ doesn’t align with his.

🐯 These are hardcore times after all.

The Exodus: Mistakes Were Made

So, what new insight changed this notoriously stubborn CEO’s mind so dramatically?

My guess is that it has something to do with the ultimatum he served up for Thanksgiving lunch, which forced people to choose between 3 months severance pay or the new ‘hardcore’ work environment.

😳 Apparently, he was surprised how many people chose to leave.

Nick Bloom, a Stanford Economist said:

“Market forces even apply to Musk…facing massive hourly wage cuts employees quit. Would you expect anything else?”

It’s simple economics.

We know that tech employees value remote work as much as a 10% pay rise. Taking that away is basically a 10% pay cut. Throw in the promise of ‘hardcore’ hours, and you get the kind of market conditions that would lead to an exodus anywhere.

😬 So a ton of people took the severance.

But if this was his plan all along, why the 180? It wasn’t because of human kindness or a visit from the ghost of Christmas past, that’s for sure.

And what about that tweet showing him rehiring fired employees? Pure hoax.

The Ligma and Johnson tweet was Elon pranking Twitter. It came about after two pranksters posed as fired Twitter employees being rehired after the exodus. He played along, even going so far as to apologize to them.

The entire thing was a joke. No authentic apologies have been made.

So why the flip in perspective?

Turn Around: Learning Through Apple’s Mistakes

Earlier this year a different Silicon Valley CEO turned their back on remote work – and it was a really dumb thing to do.

Apple’s return to office plan made them lose Ian Goodfellow, a virtually irreplaceable machine learning engineer. Like in sports, in big tech to be competitive you have to get the best people to play on your team – it’s the fastest route to victory.

👨‍💻 Worse than losing Ian Goodfellow, was the fact that he was immediately snapped up to work at DeepMind, Apple’s biggest rival.

I bet that’s happening to a lot of people at Twitter.

Maybe not all of them, but the smartest and most talented are also the most likely to be poached over something like remote work.

Tristan Greene said it best -

“It’s like letting Tom Brady or Michael Jordan leave your team over a disagreement between them and the team owner on how towels should be folded.”

Crippling Tim. And not worth it.

So props to Elon Musk for doing better than some of his peers, and figuring out that killing remote work altogether was a dumb move.

I’ll say it again –

A smart person in this position would use this moment as an opportunity to realign policies and figure out how to turn remote work from a blocker, into an advantage.

Now that would be hardcore.

That’s all for this week, and remember the future of work is Out of Office.

Andrew

This Week’s Shareable

• Stanford economist @Nickbloom says that when employees are given the choice between a ‘hardcore’ work environment or a severance package, on top of the loss of #remotework, they leave. It’s like a 10% pay cut. #twitterexodus