{"id":34235,"date":"2025-02-24T20:15:23","date_gmt":"2025-02-24T20:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/24\/flashback-musk-used-his-what-did-you-get-done-this-week-directive-before-gutting-twitter\/"},"modified":"2025-02-24T20:15:23","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T20:15:23","slug":"flashback-musk-used-his-what-did-you-get-done-this-week-directive-before-gutting-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/24\/flashback-musk-used-his-what-did-you-get-done-this-week-directive-before-gutting-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Musk used his ‘what did you get done this week’ directive before gutting Twitter"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of his acquisition of Twitter in 2022, Elon Musk<\/a> called on the social media giant’s CEO to detail what he accomplished during the work week \u2013 years before he employed the same tactic on federal employees while serving in his capacity as chair of the Department of Government Efficiency under the Trump administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Musk roiled the federal workforce on Saturday when he posted to X that employees would need to list their accomplishments for the previous week or risk losing their jobs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But this isn’t the first time Musk has used the tactic: He did the same amid his purchase of Twitter in 2022, before he overhauled the social media behemoth, including axing top brass.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“What did you get done this week,” Musk had texted former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in April 2022, months before he purchased Twitter and ultimately renamed it X.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Musk helped resurrect the text exchange over the weekend on X, when he responded to an account that shared a “how it started, how it\u2019s going” post that showed a screenshot of Musk\u2019s text to Agrawal, accompanied by a screen shot of a Musk X post on Saturday directed at federal employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump\u2019s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk wrote on X on Saturday. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

“To be clear, the bar is very low here,” Musk wrote. “An email with some bullet points that make any sense at all is acceptable! Should take less than 5 mins to write.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

DOD TELLS CIVILIAN WORKFORCE TO IGNORE ELON MUSK’S REQUEST TO REPORT PRODUCTIVITY\u00a0<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Musk, who positioned himself as\u00a0“free speech absolutist” amid the Twitter purchase, bought the social media platform in 2022<\/a> after it came under fire from conservatives and free speech advocates for censoring conservative viewpoints.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The\u00a0tech giant had “permanently” banned former President Donald Trump<\/a> from the platform in 2021, drawing ire from conservatives and free speech advocates.<\/a> It also blocked the New York Post\u2019s 2020 story on Hunter Biden\u2019s notorious laptop \u2013 and suspended some conservative accounts from the site, such as satire website Babylon Bee in 2022 after it awarded transgender Biden administration official Rachel Levine a fictitious “Man of the Year” award.\u00a0<\/p>\n

MUSK’S DEMAND THAT FED EMPLOYEES LIST THEIR ACCOMPLISHMENTS ROILS WORKFORCE: ‘MASS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE’<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s text to the then-Twitter CEO asking what he accomplished for the week came as the two sparred over Musk\u2019s critical messages aimed at the social media platform<\/a>, including asking publicly that year, “Is Twitter dying?” The text messages were revealed in court documents released in 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Months later, in October 2022, Musk officially acquired Twitter\u00a0in a $44 billion deal, making waves when he entered its headquarters that month carrying a bathroom sink in a video he posted to X with the caption, “Entering Twitter HQ \u2013 let that sink in!”<\/p>\n

Musk went on to fire the social media company\u2019s top executives, including\u00a0Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and general counsel Vijaya Gadde. Musk explained on X recently that Agrawal was fired due to reported productivity issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Parag got nothing done. Parag was fired,” he posted to X on Saturday.<\/p>\n

All in, roughly 70% to 80% of Twitter’s approximate 8,000 employees were fired or exited the company following Musk\u2019s purchase. Musk took a hatchet to the company\u2019s work from home policy, and remarked that the company was overstaffed and needed to be trimmed of staffers who did not contribute much to its operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

TRUMP RATTLES OFF \u2018FLAGRANT SCAMS\u2019 UNCOVERED BY DOGE, TAKES AIM AT FORT KNOX IN CPAC SPEECH<\/u><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

“We just had a situation at Twitter where it was absurdly overstaffed,” Musk said on Fox News in 2023. “Turns out you don’t need all that many people to run Twitter.”<\/p>\n

“If you’re not trying to run some sort of glorified activist organization and you don’t care that much about censorship, then you can really let go of a lot of people, turns out,” he said at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CPAC STRAW POLL REVEALS WHO CONSERVATIVES BELIEVE WILL BE 2028 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE<\/u><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s comments reflect those he\u2019s made in the second Trump administration as the chair of DOGE, which is in the midst of auditing various federal agencies in the search for overspending, corruption and mismanagement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

DOGE\u2019s work comes as President Donald Trump<\/a> ordered the federal workforce to return to the office after five years of remote work stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, and has vowed to clean house of bad actors within the government and ax overspending.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Musk said on Saturday that federal employees would receive an email directing them to list their accomplishments from the week prior, with the DOGE leader adding later that day that the assignment should take less than five minutes to accomplish.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Employees have until 11:59 pm on Monday to send the list or lose their employment, according to emails regarding Musk’s directive that were sent by the Office of Personnel Management.<\/p>\n

Musk’s message followed\u00a0Trump<\/u><\/a> remarking that he has been pleased with Musk and DOGE’s work investigating various federal agencies for government overspending, fraud and mismanagement, but that he would like to see Musk “get more aggressive.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Musk responded on X: “Will do, Mr. President!”<\/p>\n

ELON MUSK SAYS FEDERAL EMPLOYEES MUST FILL OUT PRODUCTIVITY REPORTS OR RESIGN<\/u><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Some Democratic lawmakers, unions and activists have called for federal employees to buck the order, while a handful of government departments and agencies, such as the FBI and Department of Defense, told staff to hold off on responding to the email, as respective officials will handle auditing their own staffers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“This is a good opportunity for mass civil disobedience. Musk has no authority to do this,” Illinois Democratic Rep. Sean Casten, for example, posted to X on Saturday evening. “Encourage all federal employees to report to work, prepare GFY letters and continue to demonstrate the public service and patriotism he lacks.” The acronym GFY is internet slang typically meaning “go f— yourself.”<\/p>\n

“It takes a remarkable combination of arrogance and stupidity to think that this is the best use of time for our intelligence officers, VA workers, air traffic controllers, and everyone else we depend on to do their job well,” he continued.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of his acquisition of Twitter in 2022, Elon Musk called on the social media giant’s CEO to detail what he accomplished during the work week \u2013 years before he employed the same tactic on federal employees while serving in his capacity as chair of the Department of Government Efficiency under the Trump administration.\u00a0 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}