President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Elon Musk to co-head the Department of Government Efficiency to reduce government spending alongside businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

At companies like X, Tesla and SpaceX, Musk is known for his aggressive work culture and aggressive cost cutting.

A longtime Tesla executive who left in August wrote on LinkedIn that working there was an “extraordinary” experience but “not for the faint of heart.”

End remote work policy, eliminate free lunch

A few weeks after acquiring Twitter (now X), Musk sent an email at 2:30 a.m. in November 2022 announcing the end of remote work because “the road ahead is difficult and requires intense work to succeed.”

He also required employees to pay for office lunches that were free, citing the 80-hour work week.

That same month, Musk laid off about half of Twitter's roughly 7,500 employees.

In a midnight email, he gave those who remained an ultimatum: either work hard or be fired and receive three months' salary in compensation.

When Twitter employees criticized Musk online and in internal Slack messages, Musk fired them.

Elon Musk Scmp
Elon Musk is not afraid to fire employees to streamline the company. Photo: SCMP

Tesla lays off 10% of staff at midnight

Tesla's job handbook sets very high standards for employees, such as being self-reliant and doing everything possible to solve problems, including contacting Musk directly.

“Your number one job – and everyone else's – is to make this company successful… If you see an opportunity to improve the way we do things, speak up, even if it's outside your area of ​​responsibility… Good ideas don't do you any good if you keep them to yourself,” reads the Tesla job handbook.

In 2018, Musk said he slept on couches and the Tesla factory floor many nights while the company ramped up production of the Model 3 sedan. He said he wanted to make himself more miserable than anyone else in the company.

At the 2022 annual Baron Investment Conference, Musk shared that he had lived at Tesla's factories in California and Nevada "for three years in a row" to inspire employees to "give it their all" and show them that he was working hard too.

In April, Tesla announced it would lay off 10% of its workforce to cut costs in a midnight email. The electric carmaker had previously reported an 8.7% year-over-year drop in revenue.

SpaceX fires employees to streamline organization

In 2019, Musk laid off 10% of SpaceX employees in an effort to “ become a leaner company.”

Vincent Peters, a former SpaceX employee, describes the work culture there as “ruthlessly efficient,” where people are encouraged to leave meetings where they don’t add value.

He recounted a time when a government client brought in a 50-page slide deck for a presentation and after just six slides, 75% of the room walked out. The guest then had to “fast forward” to the last five slides.

Jim Cantrell, former vice president of business development at SpaceX in the early 2000s, said that if you share Musk's vision and are immune to a boss who demands all your time and thought, working with Musk can be a very interesting experience.

In addition, SpaceX is also working to build a fully reusable rocket system to reduce launch costs tenfold.

In October, during the fifth test flight of the Starship rocket, the Super Heavy booster successfully flew back to the launch site, marking a major step forward in reducing the cost of space travel.

(According to Insider)