The chaos at the Church of Twitter has been even greater than my wildest expectations. There's been another max exodus of employees this week after Elon sent an email requesting that they opt-in to Twitter 2.0, which he describes in the following manner:
"We need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade."
I'm no stranger to working Elon style (not nearly as much fun as Gangnam Style). I was Valedictorian in high school. I graduated Magna cum laude with a double major that included some semesters with 20+ credit hours while also working part-time. I worked very hard teaching middle school for two years. I've worked 50-60 hour weeks as a supervisor/manager and even reached 70-hour weeks when I had three consulting gigs with three different clients, all while being newly promoted to Client Director. I know very much what it means to be a workaholic.
I consider myself a recovering workaholic now. Working all those billable hours paid well, but it was not good for my mental or physical health. In addition, I am not passionate about the health insurance industry. Why work so hard? For the sake of it?
I'm sure Elon style comes as a shock to employees at Twitter who have not worked in this manner before. I don't blame them for leaving. I also don't blame the people who stay on board and believe in Elon's vision for Twitter 2.0.
