You have to feel for Twitter employees.
It’s been almost ten years since Mark Zuckerberg referred to Twitter as a clown car that fell into a gold mine. That’s a long time to suffer quarterly headlines like, “Still a bunch of clowns, still no gold.” People started referring to Twitter as Silicon Valley’s retirement community. The founder basically abandoned Twitter for a favored child. Can you imagine the pain? Put yourself in their shoes. Every single day, you have to moderate the thoughts of literally all of the craziest people in the world. Sometimes you do that in a way people don’t like, and in addition to being subjected to allegations like “you are literally a lizard,” suddenly whole new competitors spring up to siphon off part of your userbase. Now the richest person in the world… is going to be your boss? Like, in private?
What a wild ride.
I’ve never worked at Twitter, but if I were considering working there, as a retired clown or whatever, I would be interested in the culture. Except that’s not quite right, because Twitter’s culture may soon change. I’d want to know what the culture is like at companies run by Elon Musk. I’d also want to know many other things (how the business model could change, what kinds of technology upgrades are likely, etc.), but those will come in future posts because I have many more jokes about this.
Part One: Musk Culture
Expert calls are excellent sources of information about company culture, information that’s hard to find through other channels. At Stream, we preserve the anonymity of the experts. That alone doesn’t guarantee that they will speak their mind, but anonymity plus a skilled interviewer can reveal things you won’t see anywhere else. Below, you’ll find quotes related to the culture at SpaceX and Tesla. There are many more where these came from: request access to the Stream by AlphaSense expert transcript library here.
1) High Intensity
Tesla – Senior Global Supply Manager (Prior):
SpaceX – Ground Segment Operations Lead (Prior):
2) High Talent
Tesla – Program Manager (Prior):
SpaceX – Executive (Prior):
3) Mission-Driven
Tesla – Senior Corporate Sales Manager (Prior):
SpaceX – Executive (Prior):
Final Thoughts
Notice how the cultural elements bleed together? A unified mission attracts talent and motivates that talent to work very hard.
Is that how experts talk about Twitter’s culture? No spoilers. That will be the topic of a future post. You can request access to the Stream by AlphaSense expert transcript library to find out (search: ticker=TWTR, keyword=culture).
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Austin’s primary experience is in consulting and private equity, though he’s also a published author.
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