The Work of Work Without Workers

Here's the tea, sis: it's all about pure value

Elon Musk did the work of breaking the mold

The suits want their empty chairs back. Not because anyone needs to sit in them. They want to count all the spots where workers used to be.

Elon Musk showed them how. He bought Twitter for too much money and fired everyone who wasn't nailed down. The business writers cranked out four solid books¹ about it, as if we needed that many stories about shrewd rich people acting like shrewd rich people. They called it a "takeover," but that suggests there was resistance. This was more like watching someone buy a McMansion just to tear it down and replace it with a big billboard for his products and services.

No matter what they say about Musk publicly, the CEOs loved it. They still do. Look at their faces when Musk comes up at their leadership retreats, their executive getaways, their strategic planning sessions. Their eyes get bright. They lean forward in their Eames chairs. Here was a man who did what they all dream about: he took a company full of not-so-essential people and turned it into a company full of almost nobody.