What Elon Musk Is Doing to Twitter Is What He Did at Tesla and SpaceX
继承特斯拉“休克疗法”，马斯克对推特“打鸡血”

Elon Musk was sleeping at the office. He dismissed employees and executives at will. And he lamented his company was on the verge of bankruptcy.

伊隆·马斯克睡在办公室里。他会随意解雇员工和高管。他还感叹自己的公司濒临破产。

That was back in 2018 and the company was Tesla, as Mr. Musk’s electric automaker struggled to build its mass-market vehicle, the Model 3.

那是在2018年，那家公司是特斯拉，当时马斯克的这家电动汽车制造商正在艰难地生产大众市场车型Model 3。

Model 3装配线上的特斯拉员工。特斯拉首席执行官埃隆·马斯克为提高这款汽车的产量，曾睡在一家工厂里。

“It was excruciating,” he told The New York Times at the time. “There were times when I didn’t leave the factory for three or four days — days when I didn’t go outside.”

“太折磨人了，”他当时告诉《纽约时报》。“有时候我三四天不离开工厂——那段时间根本不出门。”

The billionaire’s experience with what he called Tesla’s “production hell” has become a blueprint for the crisis he has created at Twitter, which he bought for $44 billion last month. Over the years, Mr. Musk has developed a playbook for managing his companies — including Tesla and the rocket manufacturer SpaceX — through periods of pain, employing shock treatment and alarmism and pushing his workers and himself to put aside their families and friends to spend all their energy on his mission.

这位亿万富翁在他所称的特斯拉“生产地狱”中的经历已经成为他在Twitter造成的危机的蓝图。上个月，他以440亿美元收购了Twitter。多年来，马斯克为管理他的公司——包括特斯拉和火箭制造商SpaceX——制定了一套度过痛苦时期的策略，采用休克疗法和危言耸听，敦促他的员工和他本人抛开家人朋友，把所有精力花在他的这项事业上。

At Twitter, Mr. Musk has used many of those same tactics to upend the social media company in just a few weeks.

在Twitter，马斯克用了很多同样的策略，在短短几周内把这家社交媒体公司搞得天翻地覆。

Since late last month, the 51-year-old has laid off 50 percent of Twitter’s 7,500 employees and accepted the resignations of 1,200 or more. On Monday, he began another round of layoffs, two people said. He tweeted that he was sleeping at Twitter’s offices in San Francisco. And he has applied mission-driven language, telling Twitter’s workers that the company could go bankrupt if he wasn’t able to turn it around. Those who want to work on “Twitter 2.0” must commit to his “hard core” vision in writing, he has said.

自上月末以来，这位51岁的老板已经解雇了Twitter的7500名员工中的50%，并接受了1200名或更多员工的辞职。两名知情人士说，周一，他开始了新一轮裁员。他在Twitter上说，他在旧金山的Twitter办公室睡觉。他还使用召唤使命感的语言，告诉Twitter员工，如果他不能扭转局面，公司可能会破产。他说，那些想要在“Twitter 2.0”工作的人必须以书面形式承诺效忠他的“硬核”愿景。

David Deak, who worked at Tesla from 2014 to 2016 as a senior engineering manager overseeing a supply chain for battery materials, said Mr. Musk “clearly thrives in existential circumstances.” He added, “He quasi creates them to light the fire under everybody.”

2014年至2016年在特斯拉负责管理电池材料供应链的高级工程经理戴维·迪克说，“显然生死攸关的情境会让他生龙活虎”。他还说，“他有点在主动地创造出这样的环境，让所有人都有紧迫感。”

The similarities between Mr. Musk’s approach to Twitter and what he did at Tesla and SpaceX are evident, added Tammy Madsen, a management professor at Santa Clara University. But it’s unclear if he will find the means to motivate employees at a social media company as he did with workers whose quests were to move people away from gas-powered cars or send humans into space.

圣克拉拉大学管理学教授塔米·马德森说，马斯克在Twitter的做法与他在特斯拉和SpaceX的做法明显相似。但目前尚不清楚，他能否找到激励这家社交媒体公司员工的方法，就像他激励那些希望让人们远离汽油动力汽车或将人类送入太空的员工一样。

“At Tesla and SpaceX, the approach has always been high risk, high reward,” Dr. Madsen said. “Twitter has been high risk, but the question is: What is the reward that comes out of it?”

“在特斯拉和SpaceX，这种做法一直是高风险、高回报的，”马德森说。“在Twitter，风险是高，问题是：回报是什么？”

Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

马斯克没有回应置评请求。

On Sunday, Mr. Musk held a meeting with Twitter’s sales employees, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Then on Monday, he laid off employees in the sales department, they said. Late last week, Mr. Musk fired Robin Wheeler, a top sales executive, they added. Bloomberg earlier reported that more layoffs might be coming.

据两名知情人士透露，周日，马斯克与Twitter的销售员工举行了一次会议。然后，在周一，他们说，他解雇了销售部门的员工。他们还说，上周晚些时候，马斯克解雇了销售高管罗宾·惠勒。彭博新闻社早些时候报道称，可能会有更多裁员。

Twitter is also reaching out to some engineers who quit to ask them to return, the people said. In a meeting with employees on Monday, Mr. Musk said the company was not planning any further layoffs, according to one person who attended.

知情人士说，Twitter也在联系一些辞职的工程师，请求他们重返岗位。周一，马斯克与员工会面，据一位与会者透露，马斯克表示公司没有进一步裁员的计划。

At companies led by Mr. Musk, the pattern of claiming that the firms are on the brink of a potential bankruptcy has come up often. At Tesla in December 2008, during the depths of the financial crisis, Mr. Musk closed a $50 million investment round from Daimler, he said, on the “last hour of last day possible or payroll would’ve bounced 2 days later.”

在马斯克领导的公司中，声称公司可能处于破产边缘的情况经常出现。2008年12月在特斯拉，金融危机最严重的时候，马斯克“在最后一天的最后一小时”完成了一轮来自戴姆勒的5000万美元投资，“否则两天后会发不出工资”。

He has said the same about SpaceX, once noting that both SpaceX and Tesla had a more than 90 percent chance that they “would be worth $0” in their early days.

关于SpaceX他也说过同样的话。他曾指出SpaceX和特斯拉在早期都有超过90%的机会变成“一文不值”。

For 2017, Mr. Musk said, SpaceX had to perform rocket launches once every two weeks or face bankruptcy, recalled one former SpaceX executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. At a company that was driven by a goal to make life “multiplanetary,” the threat of bankruptcy was a motivating factor, the former executive said.

一位因害怕报复而不愿透露姓名的SpaceX前高管回忆称，马斯克说过，SpaceX在2017年必须每两周进行一次火箭发射，否则将面临破产。这位前高管说，在这家以“多行星”生活为目标的公司，面临破产是一个激励因素。

SpaceX has since successfully sent many rockets into space and safely landed them again on Earth. But Mr. Musk has returned to his favorite stick, tweeting last year that if a “severe global recession” were to dry up capital, bankruptcy at the rocket maker was “not impossible.”

此后，SpaceX成功地将多枚火箭发射到太空，而后安全降落在地球上。但马斯克又回到了他最喜欢的那种大棒策略，他去年发推说，如果“严重的全球经济衰退”导致资本枯竭，这家火箭制造商破产“并非不可能”。

“Only the paranoid survive,” he wrote, quoting Andy Grove, the former chief executive of Intel.

“只有忧心忡忡才能活下来，”他引用英特尔前首席执行官安迪·格罗夫的话写道。

A crisis atmosphere and self-imposed austerity gives Mr. Musk the cover to make drastic changes and fire top managers or eliminate large swaths of staff, two former Tesla executives said. It also prepares those who remain to work under extreme conditions to bring about Mr. Musk’s desires, they said.

两位特斯拉前高管表示，危机气氛和自我强加的紧缩政策为马斯克提供了进行重大变革、解雇高层管理人员或解雇大量员工的借口。他们说，这也让那些留下来在极端条件下工作的人做好准备，以实现马斯克的愿望。

The approach at Twitter, where Mr. Musk has laid off thousands of employees, “is typical Elon,” Mr. Deak said.

迪克说，马斯克解雇了数千名Twitter员工的做法“是典型的伊隆”。

The chaos at the social media company is familiar to people who worked at Tesla when the company was struggling to ramp up manufacturing of the Model 3, which went on sale in 2017. In May of that year, Mr. Musk sent an email to the staff that echoed some of the language he has used with Twitter employees.

对于在特斯拉工作的人来说，这家社交媒体公司的混乱局面并不陌生。特斯拉的员工当初在奋力提高于2017年上市的Model 3的产量。当年5月，在马斯克给员工的邮件中，他的一些措辞和他如今对Twitter员工使用的相呼应。

“Tesla has to be hardcore and demanding,” he wrote. “The passing grade at Tesla is excellence, because it has to be.”

“特斯拉必须是硬核和苛刻的，”他写道。“特斯拉的及格线非常高，因为必须如此。”

In the year that followed, Mr. Musk famously slept on the floor in a Tesla factory’s conference rooms, fired the vice president of engineering and worked 120-hour weeks to cope with a lag in the production of Model 3s. Members of Tesla’s board worried about Mr. Musk’s workload and his use of Ambien to try to sleep.

众所周知，在接下来的一年里，马斯克睡在特斯拉工厂会议室的地板上，解雇了工程副总裁，并每周工作120小时，以应对Model3的生产滞后。特斯拉董事会成员对马斯克的工作量和他服用安必恩感到担心。

Foreshadowing the turmoil at Twitter, Mr. Musk spent part of 2018 on the social media service, antagonizing lawmakers and regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission. The S.E.C. later sued Mr. Musk for tweeting that he had the “funding secured” to take Tesla private, even though the billionaire never followed through and settled with the agency. This summer, he spent months and millions of dollars in legal fees to back out of his deal to buy Twitter.

2018年，马斯克把一部分时间花在了这个社交媒体服务上，得罪了许多议员和监管机构，包括美国证券交易委员会，为如今Twitter的动荡埋下伏笔。委员会后来起诉了马斯克，因为他在Twitter上透露“已经拿到了”将特斯拉私有化的资金，尽管这位亿万富翁从未推进私有化，并与该机构达成和解。今年夏天，他投入了大量时间和数以百万美元计的法务费用，以求退出收购Twitter的交易。

Testifying in Delaware last week in a lawsuit about his Tesla pay package, Mr. Musk acknowledged that his penchant for acting unilaterally can get him in trouble. “When I make decisions without consulting people,” he said, “the probability that those decisions will be wrong is higher.”

上周，马斯克在特拉华州为一起关于特斯拉薪酬方案的诉讼作证时承认，他对于单边行动的热衷可能会让自己陷入麻烦。“当我不征求他人意见就做出决定时，”他说，“这些决定出错的概率会更高。”

In Delaware, Mr. Musk also downplayed comparisons between what he was doing at Twitter with the Model 3 ramp-up, saying on his way into the courtroom that what was happening at the social media service was “easier.”

在特拉华州，马斯特也不愿将他在Twitter的所作所为与Model 3增产的情况相提并论，他在进入法庭前表示，这家社交媒体服务公司的问题要“简单得多”。

Some of Mr. Musk’s former employees question whether his management tactics will ultimately work at Twitter. Tesla and SpaceX were in earlier stages of growth when their boss whipped out his tough language and told everyone they had to go full tilt. But Twitter is a more mature company that has performed inconsistently for years.

马斯克的一些前员工质疑他的管理策略最终能否在Twitter奏效。当他们的老板突然甩出强硬措辞，告诉所有人必须全力生产的时候，特斯拉和SpaceX正处于增长的早期阶段。但Twitter是一家更成熟的公司，多年来的业绩并不稳定。

Mr. Musk’s management techniques are “good start-up and growth strategy, but it is not good for building a stable company,” Mr. Deak said.

迪克表示，马斯克的管理方式属于“优秀的创业和成长策略，但并不利于建设稳定的企业”。

Mr. Musk’s all-in commitment to a company is often inspirational, but can also turn toxic and engender a culture of fear and scapegoating, three former Tesla and SpaceX managers said.

三位特斯拉和SpaceX的前经理表示，马斯克对一家公司的全身心投入通常能够鼓舞人心，但也有可能变得有毒，导致恐惧和替罪羊文化出现。

And for Mr. Musk, remaking Twitter is only a part-time job. He remains chief executive of Tesla, which he said in court he continued to lead, and SpaceX, where, he said, he focuses on designing rockets rather than management.

对马斯克而言，重塑Twitter只是他的一份兼职。他仍是特斯拉和SpaceX的首席执行官，他也在法庭上说会继续领导特斯拉，至于SpaceX，他说自己专注的是火箭设计而非管理工作。

Mr. Musk also leads the Boring Company, a tunneling start-up, and Neuralink, a brain-computer interface technology firm. He has said his long-term goal is to save humanity by developing technology for space travel, or, in his words, by “making life multiplanetary in order to ensure the long-term survival of consciousness.”

马斯克还负责管理隧道建设初创公司“无聊公司”，以及脑机接口科技公司Neuralink。他曾说过，自己的长远目标是通过研发太空旅行技术来拯救人类，或者用他的话说，通过“实现生命的多行星栖息，以确保人类意识的长久存续”。

The multitasking has become an issue in a lawsuit filed by Tesla shareholders who objected to the pay package that made Mr. Musk the world’s richest person. Last week in Delaware, under questioning by a lawyer representing shareholders who have accused Mr. Musk of neglecting his duties at Tesla, the billionaire said his intense involvement in Twitter was temporary.

这种多事业并行已是特斯拉股东们提起的诉讼中的一大问题，他们反对让马斯克成为世界首富的薪酬方案。特斯拉股东指控马斯克疏于管理该公司，上周在特拉华州，面对这些股东所委托的律师提出的质疑，这名亿万富翁宣称自己对Twitter的密集投入只是暂时的。

“There was an initial burst of activity to reorganize the company,” he said last Wednesday, adding, “I expect to reduce my time at Twitter.”

“企业改组之初会出现工作量的爆发，”他在上周三表示，并补充说，“预计我将减少投入在Twitter的时间。”

来源：好英语网