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app today.

0:16

For

0:19

most of the year, Sun Valley is

0:21

a quiet mountain town in Idaho with

0:23

a population of about 1,800 people. A

0:27

picturesque slice of earth nestled

0:29

in the Sawtooth National Forest. But

0:32

every summer for one week in early July,

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the moguls aren't just on the ski slopes.

0:38

Sun Valley is an annual

0:40

conference run by a boutique

0:42

investment bank called Allen & Co.

0:45

Reporter Ed Ludlow has covered the event

0:47

before for Bloomberg.

0:49

The way I describe it is like, it's

0:51

kind of like Davos, but

0:53

more secret. Once

0:56

a year, whether the locals want it

0:58

or not, the leaders of industry

1:00

arrive by private jet to live out

1:02

their fantasies of being Ernest Hemingway

1:05

and leave with a new fishing story and

1:08

the occasional multi-billion dollar deal.

1:11

It's like billionaires' mountain

1:13

retreat. And it's a who's

1:16

who of company executives,

1:19

wealthy elites, the world's richest

1:21

people, influential bankers,

1:23

interesting people, startup founders.

1:27

With the exception of Mark Zuckerberg's Friday night

1:29

karaoke party, a Sun Valley

1:31

favorite turned COVID casualty,

1:33

the event in 2022 was very

1:35

much back to pre-pandemic form.

1:38

There are just a constant stream

1:41

of Allen & Co. hired

1:43

escorts who just ferry the world's most

1:46

influential and richest between

1:48

the main lodge where they have breakfasts

1:51

and lunches and meet in the hallways

1:54

and other sporting activities like people go

1:56

and play golf.

1:59

On the guest list this year were three

2:02

of Twitter's most senior people. Twitter

2:04

board chair Brett Taylor, CEO

2:07

Parag Agrawal, and CFO

2:10

Ned Siegel. Parag

2:13

arrived the day before the conference began. By

2:16

private jet, of course.

2:17

Like everyone else at Sun Valley, Parag

2:20

checked in and got his name tag. Even

2:22

Rupert Murdoch wears a name tag.

2:24

As Parag settled

2:26

in, everyone was already buzzing about the headliner.

2:30

In July of 2022, at Sun

2:32

Valley, Elon Musk is the main event.

2:35

Elon Musk, now just a few

2:37

months away from becoming Twitter's new owner, was

2:40

set to deliver the Martí address.

2:44

But as the conference got underway,

2:46

Elon wasn't there. He

2:49

missed the first day of the conference, and

2:52

the second. His absence

2:54

meant that all the questions about the recently

2:56

announced Twitter deal were thrown

2:58

at the Twitter execs. We saw

3:01

Parag Agrawal walking around, Ned

3:04

Siegel walking around as well. And

3:06

we called out to both of them to ask about what was going

3:08

on with Twitter and if there was a risk that

3:11

the deal would fall through.

3:13

And, you know, neither of them, walking alone,

3:15

answered any questions.

3:20

On Thursday evening, the Elon finally

3:22

landed. Security ushered him in through

3:25

a back door. It was as low profile an

3:27

entrance as he could make. But

3:31

it didn't take long for him to make a huge ruckus.

3:36

On Friday, as Sun Valley's VIPs were likely debating

3:38

what to do about a looming recession, phone alerts

3:40

started buzzing all around the resort.

3:44

There was a new SEC filing regarding the Twitter sale.

3:47

The

3:48

regulatory filing states that

3:50

Elon Musk is terminating his agreement

3:53

by Twitter. He literally,

3:55

while he's at Sun Valley, somebody on his

3:57

behalf, one assumes, has filed a new campaign. filed

4:00

a regulatory filing stating that

4:02

he wants to end the agreement by

4:04

Twitter. Elon wanted

4:07

out of the deal.

4:08

And in it, he alleges that the

4:10

company has misrepresented

4:13

user data. And he

4:15

also says that Twitter has breached

4:18

its contractual obligations

4:21

to provide more information to

4:24

him. These

4:26

were suddenly very tense in Sun

4:28

Valley. Conference watchers

4:30

were on high alert for any potential awkward

4:33

run-in between Elon and Parag

4:35

or Brett.

4:39

When Elon took the stage the next day,

4:42

the room was packed. He's interviewed

4:44

by Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI.

4:47

And he gets questions from

4:49

Sam and from the audience about Twitter.

4:52

And he declines to talk about the status of

4:54

the deal. But Elon

4:56

was quite willing to drag Twitter.

4:59

The pervasiveness of bots, the treatment

5:01

of former President Donald Trump, he

5:04

talks about how Twitter's user

5:06

data is shared. At one

5:08

point, he asked the audience if they believed

5:11

Twitter's claim that 95% of users were

5:14

authentic. Heads

5:16

immediately turned to see how the Twitter execs

5:18

in the audience might respond.

5:21

The scene may have been humiliating, Elon

5:24

publicly dragging them.

5:26

But Brett Taylor, Parag Agrawal,

5:28

and Ned Siegel sat there, in the

5:30

audience, completely poker faced.

5:33

They had a plan. In

5:36

fact, it appears they didn't speak to Elon

5:38

at all. They were done

5:40

with PR spats and public games.

5:44

They had an airtight purchase agreement with

5:46

Elon. Something he was saying

5:48

on stage changed that basic fact.

5:51

It was time to hold Elon Musk accountable

5:54

for the deal he had signed. And

5:56

once all the CEOs and billionaires

5:59

had left their summer

5:59

camp in Sun Valley, the

6:02

Twitter board got to work by

6:05

suing Elon Musk.

6:13

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From Wondery,

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I'm David Brown, the host of Business Wars. This

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is Flipping the Bird, Elon versus

7:53

Twitter. This is Episode 3,

7:56

Chief Twit. What

8:00

should be a small success? But

8:02

I'd like rats at least I've tried my very best, I

8:04

guess. Put me on a pedestal and I'll

8:07

only disappoint you. Don't be

8:09

on any steps until

8:11

I promise to exploit you.

8:24

A week after Twitter

8:26

sued Elon for breach of contract, their

8:28

lawyers met in court for the first time.

8:31

Well, they met in court virtually.

8:34

It was, I'm sure, like the

8:37

most hotly listened to

8:39

pre-trial hearing the Delaware and Chancery

8:42

Court has ever had.

8:43

New York Times reporter Lauren Hirsch

8:46

was among the throng of reporters in Wall

8:48

Street types who called in to listen to the

8:50

hearing. There were so many of them that

8:52

they jammed the court phone system.

8:55

These kinds of hearings rarely draw this much

8:57

attention. But Elon versus

8:59

Twitter promised high drama. There

9:02

has been so much noise and

9:04

so many tweets, but at the end of the day,

9:06

this is a trial that will largely simply

9:08

rest on legal arguments.

9:11

So you had both sides get up there

9:13

and make their initial case.

9:15

This hearing would determine the start date

9:17

of the trial and the date itself

9:20

had major implications for both sides.

9:23

Elon wanted to buy time.

9:25

His legal team insisted it needed at least

9:28

six months to prepare its case. They

9:30

pushed for a February 2023 court date.

9:33

So it seemed his strategy was to delay

9:35

trial as much as he can and

9:38

make kind of documents search as sweeping

9:40

as he wanted. And as you delay trial

9:43

for long enough, then you

9:45

might actually eventually give Musk

9:48

the right to walk away if the company

9:50

deteriorates so much that he can

9:53

say, well, this isn't the company I agreed to buy.

9:55

Now I can walk away. So Twitter's main

9:58

objective from day one.

10:00

was to get to trial as quick as

10:02

they could and keep it focused on

10:04

the legal arguments that they really thought

10:07

were on its side.

10:09

Twitter's lawyers accused Elon of trying

10:11

to sabotage the deal, arguing

10:13

that every time he stoked uncertainty, he

10:16

hurt the value of the company.

10:18

Twitter's stock had been on a bumpy ride

10:20

since Elon made his offer, with

10:22

each derogatory tweet and threat to

10:24

the deal sending the stock on yet

10:27

another dip. They entered

10:29

into evidence one exchange that had made headlines.

10:32

In mid-May, CEO Parag Agrawal

10:35

tweeted a long thread that explained how Twitter

10:37

analyzes the number of spam accounts, claiming

10:40

it was less than 5% of all accounts, and

10:43

that Elon couldn't possibly determine

10:45

the number of spam accounts on Twitter without

10:47

having access to internal company data,

10:50

which he didn't. Parag's

10:53

thread was detailed and technical, showing

10:56

his computer engineering roots. Elon

10:59

responded with a poop

11:02

emoji.

11:05

Now, Twitter was demanding Elon close

11:07

the deal on the originally agreed upon date,

11:10

for the originally agreed upon price. The

11:13

judge agreed with Twitter that every passing

11:16

day risked harming the company. She

11:19

set the trial start date for October

11:21

17th.

11:37

Over the next two months, Elon

11:39

kept trying to stall. He filed

11:42

motion after motion demanding more

11:44

and more data from Twitter, subpoenaing

11:46

his good buddy Jack Dorsey, and

11:48

even trying to use information from a questionable

11:51

Twitter whistleblower to derail the

11:53

deal. He asked for another

11:55

delay of trial, but the judge

11:57

said no.

11:59

It was early.

11:59

September and the approaching

12:02

October trial must have started to feel like

12:04

looking down the barrel of a gun. Especially

12:07

when Musk's lawyers were forced to reveal

12:10

one particularly interesting bit of

12:12

discovery. Exhibit

12:14

H.

12:17

That filing with all

12:19

of the text was like the juiciest,

12:22

most fun legal filing I think

12:25

I have ever read. It was 33

12:27

pages of text messages about the Twitter deal

12:30

between Elon and his rich

12:32

and powerful friends and associates. Remember

12:35

billionaire Larry Ellison casually offering

12:37

up a billion dollars and angel investor

12:39

Jason Calacanis offering up his proverbial

12:42

sword? It was all there and

12:45

then some.

12:45

It's this insight into

12:48

how deals are done, how people

12:51

talk to each other in the valley, how

12:53

so much of what deal making that you

12:56

think is about money and

12:58

financials. Well it is about money

13:00

but it's also about ego and relationships.

13:04

The dynamic was less sound investment

13:06

principles and due diligence and

13:08

more like a teen movie.

13:11

Yes it was total high school vibes like the big

13:13

man on campus was throwing a cool

13:15

party on Friday night and everyone

13:18

was trying to figure out how to get the

13:20

invite. Like some people are offering him fear.

13:23

Some people are trying to like show off that

13:25

they have the cool date.

13:28

The press had a field day with these text

13:30

messages and Tesla's stock

13:33

which was the main source of Elon's wealth

13:35

plummeted 5% that day.

13:38

It fell the next day too. Public

13:42

humiliation for Elon was one thing.

13:45

A tanking Tesla stock and deteriorating

13:47

legal situation was a different

13:49

story altogether.

13:51

Three days after Elon's private

13:53

text messages were made public the

13:55

judge demanded Elon turn over even more

13:58

documents. Maybe

14:00

the public perception that Elon would lose this

14:02

trial finally got to him. The

14:05

next day, Elon changed course

14:07

again. According to Bloomberg sources,

14:09

his U-turn now, he wants to propose

14:12

to buy Twitter at that original offer price

14:14

and has informed Twitter of his intention

14:16

to do so. He

14:18

would do what the board was asking. Buy

14:21

Twitter at the original offer price of $54.20 per share.

14:25

The judge allowed him a few extra days to close

14:28

the deal, giving Elon until

14:30

October 28th. It

14:34

had been one of the strangest on-again,

14:37

off-again, on-again courtships in modern

14:39

business history. For

14:42

so long, the question had been whether or not

14:44

Elon would actually buy Twitter. Now

14:47

came the question, once it was his,

14:50

what would he do with it?

14:53

Elon had always been an erratic CEO

14:55

at his other companies, but employees,

14:57

the media, and investors

15:00

had often overlooked his unusual

15:02

or even abusive behavior, largely because

15:04

of the incredible size of his vision. Tesla,

15:09

the clear market incumbent in the world of electric

15:11

vehicles, that continues

15:14

to grow and set records for production

15:17

and is working on advancing autonomous driving.

15:21

And many would say and

15:24

argue that it's a clear leader

15:26

and the rest of the industry is struggling to catch up.

15:32

SpaceX dominates commercial

15:34

launch of payload to orbit. It's

15:37

like two-thirds of everything that goes into

15:39

space. And that's pretty

15:42

incredible to say when you take into account

15:44

all of the public and private sector, not

15:46

just here in the US, but in Europe, China.

15:58

Elon

16:00

run Twitter, one that could inspire

16:02

his employees, users, and investors?

16:06

Elon had already made plenty of bold

16:08

statements about what he'd do with Twitter once

16:10

it was his. Overhaul content

16:12

moderation, make Twitter's code open

16:15

source for anyone to see, verify

16:17

every user, and

16:18

get rid of bots.

16:21

But those goals, and the way

16:23

he'd behaved throughout the deal, had

16:25

eroded most of the trust he might have had

16:27

with Twitter employees.

16:30

They weren't waiting for a visionary to come

16:32

and save them. They were bracing

16:34

for an invader.

16:36

Because what was most worrying of all to Twitter's

16:39

employees was Elon's plan

16:41

for layoffs. While Twitter

16:43

was likely to face layoffs even without

16:46

Elon,

16:47

he had told his investors he might lay off

16:49

as much as 75% of the 7,500 person workforce

16:53

as a way to get the long-suffering finances

16:56

of the company closer to profitability.

16:59

But could Twitter even function with those

17:01

kinds of cuts? On

17:08

October 26th, employees

17:10

at Twitter's HQ in San Francisco

17:13

were surprised when their new boss arrived

17:15

largely unannounced for the first time, carrying

17:19

a large white porcelain sink.

17:22

When he walked in with that sink, that was

17:24

the signal

17:26

that there was no going back. We

17:29

were in for it, whether we liked it or not. Elon

17:33

was all smiles and let out a few chuckles

17:36

as he lumbered across the lobby, sink

17:38

in hand.

17:38

The entire performance

17:40

was caught on video, which Elon

17:42

was quick to post. Entering

17:45

Twitter HQ, let that

17:47

sink in. He also updated

17:49

his Twitter bio to ChiefTwit.

18:00

The deal was not officially done,

18:03

but it was clearly the beginning of the Elon

18:05

Musk era.

18:06

Musk visited the SF office. A

18:09

lot of people didn't either know he was going to be there

18:11

or weren't expecting him to be there.

18:13

Software engineer and manager Sasha

18:15

Solomon was working remotely from Portland,

18:17

Oregon that day. But several members

18:19

of her team were at HQ, and

18:22

they were curious. And so they

18:24

were like,

18:24

we're going to try to find Elon Musk and

18:26

talk to him. I was like, put in a good word for GraphQL.

18:29

GraphQL, that was what Sasha's

18:32

team worked on. It was a computing

18:34

language the company used to send data

18:36

between different parts of the site. They

18:38

had no idea if Elon knew what it was,

18:41

let alone if he would value it.

18:44

Elon was there to learn, finally,

18:47

how Twitter actually worked. He

18:49

went from meeting to meeting with engineers and

18:51

project leads to take a peek under the hood

18:54

of the thing he was about to pay $44 billion for. But

18:58

he wasn't alone. He also brought

19:00

along his two-year-old son, X, and

19:03

his biographer, Walter Isaacson. Tweeps

19:07

who'd spent the better part of the last six months riding

19:09

the roller coaster of will he or won't he and

19:12

what the hell will it mean for us if he does, were

19:14

a bit awestruck to see him in person, wandering

19:17

around their halls, grabbing a

19:19

coffee at Twitter's own coffee shop

19:21

called The Perch, a hyper-modern

19:24

cafe with black ceilings, surrealist

19:26

murals, and inspirational quotes

19:28

splashed on the walls. He

19:30

was getting a coffee and they walked

19:32

right up to him. That's where Sasha's team

19:35

found Elon. They got pictures with

19:37

him, they shook his hand, they told him about what we

19:39

worked on, and then they slacked

19:41

us later and were like, we talked to Elon Musk, we

19:43

shook his hand. They said that they talked

19:45

to him about GraphQL and they're like, I think he thought it was

19:48

cool. I was like, great, okay, maybe

19:50

our team won't be cut.

19:52

More and more employees met Elon

19:54

and shared their impressions of him. Some

19:57

said he wasn't a jerk, some said

19:59

he...

19:59

almost seemed cool. I thought

20:02

things were kind of going well. And I was

20:04

like, oh my God, maybe this will work. Like maybe he

20:06

can run the company, things are going to be okay. And

20:09

like the next day, everything

20:10

just went to hell.

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22:30

The day Elon's purchase of Twitter officially

22:33

closed was the day of Twitter's annual

22:35

Halloween party at HQ, aptly

22:38

called Trick or Tweet. Employees

22:41

were encouraged to bring their kids and make it

22:43

a family affair. The kids came

22:45

in pretty common kid costumes. You had them dressed

22:47

up as different cartoon characters. You had

22:50

some kids dressed as witches or ghosts or

22:52

skeletons. Software engineer

22:54

Jim Redman saw the festivities when he

22:56

stepped away from his desk for a snack. The

22:59

two-story cafeteria had been decked out

23:01

with carved pumpkins and fake spider

23:03

webs. Kids were digging into

23:05

bowls of candy. There were people dressed

23:08

as pilots, flight attendants, zombies,

23:11

vampires or things. So everything was

23:13

very festive, very Halloween-y. But

23:16

the fleet of Teslas parked outside

23:18

was the flashing neon message that

23:21

something else was going on.

23:23

People realized the deal was going

23:25

to close and it was probably going to close in the next 24

23:28

hours. And that would mean a

23:30

ton of people were going to lose their jobs.

23:33

Zoe Schiffer is a reporter for the fledgling

23:35

tech blog site called Platformer, which

23:38

became a leading source of breaking news in

23:40

the Elon Twitter saga.

23:42

Sources inside Twitter

23:44

were sending Zoe photos of the Halloween

23:46

party. There's a performer

23:49

who's dressed like a scarecrow and at first

23:51

employees are saying, I think that's Elon

23:53

Musk. And then, you know, quickly realize that no,

23:55

it's just like a scarecrow performer.

23:58

The mood in the building was palpably

24:00

different than the day before. There

24:03

was a growing paranoia in the air that

24:05

had nothing to do with Halloween.

24:07

It has this kind of last

24:09

day of camp vibe where everyone's

24:12

like, we're not sure if we're gonna see each

24:14

other again or like what this company is going

24:16

to even be like.

24:19

Jim had just grabbed a snack and walked past

24:22

the Halloween scene to rejoin his team

24:24

in what they referred to as the cave, the

24:26

dark room with no windows. This

24:29

was where they focused on maintaining the integrity

24:31

of the site.

24:33

Then he noticed something on Slack.

24:37

We started to hear rumors that the

24:39

deal had closed. At this point, our sources

24:41

were other employees. We didn't have any

24:43

external confirmation, but the

24:46

sources were plausible and we were

24:48

getting it from lots of different places. So it seemed

24:50

pretty reasonable to assume that this had happened. Soon,

24:54

one of Zoe's sources messaged her. The

24:57

rumors were true. So

25:00

she'd been at the party with her kids trying

25:02

to put on a brave face and eventually she gives up

25:04

and she's like, you know what, I'm going

25:06

home. This is nuts. And on her way

25:08

out the door, she passes the head of product

25:11

and he's looking super somber, just

25:13

like not. Good news has

25:15

not come his way in a minute. And as

25:17

she passes him, he just kind of shakes his

25:20

head and says, it's done, the deal's done. And

25:23

she knows that Elon Musk now owns the company.

25:26

Twitter was Elon's and

25:28

he was wasting no time getting to work

25:30

on his agenda. Employees

25:32

heard that CEO Parag Agrawal

25:34

was out, head of legal policy,

25:36

Vijay Gaddi, out.

25:38

Chief finance officer, Ned Segal,

25:41

out. General counsel, Sean

25:43

Edgid, was escorted out of the building

25:45

by security guards moments after he

25:47

finished the paperwork on the deal. The

25:50

key players of the C-suite

25:53

were all gone and they weren't just

25:55

let go. Parag, Vijay

25:57

and Ned were fired for car...

25:59

laws, meaning the millions of

26:02

dollars they were owed as golden parachutes

26:04

that had been baked into the deal, Elon

26:07

was trying to avoid paying them. Basically

26:10

a huge middle finger to the people who

26:12

had just sued him.

26:14

A few employees from the party huddled

26:17

in the bathrooms sobbing. Anxiety

26:20

hit epic levels, and a

26:22

sort of mourning started to settle

26:24

in for the Twitter they'd all known and loved.

26:30

Sitting at home in South Carolina, Nya,

26:33

a sales rep at Twitter,

26:34

couldn't take her eyes off her phone and

26:36

computer, waiting for some kind

26:38

of official word. And I just remember

26:40

just waiting. And I remember thinking, okay, well,

26:43

they're working on West Coast time. Surely

26:46

I'm going to hear something tonight. We're going to

26:48

get an intro email. We're going to get a,

26:50

Hey guys, I'm Elon. Like, we're

26:52

going to get something.

26:55

But by the end of the business day in San Francisco,

26:58

she still hadn't heard anything nor

27:00

had thousands of employees spread around the

27:02

country. Elon instead

27:06

chose to make the news of the deal official

27:09

with a tweet. The bird

27:11

is freed. The

27:13

tweet was open to interpretation. Surely

27:17

Elon now felt free to do what he wanted

27:19

with Twitter,

27:20

but inside the cage, Twitter's employees

27:23

felt trapped and anxious, waiting

27:25

to learn of their own personal fates. Elon

27:29

had wasted no time laying waste

27:31

to the C-suite. Were

27:32

the rank and file employees next?

27:39

Bloomberg reporter Ed Ludlow was camped outside

27:41

of Twitter HQ with his TV crew the

27:43

next day.

27:45

We're outside Twitter HQ, which is on

27:47

the corner of market and 10th. There

27:49

may be like two or three live television

27:52

crews. There was always some photographers hanging

27:54

about a very committed press pack.

27:57

There's two entrances, right? There's kind of a front entrance.

28:00

to the building and a side entrance. And

28:02

so you'd have people like split their time between the

28:04

two and try and get some

28:06

sense of what was going on.

28:08

It's kind of a lull. We've

28:10

been there for hours. And so

28:13

we're walking around

28:15

the outside of the building. The kind of the entire

28:17

press pack is gathered on

28:20

the 10th street side of the building. Ed

28:23

stood around in a trim navy blue suit.

28:26

His head hung down as he texted on his phone.

28:29

The other reporters, none of whom were wearing

28:31

anything close to a suit, kept a

28:33

gaze down an alleyway, which led to Twitter.

28:36

And these two men, these two

28:38

guys, come out carrying boxes,

28:41

like literally cardboard boxes. There's

28:44

kind of like a mini media scrum where

28:46

all of the journalists there surround

28:49

them and start asking questions. Ed

28:51

asked the first question. Later off. I

28:53

wish to hear what you went. I was on engineering. Do

28:55

you know how many?

28:56

I don't know. I know. Nobody

28:59

knows any. How did they tell you? My director

29:01

was in a, I'm really

29:04

sorry, by the way. I realized. A CNBC

29:06

reporter on the ground tweeted out that they

29:08

are visibly shaken. It seemed

29:11

like the forced exodus of Twitter had begun.

29:14

I've been on Tesla, man. Right.

29:17

Yeah, me too. We'll get your entire team. Some

29:20

people are in the Zoom meeting.

29:23

And then in the Zoom meeting,

29:25

you can see the other people

29:28

that are in there.

29:29

As Ed and the reporters continue to ask

29:31

questions and tweet out the breaking news

29:33

about layoffs at Twitter,

29:35

engineer Jim Redmond was at home working

29:38

remotely. He saw the news coverage

29:41

and immediately grew suspicious. Number

29:44

one is that they had boxes. At that point, we

29:46

did not have assigned desks in

29:48

the office. So everything

29:51

that you had brought with you, you would need to take with you

29:53

at the end of the day. The guys

29:55

told reporters their names were Rahul

29:57

Ligma and Dan Johnson.

29:59

Jim pulled up Birdhouse,

30:02

Twitter's internal directory. There's no one

30:04

by that name here. It

30:06

was just a prank.

30:09

The two men had seen the media waiting outside

30:11

of Twitter's HQ that morning and

30:13

decided to trick them. Elon

30:16

thought it was hilarious and tweeted, One

30:19

of the best trolls ever. The

30:22

stunt went viral, but the over 7,000

30:25

employees had no idea if

30:27

and when the actual layoffs would become

30:29

real,

30:30

there was still no official communication from

30:33

Elon or the company. We

30:35

just had to kind of speculate and go on rumor.

30:38

In Portland, Oregon, Sasha

30:40

was trying to figure out what was happening at HQ.

30:44

She searched the birdhouse too, hoping to keep

30:46

track of the changes to the org chart. What

30:49

Sasha found made her furious.

30:52

Elon was bringing his favorite Tesla

30:55

engineers to Twitter.

30:57

So these were like all the Tesla employees

30:59

that had kind of been moved over temporarily to like

31:01

assess our code and our engineering

31:04

skills.

31:05

That glimmer of goodwill Sasha had started

31:07

to feel toward Elon days earlier evaporated

31:11

immediately.

31:12

So it was this kind of like adversarial

31:14

vibe. It was pretty clear that

31:16

that meant that like Elon basically

31:18

didn't trust us to do our jobs

31:21

and didn't trust that we were like good engineers.

31:25

It wasn't just engineers Elon brought

31:27

with him. He called

31:29

in his own personal lawyer, Alex Spiro,

31:32

and the exact friends that ran his other companies

31:34

to serve as his new de facto posse

31:37

in C-suite. Guys like angel

31:39

investor Jason Calacanis, former

31:41

Twitter director turned tech investor Sri

31:43

Ram Krishnan, and former PayPal

31:46

COO David Sacks. They

31:48

set up a war room on an unused floor

31:51

of Twitter HQ and posted

31:53

a security detail outside of Elon's

31:55

office. The

31:57

tweeps quickly settled on a name for

31:59

all these.

33:11

by

34:00

which to judge layoffs in particular.

34:04

There was, of course, another problem

34:06

with their plan. Most of the company

34:08

was paperless. This was a modern

34:11

tech company that prided itself on sustainability.

34:14

We're talking about a company that grew their own herbs

34:16

for the food served in the corporate cafeteria.

34:20

Engineers hunted to find the few available

34:22

printers in the building. They panicked

34:24

at the prospect of meeting their new boss without

34:27

their code in print.

34:29

And then,

34:30

boom, a new message

34:32

popped up on Slack. Stop

34:35

printing your code. Engineers

34:37

were told to be prepared instead to show

34:40

Elon their code on their computer.

34:43

And for those lucky few who found a

34:45

working printer, they were instructed

34:47

to shred their code. The

34:50

back and forth left a bad taste. In

34:53

my more paranoid moments, I suspect it was an attempt

34:55

at a power play. Make people dance

34:57

to your music. Jim wasn't

34:59

the only

35:00

one growing more and more paranoid. We

35:03

were worried that there were goons in the Slack channels

35:05

kind of trying to, I don't know, tell Elon

35:08

Musk something. It just didn't seem like a safe

35:10

place to talk about things anymore. Sasha

35:13

set up a secret Slack channel away from

35:15

the eyes of the goons so

35:17

she could talk to her team openly.

35:20

It was just kind of

35:21

mostly just us trying to figure out what's

35:23

going on. Like, oh, I heard

35:25

this from someone or I saw this tweet.

35:28

Maybe that's what's going on. Or like, Elon

35:30

tweeted this. And so it was kind of like piecing

35:32

together, like what's going on.

35:35

But what Sasha understood about Slack

35:38

was that as a matter of process at Jack Dorsey's

35:41

Twitter, all Slack channels were set

35:43

to public.

35:44

So if you wanted privacy, you needed to

35:46

set them to private.

35:48

Elon's advisors, well, they

35:51

did not know that. And so they created

35:53

a new channel, expecting it to be private.

35:56

It wasn't private and everyone could see, yes,

35:58

they are discussing layoffs.

36:00

It should have been very obvious that this was a public

36:02

channel, that you're discussing this thing. It

36:05

did not reflect well on the people who made the channel.

36:08

What was rumor and dread for Tweeps

36:11

now was more certain. I

36:14

spent most of that week unable to sleep,

36:17

with a very, very low appetite, just

36:19

kind of jittery, just waiting for

36:21

things to happen and knowing that there

36:23

was nothing I could do about, you know, nothing

36:26

I could do to make it happen faster or

36:28

slower or not at all, nothing

36:31

I could do to change the outcome.

36:34

Mass layoffs were coming, and

36:37

soon. And with it, the

36:40

fear that a shock to the system like

36:42

that might cause

36:44

the entire site to

36:46

break. We had several places

36:48

where if people weren't being mindful

36:51

of things and weren't keeping an eye on the automation,

36:54

that things would potentially fall apart in

36:56

a very dramatic fashion. There's

36:58

just a bunch of little things that I think over

37:00

time will just kind of like death by a thousand cuts. You

37:03

had entire critical engineering

37:05

teams that had one

37:08

to two people. Some of them had no people

37:10

on them overnight.

37:11

That's on

37:13

the next episode of Flipping the

37:15

Bird.

37:20

Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to episodes of Flipping

37:23

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at wondery.com slash survey.

37:40

From Wondery, this is episode three of

37:42

six of Flipping the Bird, Elon

37:45

versus Twitter. I'm your host, David

37:48

Brown. Austin Rackless wrote this story.

37:50

Our producers are Nika Singh and Dave

37:52

Schelling. Julia Lowry Henderson

37:55

and Karen Lowe are our senior producers. Reporting

37:57

by Emily Corwin. Production...

38:00

assistance by Emily Locke and Mariah Dennis.

38:03

Fact-checking by Noelle Anjani. Consultant

38:06

is Kurt Wagner, Bloomberg journalist and author

38:08

of an upcoming book about Twitter and Elon

38:10

Musk. Sound-designed by Kyle

38:13

Randall. Music supervisor is

38:15

Scott Velasquez for Freesan Sink.

38:18

Senior managing producer is Latha Pandya.

38:21

Managing producer is Olivia Weber. Coordinating

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producer is Heather Baloga. Executive

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producers are Jenny Lower Beckman, George

38:29

Lavender, Marshall

38:29

Louie and Jen Sargent

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