Panicked workers stared down an ominous email with the subject line “A Fork in the Road” promising their dismissal if they did not reply. Those who enjoyed remote-work privileges in the wake of COVID-19 were suddenly, emphatically mandated to return to the office.
No, this is not a vignette from February 2025. It played out years ago. November 2022, to be precise.
Elon Musk had just taken over Twitter. He had yet to bestow the name “X” upon the social media platform, but it was not long after his self-installation as CEO that he set about a complete overhaul of the company’s workforce.
It began with a shot across the bow: Musk fired approximately half of Twitter’s employees and, days later, fired off an email ending the company’s work-from-home policy with limited exceptions requiring his personal approval.
All employees who wished to remain at Twitter, per the terms of the “A Fork in the Road” missive that followed, had to subscribe to an “extremely hardcore” mentality of “working long hours at high intensity.”
As much of a whirlwind as these changes may have been, they did establish a template of sorts for understanding Musk’s management style. His focus on lean efficiency became the guiding principle for a company that, by his own admission, he overpaid for.
The Twitter saga also demonstrated just why none of us in the HR space should be too surprised by what Musk has gone on to do as an advisor to the second Trump administration and de facto head of its Department of Government Efficiency.
We’ve seen this movie before
Despite Musk’s cachet among his fandom, his reputation in HR’s mainstream has little to do with his social media posts or unhinged vehicle design concepts.
It has instead been characterized, at least in part, by lawsuits against his companies. Tesla alone has faced a mountain of allegations regarding unsafe working conditions and racial discrimination within the past decade, much of them involving its Fremont, California, manufacturing facility. Almost exactly a year ago, Tesla settled a discrimination case that resulted in two separate jury trial verdicts in favor of suing employees.
His other firms have not fared much better in this regard. Neuralink and SpaceX have been the subject of allegations with respect to unsafe workplace conditions and unfair labor practice charges. X, of course, has spent years dealing with the legal fallout of Musk’s staffing cuts; four former employees succeeded in asserting their claims via arbitration that they were illegally denied severance pay, Bloomberg reported Feb. 26.
Even aside from these legal controversies, Musk’s approach to HR can charitably be described as unorthodox. As recently as 2020, Tesla maintained an “Anti-Handbook” employee handbook in which it said it eschewed traditional policies and rules seen at other firms. “Policies and rules tell you where the bottom line is — they tell you how poorly you can perform before you get shown the door,” a leaked version read. “That’s not us.”
Coupled with Musk’s uncompromising takeover at Twitter, it’s little wonder that he would copy and paste this approach when given the reins to reshape the nation’s largest — and arguably most powerful — employer. If there is any doubt that Musk’s X playbook is being repeated at the federal government, one need look no further for proof than the title of the Office of Personnel Management’s deferred resignation email: “Fork in the Road.”
According to Andres Lares, managing partner at the global training and consulting firm Shapiro Negotiations Institute, Musk’s approach is one of accountability above all else. This approach leans far more on the motivational “stick” than the “carrot,” and the idea of a gradual rollout of new policies is dismissed in favor of abrupt change.
“From what we’ve seen, it’s been a consistent playbook,” Lares said. “There’s a culture of accountability that goes to the extreme.”
Musk’s great challenge is applying his philosophy to the complex organism that is the U.S. bureaucracy. There have already been missteps. Nuclear safety workers and employees of the National Science Foundation are among those dismissed employees who have since been rehired, and a federal judge held Feb. 27 that the OPM’s firing of probationary employees exceeded its authority.
“With the federal government, it’s like moving the Titanic,” Lares said. “It’s not as nimble as businesses are, and it’s not used to the same [key performance indicators] and level of accountability.”
Feds’ chaos may be HR’s opportunity
I don’t mean to suggest the changes Musk, DOGE and the rest of the Trump administration have made should be reduced to a conversation about management approaches. HR Dive’s coverage of the legal fallout from the layoffs and deferred resignation offers, for instance, is a testament to the constitutional questions involved, and courts are currently digesting the legal arguments for and against those cuts.
However, I do want to convey that readers should understand that they are not, on the whole, at a loss to understand DOGE’s priorities or to learn from them.
For example, even if HR wants to implement a culture of accountability, it doesn’t have to do so with the recklessness that has characterized Musk’s management style, Lares said. DOGE’s push to have federal workers list five weekly accomplishments would be difficult for any organization to make actionable, he added, and such edicts could sour the trust between workers and management needed to maintain a collaborative environment.
“People need time to make adjustments,” Lares said. “It’s not only the decisions that you make, but how you implement them and communicate them. That’s leadership management 101, and that’s the piece that’s forgotten.”
Employers have an opportunity to contrast themselves with Musk in areas like flexibility, said Ayesha Whyte, managing partner at consulting firm Dixon Whyte LLC. Musk has taken a hard line against remote work at DOGE, X and Tesla, going as far as to paint the lion’s share of remote workers as slackers who “pretend to work” all day. But Whyte said she knows firsthand the value that remote work brings to workers who are caregivers, those who live far from corporate offices and others. “That is a lifeline,” she said.
Organizations also may compare themselves to the DOGE-run federal government favorably in terms of employee well-being and culture. “Make sure you are showing yourself as different from whatever the turmoil is that’s going on within the government,” Whyte said. “That would be a big boost for [employers] as well as their employees.”
