The Elon Musk effect: have we reached our limit with awful bosses? | André Spicer

Twitter's billionaire owner may think his tactics will leave him with committed employees. The evidence suggests otherwise

If you passed by the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on Thursday, you would have seen a stream of insults projected on to the side of the building: Elon Musk: mediocre manchild, pressurised privilege, petty racist, megalomaniac ..." Inside, employees had received a message asking them to sign a pledge to work long hours at high intensity" or leave their jobs. This came on the back of large-scale layoffs and an all-company email sent at 2.30am declaring there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn".

Musk's uncouth approach to managing people is long documented. Take allegations made about his behaviour at Tesla, where he reportedly yelled at one engineer You're a fucking idiot! ... Get the fuck out and don't come back!", according to Wired. Other colleagues told the magazine that he would publicly humiliate and demote people, and that staff were discouraged from walking too near his desk as he was prone to unpredictable rages". He was shouting that I didn't know what I was doing, that I was an idiot, that he's never worked with someone so incompetent," one former employee told the magazine about her sacking.

Andre Spicer is professor of organisational behaviour at the Bayes Business School at City, University of London. He is the author of the book Business Bullshit