Flashback: Musk used his 'what did you get done this week' directive before gutting Twitter

Musk roiled the federal workforce on Saturday when he posted to X that employees would need to list their accomplishments for the previous week or risk losing their jobs. 

But this isn't the first time Musk has used the tactic: He did the same amid his purchase of Twitter in 2022, before he overhauled the social media behemoth, including axing top brass. 

"What did you get done this week," Musk had texted former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in April 2022, months before he purchased Twitter and ultimately renamed it X. 

Musk helped resurrect the text exchange over the weekend on X, when he responded to an account that shared a "how it started, how it's going" post that showed a screenshot of Musk's text to Agrawal, accompanied by a screen shot of a Musk X post on Saturday directed at federal employees. 

"Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump's instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week," Musk wrote on X on Saturday. "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation." 

"To be clear, the bar is very low here," Musk wrote. "An email with some bullet points that make any sense at all is acceptable! Should take less than 5 mins to write." 

Months later, in October 2022, Musk officially acquired Twitter in a $44 billion deal, making waves when he entered its headquarters that month carrying a bathroom sink in a video he posted to X with the caption, "Entering Twitter HQ - let that sink in!"

Musk went on to fire the social media company's top executives, including Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and general counsel Vijaya Gadde. Musk explained on X recently that Agrawal was fired due to reported productivity issues. 

"Parag got nothing done. Parag was fired," he posted to X on Saturday.

All in, roughly 70% to 80% of Twitter's approximate 8,000 employees were fired or exited the company following Musk's purchase. Musk took a hatchet to the company's work from home policy, and remarked that the company was overstaffed and needed to be trimmed of staffers who did not contribute much to its operations. 

"We just had a situation at Twitter where it was absurdly overstaffed," Musk said on Fox News in 2023. "Turns out you don't need all that many people to run Twitter."

"If you're not trying to run some sort of glorified activist organization and you don't care that much about censorship, then you can really let go of a lot of people, turns out," he said at the time. 

Musk's comments reflect those he's made in the second Trump administration as the chair of DOGE, which is in the midst of auditing various federal agencies in the search for overspending, corruption and mismanagement. 

Musk said on Saturday that federal employees would receive an email directing them to list their accomplishments from the week prior, with the DOGE leader adding later that day that the assignment should take less than five minutes to accomplish. 

Employees have until 11:59 pm on Monday to send the list or lose their employment, according to emails regarding Musk's directive that were sent by the Office of Personnel Management.

Musk responded on X: "Will do, Mr. President!"

Some Democratic lawmakers, unions and activists have called for federal employees to buck the order, while a handful of government departments and agencies, such as the FBI and Department of Defense, told staff to hold off on responding to the email, as respective officials will handle auditing their own staffers. 

"This is a good opportunity for mass civil disobedience. Musk has no authority to do this," Illinois Democratic Rep. Sean Casten, for example, posted to X on Saturday evening. "Encourage all federal employees to report to work, prepare GFY letters and continue to demonstrate the public service and patriotism he lacks." The acronym GFY is internet slang typically meaning "go f--- yourself."

"It takes a remarkable combination of arrogance and stupidity to think that this is the best use of time for our intelligence officers, VA workers, air traffic controllers, and everyone else we depend on to do their job well," he continued.