Musk Asks Same Question He Asked Agrawal

Aakhir Tak – In Shorts

Elon Musk asks federal workers the same question he asked Parag Agrawal 3 years ago.
Musk sought a weekly work report from Agrawal before firing him.
Now, Musk is demanding similar info from federal employees via DOGE.
Musk claims Parag did nothing, hence the firing.
Employees face job loss for not reporting work details.

Aakhir Tak – In Depth

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Tech billionaire Elon Musk was prompt to take note of and reply to an X user’s post about the sacking of Parag Agrawal, the former CEO of the platform (when it was called Twitter), amid the Tesla chief’s diktat to federal employees asking them to furnish details of the work done by them in the past week or get fired. This Elon Musk Parag Agrawal connection has resurfaced.

“Parag got nothing done. Parag was fired,” the billionaire head of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), wrote in reply to a post shared by an X user on Sunday, which shared a screenshot of an old conversation between Parag Agrawal and Tesla chief Musk about the work environment at Twitter, before the latter acquired the social media platform in 2022.

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As per the excerpt of the conversation shared in the post, Parag Agrawal said, “You are free to tweet- is Twitter dying? or anything else about Twitter- but it’s my responsibility to tell you that it’s not helping me make Twitter better in the current context. Next time we speak, I’d like to provide you with perspective on the level of internal distraction and how it is hurting our ability to do work. I hope the AMA will help people get to know you, to understand why you believe in Twitter, and to trust you- and I’d like the company to get to a place where we are more resilient and don’t get distracted, but we aren’t there right now”.

“What did you get done this week?” was Musk’s reply in the form of a pertinent question posed to the former Twitter CEO that has returned as a threat to scores of US federal workers three years later.

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The X user’s post was captioned, “DOGE: Almost three years ago Elon Musk asked Parag Agrawal what he got done last week. Now he’s asking every federal worker the same question”.

The X user also shared a grab of Musk’s order issued in line with US President Donald Trump’s Truth Social post, in which he said that DOGE should be more aggressive in its attempts to downsize and reshape the federal workforce.

“All federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk posted on X. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” he added.

As of Saturday evening, emails were sent to employees at federal agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others with the subject line, “What did you do last week?”

Hours later, Musk informed through X that he received a lot of “good responses” who deserved promotions.

“A large number of good responses have been received already. These are the people who should be considered for promotion,” he wrote in his post on Sunday.

ELON MUSK VS PARAG AGRAWAL

In 2022, Elon Musk took control of Twitter and rechristened it as X. Among his initial actions as the new owner was the termination of then-CEO Parag Agrawal. Musk also dismissed several other high-ranking executives, leading to a substantial workforce reduction with thousands losing their jobs. It was reported that Agrawal was fired because he refused to block an account on Twitter that Musk wanted.

Following his ouster, Agrawal, along with three other former Twitter executives, sued Musk for not paying USD 128 million dollars worth of severance.

The executives, as per the lawsuit, claimed they had been fired by Musk just minutes after he took control. They further alleged that Musk falsely accused them of misconduct and forced them out after they sued him for attempting to back out of the Twitter purchase.

Meanwhile, DOGE, the brainchild of Musk, has been aggressively cutting federal funding. US President Donald Trump has given DOGE a free hand to restrict federal spending to save USD 2 trillion.

Aakhir Tak – Key Takeaways to Remember