> The top down, hard ass culture of Elon etc, basically flips the work to being extrinsically motivated based on fear. I worked at a company (well known in tec

> The top down, hard ass culture of Elon etc, basically flips the work to being extrinsically motivated based on fear. I worked at a company (well known in tech circles) where the CEO went through a phase of ruling by fear. He was firing and replacing people constantly, ever present in Slack to criticize work and threaten people if he thought delivery wasn’t fast enough, and even fired a couple people on the spot in front of a large group of people just to make a point. It created a wave of productivity at first. We all thought we could just get ahead of it by doing good work. If we work hard, we won’t end up embarrassed and disgraced like our fired ex-colleagues. But after a while everyone realizes that there is no winning in a fear-based environment. It doesn’t matter how hard you work or how great your results, the fear-based boss will always find some other excuse to apply more fear push everyone harder. People must be sacrificed constantly to maintain the image of a ruthless leader. Eventually everyone rotates out of the company into better jobs. The company became a revolving door. Product quality declined as knowledge was constantly lost with departing employees.