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Federal agencies have offered exits to millions of employees and tested the prowess of engineers — just like when Elon Musk bought Twitter. The similarities have been uncanny.
By Kate Conger and Ryan Mac
Kate Conger and Ryan Mac have written about Elon Musk’s management of X and his other businesses since 2022.
Jan. 30, 2025Updated 1:16 p.m. ET
The email landed in employees’ inboxes with the subject line: “Fork in the Road.” The message in the email was stark: Accept a sweeping set of workplace changes or resign.
That was the note that millions of federal employees received around 5 p.m. on Tuesday. It echoed a similar message that thousands of workers at Twitter got from Elon Musk in late 2022 after he bought the company.
Mr. Musk has brought his takeover tactics from Twitter to the federal government, where he’s become a close adviser to President Trump and is running the cost-cutting initiative called the Department of Government Efficiency. The administration is already eliminating diversity initiatives, testing engineering prowess and demanding federal employee loyalty, maneuvers Mr. Musk embraced to slash his social media company’s budget and operations.
The Tuesday email, sent by the Office of Personnel Management, was the latest example of the billionaire’s fingerprints, down to the subject line — the same as his 2022 buyout offer to Twitter employees.
“It’s a knife-at-your-throat feeling,” said Rumman Chowdhury, a former Twitter executive who left the company, which is now known as X, after Mr. Musk’s takeover. “The uncertainty is wild.”
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