Who was on Elon Musk’s Twitter transition team?

A subpoena list reveals who Musk relied on during his chaotic early days at Twitter.

[Screenshot and joke exegesis from USA Today]

After Elon Musk’s slapdash, legally enforced takeover of Twitter officially concluded on October 28, 2022, which took the company private under his control, he oversaw a raucous transition characterized by mass firings, supposed revelations of institutional corruption, a weird grasp at virality involving a sink, lots of bold, middle-of-the-night promises tweeted out to his growing army of cultists, and frenetic activity at Twitter HQ in San Francisco. Musk reportedly denuded the place of its techie art and wall decorations, selling off what he could, and stopped paying rent, along with stiffing vendors. He also boasted about sleeping at Twitter’s office.

Perhaps most crucially for Musk during this chaotic period, he relied on longtime advisers, venture capitalists, family members, and dozens of engineers and other staffers from his companies to implement his edicts, choose survivors, and pore over the Twitter code-base. The overriding mission was to fire people, cut costs, and excise the woke mind virus that Musk believed had taken up residence in Twitter’s executive suite. At the time, there was some reporting on Musk’s “war room” that revealed the presence of venture capitalists David Sacks, Jason Calacanis, Sriram Krishnan, and Antonio Gracias, lawyer Alex Spiro, and Musk family office manager Jared Birchall. Musk had also drafted numerous employees of companies in his vast portfolio, but their identities were largely unknown. 

A list of names subpoenaed in a case brought by six ex-Twitter employees who left or were fired after Musk’s takeover offers a better picture of who, exactly, was working on Twitter in the fall of 2022. The subpoenas ask for a wide scope of records and communications about the transition, the decision-making process in firing incumbent Twitter employees, and people’s duties at Musk’s Twitter and at their other jobs in the Musk imperium.

The plaintiffs in the case, Arnold v. X Corp, allege that they were fired and then not paid their “contractually required severance.” The employee who was forced to resign says he did so after “being repeatedly and specifically directed to violate California’s building codes – in ways that potentially put Tweep lives at risk.” Overall, the complainants paint a picture of impulsive decision-making focused on relentless cost-cutting, no matter the result: “Led by Musk and the cadres of sycophants who were internally referred to as the “transition team,” Twitter’s new leadership deliberately, specifically, and repeatedly announced their intentions to breach contracts, violate laws, and otherwise ignore their legal obligations.” 

Or, as one transition team member allegedly told a Twitter employee, “Elon doesn’t pay rent.”

All of the aforementioned names appear on the subpoena list, which has 91 people on it. At least seventy of them worked for Musk directly or at one of his companies. It’s unknown if this is a full roster of everyone Musk drafted during his crash takeover; there may be more people or entities subpoenaed in other filings. I relied on LinkedIn and public reporting from the time to determine who worked where. In the case of two people subpoenaed, I haven’t been able to confirm their identities. A few names in the subpoena list were apparently misspelled.

Among the venture capitalists subpoenaed were Randy Glein (DFJ), Chris Shanahan (DFJ), Samuel Pullara (Sutter Hill Ventures), Pablo Mendoza (Vy Capital), and four employees of Valor Equity Partners, including its CEO and President Antonio Gracias, who has become close to Musk in recent years. Case filings indicate that a number of law firms were subpoenaed. So were Andrew and James Musk, cousins of Elon.

The Musk employees came from SpaceX, Musk’s family office, The Boring Company, and Tesla. In the case of SpaceX, Musk brought over 11 employees, mostly senior executives, including top people from finance, human resources, IT, facilities, and real estate. The Boring Company supplied two people from its operations department along with Steve Davis, its CEO and President. Davis, who was tipped as a potential future Twitter CEO, was one of the Musk loyalists who famously slept at the Twitter office – except that Davis did it with his wife and a newborn baby. As a result, Davis’ wife is also included on the subpoena list. (The baby was spared.)

Tesla provided the bulk of Twitter transition team members – 54 people, according to the subpoena list. Most of them were engineers who listed their jobs as working on autopilot or in related areas like machine learning, AI, or computer vision. About fifty of them appear to still work at Tesla. Two are now at OpenAI. Two team members transitioned to X, with one sticking around at xAI and the other departing. Few of their LinkedIn profiles listed experience working at social-media companies.

Musk has painted the Twitter transition effort as a volunteer process. Talented engineers from his companies responded to a call for help and offered their time and expertise. The implication seems to be that if Musk ordered top engineers from his publicly traded company to drop what they were doing and go work at Twitter in San Francisco, that could be a matter of concern for company shareholders. It could be a breach of Musk’s fiduciary duties, especially because these people were paid by Musk’s other companies while, by his own admission, Twitter teetered toward bankruptcy. But if they were just volunteering some extra time, then it’s all cool. 

During testimony in Tornetta v. Musk, the trial that resulted in Musk’s $56 billion pay package being revoked, Musk said that the use of Tesla engineers was purely voluntary and didn’t take away from company resources.

That also seems to be why Musk has gently backpedaled on the claims that he and others slept at Twitter HQ during this new “hardcore” period. People who are sleeping at an office are probably working a lot. It might even be their main focus (my sympathies to Steve Davis’ wife and newborn). 

During his testimony in Tornetta v. Musk, Musk denied that he slept a lot at Twitter.

[Screenshot via The Verge]

Asked again about his vow to sleep at Twitter until everything was fixed, Musk made it seem like it would be a quick process.

[Screenshot via The Verge]

Musk said that on Nov. 16, 2022, 19 days after he acquired Twitter. He eventually deleted the tweet, which read, “I’ve been at Twitter SF HQ all night. Will be working and sleeping here until org is fixed.” 

One of the plaintiffs in Arnold v. X Corp is the Twitter employee who was told to turn office space into a “Twitter Hotel” for employees – a process that involved numerous violations of building codes. Twitter later used the term “sleeping rooms” in order not to attract the attention of city inspectors. The plaintiff “was also instructed to place locks on the “hotel room” doors – a request that betrayed the lie that these were intended to be temporary rest spaces for exhausted Tweeps.”

Instead of complying, they quit. Someone else put the locks on.

[Update: Here’s a link to Arnold v X Corp. on Courtlistener, where the subpoena list can be found.]

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