’s close coverage of the Twitter saga over the past year, it was this aspect of the book that interested me the most. In some ways, Isaacson’s perspective on the story skews much closer to Musk’s than mine does — particularly in its depiction of Twitter 1.0 as more of an adult day-care center than a tech company. “Twitter prided itself on being a friendly place where coddling was considered a virtue,” Isaacson writes.
At the same time, the biography does not suggest that Musk is pleasant, tolerable, or even safe to work for. After hundreds of pages of anecdotes, Isaacson notes accurately that Musk “preferred a scrappy, hard-driven environment where rabid warriors felt psychological danger rather than comfort.” Unfortunately for Musk, restructuring the deal would have given banks the chance to renegotiate the terms of their loans. Interest rates rose significantly during between the deal being signed and its closing date, which would have wiped out any discounts.