Elon Musk basically lives for the chaos of a good meme. If you've spent any time on X lately, you’ve probably seen the reference or heard about the emails. It’s a callback to Office Space, that 1999 cult classic that every cubicle worker in America knows by heart. In the movie, two consultants—both named Bob—sit down with employees to figure out who to fire. They lean in, look them in the eye, and ask: "What would you say you do here?"
For Musk, this isn't just a funny line from a movie. It’s a management philosophy. Honestly, it’s become his go-to weapon for gutting organizations. Whether he's taking over a social media giant or trying to trim the federal government, this specific question is the tip of the spear.
Why the Office Space Reference Stuck
The phrase Elon Musk what would you say you do here first blew up during the Twitter acquisition in late 2022. It wasn't just a joke; it was a warning shot. Musk has always had a thing for "first principles" thinking, which is a fancy way of saying he likes to strip everything down to the studs and see if it actually works.
When he took over Twitter, he didn't just walk in with a sink. He walked in with a mandate for "hardcore" work. He started asking engineers to print out their code. He wanted to see who was actually building and who was just attending meetings about meetings.
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Remember Haraldur Thorleifsson? He was a senior director at Twitter who couldn't get a straight answer on whether he was still employed. He eventually tweeted at Musk directly. Musk’s response was a public interrogation that felt like a digital version of the Bobs' office. He literally asked what the guy had been doing, eventually tweeting a clip from Office Space to drive the point home. It was brutal. It was public. It was pure Musk.
The DOGE Era and the Federal "Hardcore" Test
Fast forward to early 2025. Musk moves from Silicon Valley to D.C. to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. If you thought he was intense with software engineers, the federal workforce was in for a massive shock.
In February 2025, federal employees started receiving emails that looked eerily familiar. The subject lines were blunt. The requirements were steeper. Musk demanded that workers justify their roles in five bullet points. Basically, he was asking millions of people: Elon Musk what would you say you do here?
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- The Deadline: Often just 24 hours.
- The Stakes: Failure to respond was treated as a voluntary resignation.
- The Goal: Identifying "zombie" positions and redundant middle management.
Critics, like those writing for the Washington Monthly, argued Musk totally missed the point of the movie. In Office Space, the Bobs are the villains. They are the soulless consultants who don't understand the work and fire the most talented people while rewarding the brown-nosers. But Musk doesn't see it that way. He sees himself as the guy clearing out the "brakes" so the "accelerators" can finally move. He once noted that for every one person accelerating at a company, there are often nine people acting as brakes.
Management by Meme: Does it Actually Work?
It's a mixed bag, honestly. At Twitter (now X), he cut about 80% of the staff. People predicted the site would crash within a week. It didn't. It's still running, though the ad revenue took a massive hit and the vibe changed forever.
In the government, the results were even more controversial. By late 2025, Musk himself admitted in an interview with Katie Miller that DOGE was only "somewhat successful." He claimed they saved around $200 billion by cutting "zombie payments" and redundant contracts. But the human cost was massive. Tens of thousands of career civil servants left.
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The "what do you do here" approach works great for finding people who literally do nothing. It's less great at identifying the quiet experts who keep complex systems from exploding. When you manage by meme, you tend to keep the loudest, most "hardcore" people, but you might lose the institutional knowledge that keeps the lights on.
What You Can Learn from the Musk Method
You don't have to be a billionaire to use the logic behind Elon Musk what would you say you do here. At its core, it's about radical transparency.
- Audit your own time. If you had to write five bullet points today about what you actually accomplished—not just what meetings you attended—could you do it?
- Kill the "Brakes." Look at your projects. Are there people (or processes) that exist only to slow things down?
- Direct Communication. Musk hates the chain of command. If you need to talk to a VP to get a job done, talk to the VP. Don't wait for three managers to "align" first.
The reality is that the "Bobs" style of management is terrifying because it forces us to confront our own productivity. Musk just happens to be the only person with enough money and lack of filter to do it on a global stage.
If you want to survive a "hardcore" audit, whether it's at a tech startup or a government agency, the best defense is a portfolio of finished work. In Musk's world, "knowing" is easy, but "doing" is the only thing that saves your job. Stop focusing on the titles and start focusing on the output. If you can't explain your value in a single email, you might be the next one facing the "what do you do here" question.
Your next move: Take ten minutes right now and write down the three most impactful things you did this week. If you can't find three, it's time to pivot your daily routine before someone else asks you what you're doing there.