Elon Musk was sleeping at the office. He dismissed employees and executives at will. And he lamented his company was on the verge of bankruptcy.

That was back in 2018 and the company was Tesla, as Mr. Musk’s electric automaker struggled to build its mass-market vehicle, the Model 3.

那是在2018年，那家公司是特斯拉，當時馬斯克的這家電動汽車製造商正在艱難地生產大眾市場車型Model 3。

“It was excruciating,” he told The New York Times at the time. “There were times when I didn’t leave the factory for three or four days — days when I didn’t go outside.”

The billionaire’s experience with what he called Tesla’s “production hell” has become a blueprint for the crisis he has created at Twitter, which he bought for $44 billion last month. Over the years, Mr. Musk has developed a playbook for managing his companies — including Tesla and the rocket manufacturer SpaceX — through periods of pain, employing shock treatment and alarmism and pushing his workers and himself to put aside their families and friends to spend all their energy on his mission.

這位億萬富翁在他所稱的特斯拉「生產地獄」中的經歷已經成為他在Twitter造成的危機的藍圖。上個月，他以440億美元收購了Twitter。多年來，馬斯克為管理他的公司——包括特斯拉和火箭製造商SpaceX——制定了一套度過痛苦時期的策略，採用休克療法和危言聳聽，敦促他的員工和他本人拋開家人朋友，把所有精力花在他的這項事業上。

At Twitter, Mr. Musk has used many of those same tactics to upend the social media company in just a few weeks.

Since late last month, the 51-year-old has laid off 50 percent of Twitter’s 7,500 employees and accepted the resignations of 1,200 or more. On Monday, he began another round of layoffs, two people said. He tweeted that he was sleeping at Twitter’s offices in San Francisco. And he has applied mission-driven language, telling Twitter’s workers that the company could go bankrupt if he wasn’t able to turn it around. Those who want to work on “Twitter 2.0” must commit to his “hard core” vision in writing, he has said.

自上月末以來，這位51歲的老闆已經解僱了Twitter的7500名員工中的50%，並接受了1200名或更多員工的辭職。兩名知情人士說，週一，他開始了新一輪裁員。他在Twitter上說，他在舊金山的Twitter辦公室睡覺。他還使用召喚使命感的語言，告訴Twitter員工，如果他不能扭轉局面，公司可能會破產。他說，那些想要在「Twitter 2.0」工作的人必須以書面形式承諾效忠他的「硬核」願景。

David Deak, who worked at Tesla from 2014 to 2016 as a senior engineering manager overseeing a supply chain for battery materials, said Mr. Musk “clearly thrives in existential circumstances.” He added, “He quasi creates them to light the fire under everybody.”

2014年至2016年在特斯拉負責管理電池材料供應鏈的高級工程經理戴維·迪克說，「顯然生死攸關的情境會讓他生龍活虎」。他還說，「他有點在主動地創造出這樣的環境，讓所有人都有緊迫感。」

The similarities between Mr. Musk’s approach to Twitter and what he did at Tesla and SpaceX are evident, added Tammy Madsen, a management professor at Santa Clara University. But it’s unclear if he will find the means to motivate employees at a social media company as he did with workers whose quests were to move people away from gas-powered cars or send humans into space.

聖克拉拉大學管理學教授塔米·馬德森說，馬斯克在Twitter的做法與他在特斯拉和SpaceX的做法明顯相似。但目前尚不清楚，他能否找到激勵這家社群媒體公司員工的方法，就像他激勵那些希望讓人們遠離汽油動力汽車或將人類送入太空的員工一樣。

“At Tesla and SpaceX, the approach has always been high risk, high reward,” Dr. Madsen said. “Twitter has been high risk, but the question is: What is the reward that comes out of it?”

「在特斯拉和SpaceX，這種做法一直是高風險、高回報的，」馬德森說。「在Twitter，風險是高，問題是：回報是什麼？」

Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

馬斯克沒有回應置評請求。

On Sunday, Mr. Musk held a meeting with Twitter’s sales employees, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Then on Monday, he laid off employees in the sales department, they said. Late last week, Mr. Musk fired Robin Wheeler, a top sales executive, they added. Bloomberg earlier reported that more layoffs might be coming.

Twitter is also reaching out to some engineers who quit to ask them to return, the people said. In a meeting with employees on Monday, Mr. Musk said the company was not planning any further layoffs, according to one person who attended.

知情人士說，Twitter也在聯繫一些辭職的工程師，請求他們重返崗位。週一，馬斯克與員工會面，據一位與會者透露，馬斯克表示公司沒有進一步裁員的計劃。

At companies led by Mr. Musk, the pattern of claiming that the firms are on the brink of a potential bankruptcy has come up often. At Tesla in December 2008, during the depths of the financial crisis, Mr. Musk closed a $50 million investment round from Daimler, he said, on the “last hour of last day possible or payroll would’ve bounced 2 days later.”

在馬斯克領導的公司中，聲稱公司可能處於破產邊緣的情況經常出現。2008年12月在特斯拉，金融危機最嚴重的時候，馬斯克「在最後一天的最後一小時」完成了一輪來自戴姆勒的5000萬美元投資，「否則兩天後會發不出工資」。

He has said the same about SpaceX, once noting that both SpaceX and Tesla had a more than 90 percent chance that they “would be worth $0” in their early days.

關於SpaceX他也說過同樣的話。他曾指出SpaceX和特斯拉在早期都有超過90%的機會變成「一文不值」。

For 2017, Mr. Musk said, SpaceX had to perform rocket launches once every two weeks or face bankruptcy, recalled one former SpaceX executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. At a company that was driven by a goal to make life “multiplanetary,” the threat of bankruptcy was a motivating factor, the former executive said.

一位因害怕報復而不願透露姓名的SpaceX前高管回憶稱，馬斯克說過，SpaceX在2017年必須每兩週進行一次火箭發射，否則將面臨破產。這位前高管說，在這家以「多行星」生活為目標的公司，面臨破產是一個激勵因素。

SpaceX has since successfully sent many rockets into space and safely landed them again on Earth. But Mr. Musk has returned to his favorite stick, tweeting last year that if a “severe global recession” were to dry up capital, bankruptcy at the rocket maker was “not impossible.”

此後，SpaceX成功地將多枚火箭發射到太空，而後安全降落在地球上。但馬斯克又回到了他最喜歡的那種大棒策略，他去年發推說，如果「嚴重的全球經濟衰退」導致資本枯竭，這家火箭製造商破產「並非不可能」。

“Only the paranoid survive,” he wrote, quoting Andy Grove, the former chief executive of Intel.

「只有憂心忡忡才能活下來，」他引用英特爾前首席執行官安迪·格羅夫的話寫道。

A crisis atmosphere and self-imposed austerity gives Mr. Musk the cover to make drastic changes and fire top managers or eliminate large swaths of staff, two former Tesla executives said. It also prepares those who remain to work under extreme conditions to bring about Mr. Musk’s desires, they said.

兩位特斯拉前高管表示，危機氣氛和自我強加的緊縮政策為馬斯克提供了進行重大變革、解僱高層管理人員或解僱大量員工的藉口。他們說，這也讓那些留下來在極端條件下工作的人做好準備，以實現馬斯克的願望。

The approach at Twitter, where Mr. Musk has laid off thousands of employees, “is typical Elon,” Mr. Deak said.

迪克說，馬斯克解僱了數千名Twitter員工的做法「是典型的伊隆」。

The chaos at the social media company is familiar to people who worked at Tesla when the company was struggling to ramp up manufacturing of the Model 3, which went on sale in 2017. In May of that year, Mr. Musk sent an email to the staff that echoed some of the language he has used with Twitter employees.

對於在特斯拉工作的人來說，這家社群媒體公司的混亂局面並不陌生。特斯拉的員工當初在奮力提高於2017年上市的Model 3的產量。當年5月，在馬斯克給員工的郵件中，他的一些措辭和他如今對Twitter員工使用的相呼應。

“Tesla has to be hardcore and demanding,” he wrote. “The passing grade at Tesla is excellence, because it has to be.”

In the year that followed, Mr. Musk famously slept on the floor in a Tesla factory’s conference rooms, fired the vice president of engineering and worked 120-hour weeks to cope with a lag in the production of Model 3s. Members of Tesla’s board worried about Mr. Musk’s workload and his use of Ambien to try to sleep.

Foreshadowing the turmoil at Twitter, Mr. Musk spent part of 2018 on the social media service, antagonizing lawmakers and regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission. The S.E.C. later sued Mr. Musk for tweeting that he had the “funding secured” to take Tesla private, even though the billionaire never followed through and settled with the agency. This summer, he spent months and millions of dollars in legal fees to back out of his deal to buy Twitter.

2018年，馬斯克把一部分時間花在了這個社群媒體服務上，得罪了許多議員和監管機構，包括美國證券交易委員會，為如今Twitter的動盪埋下伏筆。委員會後來起訴了馬斯克，因為他在Twitter上透露「已經拿到了」將特斯拉私有化的資金，儘管這位億萬富翁從未推進私有化，並與該機構達成和解。今年夏天，他投入了大量時間和數以百萬美元計的法務費用，以求退出收購Twitter的交易。

Testifying in Delaware last week in a lawsuit about his Tesla pay package, Mr. Musk acknowledged that his penchant for acting unilaterally can get him in trouble. “When I make decisions without consulting people,” he said, “the probability that those decisions will be wrong is higher.”

In Delaware, Mr. Musk also downplayed comparisons between what he was doing at Twitter with the Model 3 ramp-up, saying on his way into the courtroom that what was happening at the social media service was “easier.”

在特拉華州，馬斯特也不願將他在Twitter的所作所為與Model 3增產的情況相提並論，他在進入法庭前表示，這家社群媒體服務公司的問題要「簡單得多」。

Some of Mr. Musk’s former employees question whether his management tactics will ultimately work at Twitter. Tesla and SpaceX were in earlier stages of growth when their boss whipped out his tough language and told everyone they had to go full tilt. But Twitter is a more mature company that has performed inconsistently for years.

馬斯克的一些前員工質疑他的管理策略最終能否在Twitter奏效。當他們的老闆突然甩出強硬措辭，告訴所有人必須全力生產的時候，特斯拉和SpaceX正處於增長的早期階段。但Twitter是一家更成熟的公司，多年來的業績並不穩定。

Mr. Musk’s management techniques are “good start-up and growth strategy, but it is not good for building a stable company,” Mr. Deak said.

迪克表示，馬斯克的管理方式屬於「優秀的創業和成長策略，但並不利於建設穩定的企業」。

Mr. Musk’s all-in commitment to a company is often inspirational, but can also turn toxic and engender a culture of fear and scapegoating, three former Tesla and SpaceX managers said.

三位特斯拉和SpaceX的前經理表示，馬斯克對一家公司的全身心投入通常能夠鼓舞人心，但也有可能變得有毒，導致恐懼和替罪羊文化出現。

And for Mr. Musk, remaking Twitter is only a part-time job. He remains chief executive of Tesla, which he said in court he continued to lead, and SpaceX, where, he said, he focuses on designing rockets rather than management.

對馬斯克而言，重塑Twitter只是他的一份兼職。他仍是特斯拉和SpaceX的首席執行官，他也在法庭上說會繼續領導特斯拉，至於SpaceX，他說自己專注的是火箭設計而非管理工作。

Mr. Musk also leads the Boring Company, a tunneling start-up, and Neuralink, a brain-computer interface technology firm. He has said his long-term goal is to save humanity by developing technology for space travel, or, in his words, by “making life multiplanetary in order to ensure the long-term survival of consciousness.”

馬斯克還負責管理隧道建設初創公司「無聊公司」，以及腦機接口科技公司Neuralink。他曾說過，自己的長遠目標是通過研發太空旅行技術來拯救人類，或者用他的話說，通過「實現生命的多行星棲息，以確保人類意識的長久存續」。

The multitasking has become an issue in a lawsuit filed by Tesla shareholders who objected to the pay package that made Mr. Musk the world’s richest person. Last week in Delaware, under questioning by a lawyer representing shareholders who have accused Mr. Musk of neglecting his duties at Tesla, the billionaire said his intense involvement in Twitter was temporary.

這種多事業並行已是特斯拉股東們提起的訴訟中的一大問題，他們反對讓馬斯克成為世界首富的薪酬方案。特斯拉股東指控馬斯克疏於管理該公司，上週在特拉華州，面對這些股東所委託的律師提出的質疑，這名億萬富翁宣稱自己對Twitter的密集投入只是暫時的。

“There was an initial burst of activity to reorganize the company,” he said last Wednesday, adding, “I expect to reduce my time at Twitter.”

「企業改組之初會出現工作量的爆發，」他在上週三表示，並補充說，「預計我將減少投入在Twitter的時間。」