--- title: "Three filters for who stays" description: "The screening criteria Musk used in November 2022 to decide which Twitter engineers survived the cuts." canonical: https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/elon-musk/three-filters-for-who-stays/ updated: 2026-11-03 --- # Three filters for who stays > The screening criteria Musk used in November 2022 to decide which Twitter engineers survived the cuts. Walter Isaacson's framework, from Elon Musk, pp. 656 to 662. Framework 6 of 7 from [Elon Musk](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/elon-musk/index.md) by Walter Isaacson. Category: Content and packaging. ## The steps 1. **Excellent.** Grade engineers by their recent code, commits and submitted samples, and keep the best generalists. 2. **Trustworthy.** Search public Slack and social posts for disloyalty or threats from people with access to the software stack, and fire those who seem hostile. 3. **Driven.** Make employees opt in with a yes button to a hardcore Twitter, with those who do not receiving three months of severance. ## Where it comes from From chapter: Chapter 87: All In: Twitter, November 10–18, 2022, pp. 656–662 Musk moves into Twitter headquarters on a seventh-floor library couch, summoning his cousins James and Andrew and Ross Nordeen to the hot box war room. He wants to cut close to another 80 percent of engineers, keeping only those who are excellent, trustworthy and driven. They search Slack for disloyalty, firing three dozen malcontents including one who posted a command that could take down a data centre. A self-selection email titled A Fork in the Road, with opt-in rather than opt-out, draws 2,492 yeses, 69 percent. On 18 November he summons engineers for desk-siding code reviews. ## The animation 24 seconds, 4:5, no sound. - MP4: https://tomsharman-downloads-006143767029.s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/downloads/bookshelf/elon-musk/three-filters-for-who-stays.mp4 - MP4, dark: https://tomsharman-downloads-006143767029.s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/downloads/bookshelf/elon-musk/three-filters-for-who-stays-dark.mp4 - Still: https://tomsharman-downloads-006143767029.s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/downloads/bookshelf/elon-musk/three-filters-for-who-stays.png - Still, dark: https://tomsharman-downloads-006143767029.s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/downloads/bookshelf/elon-musk/three-filters-for-who-stays-dark.png