I worked at Iomega (Zip Drive) from 1994 to 1998. The VP was rumored to fire people on the spot for the smallest thing.

One day we worked an all nighter. The entire department. The next day we were still there. Having solved the problem, most of us were asleep at our desks.

The VP made an unannounced visit and walked through the office. None of us noticed him. He walked to my bosses bosses office and asked him to assemble us in the meeting room.

He walked into the meeting, said he was impressed with how hard we were working, pointing out that our heads were down in deep thought. Then he left.

These days, I think he was trolling us.

I got to know him quite well later in my career. I never saw him fire anyone.

Musk firing people at random was not an exaggeration. My friend was head of all software at Tesla for the original car and much of the Model S development. Musk would routinely fire random folks in his department and he’d have to go to musk to get it undone. Often he had to put his job on the line threading to quit if he did not change his mind. Eventually musk took him up on it and my friend quit.