What did you get done this week?

Elon Musk's email divides the internet and underscores the deep cultural rift on work.

After I had been at Business Insider for a couple years, I felt I was stagnating.

I wasn’t sure how to keep growing in my role. So, I sat down with my manager and volunteered to send him and his boss a weekly report of what I got done.

The idea was met with surprise. But the practice put me back on track to learn and ultimately excel. The email — which took less than 10 minutes to write every Friday — was a win-win-win for myself, my manager and the company.

I didn’t have the foresight then to know that a similar concept, applied at scale, would be met with ferocious pushback on a national level.

A few days ago Elon Musk announced that every federal government employee would receive an email asking, “What did you do last week?”

Failure to respond with bullet points summarizing their duties, he said, would be taken as a resignation.

Some officials applauded it as an overdue measure of accountability. Others instructed staffers to ignore the email. Some individuals went a step further, going on cable news to explain the trauma, discomfort, and invasiveness of the email and its 48-hour deadline.

One anonymous government worker told The New York Times it left her feeling sick: “They’re terrorizing us.”

I’m not here to unpack the news of Musk’s directive. I raise the topic because of how my own friends and colleagues have reacted the last several days.

For context, I live in New York City, work at the intersection of media and finance, and have a lot of ambitious, high-agency friends.

Overwhelmingly, no one in my immediate circles could figure out the “trauma” angle of Musk’s now-notorious email. Something close to the opposite, rather, seemed true.

While several of my friends are entrepreneurs and so work for themselves, they said they would actually prefer to share — directly and regularly — with the powers that be exactly how much they achieve in a given week.

Now, if you’ve read even a little of my work, you probably know I am ambitious, diligent, and obsessed with forward momentum.

You’ll likely guess, too, that I agree with my friends.

The backlash to Elon Musk’s email exposes a quiet cultural rift — one between those who view work as a stage for growth and mastery, and those who see it as a static obligation, insulated from scrutiny.

It forces an uncomfortable question: Should holding a job require continuously proving your value?

On this matter an entrepreneur has no choice. The market is a cold scorekeeper — fail to deliver and you’re out. Running a business has taught me over and over that value must be demonstrated, rather than assumed.

I can imagine how jarring Musk’s email seems within institutions where job security is prized over output and process overshadows performance. For better or worse, accountability here is far from a condition of employment.

The question isn’t whether the email is radical, it’s whether a competitive benchmark belongs in a place that isn’t hardwired for competition.

Either way, if simply listing one’s contributions induces “trauma,” what does that say about the nature of the work being done?

The email underscores the divide between those who work because they have to, and those who see work as a consequence of forward momentum.

I produced some of my best journalism at Business Insider after I implemented the practice that Musk has since made viral.

I learned then what drives me now — accountability isn’t an imposition but an invitation; not a demand, but a mirror.

If you believe whole-heartedly in what you’re doing, “What did you do last week?” shouldn’t feel like a threat. It’s opportunity.