new boss
And it was chaos: Twitter employees report on a memorable day under Elon Musk
Elon Musk has acquired Twitter for $44 billion
© Angela Weiss / AFP
The previous bosses: fired. The staff: distressed. Elon Musk has made a memorable inauguration as the new head of Twitter. Employees at the San Francisco headquarters report conditions are somewhere between a hostile takeover and a raid.
It started with a joke, but then it got serious. Sink in hand, Elon Musk entered Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on Wednesday. “Let that sink in,” joked the billionaire, which can be translated as “let that sink in” or “let it sink in.” With the joke, Musk wanted to make it clear that after much back and forth, he would actually take over the powerful short message service.
However, it would have been more appropriate if Musk had brought an ax with him. Because even before the final completion of the $44 billion deal was announced on Friday, Musk had already fired the group’s top management. According to media reports, the company’s boss, Parag Agrawal, has been fired, as has the previous CFO, Ned Segal, and Legal Director, Vijaya Gadde. Agrawal and Segal were immediately escorted out of the building, almost like an arrest. “The bird is free,” tweeted Musk, who calls himself “Chief Twit.”
Employees have to print pages of code.
Yesterday, Friday, officially the first day under new boss Elon Musk, must have felt like something between a hostile takeover and a raid for parts of Twitter’s workforce. At least that is how the reports of numerous employees in the American media read. For her, the first day of working with Musk was characterized by chaos, uncertainty and helplessness. You wonder: after the top management is fired, will there also be a broad cut in the workforce, as Musk previously publicly announced? What does the man want anyway and what’s next?
According to “Business Insider,” employees on the product and development teams were instructed Thursday night to prepare for meetings with Musk on Friday. They must also bring the programming code with them. In addition, Tesla developers reportedly showed up at the company’s San Francisco headquarters to question individual Twitter programmers about the technical aspects of their work.
Meetings with Musk in person on Friday were repeatedly postponed and ultimately cancelled. Some employees are said to have been asked to print out pages of software code so that Musk and his inner circle could view them behind closed doors. Musk has raised concerns with him in the past that Twitter’s algorithm distorts public discussion. Furthermore, he criticized the large number of spam bots and used them, ultimately in vain, as a reason to allow the Twitter takeover to break out.
Where is Elon Musk taking Twitter?
Musk himself is said to have worked Friday at the company’s San Francisco headquarters with his personal attorney Alex Spiro and a team he brought with him on a separate floor to take care of company business. Even the staff cafeteria would have avoided Musk’s people, preferring to have their food brought to them, anonymous Twitter employees report.
The Twitter staff waited in vain all Friday for an appointment or at least an email to appear on the calendar in which the new boss addressed his employees. “It’s quiet,” an employee told Business Insider. And another says, “It’s scary because it’s so unpredictable.”
Musk made a couple of short tweets on Friday. He described as “comedy” the images of two supposedly fired employees, who could be seen with a cardboard in their hands in front of the Twitter building. Apparently, they weren’t actually real employees. Musk has openly said in the past that he is planning major staff cuts. There is speculation among employees that he could be laid off before November 1 when employee stock options expire. As announced, Musk suspended trading in Twitter stock on Friday.
It is eagerly awaited to what extent Musk will weigh in on the content of the speech on Twitter and whether, as announced, he will quickly lift the ban on Donald Trump and other banned individuals. Musk tweeted Friday that he would set up a content moderation panel that would include “a wide range of opinions.” “No major substantive decisions will be made or accounts reset prior to the convening of this body.”
Sources: Business Insider / New York City Times / axes
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