Overnight the abyss into which Twitter is now staring stared right on back – and the used it Tweet. That’ll be new undaunted owner Elon Musk, the last man alive to enjoy tweeting aimlessly about anything that’s happening nearby.
And yet even Musk – possibly physically restrained by the remaining PR team – held back from live Tweeting the most recent spectacle of several employees appearing to get up and quit having refused to commit to play ball with the platform’s ominous new mission and a deadline to respond set by the billionaire Tesla boss about their new work/life outlook.
Over the past few weeks, Musk has been firing those who oppose or disagree with him. Largely via Trumpian public tweets, or emails which find their way to TMZ.
The New York times tells us Musk told whatever remaining employees are still around they’ve got circa 36 hours to accept their new work conditions which include KPIs like being “extremely hard core” So it was – give your everything to building “a breakthrough Twitter 2.0,” or get out.
“In one of those meetings, some employees were summoned to a conference room in the San Francisco office while others called in via videoconference. As the 5 pm deadline passed, some who had called in began hanging up, seemingly having decided to leave, even as Mr. Musk continued speaking,” according to the NYT.
In response Friday night our time Elon, sounding like me during the notorious 8th birthday Maccas ice cream cake (melted) walkout, has tweeted he’s “not super worried” because “the best people are staying.”
Like my fateful 8th birthday party, that’s not going to end up being accurate. Unless the greedy sycophants; the lonely or the cowed and confused are a big improve on the principled; the uncompromising and courageous or just the plain old fed up.
“In his pitch, Mr Musk said that he knew how to win and that those who wanted to win should join him,” the NYT reported.
The meeting and Twitter then descended into further real life, 280 characters or Unicode glyph madness which included a train of employees appearing to stand up, switch and walk out of the Twitter HQ, which then sent messages around the shop that it was locking down “office buildings” for the next few days.
Now even that order has been belayed, according to CNBC, in a pair of widely distributed emails sent at the start of business on Friday, Musk called for “anyone who actually writes software,” to report to HQ by Friday arvo.
But first he wanted to be sent a high-level report ‘of the best code they’ve been doing over the last 6 months
The New York Times reported that after a 5 pm Thursday deadline was given by Musk to employees to choose whether to quit or stay on at Twitter, “hundreds of Twitter employees appeared to have decided to depart with 3 months severance.”
Musk’s team also held meetings with “undecided employees” who are considered key to Twitter’s operations in a bid to try to persuade them to stay.
Twitter, best read upside down and back to front:
It’s only taken Elon a few short weeks, and US$44 billion to turn the hot mess of Twitter into an even hotter messier mess.
He says, for example, that he hates the advertising and apparently his advertisers who he threatened with “thermonuclear name and shame,” if they weakened and left.
That’s good, because they’re leaving and might drive up ‘usage’, but it’s also bad because they provide 90% of his new toy’s revenue.
It got bad from the get go.
I won’t get into the blue check thing.
But on about Day 2, the new Chef Twit Elon-do-what-I-say-not-what-I-tweet-Musk tweeted out a link to a nutbag-ultra-right-wing-T-anon-style-conspiracy nonsense about the recently-almost-hammered-to-death husband of Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, before then finding an appropriately inappropriate pic of a Wehrmacht soldier as some kind of gag about messaging technology.
He’s laid off half of Twitter’s 7,500 full-time workers, through the company’s inherently rude and curt platform but also in mails like this on the 4th of November, signed ‘Twitter’:
Peoplequestions is at least being kept busy in a secure job.
The NYT report suggests “shedding of so many employees in such a compressed period has raised questions about how Twitter will keep operating effectively.”
Employees were provided with a FAQ ( frequently asked questions) document about exit packages on Wednesday.
The FAQ opened by saying that Musk’s ultimatum was an “official company communication” and “not a phishing attempt.” “As you have seen, Twitter is at the beginning of an exciting journey,” the document said.
The FAQ said employees would have to “maximise working from an office” and “work the hours necessary to do your job at the highest level,” including early mornings, late nights and weekends, the NYT report said.
Musk also sent out confusing and differing messages about Twitter’s remote work policy, first saying that all Twitter employees must come into the office to work at least 40 hours a week and then announcing that “Regarding remote work, all that is required for approval is that your manager takes responsibility for ensuring that you are making an excellent contribution.”
Confusing messages from Musk about the company’s remote work policy…
First, if you WFH you’re ass is grass.
Now, if you WFH you’re manager’s ass is grass.
The NYT report said that some minutes later, Musk “sent another email to staff saying managers were on the hook not to lie about strong work as a cover for employees to work from home.”
The solution here is obvious.
Since taking over Musk’s tweets have become the ‘top selling records’ of the platform.
In his first week his missives were the top 3.
The one about posted the top tweet of the week – the one about – the bird is freed, garnering nearly 2.5 million likes.
Perhaps he’s going to just drive Twitter into the ground as publicly and carelessly as would be enjoyable to watch.
Then date Taylor Swift. Buy her a Tesla. Drive to Mar a Lago. Run over one of the children while parking. Flee the scene with Taylor driving like she sings. Get married in space.
Problems solved.