Twitter, Musk’s ultimatum doesn’t work: “hundreds” of employees out

It seems that Elon Musk’s ultimatum to Twitter employees has not had the desired outcome: according to the main US newspapers, including The Verge And New York Times, “hundreds” of workers preferred to leave instead of adhering to the new “hardcore” work rules imposed by Musk. It is currently not possible to make an exact estimate of how many people have decided to abandon ship – accepting, among other things, three months’ salary as severance pay – but according to some reports, the situation is complicated: a significant number of teams critical to the smooth functioning of the platform they essentially disappeared overnight.

As the deadline approached, it is said, Musk became increasingly concerned about the number of entries. We recall that the founder of Tesla and SpaceX had released an email a couple of days ago according to which “Twitter 2.0” required long hours in the office with high intensity and only those who worked with “outstanding” results would keep their jobs. To confirm that they agreed with this vision, employees simply had to answer “yes” in a special form on Google Forms. Musk had subsequently tried to make some concessions or steps back from previous statements, especially on remote work, but apparently it was not enough.

It’s worth mentioning that in his first few days at the helm of Twitter, Musk fired around 50% of his staff; according to rather summary estimates, before this new exodus the total number of employees was around 3,000. According to reporter Kylie Robinson of Fortunes, even 75% of those who remained would have decided to leave (but this is a very arbitrary figure based on the perception of the employees themselves). If so, within two weeks Twitter would be reduced to a tenth of what it was at the beginning of the month (for manpower, of course).

As it is easy to imagine, in these first hours the reports are very confused and there is little clear and concrete data. However, they seem to be there confirmations for the total elimination of entire teams such as the one dedicated to the Blue premium subscription (it is therefore very likely that the relaunch of the feature will be postponed again), the one that takes care of the maintenance of the fundamental system libraries, and the one that forwards the requests of the front end developers to the back end ones . Other teams, such as the one that manages the developer API and the “Command Center” that works a bit like “first aid” in case of problems and failures, have been drastically reduced.

The now former employees believe that with all these resignations, Twitter will start having serious problems to function soon. Musk and his lieutenants are still trying to figure out who stayed and who didn’t. In the meantime, however, all the company’s badges have been temporarily deactivated – in other words, the offices have been closed and will reopen next Monday. Employees were not given any explanations, but Musk apparently fears sabotage attempts and retaliation.

Meanwhile, ironically on Twitter, the hashtag #RIPTwitter is all the rage. Former employees post their send-off messages and, as you can imagine, all kinds of conversations, memes and considerations ensue. Meanwhile, on his platform, Musk flaunts confidence, sharing memes and making jokes. In response to one user’s tweet, he says, for example, that “the best people remain, so I’m not super worried.” However, it is said that Musk has simultaneously organized meetings with some employees deemed crucial to try to convince them to stay.

The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022

But there is at least one part of the US government that wants to understand more closely the events related to Musk’s first two weeks at the helm of Twitter: a group of Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumenthal and Dianne Feinstein, they wrote one letter to the FTC requesting an investigation on his work, expressly citing concerns for the management of user privacy and security (we remind you that almost all of the highest-ranking people have also been fired or have left voluntarily, including the highest privacy and security managers ) and the confusion surrounding Twitter Blue.

The senators recall in the letter that since 2011 Twitter has signed an agreement with the FTC whereby the platform must evaluate potential privacy issues for each new feature and send reports to the agency at regular intervals. The deadline for sending the next reports is near, and basically it seems that there is no one left to fill them in – indeed a deadline seems to have already passed, since one of the clauses says that a report must be sent, and be signed by responsible predetermined, within 14 days of any change in control of the company. Already in recent days, he had caused much discussion as a lawyer employee of Twitter itself observed in the internal Slack chat that he said he was confident the FTC would enforce it fines running into the billions of dollars to the company for non-compliance with the agreements.