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Twitter exodus begins after Musk 'hardcore' ultimatum

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He's already backing off since more people are choosing to leave than he anticipated.

-1 ( +7 / -8 )

twitter again...who really cares?

6 ( +15 / -9 )

Seems like you do your you wouldn't be here, would you?

2 ( +11 / -9 )

I like the part about how he is now begging people to come back and they are like "nah man. I'm good."

5 ( +14 / -9 )

How much severance is offered in Japan if they consider 3 months unusual?

Most US-based companies pay up to 26 weeks or more.

-6 ( +1 / -7 )

Now facing an exodus of employees that said "Got it. Bu-bye" Mjstk has locked the doors and locked out access to employees since basically everyone is quitting. ROFL.

3 ( +8 / -5 )

Twitter equals Band-on-the-Run.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Send a return email to musk indicating he must increase their salary three fold to cover the hardcore expectations. Only giving hardcore salary gets hardcore employees..He has until 5pm to reply in the affirmative or his email expecting hardcore work is considered null and void.

Musk has turned into a hardcore douche. Get himself into trouble and expect employees to sacrifice to bail him out. Like he is not one of the worlds richest men. So sad.

7 ( +12 / -5 )

Who does he think he is ? He thinks that being rich means that you can treat other people like s... !

4 ( +10 / -6 )

According to published reports, there are literally zero engineers monitoring certain critical systems. "These systems will coast along until something goes wrong then they will stop. Then Twitter will stop."

Wow.

10 ( +13 / -3 )

Per the Washington Post: (Emphasis added is my own)

Among those who were said to have declined to sign the pledge was half the trust and safety policy team, including a majority of those who work on spotting misinformation, spam, fake accounts and impersonation, according to one employee familiar with the team.

Meanwhile, several critical engineering teams were reported to have been hollowed out. The team that runs the service Gizmoduck, which powers and stores all information in user profiles across the site, was entirely gone, according to a recent department head who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to detail the departures.

12 ( +13 / -1 )

Going onto Twitter to watch the downfall of Twitter is quite the wild ride!

4 ( +6 / -2 )

This clown, in addition to ruining twitter, is going to be as hated in the world as Putin is..

-4 ( +3 / -7 )

Our new overlords will look a little more like Musk. He's got his cult following though. They will be the brownshirts he cares nothing for in the end. His dream is to replace them all by machines.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

Bungle

I find Musk absolutely fascinating...

As do I, in the same way behavioral scientists find sociopaths fascinating.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Part of the problem I think is that there is a huge difference between Twitter on the one hand and Space X and Tesla on the other.

With SpaceX and Tesla this type of hardline approach - work like crazy or get out - could work on talented engineers because there is a pay off for them: they get to work in companies that are technology leaders in their field and have exciting mission statements that can actually motivate people ("Sending rockets to space", "revolutionizing the automobile", etc).

With Twitter though those upside pay offs don't exist as an incentive for employees to work like slaves. Its not the leading company in the social media field by a long shot, and its mission statement under him amounts to little more than "Anything goes because we gotta own the libs" or something like that, which isn't the sort of stuff that generally motivates software engineers.

As a Twitter user I'm kind of torn. On the one hand its sad to see a useful social media site go under. On the other hand its really super duper awesome to see a social media site go under due to the hubris of its insane billionaire owner who is going to lose tens of billions of dollars in a very public comeuppance.

5 ( +7 / -2 )

I've never been a Twitter fan, but I can't blame Musk for wanting to get rid of the dead wood. If only they would do that in the Japanese government!

Wait! If they did that, there wouldn't be anyone left!

-1 ( +7 / -8 )

Moonraker

Our new overlords will look a little more like Musk. He's got his cult following though. They will be the brownshirts he cares nothing for in the end. His dream is to replace them all by machines.

It seems like he's emulating a certain fluorescent-orange-colored reality TV host who also has a knack for failing at business.

6 ( +9 / -3 )

Slash and burn isn't the way forward.

Review the organization first. Which are the good teams and which are not working? What improvements can be made and what dead parts need cutting?

8 ( +8 / -0 )

Thousand of people in that industry are being laid off, while Elon is offering opportunity to work hard for a couple of years and retire by the age of 30.

-5 ( +3 / -8 )

The liberal universities are not preparing students for the real world by coddling students and giving them their safe spaces. There are no safe spaces in the real world and no one is going to care if they hurt your feelings! These liberal universities are not doing their students any favors by coddling them. In the real world, most every company conducts yearly performance reviews, and if you’re not meeting expectations, you’ll soon be looking for another job! Elon's message is clear. The silver spoon fed elitist twitter employees should pack it up and find work elsewhere. Elon will find hardworking employees who will contribute to it's growth. I only hope that Elon pays back (higher salaries, profit sharing, bonuses, OT?) for the employees who stay on.

-4 ( +7 / -11 )

Who does he think he is ? He thinks that being rich means that you can treat other people like s... !

Though nobody has mentioned it anywhere, I can pretty much guarantee that whoever shows up on Monday morning for work will be getting a huge raise and/or some other reward.

Musk is smart, and he values loyalty.

-10 ( +3 / -13 )

I've never been a Twitter fan, but I can't blame Musk for wanting to get rid of the dead wood. If only they would do that in the Japanese government!

Ah yes, dead wood like the people who work with advertisers on Twitter. What could go wrong with that?

The liberal universities are not preparing students for the real world by coddling students and giving them their safe spaces. There are no safe spaces in the real world and no one is going to care if they hurt your feelings!

None of this has anything to do with Twitter. Silly culture warrior gobbledygook.

Elon's message is clear. The silver spoon fed elitist twitter employees should pack it up and find work elsewhere.

lol Isn't Elon Musk a silver spoon fed elitist? He was born into wealth.

All in all, Musk's Twitter Bankruptcy speed run is quickly disproving the notion of correlation between intellect and wealth.

9 ( +10 / -1 )

“We’re hearing this is because Elon Musk and his team are terrified employees are going to sabotage the company. Also, they’re still trying to figure out which Twitter workers they need to cut access for,” she wrote.

LOL, Elon doesn't need any help from the employees. He is doing a bang-up job of sabotaging the company all by himself.

Followed by:

“Offices will reopen on November 21st. In the meantime: “Please continue to comply with company policy by refraining from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere.”

So the beacon of free speech will fire you if you disagree with him on a company platform (internal) or talk to the press. Got it. I guess it's a case of "free speech for me, not for thee."

6 ( +8 / -2 )

"This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade," he added.

This stricture should apply to the capital-rich oligarchs in business and politics as well as citizens and employees.

Usually the opposite is true and all that matters is having capital.

Musk is playing this ridiculous tack right champion of free speech ruse and turning off many, when all those associated know the goal is turning Twitter into a financial/social/messaging Chinese style super app.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

My Twitter feed right now is wall to wall people saying goodbye to Twitter. Not because they are quitting, but because they anticipate its going to completely collapse in the coming hours or days.

3 ( +6 / -3 )

I might have to log back in to my Twitter account, which I haven't in years, to watch the catastrophe unfold.

Musk might turn out to be the poster boy for disaster mismanagement.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

And with the FTC likely to start investigating and making demands of Musk, which he does NOT like, Twitter is done. How much time do you predict it has left? A month? Two? It's a shame Musk puts personal pride, arrogance, and jokes at the expense of thousands of people's livelihoods. I don't think he actually cares if it goes bust or not.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

I don't think anyone could have possibly crash and burn twitter to the ground as fast as he did. I guess if you can afford to lose 40 bill, you might as well lose another 4 in style.

5 ( +7 / -2 )

Twitter ‘closes offices’ after Elon Musk’s loyalty oath sparks wave of resignations

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/17/elon-musk-twitter-closes-offices-loyalty-oath-resignations

Elon The Emperor's New Clothes Musk, I find the whole sorry saga bewildering.

Is Musk the richest ot rashest fool in the world?

5 ( +6 / -1 )

would hate to be in a HR/Sales/Accounts role these days. Easy rides are over for you ;)

1 ( +4 / -3 )

Though nobody has mentioned it anywhere, I can pretty much guarantee that whoever shows up on Monday morning for work will be getting a huge raise and/or some other reward.

Most likely the "reward" is the workload of all the people that quit.

One good thing is that the current situation is that Twitter is leaving a vacuum that someone smart will fill with a service that offer what twitter did, hopefully in a more organized way, and lots of qualified professionals are now free to join this new service if they want. What else would anybody want? a need to fulfill and their pick of people with the experience and capacity to do the work.

2 ( +5 / -3 )

He got locked out of the building after disabling everyone's security passes. Had to get in touch with the head of Security who'd he just fired, in order to fix the problem... it's a bit farcical.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

It seems like he's emulating a certain fluorescent-orange-colored reality TV host who also has a knack for failing at business.

Of course, they are all the same. Greed and riches is their antidote for existential angst. They have mostly convinced us of that too. And by venerating them we give them validation, but the validation they really need is from those like them. We are mostly irrelevant. We may love them but they would not give us a second glance.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

hahaha couple of years ago these millenials were inspired by Elon and his success. Now he is showing them the real world, they hate him.

-1 ( +4 / -5 )

 Now he is showing them the real world, they hate him.

I think they are the ones showing him the real world.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

Only time will tell whether this was a good decision or not. Elon is an interesting person with some big visions. I wouldn't be surprised to see twitter takeover from youtube as THE content platform in the coming years.

In the meantime just ignore the news rags trying to discredit him. Twitter is also putting their future at risk, so it all makes sense.

-5 ( +1 / -6 )

My Twitter feed right now is wall to wall people saying goodbye to Twitter.

The irony

0 ( +0 / -0 )

His very public Twitter dumpster fire has many investors in his other ventures thinking twice about his business acumen. Tesla stock is worth less than half of what it was a year ago, and experts are predicting another 25% drop.

While I feel a little bad for some of stockholders (but only a little), it's comforting to know that a huge part of his wealth, the value of his Tesla stock, is shrinking rapidly (and "bigly").

3 ( +3 / -0 )

I find it hard to believe that this is legal. Anyways, he will get what he deserves.

For a public company, it isn't. For a privately owned company, there are many things the owner can do.

There are labor laws when the number of employees impacted by a decision is over a certain size. My company is less than 50 employees, so we don't have to worry. The employees are friends and sometimes family.

It is hard to run any company of an size when you treat the employees like crap. The company is the employees. It isn't the servers which will likely break and tweeting will stop soon, worldwide. Soon could be this week or next month, depends on how many of the devops team stays and how mature their code is for addressing issues without human intervention.

I've never been laid off. Always quit with plenty of notice. Sometimes, my contract ended (I wasn't an employee) and I refused to accept an offer to have the contract extended or to become an employee. If you choose to leave, severance isn't usually paid.

I have survived multiple layoff rounds at multiple companies. At one, the client (prime contractor) cut our head count 50% - they also took a 50% headcount cut, so it wasn't malicious, just the way govt contracts work sometimes. Seeing 50% of my team leave wasn't fun. Usually, I've left because there wasn't any more to learn in the position I had there or the other offer was for much higher pay and new challenges.

I'm fairly certain people leaving twitter will have all sorts of options, from commercial options. Just hope they aren't picked up by TikTok. Facebook is cutting their workforce too, it was announced. They may need to move from California which can be stressful for people from there. They don't realize that other parts of the US have some amazing things too. OTOH, most employees should have had their stock and options bought when the company was taken private, so they should have 1-20 yrs of living expense cash handy. They just need to decide what to do with it. To bad they are in a very high taxation state.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

There is a Harvard Business Review case (likely many of them on subjects from Hostile M&A to HR to Organizational Culture to basic Strategy MGT) just waiting to be written on this freak show.

Working title: "A fool and his money"

As stated by another poster, if I were on the BOD of one of his other publicly listed corporations (And no amount of money would make me want that punishment), I would have real questions about how much of his time, band width and sanity Twitter is taking up as well as real questions about his ability to... well.... manage.

The man may be a visionary, but the basic management thing.... That is kind of a price of entry item when one is the CEO of a publicly traded company who's BOD have a feduciary responsibility to the shareholders (who are not ALL named Elon).

After this feces-fest, I would not at all be surprised to see him "hand over" the day to day operational reigns to a lesser mortal (who can actually make things run), and to "transition" to a "senior advisor" role (where his ability to muck things up and destroy shareholder value is much reduced).

5 ( +5 / -0 )

For a public company, it isn't. For a privately owned company, there are many things the owner can do.

I'm very curious about the wave of litigation the Twitter collapse is going to set off.

Technically its not a public company since its shares aren't traded on an exchange, but Musk isn't the sole shareholder, he had to bring some minority shareholders (Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, some Saudi prince and Larry Ellison) to finance the purchase. They probably aren't super happy with how quickly he's lost their investment for them and may sue for breaches of his fiduciary duties and other things.

Also, another part of the deal was financed through bank loans (including some Japanese banks like MUFJ). This was a partially leveraged takeover, which means the counterparty on those loans was Twitter itself rather than Musk personally. I'm not sure how if they secured their loans against Musk, but if Twitter goes bankrupt and they aren't able to get their money back, they'll also probably want a crack at him.

I suspect shareholders in Tesla and Space X probably are too. He is engaged in blatant tunnelling of assets from them to support Twitter (sending Tesla engineers to Twitter, getting Space X to buy up ads on Twitter), which is not above board. And he's already being sued for his compensation package at Tesla, the way this has wiped out the value of investments there will also probably fuel a lot of lawsuits.

And this is just the corporate law stuff, he also faces a ton of labor law litigation, enforcement actions related to privacy law in the EU, etc.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Only Ligma Johnson can save us, he says!

-4 ( +0 / -4 )

Poor little babies lost their woke one sided safe space.

Twitter usage at an all time high. all the amazing you can now actually talk about.

I enjoy seeing people post they are leaving Twitter/goodbye!

but then 95% of them have posts more recent than that one. All libs with Ukraine flags in the bio, uncoincidentally.

-7 ( +2 / -9 )

Poor little babies lost their woke one sided safe space.

Always amusing to see people with fantasy jobs make fun of people with real skills which can easily get them real jobs.

Musk was on Twitter saying usage is at all time high, but knowing that a large number of engineers who handled performance monitoring are gone it's just another Musk lie trying to save face.

Losing $44 billion just to spite a few people who allowed other people to make fun of Musk is hilarious.

All these engineers will find jobs but Musk will not get back is $44 billion, ROFL!

5 ( +7 / -2 )

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