Elon Musk has taken Twitter private and has wasted no time in making his mark on the company, whatever the consequences. His Friday cull of half of Twitter’s staff has been well reported but we thought this article did a good job of telling the inside story of how Twitter employees navigated the end of last week.
Perhaps more interesting is what happens this week and beyond. Because it sounds like the layoff process and what happens next were poorly communicated to those employees that kept their jobs. This article writes of project groups sending messages “Can everybody left please raise their hand” and a Twitter-wide Google Doc that has been created to build a list of employees still at the company. Employees were reportedly sending Slack messages to all employees, and if they replied, they would get added to the Google Doc.
Not what you want to see from a $44 billion company.
There is an open question about whether these layoffs will lead to a Twitter outage. According to this article, employees that remained at the company were torn on the risk. And the challenges for Elon do not stop there. There is a growing advertiser boycott, with organisations from Pfizer to the NAACP all pulling advertising spend.
If you thought (or hoped) the Elon Musk-Twitter story would end with his purchase of the company, think again. It feels like this story is just getting started. For Elon and his remaining employees, the hope is this story doesn’t end at Chapter 11.
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