The Washington Post published a fascinating account of what’s happening inside Twitter, the company with 7,500 employees. The workers have heard nothing since the takeover. No word from the new boss. At one time, he said he would fire 75% of the workforce, then changed it to 50%. He is swiftly destroying whatever collegiality and trust existed among colleagues. A large number will soon have their computers locked and told to leave the building at once with their personal possessions.
With rumors of impending layoffs by new owner Elon Musk swirling inside Twitter on Wednesday, an employee noticed that the Google Calendar of one of their new bosses was publicly viewable. On it was an entry at 5 p.m. that day titled “RIF Review” — an acronym for Reduction in Force, or layoffs.
Another Twitter employee was able to view a group on Slack, the workplace chat tool, in which company administrators appeared to be finalizing the precise number of workers to be laid off, and how much they’d receive in severance.
By day’s end, word had spread across the company that layoffs — half the staff — would probably come Friday, and that Musk would require Twitter’s remaining employees to return to the office full-time. But that word didn’t come from Musk, or anyone on his leadership team. It came via Blind, the anonymous workplace gossip site that some Twitter employees say has become their best, and often only, source of information about what’s going on inside the company in the chaotic, surreal week since Musk acquired it for $44 billion.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and the company’s leadership has not confirmed the layoff plans.
Since Musk closed the deal on Oct. 27, employees say, they have not received a single official communication from anyone in a leadership position at the company. They have not been told that Musk completed the purchase, that their CEO and top executives were summarily fired, or that Musk dissolved the board and installed himself as chief executive.
Instead, they have read about Musk’s dramatic plans to overhaul the company via media reports, Musk’s tweets, back-channel private chats and Blind. Twitter’s formerly open corporate culture, centered on all-staff meetings and freewheeling Slack channels where employees and managers shared ideas, plans and jokes, has turned suspicious and secretive, several Twitter employees told The Wasington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution.
“It’s like Twitter’s culture has been completely turned inside out overnight,” one employee said. “Mass trauma event over here.”
The last official communication to the Twitter staff came the day before Musk took over, when Twitter’s head of people, Leslie Berland, sent a cheery email with the subject line “Elon office visit.”
“If you’re in SF and see him around, say hi!” Berland wrote. “For everyone else, this is just the beginning of many meetings and conversations with Elon, and you’ll all hear directly from him on Friday.”
But workers did not hear directly from Musk on Friday, when his planned introduction to the company was quietly canceled, or anytime since. The company’s regular all-hands meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, disappeared from everyone’s calendars on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Berland left the company, according to people familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Berland’s apparent departure, along with those of several other executives in recent days, was not announced either internally or externally, leaving employees to speculate on Blind about which of their bosses have quit or been fired.
Since Friday, employees have posted memes and comments on the company Slack noting each day that has passed without word from management. One person posted an image of a skeleton with a caption that read, “me waiting on updates from leadership,” according to documents obtained by The Post.
In lieu of communicating with employees, Musk and his new deputy Jason Calacanis, who appeared in a company directory over the weekend, have been brainstorming, focus-grouping and announcing new products and policies in public, via their personal Twitter accounts.Twitter’s employees have quickly learned to follow their new leaders’ Twitter feedsfor updates essential to their work.
TWEXIT ⁑ Twitter ➱ Mastodon
T-witz
T-witz
T-witz was a giant
The apex of his kind
Musk-ox made him pliant
And deaf and dumb and blind
https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2022/11/04/sundial-puzzle/
And here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I’d known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall
Joan Baez, physicist (Diamonds and Rust)
But seriously, I love that song, even if she got the physics wrong and probably embarrassed her father and cousin. Or maybe she did it on purpose?
Twitter after Musk brings back Trump
MasterDon
Aka Master Bate
Master Bates
As in Norman Bates (from Psycho)
https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry
Love the name — and the drawing!
The Mathstodon
Science says the mastodon
Is now extinct, is really gone
But now, a man of maths, a Jon
Has brought it back as Mathstodon
Several months ago a software engineer at Twitter publicly posted a comment about how little work he and his peers do every day. I’m going from memory here, but he said they do actual work on average 2-3, or 3-4, hours per day. I asked a younger relative who is a software engineer about that comment. He said that such a minimal workload is quite common – but not universal – in high tech. No wonder Twitter employees had the time to obsess over politics rather than doing real work at their jobs. I suspect a 50% staff reduction with no decrease in total productive work is very doable. Existing Twitter emploeyes don’t want their cushy arrangements ended and they don’t want dissenting opinions to appear on Twitter.
Twitter has long been one of the few places you can find dissenting opinions, unlike mainstream media, either liberal or conservative. It’s one of the few places you are likely to actually see viewpoints you may not agree with and have dialogue with people you may not agree with (granted, not always civil dialogue). So far I haven’t seen any significant changes beyond some general downward trends the app was already on in terms of cooperation with government stifling of dissenting opinions. Granted, it’s only been a week, but for now Twitter remains the best option for social media, unless right-wing sites like Rumble, Telegram or Truth Social are your thing. Fakebook is a joke as they long ago completely capitulated to the government censors.
2-3 hours per day is quite common in high tech??
Man, I missed the boat.
When I was working as a programmer* in that industry 20+ years ago, 12 -14 hour days, often seven days a week were quite common.
And I pulled more all nighters to meet deadlines imposed by sales department nitwits than I could even count.
But from what I know of Twitter, I don’t doubt the light work load. From a technical standpoint, there is really not much to the platform and I can’t imagine that there would be all that much to do to maintain it and make minor mods from time to time. But then I’ve never been much impressed with Twitter* so maybe I’m biased.
I think it’s for T-witz.
And in my opinion, people are getting waaay more upset about what Musk may or may not be doing than is warranted. Twitter is like a black hole for time and effort. Everything goes in and nothing comes out.
The Twit-hole
Twitter is a Twit-hole
A social nutwork fling
A time and effort black hole
That sucks up every thing
For someone like Musk, who at this point is acting like a bored genius who needs another distraction, Twitter is merely a plaything. His recent treatment of the attempted Paul/Nancy Pelosi assassination (call it what it is) shows how much he is willing to push the buttons for his own twisted amusement. Best thing to do for the rest of us (full disclosure, I hardly ever use Twitter) is to show him a lesson and jump ship. That the strength of many can overcome the dominance of one. If he wants to tweet into the remaining cesspool of lies and hate, so be it. The rest of us don’t need to come to the party.
well said
That’s a good idea, but many people just can’t ignore Twitter.
When Trump was regularly Tweeting, millions of people reacted to his every tweet, even though his tweets were all just meaningless gibberish.
If they had simply ignored his tweets, he would not have had anywhere near the influence that he did.
But they found them impossible to ignore .
Which means they spent untold hours (days? Weeks?) obsessing about total kaka.
It was insane.
I have no sympathy for anyone involved in this tragedy. I could care less that the people who had a great part in getting us into this mess are losing their cushy jobs. They’ll survive whether we do or not. Quite well. Musk is only going to make a miserable product more toxic and we all get to deal with the consequences. They won’t.
This concerns me a lot more than Elon Musk does: https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Does it concern you more than Russia RepubliQan traitors handing the Ukraine to Putin?
Not at all, but that’s off topic and I’ll get scolded for saying more.
Hopefully he’ll just shut it down entirely. Twitter is a cancer.
I suspect that most of Twitters employees are currently applying for jobs in other tech companies spread throughout the Bay Area. Since the Bay Area has BART, they won’t even have to drive to work as long as they find a job inside the BART area.
It appears that Musk is going to turn Twitter into a shadow of itself or sink it. If Musk succeeds, I hope he buys Facebook next and sinks it, too.
Facebook and then TikTok.
I tell ya, it gets dumber with each step.
It’s a reflection of the public intelligence.
The Social Media Mirror
Twitter is for birds
Who Twitter here and there
The end result is turds
Deposited in hair
I hope they never get rid of YouTube! I have learned how to repair my lawn mower and rethread the weed whacker when my husband wasn’t available. I’ve learned how to do some maintenance/repairs on my old van. I sew and craft and the tutorials and links are great.
I agree.
YouTube is great.
You can learn pretty much anything you desire on YouTube.
The only thing about YouTube is that you have to be careful.
Some of the people who post stuff have no clue what they are doing.
I once followed a YouTube lesson on soldering a water pipe in my house and when i turned on the water, it sprayed everywhere!
Luckily it was in the basement.
But the YouTube lesson was completely wrong, which I learned by viewing several other people teaching the same thing (correctly, as it were).
Always watch several different people before trying something new was the lesson I learned from that.
Having said that, there also amazingly knowledgeable and competent people posting on YouTube.
They he same can be said for getting information from any medium.
Always consult multiple sources and take a sort of average.
I actually think that people need to take far more personal responsibility for what they get off the internet.
They shouldn’t expect YouTube and other media to decide what is “correct” for them.
If people believe bullshit found on YouTube and other platforms, it’s their own fault.
It was my own fault when I followed the incorrect method for soldering.
Facebook is already sinking and so are Instagram and whatsApp. The employees there are nervous. It seems the Cyborg is all wrapped up in Meta/virtual reality and the R&D of $1500 heavy glasses so that people can play in an alternate reality by themselves. He’s ignoring his other products that used to make a lot of $$$$ (ad revenue). Stocks for FB are way down. All fads eventually come to an end.
I don’t use any social media but I don’t like Musk. I like Bernie’s thought that nobody should be a billionaire. Wealthy people think they are smarter than everyone else and have no problem stomping over everyone who isn’t as wealthy.
………………………………………………….
Twitter may have lost more than a million users since Elon Musk took over
November 3, 2022
In the days after Elon Musk’s October 27 purchase of Twitter was confirmed by his tweet saying “the bird is freed,” many Twitter users have threatened to leave, unhappy about the new ownership.
People always threaten to leave Twitter and then often fail to follow through—but new data suggests that a significant number of users really are abandoning the platform this time.
The firm Bot Sentinel, which tracks inauthentic behavior on Twitter by analyzing more than 3.1 million accounts and their activity daily, believes that around 877,000 accounts were deactivated and a further 497,000 were suspended between October 27 and November 1. That’s more than double the usual number.
“We have observed an uptick in people deactivating their accounts and also Twitter suspending accounts,” says Christopher Bouzy, Bot Sentinel’s founder.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/03/1062752/twitter-may-have-lost-more-than-a-million-users-since-elon-musk-took-over/
If Trump goes back to Twitter, they will easily get back a multiple of the number lost — and not only in Trump fans. Lots of liberals just can’t ignore Trump. The phenomenon is basically the “I can’t go to bed . There’s someone wrong on the internet” XCD joke with a twist:” I can’t go to bed. There’s someone wrong and obnoxious on Twitter”
Someone is Obnoxious on Twitrer
I simply can’t ignore
A man that I deplore
Whose tweets are bound to roil
And bring my blood to boil
TWEXIT —
https://fedi.tips/