Twitter Saga: Elon Musk Remains Determined on Twitter 2.0 as Employees Jump Ship

Twitter: When Elon Musk took over Twitter, there was cautious excitement. The maverick billionaire can be as disruptive as he is an inspiration. Spontaneous decision-making was already part of his public identity at Tesla and SpaceX.

But Musk, the head of a social media company with 186 million daily users, had all the makings of a dramatic tale. The drama began even before he took ownership of Twitter on Oct. 28. He had to be sued to make the deal.

Once in charge, Elon Musk began by laying off thousands of employees in central teams and infrastructure. It also banned staff from working remotely. However, things came to a head on November 16 when he issued an ultimatum that may have left Twitter on a precipice.

“To build a game-changing Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore,” Musk wrote in an email to employees on Wednesday.

“That will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only outstanding performance will constitute a passing grade. Musk gave employees until 5 p.m. ET Thursday (Nov. 17) to decide if “you want to be part of the new Twitter.”

He offered three months’ salary to those who did not want to stay. Thousands of people decided to take Musk on this latest offer and quit en masse. According to several media, more than 1,200 critical staff teams have quit.

As the chaos unfolded, many began dancing at Twitter’s grave, a procession largely led by departing employees. The RIPTwitter and GoodbyeTwitter hashtags have quickly become trending.

Some 48 hours after the mass exodus and the accusations of blind theft, Twitter is still standing. For the moment.

Twitter: Everyone Hates Elon

Elon Musk is the richest man in the world. He has an estimated net worth of $181 billion. Earlier this year, it paid $44 billion, or $54.20 per share, more than the shares were trading on the stock exchange at the time, to acquire Twitter.

Musk is renowned for having a very strong work ethic, often leaving the office in the wee hours of the morning. On occasion, he was told that he camped out at the office until he got the job done. It seems the billionaire expects his employees to do the same.

Immediately after taking control of Twitter, Musk fired top executives including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde. He said that all employees of the company must be prepared for a painful path or find employment elsewhere.

His erratic approach has made him the social network’s public enemy number one.

Musk is accused of misanthropy after laying off thousands of workers on a whim. He followed that up with an ultimatum to work more hours, probably for the same pay, or time off. Some say he has “mismanaged various parts of Twitter” since taking over a few weeks ago.

“I didn’t want to work for someone who repeatedly threatened us by email saying that only ‘exceptional tweeps should work here’ when I was already working 60 to 70 hours a week,” he told the BBC an employee of Twitter, has just resigned.

Change the work culture

Work culture is changing dramatically on Twitter. Musk has released tough new rules. He expects every employee to follow the rules.

By banning remote work, Musk effectively reversed Jack Dorsey’s policy from a year earlier, which allowed Twitter staff to work from home indefinitely. He demanded that staff return to the office and that managers physically meet with their teams every week.

Elon Musk has threatened to fire managers who allow employees to work remotely if they are not “exceptional”. He has already fired workers who disagreed with him on Twitter. This is despite Musk preaching free speech in the lead-up to his purchase of the platform.

“When it comes to working remotely, all that’s required for approval is that your manager takes responsibility for making sure you’re making a great contribution,” CNBC reported, citing an internal email from Musk.

“You are also expected to have face-to-face meetings with your colleagues at a reasonable cadence, ideally once a week, but no less than once a month.”

The food wars

Musk’s whip isn’t limited to those who’ve come across it. He argues that his decisions are purely commercial, to cut costs. The billionaire claimed that Twitter uses $400 per person per day for food, which is about $13 million per year for its entire workforce.

Tracey Hawkins, who ran the program, refuted the claims. She tweeted:

“This is a lie. I ran this program until a week ago when I quit because I didn’t want to work for Elon Musk. For breakfast and lunch we spent 20 at $25 per day per person. This allowed employees to work during lunch hours and meetings. Footfall was 20-50% in offices.

Along with facing a constant risk of being fired, Twitter employees had to go through the complication of working on instinctive updates. Recently, a team of developers went viral while burning the midnight oil in the office working on verifying the company-marketed blue tick, an $8 badge.

The update was suspended within 72 hours. Imposters bought identities and posed as people whose opinions were potentially sensitive. After the update, there were “verified” Twitter accounts belonging to George Bush and Tony Blair.

“I miss killing Iraqis,” George Bush’s verified account said. A Tony Blair account, which had been created hours earlier, matched the account. Both have since been removed.

What is Twitter 2.0?

In the Nov. 16 email titled “A Fork in the Road,” Elon Musk gave employees the option to stay with the company and make Twitter 2.0 or not. He told them “we’re going to have to be extremely hardcore”, going forward, detailing what Twitter 2.0 might look like.

Musk said Twitter 2.0 will be “engineering-driven” and will “mean long hours of high-intensity work” for employees.

“Product design and management will always be very important and will fall to me, but those who write great code will make up the majority of our team and have the greatest influence. At its heart, Twitter is a software and server company. , so I think that makes sense,” Musk wrote.

Musk has not publicly commented on Twitter 2.0. However, it institutes a series of changes in the company.

On Oct. 29, Musk revealed he would be setting up a content moderation board with “very diverse viewpoints.” He promised to improve search in Twitter’s app as well as add the ability to attach long text to tweets.

Musk plans to monetize all forms of content for creators. On November 6, he warned that users who impersonate others without specifying it as a “parody” account will be suspended without warning, permanently.

On the same day, he tweeted that Twitter’s mission was to be the world’s most accurate source of news. Musk’s vision was that Twitter would earn the respect of advertisers.

However, since its emergence, some big companies have stopped directing their money to the platform. These include Pfizer, Balenciaga, General Mills, and others.

The Midas touch

It’s not yet been a month with Elon Musk at the helm of Twitter, but jobs have been lost, updates have been affected and rolled back, and advertisers are leaking. He said on Nov. 16 that he plans to spend less time on Twitter and appoint a new executive to lead the company.

But it seems that despite his seemingly unorthodox management style, Musk has the Midas Touch. He sold his first company Zip2, created right after graduating from college, for $307 million in 1999.

That same year, Musk co-founded online bank X.com, which merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal. eBay bought PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion. He then founded SpaceX, The Boring Company, and OpenAI and bought Tesla Motors.

Musk is often described as a micromanager. He is accused of forcing “employees to adopt company jargon and to launch ambitious, risky and costly projects against the recommendations of his advisers, such as the removal of Tesla Autopilot’s frontal radar”.

According to the Wikipedia online dictionary, Elon Musk has always insisted on vertical integration, forcing “his companies to move most production in-house”. This helped reduce the costs of vertically integrating the SpaceX rocket, he said.

His management of Twitter employees is his trademark. In 2018, during the production of the Tesla Model 3, Musk laid off staff in a “spree.” This year he revealed plans to lay off 10% of Tesla staff over concerns about the economy.

Musk has also banned remote work at SpaceX and Tesla and threatened to fire workers who don’t spend 40 hours in the office. Despite its style, Tesla became the sixth company in US history to reach a market capitalization of $1 trillion in October 2021.

Twitter Succession Plan

Three failed rocket launches at SpaceX nearly bankrupted Musk and his companies. But its successful fourth test launch with Falcon 1 in 2008 resulted in a $1.6 billion contract from NASA that helped keep the company afloat.

Musk warned of Twitter’s bankruptcy. It would be interesting to see if, after his cycle of changes, Musk’s leadership style will shine again and save Twitter from the brink. For those who quit, Musk doesn’t seem to care.

“The best people stay, so I’m not super worried,” he said. tweeted November 17. He is moving towards Twitter 2.0.