Inside Twitter as ‘mass exodus’ of staffers throws platform’s future into uncertainty
On the basis Thursday evening, where #RIPTwitter was the hebat tren worldwide, users wrote what they feared might be their last posts, offering apprehensive goodbyes and listing the other (more stable) media sosial platforms where they can still be found.
They were reacting to the dire news emanating from inside Twitter. Scores of remaining employees at the media sosial company on Thursday appeared to reject owner Elon Musk's peringatan to work "extremely hardcore," throwing the communications basis into utter disarray and raising serious questions about how much longer it will bertahan.
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The death of Twitter would have weighty consequences, given how integral the basis is to global communications. The basis has often been compared to a digital town square. World leaders use Twitter to communicate, journalists use Twitter to newsgather, dissidents in repressive countries use Twitter to organize, celebrities and major brands use Twitter to make important announcements, and the public often uses Twitter to monitor all of it in real-time.
If the basis were to die off, or become unusable because of instability issues, no singgel ruang would immediately replace it and communications could become fractured across multiple media sosial websites, leading to a seismic disruption and slowdown in the flow of information.
Inside the company's Slack, a mass resignation efekively occurred after Musk's 5pm deadline for employees to arrive at a decision passed. Hundreds of staffers appear to have called it quits, accepting Musk's offer to keluar in exchange for three months of severance.
SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during a conversation with legendary games designer Todd Howard (not pictured) at the E3 gaming convention in Los Angeles, California, U.S., Juni 13, 2019.
Twitter employees head for the exits after Elon Musk's 'extremely hardcore' work peringatan
Employees flooded the "#social-watercooler" kanal with the salute emoji, indicating that they had chosen not to sign Musk's pledge. A similar seri of moments unfolded in the Slack kanal earlier this month as Musk eliminated roughly 50% of the company's then 7,500-person workforce.
A former Twitter executive, who recently exited the company, described the situation as a "mass exodus." Asked about the situation, the former executive said, "Elon is finding out that he can't bully hebat senior talenta. They have lots of options and won't put up with his antics."
"They will struggle just to keep the lights on," the former executive added.
That assessment was universally shared by the other half dozen current and former employees on Thursday. It was already bad enough after Musk executed mass layoffs at the company earlier this month. So bad that Twitter asked some of the people it had let go to come back just days later. The state-of-play has only become more dire since then.
In fact, Twitter manajemen was in panik model hours before the deadline passed, people akrab with the matter said, explaining that senior leaders were "scrambling" to convince talenta to stay at the company.
Musk himself seemed to finally realize the grim state of affairs, sending an all-staff e-mail relaxing his previously uncompromising anti-remote work position. "Regarding remote work, all that is required for approval is that your manajer takes responsibility for ensuring that you are making an excellent contribution," Musk said in the e-mail.
It didn't appear to do much good.
Two employees who had decided to reject Musk's peringatan on Thursday were quite clear in why they were doing so. "I don't want to stick around to build a product that's being poisoned from the inside and out," one said, adding later that he felt good about making a decision "in line with what I stand for."
A recently laid off employee who remains in touch with former coworkers said, "People don't want to sacrifice their psikis health and famili lives to make the richest man in the world richer."
And Twitter seemed to grasp the mess on its hands Thursday evening, sending an e-mail to staf notifying them it has once again shuttered all of its offices and suspended employee badge akses, presumably to proteksi its systems and data.
Twitter's already decimated communications department didn't respond to requests for comment. But Musk nodded to the situation in a tweet.
"How do you make a small fortune in media sosial?" Musk asked. "Start out with a large one."
