Employees tried to get in the holiday spirit, but rumours were swirling that Musk planned to cut 75% of the company. The room was decorated with miniature pumpkins and fake spiderwebs. The next day, Alicia and her colleagues gathered in the cafeteria of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters for a long-planned Halloween party. (Sacks disputes this account of the meeting.) His imperiousness in the middle of a session he appeared to be botching was something to behold. Wordlessly, Sacks turned and walked out, leaving the engineers in the room – who had received little engagement from Musk on anything technical – slack-jawed. “David, this meeting is too technical for you,” Musk said, waving his hand to dismiss Sacks. “I understand how computers work.”ĭavid Sacks, a venture capitalist and friend of Musk’s who had advised him on the acquisition, walked into the room. “I was writing C programs in the 90s,” he said dismissively. She launched into a technical explanation of the company’s data-centre efficiency, curious to see if he would follow. If Musk wants to know about money, I’ll tell him. How much does Twitter spend on data centres? Why was everything so expensive?įine, she thought. When he did talk, it was to ask questions about cost. But Musk, who was sitting two seats away from Alicia with his elbows propped on the table, looked sleepy. He was supposed to officially buy the company in two days, and Alicia and a small group of trusted colleagues were tasked with outlining how its core infrastructure worked. On 26 October 2022, an engineer – let’s call her Alicia – sat in a glass conference room in San Francisco trying to explain the details of Twitter’s tech stack to Elon Musk. Musk replaced Twitter’s old culture with one of his own, but it’s unclear, with so few workers and plummeting revenues, whether or not this new version will survive. Dissenting opinion or criticism has led to swift dismissals. If “free speech” was his mandate for Twitter the platform, it has been the opposite for Twitter the workplace. He has purged thousands of employees, implemented ill-advised policies, and angered even some of his most loyal supporters. According to more than two dozen current and former Twitter staffers, Musk has, since buying the company in October 2022, shown a remarkable lack of interest in the people and processes that make his new toy tick.
It’s a cautionary tale about what is lost when you only focus on wealth.” On Slack, a product manager responded to Simon’s enthusiasm for Musk with scepticism: “I take your point, but as a childhood Greek mythology nerd, I feel it is important to point out that the story behind the idea of the Midas touch is not a positive one. Other employees noted the darker motifs of Musk’s career – the disregard for labour relations, the many current lawsuits alleging sexual harassment and racial discrimination at his companies – and found his interest in Twitter ominous. The move thrilled employees like Simon who chafed at Twitter’s laidback atmosphere and reputation for developing new features at a glacial pace. Musk had offered to buy the company for the absurdly inflated price of $44bn. Photograph: Twitter account of Elon Musk/AFP/Getty Images ‘Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!’ How Elon Musk announced his takeover – on Twitter.
0 kommentar(er)
