| To recap this (briefly), in the month or so since Twitter was forced to acquire Twitter after impulsively agreeing to acquire it, Elon has: 1. Fired all the contractors (~40% of staff) 2. Laid off fairly arbitrarily laid off half of the FTEs; 3. Tried to hire back some of those laid off as it became apparent many of these people were necessary; 4. Tried to help cover the $1 billion/year interest payments for purchasing Twitter (a business already losing moneY) introduced Twitter Blue, a much-ridiculed and poorly-communicated feature for essentially selling verified statu at $8/month; 5. Fired employees who (publicly and privately) criticized these moves; 6. At 2:30am sent out an email that work from home was cancelled as of that day. In 2020, Twitter had previously said WFH was indefinite and had hired employees on a permanent WFH basis. This was later clarified to only apply to those who could reasonably come into the office (without defining what's "reasonable") and failure to do so would be taken as resignation; 7. This was partially rescinded on a case-by-case basis. Apparently managers would be held responsible. If a manager said someone was indidpensable and they weren't or was performing well and they weren't, the manager oculd be fired; 8. Told remaining employees that they would be expected to work longer and harder for the same (or less) pay and they were welcome to leave if they didn't agree to it; 9. Managers would be expected to have 20+ reports and spend 20% or more of their time coding; 10. This week employees were asked to agree to these conditions or accept 3 months pay as severance. Anecodtally somewhere between 50 and 80% of employees have chosen to accept the severance. 11. This has caused panic and frantic attempts to retain key senior technical staff. It is believed many of whom have refused; 12. Fearing some form of retaliation, the offices were today closed. Badges have been disabled and offices locked. Apparently this was so indiscriminate that a bunch of employees got trapped in the parking garage in Sunnyvale because their badges were disabled and the team responsible for activating them had been fired or had quit. Elon truly is speedrunning this and has been the best evidence thus far that the meritocracy is a lie (which it is). |