Twitter prepares for layoffs under Elon Musk

Elon Musk has been in the news since Thursday afternoon. His $44 billion acquisition Twitter was completed and he fired four top Twitter executives.The company’s employees waited to hear from their new leaders about what might happen next. What’s changing, and what’s staying the same? Who and when will be laid off?

As of press time, though, no such message has been delivered to the company’s 7,500 or so employees. Musk? According to reports, they are planning to make cuts before Tuesday, when many employees will receive new stock grantsIt seems that any such decisions could come down to the wire.

According to eight employees who spoke with us today and this weekend, the process was frightening and disorienting. Workers have been searching for clues on Slack, gathering information in Discords and sharing the latest rumors in the absence of official communication.

In Slack, one employee shared a note they’d received from Leslie Berland, Twitter’s chief marketing officer. “It’s very destabilizing I know and the press swirl is making everything worse,” Berland wrote. “Planning is happening and is moving as quickly as possible but it’s not complete. Two things I wanted to make sure you all saw is that Elon has debunked that he was ever planning a 75% layoff and stated it’s false that he is or was trying to rush a layoff before a Nov. 1 vest. Neither of those things are true.”

The Washington PostAccording to reports, About a quarter of staff would be laid offThis has a significant impact on sales, product, engineering, legal and trust and safety teams.

The turmoil has divided the company into roughly two camps: those waiting nervously to see whether they still have a job after those cuts land, and those who are frantically working to ship new features under a threat of being fired if they don’t.

The instruction given Friday afternoon on Friday was one of the things that people were most nervous about. Engineers print the code for the 30-60th day they have writtenAs PlatformerMusk was the first to report. It was part of a set of measures Musk and his team have undertaken in an effort to identify Twitter’s highest and lowest performing employees as a precursor to layoffs.

Musk brought in more 50 employees from Tesla to Twitter to assist with the transition. CNBC reported. One employee we spoke to stated that they were called late at night by a Tesla engineer. He wanted to know about their team, and what engineers are the most highly respected.

Frustration over the lack of information has spilled into the company’s Slack channels. This was written by one employee:

since no leadershippy type appears willing or interested in filling the void: if you’re feeling bleak and dismayed right now, just want you to know you’re not alone. This is just plain stupid.

We would like to acknowledge those who have been granted visas or are in relationships with people with precarious jobs.

We wish everyone a safe and smooth journey to job stability, security, and safety wherever they land.

Another employee shared contact information with us in Slack to help them if they lose their communications suddenly.

“It’s absolutely Hunger Games, but everyone in the game is trying to help each other,” the employee said.

Musk has ordered engineers to work on two major projects within days or weeks. One is Twitter Blue changes This would mean that users would need to pay for their verification badges to be retained.Possible As high as $20 per month. The second, which AxiosFirst reported todayWe can confirm that there is a plan for Vine to be revived as an independent product or as part of the core Twitter app. Our colleague at The VergeAlex Heath reported that if there are any changes to Blue, all features must be shipped by November 7th. Otherwise, the team will be terminated.

The Vine project has generated moderate enthusiasm so far, we’re told. After Musk approved the project on Sunday night, more than a dozen engineers offered their services to the cause.

Other employees are being encouraged to go build something — anything — and show it off to Musk. A Slack message revealed that an engineering director encouraged his staff to develop new products and features, and to share them with their new CEO. “At best: you will get some feedback. You may be asked to ship it asap,” the director wrote. “At worst, you will be asked to stop and work on something else. Even in this case, at least you worked on something you love.”

“Please don’t wait for an opportunity to be handed to you,” the director added.

Similarly, on Monday, Behnam Rezaei, senior director of software engineering at Twitter, sent a note to his team acknowledging “big changes” were coming. “I think most important change is going to be cultural change,” he said, according to a copy of the email obtained by Platformer. “Some good, some bad.”

Rezaei attempted to rally the troops by telling engineers to concentrate on shipping code as soon as possible.

If you are wondering what to do now, do some good engineering work. Code. Fix bugs and keep the site running. This is the criteria for Twitter. It’s not working on a fancy project for Elon. The good culture change is, it’s shipping and delivering. Rotate more on shipping and coding, and less on strategy and documentation. If you want to be in a “special” group this week, code and ship 5x as [much as] before. Elon does not think building what Elon is looking for is the right criteria. The criteria is to be impactful, change product, and help our users. So you don’t need commands from me. All of you are software engineers. You’re all software engineers. Do it. You are the one in charge.

Not everyone is upset about the heightened urgency at the company, we’re told. Twitter has long suffered from a slow pace of product development; some employees we’ve spoken to have found Musk’s breakneck approach to product development at least somewhat refreshing.

But Musk’s attention can be unnerving, too. We spoke to one employee who said that they were mixed about working on a project Musk is known for being focused on like Vine.

“Under normal times I would be excited to work on this,” they said. “But this feels like asking for the eye of Sauron to gaze upon you.”