First Week of Elon Musk’s Twitter Was Chaos and Confusion for Employees

Author: Editors Desk Source: WSJ:

November 6, 2022 at 05:22

Twitter staffers dealt with turmoil at the company’s San Francisco headquarters with a mixture of anguish and jokes, in internal messages and public posts. CARLOS BARRIA/REUTERS

As Mr. Musk opined and joked on the platform about possible product changes, the mood inside the company was anxious and grim

Inside Twitter Inc. in the week after Elon Musk took it over, almost no one seemed to know for sure what was going on.

As Mr. Musk opined and joked on the platform about possible product changes, the mood among many inside the company was anxious and grim, according to interviews with employees. The one thing that seemed certain to employees was that many of them would soon lose their jobs, they said.

Late Thursday, the ax started falling, as the company hacked away large parts of the workforce of roughly 7,500 people, aiming to reduce costs and reshape Twitter to align with Mr. Musk’s vision. Befitting a platform built for real-time reaction, staffers tweeted as they lost access to company Slack and email accounts, not knowing for sure if that meant they were fired until official termination notices were sent on Friday morning.

The mass layoffs were the culmination of a dizzying week under Mr. Musk’s leadership, in which employees tried to adjust to his frenetic working style as their own futures at the company were in doubt. In internal messages and public posts, workers confronted the chaos with a mixture of anguish and wry jokes.

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