“Hardcore” culture or departure – Musk mocks fired employees

The somersaults continue on Twitter. On Tuesday, about two dozen employees who criticized Elon Musk in internal company chats or publicly on Twitter were fired. The “New York Times” and other American media report this in unison. Tech billionaire Musk, who bought the platform three weeks ago for about $ 44 billion, indirectly confirmed the layoffs with a mocking tweet about the former employees. “I want to apologize for firing these geniuses.”

In another tweet, he poked fun at a former employee by saying claimedthe software developer’s Twitter posts about him were triggered by “a tragic case of Gilles de la Tourette in adults”.

According to the American media, the latest layoffs do not only affect employees who publicly contradict Musk on Twitter. Apparently it had been enough express themselves critically within the company or to share a critical tweet.

According to the “New York Times,” Musk has tasked a team with keeping an eye out for employees who are defiant in company chats. Musk’s team would also sift through employee tweets for criticism of the new boss and create lists of names that disagree with him. The persons found were immediately released on Tuesday. The NYT has received the termination emails and some have been posted on Twitter. The reason given in the e-mails for the dismissal was “violation of company guidelines”.

In this context, it is important to understand that Twitter has long cultivated a culture of internal dissent, writes US tech journalist Casey Newton, who closely follows the chaos on Twitter. He and other US media, citing Twitter employees, report that before Musk’s time it was part of corporate culture that you could criticize managers in internal chats or emails, as long as the criticism was made internally.

“The internal code of conduct has not changed since Elon took over,” writes Newton. The fact that people are fired because of internal criticism is therefore “out of the blue”. employees would have it reported“that so far about 20 people have been fired for their Slack contributions”, i.e. for their statements in internal employee chats.

“Hardcore” culture or go

In a midnight email, Musk gave the remaining Twitter employees an ultimatum: commit to an “extremely hardcore” culture on Twitter or be fired with a three-month severance package.

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Musk had asked Twitter employees to sign an online form by Thursday evening (local time) committing to “working long, high-intensity hours.” “Only exceptional performance gets a pass,” says the message to staff, available to the Washington Post.

Musk also wants to encourage the remaining employees to perform optimally with a view to shares. In a letter that the NYT reviewed Monday, he wrote that “extraordinary amounts of stock will be awarded for exceptional performance.”

Twitter fires thousands of content reviewers

Before the recent layoffs, Twitter had laid off an estimated half of its 7,000 permanent employees and more recently about 5,000 temporary employees without notice. The latter mainly work as content moderators and data analysts.

A fired data analyst told the NYT she suddenly lost access to Twitter’s internal system on Sunday. In addition, her work email has been deactivated. Hours later, she was told by email that the following day would be her last day of work. As a contractually limited employee, she does not receive a severance payment. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to pay the rent or take care of my kids,” she told the NYT.

On a “collision course” with the EU

According to the Financial Times, the EU wants to scrutinize Twitter. Brussels fears more problems with fake profiles and fake news if Twitter fires thousands of contract workers who specialize in detecting political disinformation. Twitter is therefore on a “collision course” with the EU.

In extreme cases, Brussels can ban or regularly fine Twitter in Europe until it complies with the new EU law against hate speech, disinformation and war propaganda.

Twitter developer disagrees with Musk and is fired

The latest layoffs follow a tweet in which Musk wrote on Sunday that Twitter is “super slow in a lot of countries” because the app is making too many server requests. A longtime app developer at Twitter replied to Musk that his reasoning was “wrong.” Musk then asked him to correct him, publicly asking, “Twitter is super slow on Android. What did you do about it?”

The app developer justified its objection, explaining several other causes of performance issues. As a result, the two publicly exchanged multiple messages about technical details and the software developer repeatedly corrected Musk.

Musk tweeted Monday that the app developer had been fired. He later deletes the tweet.

The app developer also confirmed its eviction on Twitter. He hadn’t received formal notice of his sudden resignation until Musk’s resignation tweet. About five hours after the tweet, his company laptop automatically logged him out and he couldn’t log back in, he told Forbes on Monday.

If Musk was really wrong when he discussed it with the app developer, it wouldn’t have been the first time. For example, he wrote on Sunday that Twitter brings by far the most visitors to other websites. Twitter’s own fact-checking tool draws attention to the fact that Facebook is redirecting far more visitors to other websites.

According to CNN, Musk currently runs Twitter with the help of his friends Jason Calacanis and David Sacks, his personal attorney Alex Spiro, and several software engineers he’s hired at some of his other companies, including Tesla.

Twitter, which no longer has a communications department, says nothing about that.