Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Last Thursday night, Twitter experienced a mass resignation. On this day, thousands of employees decided to leave the company where they had worked for several years or even more than ten years. Many people say goodbye publicly on Twitter, wave goodbye to their years here, and thank their colleagues who are in the same boat.

Musk mocked that he buried Twitter for a while, and there was an air of sadness on Twitter, with hashtags like # GoodByeTwitter#, # RIPTwitter# and # Damn Twitter# all over the screen. Yue Xing, a former Chinese employee, wrote on Twitter that "once a Twitter user, always tweet his heart." (Once a tweep, always a tweep. )

Twitter, the world's most influential social media platform, has undergone an unprecedented purge after Musk, the world's richest man. In just three weeks, Twitter has suffered a big layoff and resignation from top to bottom; how many employees are left in a giant company with more than 7500 people? There are estimates that fewer than 2700 people are left.

On Monday, Musk again wielded the butcher's knife to lay off staff; this time it was the advertising sales and customer relations department responsible for revenue. Robin Wheeler, Twitter's vice president of customer relations and ad sales, resigned on Friday. She said on Twitter that she could not protect the staff of the department, so she decided to leave.

Musk is notoriously eager to transform Twitter to turn the social media around. However, without communicating layoffs, forcibly launching problematic projects, firing employees who criticized themselves, ending telecommuting across the board, and forcing him to sign striver agreements, his simple and brutal management style made Twitter employees from the top to the middle to the grass-roots level generally discouraged, leading to thousands of collective resignations.

Maybe that's what Musk wants to see. In just 20 days, Twitter has drastically slimmed down from a giant company with more than 7500 people to a small company with fewer than 2700 people, to a startup where young people stay up late to work.

Carrying the sink into the master's rough cleaning all began on October 26th. Musk walked into Twitter's San Francisco headquarters with a big smile on his face that day, holding a heavy sink. Twitter has since entered the Musk era. Let that sink in was originally an online joke that meant to carry it out completely, but now Musk can completely reinvent Twitter according to his own intention.

Despite the bright smile on his face, Musk was uncomfortable because he had suffered a terrible loss from the acquisition. At the end of April, Musk strongly pressed Twitter's board of directors to reach a $44 billion acquisition agreement. But what he did not expect was that the US stock market then began to fall sharply, with Twitter and Tesla both down more than 30 per cent. At one point, Twitter's market capitalization fell below $20 billion.

That means Musk will have to double the loss if he continues to complete the acquisition, as it is equivalent to more than double his premium for Twitter and $44 billion in cash for a company worth only $20 billion. In addition, he also needs to sell Tesla shares to cash in to raise money and pay a huge capital gains tax.

Because of this, Musk unilaterally abandoned the acquisition of Twitter in June on the grounds that Twitter was concealing the size of its false account. But when he signed the acquisition agreement, he may have been so excited that he gave up due diligence and gave himself no way out. With Twitter suing in Delaware, Musk had no choice but to close the deal at the original price of $44 billion.

Of the $44 billion Musk bought Twitter, $13 billion came from short-term bank loans. He must turn Twitter around as soon as possible and use Twitter's profits to repay the loan repayment pressure of more than $1 billion a year. Although Twitter had revenue of $5.1 billion last year, it lost $221 million and lost another $270 million in the second quarter of this year. Cutting labor costs is the direct reason why Musk can't wait for big layoffs.

On his first day in charge, Musk disbanded the Twitter board and laid off a number of core executives, including Twitter CEO ParagAgrawal, CFO Seguel, policy chief Vijaya Gadde and legal adviser SeanEdgett. The departure of these people has long been expected. Musk made a public mockery of them several times before completing the Twitter acquisition.

However, these core executives are protected by the "golden parachute" clause. Even if they are mercilessly fired, they can leave satisfactorily with severance pay totaling hundreds of millions of dollars in accordance with the terms of the contract. On the other hand, ordinary Twitter employees have to face the cruel reality of unemployment. A week after joining Twitter, Musk finally began to implement his big layoffs. But the way he laid off staff disappointed Twitter employees.

On the evening of November 4, Twitter suddenly sent an email to all its employees informing them that the company was closed the next day and that internal chat tools were suspended. All employees received an email on Friday morning knowing whether they would stay on or be laid off. In the massive layoffs on Nov. 5, more than 3700 of Twitter's more than 7500 employees lost their jobs, and some departments were even abolished altogether. There was no coordination beforehand and no communication afterwards, only a cold email notice of layoffs.

On the day of the big layoffs, several Twitter employees told Sina Technology that they were not dissatisfied with the layoffs themselves, because it was expected, but they were very disappointed by Musk's lack of communication. And Musk's severance criteria are almost the lowest in Silicon Valley. (note: two months' salary is the statutory compensation for layoffs. The third month's salary can only be obtained by signing a waiver agreement. That means they can't join the class action. )

The fake account pretended to be a pharmaceutical giant, and Blue V turned into a rumor tool that ignored warnings and forcibly launched the charge the day after the layoffs, the Twitter Blue V charging function was launched three days ahead of schedule; this is Musk's most valued revenue-generating project. it took only eight days from his entry into Twitter to his official launch. Before going online, Musk tweeted almost every day to promote the $8-a-month program to his fans.

Clearly, Musk is eager to open up new revenue channels and get rid of his dependence on advertisers. Currently, more than 90% of Twitter's revenue comes from advertisers. But after he joined Twitter, big advertisers such as Pfizer, L'Oreal, United Airlines and Allianz stopped their Twitter ads. Musk's auto industry competitors General Motors, Ford, Audi America and Volkswagen are also reluctant to spend money on his platform. This casts a shadow over Twitter's future advertising revenue.

However, due to loopholes in the design and lack of authentication, a large number of ordinary users change their account information and publish false information disguised as celebrities, big enterprises and even politicians after paying for Blue V. Instead, Blue V has become a tool for Twitter to help them spread rumors. After causing a lot of confusion, Twitter had to announce the suspension of the Blue V charging program on November 11.

Blue V spread rumors that made big advertisers shun Twitter even more. Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly was so dissatisfied with the Twitter platform that it decided to stop all ads on Twitter because users pretended to post free messages about insulin. The withdrawal of Eli Lilly alone cost Twitter millions of dollars in advertising revenue.

Twitter's troubles don't stop there. They have been investigated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) because of user data and privacy issues. According to the settlement reached between the two sides in 2011, Twitter must conduct multiple assessments of privacy issues before launching the new feature. But Mr Musk, eager to generate revenue, ignored the dissuasion of several executives to speed up product development and launch without a full compliance review. The rumors spread by the Blue V verified account may reignite the FTC investigation and may even impose sky-high fines on Twitter. (in 2018, Facebook was fined $5 billion by FTC for privacy violations. )

Musk's forced launch of the Blue V charging program has not only brought a regulatory crisis to Twitter, but also triggered the collective resignation of a group of core technology executives. November 11 is the deadline for Twitter to submit its annual compliance report on privacy issues to FTC. But the day before, Chief Information Security Officer Lea Kissner, Chief Privacy Officer DamianKieran, and Chief Compliance Officer Mariaane Forgarty chose to resign. The resignation was accompanied by Yoel Roth, head of trust and security, and Kathleen Pacini, head of human resources. In just one day, several people directly in charge of Twitter's privacy left.

After leaving office, Yoel Roth, head of Twitter's security department, commented in the New York Times that Musk's forced launch of the Blue V certification program was doomed to failure (ill-fated). Ross also questioned that Musk's so-called absolute freedom of speech is impossible and will be subject to multiple restrictions by advertisers, regulators and mobile platforms. At the same time, "while criticizing the capriciousness of Twitter's previous platform policies, Musk's impulsive announcement of Twitter rules is equally unreasonable. Musk calls himself 'Chief twit' and makes it clear that he is the ultimate decisive role."

In the third week of directly firing Musk from Twitter without criticism, Twitter employees are getting more and more angry with him. On November 14, Musk suddenly announced that he would cut Twitter's free food benefits and publicly disgruntled the food and beverage budget on Twitter with the executive director who is directly in charge of ordering food.

Musk first lamented on Twitter that no one came to work at the company, which has cost more than $400 per person for lunch in the past 12 months. The executive directly in charge of ordering accused Musk of lying, costing only $20 to $25 per person per day for free lunch and breakfast every day. Musk hit back that San Francisco headquarters spends $13 million a year ordering meals, while the average employee attendance rate is less than 10%, and more people prepare breakfast than eat breakfast.

Musk's hatred of telecommuting is well known. Before buying Twitter, he publicly ridiculed telecommuting employees as lazy dogs watching TV at home; after buying Twitter shares, Musk mocked that he could turn Twitter's San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter, but no one went to work anyway. Immediately after joining Twitter, Musk announced that telecommuting would be cancelled and everyone would have to work 40 hours a week in the office unless specifically approved.

On the other hand, Musk began to subvert Twitter's original corporate culture, refusing employees to question the following crimes. Although Musk often questions the technology and architecture of the platform on Twitter and expresses his dissatisfaction without scruples, when Twitter employees also publicly respond to his questions, pointing out that Musk's understanding is wrong, all they have to wait for is a dismissal notice.

Starting on November 14, Twitter fired several engineers who challenged Musk. Eric Frohnhorfer, an Android platform application engineer who has worked on Twitter for eight years, questioned Musk's technical understanding of Twitter and euphemistically suggested that Musk ask this question in an internal Slack or email. But the next day he was fired by Musk. Similarly, BenLeib, the head of Twitter's timeline technology architecture, also retweeted Musk's tweet, pointing out that Musk didn't know anything about the technology and that he was quickly fired after working for a decade.

Publicly questioning that Musk will be fired, internal complaints will also be fired. In the days that followed, dozens of Twitter employees criticized the company's executives on the internal collaboration platform Slack, complaining about Musk's management style, and they received dismissal notices almost that night on the grounds that they had violated the company's policy.

For years, Silicon Valley Internet companies have been working to create an equal, open and inclusive internal culture that allows employees to criticize and question senior executives and related decisions internally. Google, Meta and Twitter are the most typical companies. Meta employees can protest against the company's cloud services agreement with the US military, forcing Google executives to eventually abandon the multimillion-dollar contract; Google employees can directly ask Zuckerberg why he allowed Trump's controversial posts and reprimand company executives for attending Supreme Court Justice Cavanaugh's hearings.

But Mr Musk clearly does not agree with such a corporate culture of equal dialogue. Whether in Tesla or SpaceX, his management style emphasizes efficient implementation, not dialogue and questioning, let alone criticism of himself. Perhaps he hopes to show other employees that the original corporate culture is over and that criticism of himself will not be accepted within Twitter in the future by brutally firing Twitter employees who question him.

Similarly, SpaceX recently filed a labour law lawsuit against eight employees who were fired for spreading an internal email criticizing Mr Musk. The email called on SpaceX management to take appropriate remedial measures, including condemning Musk's harmful actions on Twitter. Musk is the founder, CEO and largest shareholder of SpaceX.

Ironically, Mr Musk cannot be fired at will in western and northern Europe. Under European labour law, companies must prove obvious faults and breach of contract before they can be fired, and if they are laid off, they must go through a lengthy application process. Last week, Twitter's Western European division informed dozens of employees to leave, suspending their access to the company's intranet, but from a legal point of view, the employment relationship between these Western European employees and Twitter has not been terminated.

Musk asked employees to sign a striver agreement to ignite discontent. On November 15, Musk took photos of two spoofers who had previously pretended to be laid-off Twitter employees to be interviewed by the media, joking that he had apologized to them. Laying them off was one of their biggest mistakes. The parody adds to the humiliation of Twitter employees who are already demoralized by layoffs, just a few days after they watched half of them be mercilessly fired.

However, the trigger for the collective resignation of Twitter employees was an email from Musk on Wednesday, November 16. In this email, he explained to Twitter employees that he wants to create "Twitter 2.0" and require employees to become "extremely hard core (extremely hardcore)", which means "long hours and high work intensity".

Musk very strongly asked all employees to make a choice by 2pm US time on Thursday, either click to confirm to accept the arrangement, or get three months' severance pay and leave. Last Wednesday, Musk was in Delaware on the east coast in a lawsuit over Tesla's sky-high salary.

To be clear, the striver Agreement that Musk asked to sign does not make specific additional requirements for the work of Twitter employees. To cancel telecommuting, you have to work at the company for 40 hours a week, which Musk has previously announced and implemented.

A Twitter employee told Sina Technology, "in fact, he did not specify how long and how hard it will take to work. Maybe he cannot elaborate because he will be sued if he is wrong. However, with the continuous accumulation of internal conflicts in the past two weeks, the dissatisfaction of many employees has reached a tipping point. This email just ignited everyone's mood." The employee did not choose to leave, he clicked yes.

Perhaps, more employees are discouraged to leave, because they do not see the hope of the platform. Peter Clowes, a senior product manager at Twitter, said he chose to leave his job not because he hated Musk, but because he didn't know what it meant to stay. His department had already been laid off 85%, the whole department was in a repressive atmosphere, and colleagues no longer wanted to work. Of the 75 employees left out of the big layoffs the week before, only three choose to stay on. And if you choose to stay, it means you will always be on standby.

This email is like the last straw that crushed the camel. At 2: 00 p. M. on Thursday, Musk was the deadline for employees to sign the striver Agreement. But many of the backbone employees who survived the previous round of layoffs chose to leave voluntarily in this round, refusing to sign the agreement offered by Musk. According to US media estimates, at least 1200 Twitter employees chose to resign last Thursday.

Those who left this time included the core technology backbone of Twitter. In the core service team dealing with the computing architecture, there were only four people left with more than 100 people; there was no one left in the service team dealing with the presentation of media information; and even the 20-member Twitter command center, which prevented unexpected outages, also experienced staff wastage. The outside world is worried about whether Twitter will be able to maintain its normal operation in the event of a peak traffic event, such as the World Cup.

Because Musk cut down Twitter's public relations department, there is no PR staff to respond to media inquiries. Musk became the only voice on Twitter, and of course this is his company, and he's the only one in charge. Some media estimated that at least 1200 people chose to leave with severance pay last Thursday and were unwilling to continue to work for Musk.

Slightly ironically, by noon on Friday, nearly a day after Musk's deadline, many Twitter employees who refused to sign the striver agreement had not received an email or even logged on to their work email. When they contacted the human resources department, they found that the HR team also left in large numbers, so that no one came to deal with the dismissal.

Musk summoned engineers to review the code all night and summoned young employees to stay up late. Musk initially did not take the collective resignation seriously. Last Thursday morning, Musk met with some employees who were considered to be at the core to persuade them to stay. That night, he said confidently on Twitter, "the best employees are still here, so I'm not too worried." Half an hour later, he posted another prank picture joking that he had buried Twitter himself.

But as more and more employees chose to resign, Musk began to get restless. On Thursday night, Twitter suddenly sent a notice to employees who did not resign, telling them that the San Francisco headquarters office would be closed on Friday and that access cards would be invalid. There has been media speculation that Twitter may be worried about sabotage before employees leave.

How many employees are left on Twitter? Maybe only Musk knows. On Thursday night, some media estimated that Twitter had only 900 employees left. Among those who remain, many are young people with H1b work visas.

They dare not resign at will, because if they lose their jobs, they must find a new employer within 60 days, or they will lose their identity and leave the United States. At a time when the Silicon Valley job market is in a cold winter, companies are either laying off staff or freezing hiring, and unemployed workers face many difficulties in finding new employers within 60 days.

However, just one night later, Musk sent several internal emails in a row, seemingly aware of the seriousness of the employee turnover problem. On Friday morning, he suddenly asked employees who could write codes to report to the 10th floor of the headquarters at 2 p.m. Half an hour later, he emailed again, saying he wanted to know more about Twitter's technology stack. It wasn't long before he sent a third e-mail, anxiously inviting non-local employees to fly to San Francisco headquarters to meet.

At 01:30 on Saturday, Musk posted a photo of himself reviewing the code with a group of young employees on Twitter. Musk lamented that it was the day he had seen the most people at Twitter headquarters.

What is even more shocking to the outside world, however, is that on Saturday, Musk directly restored former President Trump's Twitter account. He conducted a secret ballot on his account, and the proportion of votes in favor of restoring Trump's account was 52%. Musk later declared that this was the voice of the people and decided to put Trump's Twitter account back online after being banned for a year and a half.

Although when he first joined Twitter, Musk vowed to set up a content review committee with multiple perspectives, giving important content and account decision-making power to the committee. But three weeks later, he seems to have forgotten his previous promise and decided to restore Trump's account on his own. After all, he is the only one in charge of Twitter.

Musk said at the Twitter all hands conference today that the layoffs are almost complete, and then the hiring of engineers will begin, and the company's headquarters will not move to Texas. There are still 2700 people left on Twitter, but the number is likely to drop slightly.

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