Elon Musk Terminates More Twitter Employees…. While A Key Programmer That He Brought In Quits
It seems that more layoffs are happening at Twitter which is a sign that things are not going his way.
Additional Twitter employees were terminated Thursday as part of ongoing, rolling layoffs under new owner Elon Musk, including from the public policy and media and entertainment teams, according to tweets from affected employees.
As part of Thursday’s layoffs, the members of Twitter’s public policy team who had remained following last month’s mass layoffs were again cut down by about half to around 15 employees, a former Twitter employee with knowledge of the layoffs told CNN.
Among the public policy team’s responsibilities are working with outside advisory groups such as the Twitter Trust and Safety Council, which the company disbanded earlier this month. It also manages human rights programs to protect vulnerable users like activists, engages in transparency efforts, works with government agencies and helps to ensure compliance with global regulations. The public policy team had more than 60 employees prior to Musk’s takeover, the former employee said.
Thursday’s exits come after Musk laid off about half of Twitter’s workforce last month shortly after his takeover, and later pushed out additional employees, including through an ultimatum requiring them to work “hardcore” or exit the company. Musk’s team — seeking to cut costs at the struggling company that the billionaire purchased for $44 billion — has continued to lay off hundreds of additional Twitter staff since then, including top engineering and legal talent, according to the former employee and multiple recent reports.
On top of Elon being a Grade A scumbag for terminating people two days before Christmas, this is going to further erode Twitter’s ability to protect Twitter users and to make sure that they don’t run afoul of various laws around the planet. But Elon doesn’t care about any of that as it has been proven since he took over at Twitter. I guarantee that he will care at some point. And that day is coming.
Related to this, Elon brought in “Geohot” who is also known as George Hotz, Hotz is best known as the guy who performed a successful jailbreak on the Sony Playstation 3 and then promptly got sued by Sony because of that. He also once had a high-profile feud with Elon when he told a Bloomberg reporter that the Tesla founder “kept changing the terms” after tapping him for a job at Tesla. Hotz then went on to found a startup promising to outdo Tesla in self-driving technology but stepped down as its CEO at the end of October 2022. Elon recently hired him as an “intern” at Twitter to help him to fix the Twitter’s search and scrolling functions. But it looks like he’s now out. And he did it in a way that Elon would have done it.
He lasted four weeks at Twitter. Read into that what you will.
Related to this, both Hotz and Musk held an online chat on Twitter Spaces going over the drama facing the social media company and various related topics. I found a recording of this and pasted it in below:
Some notes if you’re a TL:DR sort of person:
Elon elaborated on his recent decision-making claiming that Twitter is facing a financial crisis. “We have an emergency fire drill on our hands. That’s the reason. Not because I’m naturally capricious.”
Elon said that the company is currently losing about $3 billion “in negative cash flow per year” under current conditions. “This company is basically like you’re in a plane that is headed toward the ground at high speed with the engines on fire and the controls don’t work,”
Elon noted advertisers remain resistant to spending on Twitter due to the ongoing economic downturn.
Elon claims that he company is starting to turn things around with the help of the new paid Twitter Blue subscription, he said.
Elon said “I now think Twitter will in fact be okay next year,” he added. “I think we will be, hopefully, sort of roughly, cash flow break even. That’s what I expect for next year.”
Because this is a privately held company, there’s no way of verifying the truth of any of the above. But given that he continues to cost cut by downsizing people. I question the veracity of the statements that Elon made in this Twitter Space. But this along with more recent events that I have listed above shows that Twitter is in for more chaos. And that chaos will not be taking a break for the holidays.
This entry was posted on December 23, 2022 at 10:40 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Elon Musk Terminates More Twitter Employees…. While A Key Programmer That He Brought In Quits
It seems that more layoffs are happening at Twitter which is a sign that things are not going his way.
Additional Twitter employees were terminated Thursday as part of ongoing, rolling layoffs under new owner Elon Musk, including from the public policy and media and entertainment teams, according to tweets from affected employees.
As part of Thursday’s layoffs, the members of Twitter’s public policy team who had remained following last month’s mass layoffs were again cut down by about half to around 15 employees, a former Twitter employee with knowledge of the layoffs told CNN.
Among the public policy team’s responsibilities are working with outside advisory groups such as the Twitter Trust and Safety Council, which the company disbanded earlier this month. It also manages human rights programs to protect vulnerable users like activists, engages in transparency efforts, works with government agencies and helps to ensure compliance with global regulations. The public policy team had more than 60 employees prior to Musk’s takeover, the former employee said.
Thursday’s exits come after Musk laid off about half of Twitter’s workforce last month shortly after his takeover, and later pushed out additional employees, including through an ultimatum requiring them to work “hardcore” or exit the company. Musk’s team — seeking to cut costs at the struggling company that the billionaire purchased for $44 billion — has continued to lay off hundreds of additional Twitter staff since then, including top engineering and legal talent, according to the former employee and multiple recent reports.
On top of Elon being a Grade A scumbag for terminating people two days before Christmas, this is going to further erode Twitter’s ability to protect Twitter users and to make sure that they don’t run afoul of various laws around the planet. But Elon doesn’t care about any of that as it has been proven since he took over at Twitter. I guarantee that he will care at some point. And that day is coming.
Related to this, Elon brought in “Geohot” who is also known as George Hotz, Hotz is best known as the guy who performed a successful jailbreak on the Sony Playstation 3 and then promptly got sued by Sony because of that. He also once had a high-profile feud with Elon when he told a Bloomberg reporter that the Tesla founder “kept changing the terms” after tapping him for a job at Tesla. Hotz then went on to found a startup promising to outdo Tesla in self-driving technology but stepped down as its CEO at the end of October 2022. Elon recently hired him as an “intern” at Twitter to help him to fix the Twitter’s search and scrolling functions. But it looks like he’s now out. And he did it in a way that Elon would have done it.
Apparently he didn’t take this poll too seriously because this happened next:
He lasted four weeks at Twitter. Read into that what you will.
Related to this, both Hotz and Musk held an online chat on Twitter Spaces going over the drama facing the social media company and various related topics. I found a recording of this and pasted it in below:
Some notes if you’re a TL:DR sort of person:
Because this is a privately held company, there’s no way of verifying the truth of any of the above. But given that he continues to cost cut by downsizing people. I question the veracity of the statements that Elon made in this Twitter Space. But this along with more recent events that I have listed above shows that Twitter is in for more chaos. And that chaos will not be taking a break for the holidays.
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This entry was posted on December 23, 2022 at 10:40 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.