When Peter Clowes Last updated on his LinkedIn profile, he listed his role as “Fireplace Survivor” on Twitter. However, Clowes, a senior software engineer who joined the company in the spring of 2020, is now gone as well. He quit his job yesterday, calmly explaining last night on Twitter that he decided to leave not because Twitter was lame or because he hated its new owner, Elon Musk, but simply because he no longer had any incentive to stay.
Now it seems a significant percentage of Clowes’ colleagues feel the same way. While they are not part of 50% Among Twitter employees who lost their jobs at the end of October in an unprecedented round of layoffs at the social media division, as their remaining 3,700 employees, they were given the ultimate by Musk. mail this week. The option that he presented to them: commit to using Twitter “extremely hard,” “work long hours at a high intensity,” or leave the company with three months of severance pay.
One Hobson’s ChoiceEssentially, it’s clear that Musk is hoping that some of the remaining percentage of Twitter’s employees — those who are expensive and whom he has no say in hiring — will choose to leave the company. In fact, Musk is said to have told investors he could cut 75% of employees before taking over the company, so whether he’s shocked, swayed by the company’s muscles, or is celebrating the success of his plan is something that only Musk and those close to him are. he knows.
Sure, the numbers are startling to nearly everyone else. The New York Times report earlier today based on internal estimates by sources, at least 1,200 full-time employees have just handed in their symbolic key cards. Clowes, in a long series of tweets of his own death, suggesting the number could be even higher. Speaking of his own “organization”, he wrote that “85%+” of his colleagues were laid off in October and the staggering figure was “80%” of those who were still not engaged in October. yesterday.
Indeed, what struck us when reading Clowes’ explanation of why he left, was not that so many people had gone with him. What’s more surprising is that 100% of employees didn’t leave, raising questions about who Musk thinks will stay with the company. If he just wants those employees to have no choice but to commit suicide now, it seems so. . . like a flawed business strategy.
On the other hand, if Musk is hoping to retain anyone else, it’s assumed a carrot will be offered. Instead, as Clowes wrote yesterday, there are only sticks and lots of sticks.
For example, Clowes wrote that he left because he “no longer knew what I was staying for. Previously I stayed for the people, the vision and of course the money (let’s be honest). All of that has changed completely or is uncertain.”
Clowes left because if he stayed, he “would have to be on the phone constantly with very little support for an indeterminate amount of time on some additional complex systems with which I have no experience.”
He left because he saw no positive in Musk’s rude management style, which Clowes thinks he could endure longer if he didn’t operate entirely in the dark. Instead, according to his own account, Musk has yet to share his vision for the platform with employees. “There is no five-year plan like there is at Tesla,” Clowes wrote. “Nothing more than what people can see on Twitter. It was supposed to go to those who stayed, but the requirement was blind faith and required to sign the severance offer before seeing it. Pure loyalty test.”
Clowes suggested that there was so little communication from the top that rumors and speculations were rampant. Among the obvious employee concerns: Twitter isn’t just becoming subscription-based, but adult content could become a core component of those services, Clowes writes. (Emphasizing how little known insiders are, Clowes then introduces readers to a wired story About one Washington Post story of Musk’s reported discussions with employees about monetizing adult content on Twitter.)
Last but not least, Clowes writes, “there are no plans to retain those who stay. There is no obvious benefit to mounting it over the storm on the horizon. Just verbal promises like ‘trust us’.
As of yesterday, Clowes is living in a world where “his friends are gone, vision is blurred, there is a storm coming and there is no financial growth,” he wrote. Therefore “[w]What you will do? he continued. “Will you sacrifice time with your kids during the holidays for vague guarantees and the chance to make a rich person richer or will you give up?”
You’ll get out, which Musk certainly expected. What will people think?
Now to see if he can rebuild with the rest first the whole thing cave in.
