Twitter locks remaining employees out of offices after hundreds leave following Elon Musk's...

[midian182]

In context: Elon Musk might regret firing half of Twitter's staff after he took over the company, given reports that those who weren't laid-off have been resigning in droves. It appears the departures were prompted by Musk's recent declaration that employees must commit to a "hardcore" work culture or leave the firm by 5 pm yesterday. Now, Twitter has locked those who are left out of the company's offices, reportedly over fears of sabotage by disgruntled ex-workers.

Musk, who recently fired an engineer for arguing with him publicly, continued to endear himself to Twitter's remaining staff on Wednesday when he gave them an ultimatum: say yes to the new, extremely hardcore "Twitter 2.0," with its 40-hour-minimum weeks—they could average 60 hours or more—and intense workloads, or leave the company with three months of severance. Employees were given until 5 pm the next day (Thursday) to decide.

To all the Tweeps who decided to make today your last day: thanks for being incredible teammates through the ups and downs. I can't wait to see what you do next. 🫡 '

— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) November 17, 2022

Reports say hundreds of Twitter employees said "thanks, but no thanks" to Musk's generous offer of working twice as hard, much longer, and with a drastically reduced number of co-workers. Some estimates say up to 75% chose to walk.

Internal slack messages seen by CNBC show the engineers and other staff members saying goodbye in a "watercooler" chat group. One anonymous person, who is also resigning, claimed Musk had to ask some top engineers who opted to leave to consider staying on.

Ugh, end of an era. #RIPTwitter pic.twitter.com/aL3AQuoexO

— Ju✨ (@_psiloveju) November 18, 2022

"Entire teams representing critical infrastructure are voluntarily departing the company, leaving the company at serious risk of being able to recover," the engineer said, adding that the only two people they knew who were staying at Twitter were doing so because the company sponsored their visas.

The latest twist in this increasingly tragic saga came a few hours ago when Twitter told employees that its office buildings would be closed and it is cutting badge access with immediate effect until Monday, November 21. The letter doesn't give a reason for the move, but it's reportedly over fears that disgruntled former staff could sabotage the company.

pic.twitter.com/rbwbsLA1ZG

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022

As he has done in the past, Musk's response to Twitter's crisis has been to post some memes poking fun at the situation. He also tweeted that usage on the site has reached an all-time high ("lol").

It was always expected that Musk would make some big changes at Twitter once he took over, but few could have predicted the chaos that has followed the world's richest man as he walked into its offices with a sink under his arm. Check out everything that happened there last week, including warnings of potential bankruptcy, in this article.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/96699-twitter-locks-employees-out-office-after-hundreds-leave.html

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Those poor twitter employees, being forced to work to justify their 6 figure sums. I feel SOOOOO bad for them .

Welcome to the real world snowflakes. The rest of us have been working our balls off to recover from the 2008 recession, the 2020 lockdown, and the 2021 inflation crisis. Now you gotta work too, no more sitting on golden chairs in ivory towers complaining about ~isms and ~phobics. The bourgeoisie never think they will become the next proletariat

 

[dualkelly]

This self proclaimed genius much like Trump is a numbskull. Good luck getting anyone to work for you when you publicly admit you want work slaves Willing to work hardcore hours. Hahaha best entertainment all year. Next up Trump being turned on by the GOP. Who has the popcorn?

 

[nnguy2]

Good way to waste $44bil

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

Hot take: Twitter is fine and the media is overreacting much like they did/do with Covid, climate change, Trump, Jan 6, and more by making doomsday predictions. It gets them clicks

 

[dangh]

Those poor twitter employees, being forced to work to justify their 6 figure sums. I feel SOOOOO bad for them .

Welcome to the real world snowflakes. The rest of us have been working our balls off to recover from the 2008 recession, the 2020 lockdown, and the 2021 inflation crisis. Now you gotta work too, no more sitting on golden chairs in ivory towers complaining about ~isms and ~phobics. The bourgeoisie never think they will become the next proletariat

lol those guys will find quickly another job, and don't worry, they will continue doing very well. Even better without ***** as a boss.
The real world is: people who spend years learning coding, algorithms, patterns have no issue to jump a crazy ship and continue to work at a place where they are appreciated.
If you have some inferiority complex that you had to 'work hard' then maybe you should 'stop working hard', get a degree in IT and become a 'snowflake' lol.
And they were working, and they will be working the same. They don't "gotta work too" - they simply switch the jobs to ones which offer them better treatment than modern slaves, and I think this is something you took personally.
It is Musk who will get reality check - whatever **** he could do with factory workers won't work with educated specialists who actually aren't bound to a single place.

 

[PEnnn]

The dumb elephant in the China shop is hard at work.
Soon he will be left with janitors only to clean up his mess.

Latest news? He's begging many employees he let go to come back......!!

 

[goldman]

Those poor twitter employees, being forced to work to justify their 6 figure sums. I feel SOOOOO bad for them .

Welcome to the real world snowflakes. The rest of us have been working our balls off to recover from the 2008 recession, the 2020 lockdown, and the 2021 inflation crisis. Now you gotta work too, no more sitting on golden chairs in ivory towers complaining about ~isms and ~phobics. The bourgeoisie never think they will become the next proletariat

Cute. Call me when you reach 100% inflation, then talk about "real world", snowflake.


Ignoring that.
Considering devs have a real easy time finding jobs, losing talent tends to be something companies try to avoid hard. So I kinda believe musk is doing this on purpose, either thinking "less employees=less salaries to pay" or just trolling.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

lol those guys will find quickly another job, and don't worry, they will continue doing very well. Even better without ***** as a boss.
The real world is: people who spend years learning coding, algorithms, patterns have no issue to jump a crazy ship and continue to work at a place where they are appreciated.
If you have some inferiority complex that you had to 'work hard' then maybe you should 'stop working hard', get a degree in IT and become a 'snowflake' lol.
And they were working, and they will be working the same. They don't "gotta work too" - they simply switch the jobs to ones which offer them better treatment than modern slaves, and I think this is something you took personally.
It is Musk who will get reality check - whatever **** he could do with factory workers won't work with educated specialists who actually aren't bound to a single place.

LOL somebody's mad.

"educated specialists" LMFAO I'm sure the dudes in net leggings who spent all day spending twitter's $1.5bn in research funds on starbucks and trigger warnings were doing a lot. How will twitter ever cope without them? It takes thousands to run a fancy SMS app after all!

EDIT: also, you can't say "learn to code", twitter said that's racist and banned it years ago.

 

[FaTaL]

Good. Clean up the woke trash.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Cute. Call me when you reach 100% inflation, then talk about "real world", snowflake.

Food is up over 60%, for those of us who pay attention. Natural gas heat quadrupled. Electricity went up 30%. Vehicle prices up 60% compared to 2 years ago.

The "real world" is hear snowflake, time to wake up.

 

[JKnight]

Good way to waste $44bil

Maybe he should run his companies and life using Twitter polls.

 

[m3tavision]

Elon is a Genius, He is allowing themselves to weed out all the fragile ego types... who were on a crusade, instead of being at Twitter, for a job.


The amount of entitlement these employees think they have, is embarrassing. They should all join/create Unions, instead of publicly airing their fragility for all to see. Imagine your son/daughter getting fired because they couldnt/wouldnt show up to work... how do they put that on the next resume ?

Shame on them for their entitled thinking, that THEY are the company, instead of understanding they work FOR the Company.

 

[Ohnooze]

This self proclaimed genius much like Trump is a numbskull. Good luck getting anyone to work for you when you publicly admit you want work slaves Willing to work hardcore hours. Hahaha best entertainment all year. Next up Trump being turned on by the GOP. Who has the popcorn?

It never fails.....Trump has to be brought into every single comment section.

Elon is a Genius, He is allowing themselves to weed out all the fragile ego types... who were on a crusade, instead of being at Twitter, for a job.

Exactly. He wants to remove the dead weight.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

lol those guys will find quickly another job, and don't worry, they will continue doing very well. Even better without ***** as a boss.
The real world is: people who spend years learning coding, algorithms, patterns have no issue to jump a crazy ship and continue to work at a place where they are appreciated.
If you have some inferiority complex that you had to 'work hard' then maybe you should 'stop working hard', get a degree in IT and become a 'snowflake' lol.
And they were working, and they will be working the same. They don't "gotta work too" - they simply switch the jobs to ones which offer them better treatment than modern slaves, and I think this is something you took personally.
It is Musk who will get reality check - whatever **** he could do with factory workers won't work with educated specialists who actually aren't bound to a single place.

With the layoffs and hiring freezes being reported by other big tech companies, if those are all true, it may be harder than these people think to find another job. I'm certain some will and I'm sure others will struggle, but eventually will land something and others may not find anything for a long time.

It's not the best time right now for IT to just jump ship and figure you're going to land another job immediately.

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

lol those guys will find quickly another job, and don't worry, they will continue doing very well. Even better without ***** as a boss.
The real world is: people who spend years learning coding, algorithms, patterns have no issue to jump a crazy ship and continue to work at a place where they are appreciated.
If you have some inferiority complex that you had to 'work hard' then maybe you should 'stop working hard', get a degree in IT and become a 'snowflake' lol.
And they were working, and they will be working the same. They don't "gotta work too" - they simply switch the jobs to ones which offer them better treatment than modern slaves, and I think this is something you took personally.
It is Musk who will get reality check - whatever **** he could do with factory workers won't work with educated specialists who actually aren't bound to a single place.

Sure they’ll be able to find another job. But the pay won’t be the same. Source: https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Developer/Salary/ef69e904/Mid-Career

And that’s fine. Jobs that offer higher pay are filled quickly and harder to find/land, whereas jobs that offer lower pay will linger for months/years.

 

[RudyBob]

Reminds me of an old joke.

I'm gonna get even with every cop on the force
How ya gonna do that?
I'm gonna turn in my badge

If they leave like that maybe he don't have to pay them as much

 

[fps4ever]

Apparently their entire group of employees were woke and out of touch with reality. I understand some things Musk is doing might be borderline legal but what ***** (apparently lots of them) calls out their boss/owner in public then defies orders thinks there won't be repercussions? The woke is really waking up to reality.

 

[m4a4]

Yeah, I agree with a few of the observations here; It will look bad short term (page clicks galore!), but long term they'll have people who want to put in the work instead of people who want the job perks (if management can be smart with their next hires).

That said, you can only go so hardcore in the culture before you just don't keep employees long enough to right the ship properly anymore. And it's a pretty risky move considering how many people have left already.

But what will be the most amusing thing is seeing all the people go out of their way to comment on the situation, jumping on bandwagons and making ridiculous statements. I approve of all this amusement caused by the Chief Twit lol

 

[hahahanoobs]

LOL somebody's mad.

"educated specialists" LMFAO I'm sure the dudes in net leggings who spent all day spending twitter's $1.5bn in research funds on starbucks and trigger warnings were doing a lot. How will twitter ever cope without them? It takes thousands to run a fancy SMS app after all!

EDIT: also, you can't say "learn to code", twitter said that's racist and banned it years ago.

Some might say you're mad they are making more money than you for allegedly doing little to no work, without knowing the inner workings of the company enough that you could bet a lot of money on to say it's true.

Learn to code was deemed racist? I couldn't find that by searching "learn to code is racist."
North American truckers are primarily white, so that's an entirely different issue - stupidity, not racism.

It amazes me how often that accusation gets thrown around without merit by the wrong groups. But then again, if the affected groups make accusations, it's annoying....

 

[Nobina]

People who were deadweight, like those posting short videos of them at work playing and whatnot, are going to have a hard time finding a job where you actually have to do something. They're in for a rude awakening.

I'm not going to make fun of people losing their jobs just because they're politically misaligned with me. I didn't like it when people lost their jobs because they had slightly conservative views (by today's ridiculous standards).

Unfortunately, a lot of people are happy about this that were unhappy when someone they liked was getting fired. I don't care all that much, not gonna pretend, but it's disingenuous from them.

 

[Shear]

It's mad how many people are in support of that guy in the comment section. No employee should ever work as hard as the guy who owns the company because the compensation isn't the same. Don't get me wrong, employers are very happy to find people like that but if you're one of the morons who is breaking their back for somebody else's success it's on you.

For the people who are saying this is good for Twitter, it ain't. There are so many software dev jobs out there it's crazy. And most of them now are work-from-home chill places. So it will be very hard for Elon to find people to replace the ones that left when your conditions suck. I'm sure there is some element of him trying to get rid of some people but I doubt he wanted this many to be out and that loud so everyone knows how **** it is to work for Twitter now.

Also, I live in Ireland, and this billionaire is asking for people to go back to the office in Dublin... amongst the biggest housing crises in Ireland ever, impossible to find a place to rent in Dublin atm for a decent price. He is completely lost in this Twitter business. Done some great things but it's just proof that no matter who you are, you cannot be good at everything. Also, his spending this much time on Twitter is no doubt going to lead to problems in his other endeavors.

 

[takaozo]

Just imagine the Linkedin post for Twitter roles: "are you a hardcore worker and want to work 12 hours a day and get paid for 8? come join us !!"

 

[Burty117]

Is 40 hour weeks considered "hardcore" for America or something? If so, **** the UK, I'm moving to America!

 

[ScottSoapbox]

Yet Twitter will go on.

It's not like we aren't all used to using software with bugs and slow development times. So, will we even notice the difference on our end?