Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowHundreds of Twitter employees refused Thursday to sign a pledge to work longer hours, threatening the site’s ability to keep operating and prompting hurried debates among managers over who should be asked to return, current and former employees said.
The number of engineers tending to multiple critical systems had been reduced to two, one or even zero, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
The crisis came in response to an ultimatum new owner Elon Musk issued Wednesday demanding that employees sign a pledge to work harder by 5 p.m. Thursday or accept three months’ severance pay.
In an early sign that the number of those declining to sign was greater than anticipated, Musk eased off a return-to-office mandate he had issued a week ago, telling employees Thursday they would be allowed to work remotely if their managers assert they are making “an excellent contribution.”
But it was too late to keep Twitter from a precarious position, several workers said.
“I know of six critical systems (like ‘serving tweets’ levels of critical) which no longer have any engineers,” a former employee said. “There is no longer even a skeleton crew manning the system. It will continue to coast until it runs into something, and then it will stop.”
Workers offered varying estimates of how many people remained employed at Twitter, ranging from 2,000 to 2,500, down from the 3,500 or so believed to have remained after an initial round of layoffs this month.
Among those who were said to have declined to sign the pledge was half the trust and safety policy team, including a majority of those who work on spotting misinformation, spam, fake accounts and impersonation, according to one employee familiar with the team.
Meanwhile, several critical engineering teams were reported to have been hollowed out. The team that runs the service Gizmoduck, which powers and stores all information in user profiles across the site, was entirely gone, according to a recent department head who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to detail the departures.
Departing employees filled the Twitter hashtag #LoveWhereYouWorked with public farewells.
“I thought my soul was already fully crushed after the last two weeks. I was so wrong. Today has been rough,” one tweeted. “There will never be a better culture than what we had. We know it. Every other tech company knows it.”
“Wow, this is a lot of people saying goodbye,” one current employee said Thursday, referring to internal posts on the company’s Slack channels.
Twitter employees weren’t the only ones saying goodbye Thursday night. As news of the depleted engineering teams spread across the site, Twitter users began preparing for the worst—exchanging contact information, trying to download their Twitter data, and posting potential “final posts” in case the site were to go down permanently.
As of 9 p.m., the top trend on Twitter in the United States was “#RIPTwitter,” followed by the names of alternative social networks such as Tumblr, Discord, and Mastodon as users mulled life after tweets.
Musk’s return-to-office order had been a source of tension since it was issued on Nov. 9. In an email, he told employees they were expected back at their desks the next day. At a follow-up staff meeting on Nov. 10, Musk said that “exceptional” employees could continue to work from home, as many have since the pandemic began. But the return-to-office order remained a source of grumbling for Twitter staffers who had remained at the company after Musk-ordered layoffs Nov. 4 eliminated approximately half of Twitter’s jobs.
Musk did not say why he revised his return-to-office order. One Twitter staff member said the numbers of employees seeking to leave had alarmed many of Twitter’s managers, who had formed “war rooms” to determine which employees should be asked to stay on.
Resignations and departures were already taking a toll on Twitter’s service, employees said. “Breakages are already happening slowly and accumulating,” one said. “If you want to export your tweets, do it now.”
Hate speech and other abuse was also likely to spike, employees said. About half of Twitter’s Trust and Safety team, declined to sign the pledge, a co-worker said.
The easing of the return-to-office order was the latest change in Musk’s decisions as head of Twitter. Musk also has halted his initiative imposing an $8 monthly subscription fee on accounts labeled with Twitter’s blue check mark.
Musk has said he wants to increase the platform’s ability to make money, focusing on ways to drive revenue and slashing costs. Musk, who is also chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, is known for his companies’ hard-charging cultures and has famously described spending nights in a sleeping bag on the factory floor.
On Wednesday, Musk took the stand in Delaware Chancery Court in a trial over a shareholder lawsuit stemming from a compensation package he received as Tesla CEO. He also defended some of his actions at Twitter, including bringing in Tesla engineers to evaluate Twitter’s engineering staff.
Musk said in a Wednesday email outlining the severance offer that Twitter would be more of an engineering-focused operation going forward. And while the design and product management areas would still be important and report to him, he said, “those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway.”
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.
In the self-deluded world of the WaPo (a place that was replete with members of the Blue Checkmark Special People Club prior to the reforms), we’re supposed to feel sorry for Twitter employees. Most of them couldn’t achieve basic text mods using HTML.
Three months severance pay is very generous…and probably, for many people, puts them close to six figures. It will also last them four months in the City by the Bay. A big problem, given that a sizable proportion of these “hate speech” monitors are grievance studies employees who are basically unhireable, except at other companies with the same skewed Ponzi structure as Twitter. These are no doubt abundant in the region, but they’re all on borrowed time. And some are already vestigial (Tumblr), having failed organically.
Note that employees like Rahul Ligma and Daniel Johnson didn’t mention Twitter’s most direct and obvious competitors: Gab, Parler, TruthSocial. Gosh, I wonder why.
Because they’ve all failed and no one uses them, for the same reason that no one has ever managed a competitor to Twitter. No one is interested in the “all the fun of 8chan” you seek, for much the same reason no one goes to your beloved downtown Portland. (Which I have done, repeatedly, and lived to snark about.)
Besides, Twitter bent over backwards to let Trump stay despite him violating all the rules for multiple years. I mean, sure, I get the anger, it wasn’t written down that “using the service to encourage people to overthrow American democracy” was a permanent ban, but why not be grateful for the time he had?
Literally HUNDREDS of people opting out to leave Twitter! OMG. Combined with the few hundred thousand bots the company retained to fool advertisers and overvalue the company, what are the remaining Twits to do!
Joe B, there are literally hundreds of anarcho-commies and AntiFA rioters making every effort to use Gramsci-style tactics to unravel civic foundations and “overthrow American democracy” in places like Poopland–quite successfully, since the city/state leadership (also DAs and AGs) are not considering their behavior to be criminal. Released from jail without charges after arson or criminal riots. Exact same way they treated the KKK in Mississippi in the 1960s. And, when I say “they” the political party I’m referring to is….
Every one of the sites I mentioned are still fully functioning despite Big Tech’s furious efforts to destroy them. They are “alt”. I remember when “alt” meant edgy and lefty and not scary and reactionary, but then lefties WERE edgy and I know the people who use them don’t count as human beings in your eyes, but they are chugging along despite legacy media and Big Tech’s cartel-like collusion to imitate the rail tycoons of the Gilded Age. I can assure you that, in 2022, the once-mighty Tumblr has less capitalization than they do.
That’s great, they’re “alt”. Not a one of them is around to be “alt”. They’re around to make money. People aren’t investing in them for any reason but to make money. You can be all cool and hip and a critical darling but that doesn’t pay the bills, ask any number of musicians. I mean, it’s great that everyone who bought Big Star’s first album started a band and critics loved them. That didn’t put food on Alex Chilton or Chris Bell’s table.
None of your ‘alt’ sites are going to grow unless they adopt a lot more in the way of content restrictions…to make the service something that others want to use and businesses want to advertise on … otherwise they shall remain “alt” and, hence, used by no one. It’s great Parler allows unregulated speech. They also allow lots of porn, apparently. Good luck getting McDonalds to advertise there.
Twitter made Elon buy them because it enabled them to cash out. That the site is going to fail under his watch is of little consequence to them, that’s no longer their problem.
Funny you mention “not counting as human beings” and Tumblr. You do recall their downfall was when Verizon (or Yahoo, same thing) implemented new content policies that cracked down on adult content, which ended up affecting the LBGTQ community the most. I’d have thought that wouldn’t have brought as much scorn from you as it is.
Anyway, Tumblr is owned by Automattic, which runs the WordPress software that runs (last I heard) around 45% of the Internet, including this very website you’re using. Automattic is worth $7.5 billion. And they give their core software away. Long way from the days of being a b2 spin off.
Twitter was on a downward spin before Trump and Elon started using it to bend all the political and stock market “rules”. Good times don’t last forever. Another good idea or company we evolve and grow from the ashes and talented employees that made Twitter great.
Very true, Jaron. A reasoned response. The base of talented employees stayed about the same in number since the early 2010s. What grew were the activists. Even Jack Dorsey has hinted at this. Driven out of his own company.
Lauren B.
Good points as always.
Llook at where Twitter and so many other social media sites
and the other tech companies are located,, it’s not hard to
figure out who they’re are staff8ng their companies with and their political leanings.
We also know two other things about these leftwing activists now staffing our
Media giants.
1). They do not believe in free speech in the market place if ideas.
2). By any means necessary. The ends will justify the means,
3). That America is irredeemably unjust and racist.
Keith, what in blue blazes are you talking about?
You’re after freedom of consequences for your speech, and you’re after private companies being compelled to carry your speech which is not a constitutionally guaranteed right. Freedom of speech for me, not for thee. You may as well be arguing that your 2nd amendment rights compel everyone to carry a weapon whether they want to or not.
Twitter is welcome to run their platform as they want. They are a private company. Elon can proclaim he’s a self-styled free speech guy” … while banning anyone who makes fun of him, firing anyone from the company who dares correct him in public, and having his people search the internal company discussion forums for anyone who’s ever said anything bad about him. It’s his company and he can run it as well or badly as he wants. At the same time, customers and advertisers are welcome to decide they’d rather not be part of it. That is the marketplace of ideas.
Elon can have fun with his $44 billion dollar investment and blame everyone else when it fails, but I do wonder how the Saudis will feel about being jerked around. I’d suggest Musk start with himself for buying a company with no appreciable business plan to profitability for far too much money, then leaning on the rudder to run it into the ground.
“All the why Elon Musk bought Twitter theories are overthinking it.
it’s simple.
Musk is in a right wing filter bubble. he bought Twitter believing their problems were real & that others felt the same
this is what happens when you have a lot of money & live in fantasy land”
https://twitter.com/MattBinder/status/1593474503996280833