if friday Twitter brought mass layoffs, Monday offered fresh evidence that the company will never be the same. Musk has said to put the entire website behind a paywall, platformer have realized. Meanwhile, the company is scrambling to re-engage employees it had fired hours ago, and some employees say its soon-to-be-launched Twitter Blue subscriptions will help the company. The economics behind can actually lose corporate cash.
It all happened in protest against the background of an organization that has nothing more to do than listen to a Musk official via e-mail or a company-wide assembly. As Monday began, after laying off hundreds of their colleagues several days earlier, many workers had no idea who their managers were.
Meanwhile, Musk’s increasingly erratic management, coupled with his behavior eye-watering tweeting in bad tasteSeveral current and former employees I spoke to with a sinking feeling about their firm’s path forward.
Today let’s talk a little more about how the company thwarted its layoff process, what happened inside Twitter on Monday, and what that paywall would look like.
I. The Botcho
Friday’s layoffs were brutal for all concerned, as well as those involved in planning them – many of whom lost their jobs themselves. While parted by the crew, some managers have been requested to pass on two sentences of all their direct reviews to Musk’s crew: one sentence describing what the worker did, and one sentence on Twitter. but justifies their continued employment.
“You were like, this better be a fucking good sentence,” one person requested to reduce such a list, informed me.
A former employee informed me that managers agonized over the selections and jockeyed with their friends, in an effort to protect employment for perhaps the most vulnerable of them: pregnant girls, workers who have the most cancers, and Among them are employees on visas.
Some groups have been less large than others; Many are completely ruined. As it turned out, though, the corporate went too far. as I was the first to report on saturdayWithin hours of layoffs, some managers are already being informed to ask selectively laid off workers if they wish to revisit their previous jobs.
The app began as a rumor on Blind, where employees of various corporations could chat with their coworkers anonymously. But within a day it was being posted in public Slack channels.
“Sorry @ – on the weekend everyone but I wanted to go through with this that we have an opportunity to ask those who left if they will come back. I have to prepare the names and arguments by 4 p.m. PST on Sunday, One learns a similar message to employees from a supervisor. “I will do some research but if any of you have been in contact with people who can come back and who we think will help us, please do 4 Nominate before.”
“I think we could use some Android and iOS support,” the supervisor said. The firm has been reaching out to each of the engineers and designers since the previous day to get back to them, platformer is hereby informed.
Some employees are worried that the company will formally rescind the notice it received on Friday if Twitter doesn’t return them voluntarily. Under the Employee Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, companies with more than 100 full-time employees are required to give 60 days’ notice in the event of laying off 33% or more employees. On Twitter, that notice included a promise to pay people for the next 60 days and a month’s severance to them.
Now employees worry that if they refuse to return voluntarily, Twitter will reprimand them for leaving their jobs, denying them three months’ salary in any other case.
Some employees have begun to consult with lawyers on their options in the event of a recall. Others are in open rebellion, tweeting publicly The threads about the various aspects of the organization that are broken down After the ready-fired-target catastrophe of Musk’s layoff process.
Meanwhile, the rest of the managers are preparing themselves for a much greater workload than before. One person I spoke to suggested that any technical supervisor should be trusted to handle at least 20 individual contributors, plus spend at least half their time writing code. Others have been given much higher numbers of direct reviews.
Second. two twitter
As what immediately began on Twitter, there were originally two teams at the firm, one worker informed me: these engaged in tasks that Musk was deeply concerned with, such as revamped Twitter Blue membership, and everyone else.
“The two teams that they have on their pet project are doing 20-hour days,” a worker told me. “But much of the company is just sitting around. No chain of command, no priorities, no organization charts, and in many cases, no idea who your manager or team is.”
But almost the whole company is just like sitting around.’
To study what they’ve been accused of doing, the workers seemed to have somewhat unusual sources. A variety of celebrities and high-profile accounts began impersonating him, with Musk offering a new coverage via a tweet, that anyone else found impersonating will be banned permanently without warning, This was news to Twitter’s coverage crew, I’m informed, and some activists later began discussing ways to implement Musk’s order.
Meanwhile, in response to a former employee, the health team was asked to heed Musk’s adviser David Sachs on a podcast about why they would lose half of their colleagues. Sachs, a venture capitalist working to handle the Musk transition, co-hosts the “All-In” podcast with fellow Twitter consultant Jason Calacanis and VC Chamath Palihapitiya.
“The most recent podcast covers the current layoffs happening in tech and provides some insight into why this is happening/necessary,” a VP Informed Worker. “I think it’s worth listening to to understand the macro environment we’re working in.”
Most employees were more curious about their health benefits, which suddenly became a question mark. The company’s open enrollment period was to begin immediately according to its international calendar, but no data was available in the firm’s human-resources system. Employees immediately posted several questions on the benefits inside Slack, but all remained unanswered by the administration.
III. blue disaster
By the end of the day, I’m informed, at least some groups had begun holding conferences through which workers were given information about who their managers were, what their group charts looked like, and their priorities. What will happen?
But many activists I spoke to are still wrestling with a broader question: Do Musk and his crew know what they’re doing?
On the one hand, the company is telling advertisers that it is flourishing, ledgeK Alex Heath reported the end of the second quarter, including day-to-day 15 million subscribers.
But the rollout of Musk’s first Signature mission, a brand new model of Twitter Blue subscriptions that enables anyone to get a verification badge, has been a catastrophe.
The company introduced a new model of the app on Saturday With release notes stating that the new Blue is now available, (The copy, written by Calacanis, was widely ridiculed for sounding like a phishing e-mail.) The downside is that Blu was inaccessible, and so those who subscribed found that they only needed Blue’s current model. will get admission in. ,
Then, following a debate about the potential consequences of opening hundreds of recently verified accounts on the platform amid the US midterm elections, the company postponed the launch.
Twitter employees try to promote Musk and Sachs on the idea of asking enterprise accounts to pay for additional options
But the brand new Blue appears to be facing bigger issues. The current model only had over 100,000 active customers, platformer have realized. The new model will be 37.5% more expensive, and its price seems suspicious to many common customers of the platform. It’s unclear how the company will persuade enough people to subscribe to justify the trouble.
Twitter employees tried to promote Musk and Sachs on the idea of asking enterprise accounts to pay for additional options because too many of them use Twitter to succeed in a large audience. But they have been rejected in favor of providing widespread verification first, I am informed.
Other employees have warned of a secondary feature of the new Blue that Musk added at the last minute: halving the ad load in the Twitter app. Estimates confirmed that Twitter would lose about $6 in advertising revenue per consumer in the United States, the sources noted. Factoring in part of Apple and Google’s $8 month-to-month subscriptions, Twitter appears to be lose Cash on Blue when Ad-Lite plan is applicable.
“The business basics aren’t there,” said a former employee who worked on the plans.
Musk is closely related in Blue’s chaotic launches, collaborating at standup conferences, and exchanging general emails with Esther Crawford, director of product administration at the firm. “There’s one decision-maker and that’s me,” Musk informed employees in response to assembly notes shared with workers at Slack.
Twitter appears to be lose Cash on Blue when Ad-Lite plan is applicable.
“Any detail of Twitter Blue should be clear to the last detail,” the message said.
But all this may be the prelude to the biggest change of all: charging most or all customers a subscription payment to use Twitter.
In a response to a person familiar with the matter, both Musk and Sachs have mentioned the idea at the latest conferences. One such plan would enable everyone to use Twitter for a limited time every month but would require a subscription to continue searching, the person said.
Didn’t realize how serious Musk and Sachs were about paywall; Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. This also doesn’t seem imminent, as the Blue team is fully engaged with the launch of Extended Verification.
Still, given Twitter’s sizable debt burden, Blue’s backward economics, and the latest stagnation in spending by key advertisers, it’s clear that Musk and what he believes must do a thing for a significant increase in earnings. And no matter what they choose, it seems more and more clear that Twitter will never be the same.
