That afternoon, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal held a company-wide meeting to reassure 7,500 full-time employees, with one man unable to change culture and strategy. He insisted that it was up to the company to set it up. Issues spoken on anonymous terms to discuss confidential matters.
The reputation that Musk has built partially for himself through the trolling he does on Twitter has emerged as a responsibility among employees of social media companies. Twitter is known for its generous workforce and flexible work environment.Masks, on the other hand, appear to imitate gender pronouns and forge coronaviruses. False alarmAnd his company, Tesla, have been subject to multiple proceedings on suspicion of racism and sexual harassment.
Several employees tweeted their complaints about masks on Thursday.
Employee dissatisfaction can influence the decisions facing the Twitter board of directors. This is to value the company’s $ 43 billion and mask proposal to keep it private. In addition to assessing the financial details of Musk’s bids, board members will probably consider Musk’s potential leadership chops when Musk is tackling important business and political challenges. Probably.
Twitter’s Agrawal, who just took office as CEO in December, was in an unpleasant position to answer employee criticisms of musk at a plenary meeting on Thursday. He answered a wide range of questions about Twitter workers’ offers to buy Mask’s company. This includes the treatment of people of color in his company Tesla and the resolute support of millionaires for free speech on social media. Others asked about employee representatives on the board and what would happen to Twitter employees’ restricted stock units if the company went private, people said.
Some were disappointed with Agrawal’s guarantee and left, saying it felt like an empty word.
“Obviously, people are dissatisfied with how employees look like retrofits,” said one.
Twitter employees faced a whirlwind month as Musk first acquired a large stake in the company, then agreed to join the board, and resigned before he joined. Thursday’s news shook the workforce, who were already concerned about his leadership style, with news that Musk offered to keep the company private.
Running my treatment app for all hands about hostile takeovers is peak 2022
— Casey Bishop (@caseylbishop) April 14, 2022
Daniel Ives, managing director and senior equity research analyst at financial services firm Wedbush Securities, mentioned Jack Dorsey, the company’s former CEO, saying, “Musks hijacking Twitter often worked under Dorsey and the Twitter regime. It would be a nightmare for our employees. ” “If Musk eventually takes over Twitter, I think a lot of resumes will hit, and I think there’s a big mess that will happen there in some way.”
Twitter declined to comment. Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
At a TED talk in Vancouver last Thursday, Musk said he would make a mistake on the side of free speech. “We are very reluctant to remove things … we want to be very careful about permanent bans,” he said, adding that he prefers timeouts.
Tweep, I know it’s a distracting time, but don’t forget why we’re here and what connects us:
👇— Luka (@__lucab) April 14, 2022
Last week, Musk revealed that he had bought more than 9% of Twitter’s stake, and the next day Agrawal announced that Musk would join the board. On Sunday night, Agrawal announced that Musk had declined to seat.
Even before his bid, some Twitter employees I had a hard time According to an internal message read by The Washington Post, he said last week that his values seemed inconsistent with the company in support of Mask’s involvement in the company.In an internal message, some employees have a mask who considers himself an advocate of free speech. Appeared Express contempt for the use of gender pronouns.
“We know he has harmed workers, the transgender community, women, and the weak in the world,” one employee asked. “How do we harmonize this decision with our values? Is innovation better than humanity?”
When Musk was still scheduled to join the board, Agrawal said he would open the city hall with Musk so that employees could ask them questions.
In addition to the astonishment of Twitter employees on Thursday, the takeover bid took place in the midst of the company’s “Focus Week.” off.
On Thursday, another worker tweeted a call for Musk’s behavioral bullying. “‘Titter’ is now a trend as the playground bully decides to make a joke at the expense of Twitter, just as a bully in his fanboy is wandering around,” the employee writes. rice field. “And we all know that jokes aren’t really important. Humiliation.”
Tesla’s factories in the Bay Area have been plagued by worker abuse, infringement of workers’ rights, racism and sexual harassment charges. According to Tesla, the plant, which accepts more than 20,000 workers, is the company’s busiest production plant, producing Model 3, Y, S and X vehicles.
In February, California workplace regulators sued Tesla for widespread racism, alleging hundreds of workers’ complaints about its factory in Fremont, California. In another proceeding, Tesla was ordered to pay millions of dollars to a former elevator operator who alleged hostile work environment and racial harassment. Several women have also filed sexual harassment complaints against Tesla, alleging lewd comments, cat calls, improper contact and discrimination at the facility.
Tesla has denied fostering a culture of racism and harassment and has called for the transfer of parts of the proceedings to arbitration so that the matter can be dealt with outside the courtroom.
The Fremont factory was also controversial when Musk reopened in early 2020. Despite orders for county-level shelter-in-place, workers were unable to get a job. Musk promised he could stay home if the worker felt uneasy. The post later reported that despite that policy, some workers received severance notices.
A Tesla employee who spoke to The Post on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation will announce his opinion after a fellow employee was dismissed this year after posting a video of the company’s “fully autonomous driving” software on YouTube. He said he was afraid of that. .. These clips were later analyzed by The Post.
“They are [workers] A worker at a Tesla factory said he was afraid of Musk’s own anger. “He rules with an authoritarian fist.”
In addition to serving as CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, Musk founded Neuralink with The Boring Company, which seeks to transplant computer chips into people’s brains.
If the acquisition is successful, Musk will inherit the company that has been competing to grow its user base and revenue after years of poor financial performance. Twitter is a small peer of social media competitors such as Facebook and TikTok, both attracting more than a billion users and facing issues of slow user growth and concerns about monetization. increase. By comparison, Twitter is estimated to have 217 million daily users.
Twitter is known to be slowly working on new products and feature releases.After activist investor Elliott Management It took Twitter acquired its stake in 2020 and set some ambitious goals for user and revenue growth by the end of 2023.
And the company has recently undergone a major leadership change. After spending four years as Chief Technology Officer in December, Agrawal took over Dorsey as Chief Executive Officer. Dorsey was also the CEO of both Twitter and Square, an online payments company. Square has elicited criticism from investors that his time is too divided.
“Can we foresee a scenario where he would make changes to the management team if he took over?” Asked Mark Shmulik, managing director of research firm AllianceBernstein. “It certainly looks like that, [it’s] It’s hard to say. “
Twitter has invested in new products such as Twitter Spaces, an audio chat room feature. This was aimed at competing with the emerging Clubhouse.Mask has already hinted that he believes that changes may be made to the company’s new subscription, Twitter Blue. service This gives paid customers special features such as the freedom to undo tweets.
The price is probably around $ 2 per month, but it’s prepaid for 12 months, the account doesn’t get a checkmark for 60 days (note CC chargeback), and if used for fraud / spam, it’s stopped without refund. Will be
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 10, 2022
Conflicts with employees can occur if the musk takes over and effectively says: This is what I want you to focus on, “Shmulik said.
Encouraging more employee anxiety is that masks can change the way political content is handled, which can violate rules regarding hate speech, harassment and intimidation.
In the past, Twitter has been more willing than its social media peers to punish political leaders for breaking that requirement. Twitter also took an unprecedented move to permanently ban former President Donald Trump about his role in stalking the riots that struck the U.S. Capitol last year, and the company oppressed their point of view. It urged a backlash from the conservatives.
At the TED meeting on Thursday, Mr. Musk said freedom of speech meant allowing others to speak out what you disagree with.
“It’s annoying to say something you don’t like,” he said. “It’s a sign of a healthy and functioning free speech situation.”
In a letter to Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor, the CEO of Technology said he believes the company “has the potential to become a platform for free speech around the world.”
“The company doesn’t thrive or serve this social demand in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”