Fast, strong, dangerous: The series of decisions after taking over Twitter demonstrate Elon Musk’s ‘stormy’ working style

Tram Ho

Less than 24 hours after completing the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Elon Musk has decided to change the homepage of the platform.

He requested that logged out users after visiting Twitter.com be redirected to the Explore page, which displays trending tweets and stories, according to employees familiar with the sharing issue. These people requested anonymity by speaking without the company’s permission. Previously, going to Twitter’s homepage while logged out only showed a signup form, encouraging creating an account to view tweets.

Musk’s directive, made late last Friday, requires the involvement of vice presidents in the code override process. Be aware that Twitter’s code freeze was put in place to prevent malicious employees from making changes during the takeover.

While Musk didn’t elaborate on the reason for the change, to employees observing the process, it sent a very clear message. If it were Twitter before, such a decision would be controversial among the teams and need to be discussed for weeks. But this is the new Twitter. As one former executive put it, “It’s definitely a way to make it clear who’s in charge now.”

Nhanh, mạnh, hiểm: Loạt quyết sách sau khi tiếp quản Twitter chứng minh cho phong cách làm việc ‘vũ bão’ của Elon Musk - Ảnh 1.

Twitter is transforming from the inside, with a myriad of dramatic changes.

The change to Twitter’s homepage is an example of how Elon Musk, less than three days after changing his personal account nickname to “Chief Twit,” has begun to quickly make changes to the company. This is from the inside out. Even as he is still preparing to lay off a significant portion of his staff in the coming days, Elon Musk has made quick changes to Twitter itself, such as requiring its paid subscription feature, Super Follows, renamed “Subscribe” in a rushed update to the mobile app. Not stopping there, Twitter is considering charging for the blue tick, which is coveted by most.

He also discussed using Starlink, his satellite-based internet service at SpaceX, to provide access to Twitter in countries where it is currently difficult to access.

The employees assigned to the task fulfilled Musk’s requests by working late into the night and all through the weekend, despite the possibility that their manager was compiling a list of team members that would be fired. . According to a person familiar with the matter, Musk’s firing of former Parag Agrawal executive and other top executives last week was most likely to avoid paying them tens of millions of shares under the contract. previous bonus commitments.

Now, employees are fearing that layoffs will begin before November 1, when a significant percentage of them will receive a stock allowance paid in cash, at a rate of 54, $20 a share. However, Musk later tweeted: “This is wrong” in response to a similar tweet.

Throughout this process, Elon Musk is also relying on his trusted associates to help him better understand what he just bought. Musk has locked himself in an isolated area of ​​Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, with a fleet of Tesla cars parked outside and new security guards guarding the entrance. That could also be why he needed to bring in a new sink as shown in the video that went viral last week. Because the default toilet in the Twitter office is clearly not suitable for this billionaire’s long, stressful and crowded working style. In the past, Musk is also famous for the fact that during the production of the Tesla Model 3, he was so busy that he did not have time to go home and take a shower. This billionaire even had to sleep on the factory floor with his workers.

Nhanh, mạnh, hiểm: Loạt quyết sách sau khi tiếp quản Twitter chứng minh cho phong cách làm việc ‘vũ bão’ của Elon Musk - Ảnh 2.

Bringing the sink to Twitter headquarters, Elon Musk determined to “camp” here for a long time.

In addition, dozens of people from the family office, other companies, and his friends were added to Twitter’s employee directory and given the company’s email addresses, according to employees’ sources. and internal correspondence in The Verge’s report.

These include Alex Spiro, Musk’s personal attorney, who is acting as Twitter’s de facto general counsel; Andrew Musk, a relative of Elon Musk, who works for the startup Neuralink; Jehn Balajadia, COO of The Boring Company; David Sacks, a political donor and former founding member of PayPal; Jason Calacanis, an investor and longtime friend of Musk; Sriram Krishnan, a former Twitter product lead and now at the Andreessen Horowitz hedge fund, is also a friend of Musk.

Kayvon Beykpour, Twitter’s former product manager who was fired by Agrawal in May, was also seen at the office last Friday, sparking rumors that he could return to work. Those things make many people worry about the future of Jay Sullivan, who is now Twitter’s current product manager, still working at the company.

Last Saturday, Calacanis, an American entrepreneur, angel investor, and podcaster shared that he met Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety. “Twitter will focus on identity and safety in the coming weeks,” Calacanis quoted Roth as saying.

Nhanh, mạnh, hiểm: Loạt quyết sách sau khi tiếp quản Twitter chứng minh cho phong cách làm việc ‘vũ bão’ của Elon Musk - Ảnh 3.

Elon Musk asked the Twitter programmer to print the code on paper to personally review, but then switched to reviewing everything on the computer.

Also last Friday, engineers at Twitter were asked to print out their recent programming contributions, within the last 30 to 60 days, and make them available to Tesla engineers and the company itself. close review of Elon Musk. They were then quickly asked to shred the prints, instead displaying the code on a computer, according to a report from Platformer . Several engineers mentioned a Twitter account that tracks the location of Musk’s private jet, expecting it to be reviewed by him and Tesla engineers.

Other managers were also told that the purpose of the reviews was to let Musk see who could work with the speed and efficiency he required, and that he also wanted to eliminate technical managers. not often programmed.

“Software managers must write good software, or it’s like a cavalry captain can’t ride a horse!” , he shared this in May on Twitter.

Twitter, on the other hand, has stopped answering questions from the press since Elon Musk took over.

See TheVerge, BI

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Source : Genk