Early in November, Twitter’s roughly 7,500 staff obtained a terse e mail from a generic tackle: “In an effort to put Twitter on a wholesome path, we are going to undergo the tough means of lowering our world work pressure.” The word was signed “Twitter.” On Nov. 3, some folks on the firm obtained emails indicating they might be laid off the following day.
That evening, Ms. Solomon, her husband and some colleagues headed to Dots Cafe Portland, a lounge on Clinton Avenue. Telephones have been on the desk, face up, she stated. Because the work pals talked, they tapped away at their telephones, collaborating in chats on the Sign app with colleagues in London, Seattle and San Francisco. Messages like “I acquired hit” have been flying throughout screens, Ms. Solomon recalled. “You have been seeing your co-workers drop like flies,” she stated.
By the following afternoon her workforce of about 10 engineers was lowered to 4. Ms. Solomon and her husband had survived the spherical of layoffs. The following week, she recalled, she awaited additional route from Mr. Musk or the brand new govt workforce. Nothing got here, she stated, apart from an e mail alerting staff that distant work would not be permitted, with few exceptions.
Many staff realized of Mr. Musk’s priorities by watching his Twitter feed, the place he posted often about firm enterprise to his greater than 100 million followers. On Nov. 5, he complained concerning the platform’s search operate: “Search inside Twitter jogs my memory of Infoseek in ’98! That can even get lots higher pronto,” he wrote. That very same day, he tweeted: “Twitter will quickly add means to connect long-form textual content to tweets, ending absurdity of notepad screenshots.”
That was greater than Ms. Solomon and lots of of her colleagues had heard internally. “Radio silence,” she stated. She started to vent her frustration on Twitter.
Certainly one of her first tweets on this vein got here on Nov. 6, shortly after Mr. Musk introduced a brand new rule for Twitter customers in a tweet: “Any title change in any respect will trigger momentary lack of verified checkmark,” he wrote. He had posted that message after many individuals on Twitter had modified their names to variations on Mr. Musk’s title, most of them mocking.
