Elon Musk At 'Paranoid' Stage Of Howard Hughes, Pee Bottles To Follow At Unknown Time
Yup, checks out.
The $44 billion bonfire continues to blaze over at Twitter, which is starting to feel like the Netflix series "Russian Doll." The fruit is just beginning to rot, characters have gone missing, and everything is just a little bit ... off.
In the three weeks since the Tesla and SpaceX CEO took over the social media company, he's fired half the workforce, alienated advertisers, and spent all day and night shitposting, which he appears to think is his IRL job.
"Coverage of FTX meltdown is incomparably faster *and* better quality on Twitter than old-school media," he tweeted , perhaps attempting to distract from the tire fire by highlighting another billionaire's downfall , adding later that "Twitter is like open-sourcing the news."
And in a sense, he's right. Although perhaps not in the way he thinks.
Details of the company's rapid implosion are being tweeted out in real time, forming a disastrous feedback loop as Twitter looks less viable, causing users, advertisers, and employees to flee, making the company less viable. Rinse, repeat, circle the drain.
The latest self-inflicted GSW to the dick comes after Musk's ill-advised ultimatum that employees commit to being "extremely hardcore" or GTFO.
"This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade," he emailed employees at midnight Monday. "If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below. Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance."
Given the choice between three months pay and shooting a porno at work — or worse! — hundreds of employees chose the FUCK OUT option, leaving somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 people at a company which had 7,500 three weeks ago. Put simply, ain't nobody left to fly this plane.
Tell us how bad it is, Washington Post :
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.
Yikes .
But Musk has an answer for that, and it is that "the best people are staying, so I’m not super worried." Which is cool and all, but if you don't have a payroll department , you're kinda fucked either way. Also, the guy has been wrong about literally every other thing, so, YMMV.
The Verge reports that, after demanding on November 9 that employees return to the office full time as of November 10 or else , Musk has now locked them all out until November 21. Apparently he's both paranoid that disgruntled soon-to-be-former employees will sabotage him and unclear after the "hardcore" email who took it and who left it.
“We're hearing this is because Elon Musk and his team are terrified employees are going to sabotage the company. Also, they're still trying to figure out which Twitter workers they need to cut access for.”
— Zoë Schiffer (@Zoë Schiffer) 1668729137
This isn't the ruthless efficiency of an all-knowing CEO of a start-up — and anyway Twitter isn't a start-up. This is the erratic behavior of someone who'd be relieved of responsibility for running the church raffle.
“I know of six critical systems (like ‘serving tweets’ levels of critical) which no longer have any engineers,” a former employee told the Post . “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.”
This cannot go on, and odds are, it won't. Which sucks a lot, for the employees and for all of us who spent our days on that hellsite. It was great, and soon it will be gone, taking with it the myth of Elon the genius. Also $44 billion.
Ain't capitalism great!
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"Oh I remember now...life was a fucking paradise before social media, smartphones and reality TV."
I grew up pre-internet, and the best thing about that was not being constantly exposed to endless amounts of idiots. We just had to deal with the ones in our immediate vicinity. It really was better not knowing.
Fuck him.If he needs money, let him hock the jade elephant.