Musk ‘ruling Twitter by fear’, says Irish employee

An Irish Twitter employee said the announcement by Musk that he was culling 50% of Twitter's workforce has left the platform in a state of chaos. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins Photos

Billionaire Elon Musk has been accused by an Irish employee of ruling Twitter "by fear”, with the aim of getting staff to leave.

The worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Musk's announcement that he was laying off 50% of Twitter’s workforce has left the tech giant in a state of chaos.

The firm's global workforce was reduced by around 3,500 employees, with workers discovering by email that they had been fired.

Such a mass layoff is potentially contrary to Irish employment law, which mandates a 30-day consultation period following the announcement of job losses, and prior notice of such a large-scale cull to be given to Government, something which was not done.

The Twitter employee said the situation is “kind of mad, with everyone trying to figure out who still existed and who didn’t”.

The staff member said that every vice president in the company had been let go, with roughly 80 middle managers now reporting to Musk directly.

“We don’t know what the organisational chain of command is like at present because all of management was let go,” they said.

“We don’t know much of what’s going on, we’re hearing it more from the media, and learning about it from the trickles coming through.”

The worker said that supporting the remaining services Twitter offers “is going to be very difficult”.

No one knew what teams would be let go, there was no transfer of knowledge.

“It probably is possible to cut a company in half, but you can’t do it overnight,” they said.

“How it was done will probably cause a lot more damage than the action itself. Secondary attrition will be huge.”

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment regarding the issues raised by the employee.

Mr Musk took to his social media platform yesterday to inform users that more changes are inevitable. 

"Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in the coming months. We will keep what works and change what doesn’t," he said.

Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.

We will keep what works & change what doesn’t.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 9, 2022

The company had employed roughly 500 people at its Dublin office, which doubles as its European headquarters, prior to the mass layoffs

The company’s employee said they expect many future problems given that so much expertise on how Twitter is run was lost.

“I would expect things to break,” they said. 

“It’s working now but it’s being propped up, and a lot of core services teams have been cut down to just a few people,” they said.

The Twitter office in Dublin employed about 500 people before the layoffs.

“A lot of services will be fine for a while until there’s a bug, but incidents are going to be happening more frequently, they’re going to be more serious, and they’ll take longer to fix because of all this.”

Teams to be jettisoned include the accessibility group, which ensured access to the site for people with visual impairments for example, and the entire ethics team.

Meanwhile, many content moderators have been denied access to the toolkit they need to do their job since last week, in an attempt, per employee speculation, to limit internal damage that could be inflicted by disgruntled workers.

The atmosphere inside the company is now “bizarre”, the employee said.

There were rumours in the immediate aftermath of the layoffs that Twitter managers had requested feedback as to whether some workers should have been kept on.

“That rumour is true, it was to do with specific disciplines, and they were asking us ‘who have we jumped the gun on’,” the employee said.

The worker said that Musk had embarked on his sacking spree without understanding the company he had acquired, at a cost of €44bn, just two weeks ago.

“It will come back to bite him,” the employee said. “So far he’s just ruling by fear, possibly by design to get people to leave, that’s how people feel internally anyway.”

They said that “he didn’t properly understand the business” before buying it and “he’s not listening to people who know how it runs”.

“This is showing he’s maybe not the incredible businessman everyone thought he was,” they said.

Regarding Musk’s own recent tweeting of conspiracy theories — including one regarding Paul Pelosi, the husband of US House Speaker Nancy who was brutally assaulted in his home on October 28 — the worker said: “It’s not about free speech, it’s about him pandering to the only kind of audience he has left”.

Reports are rife that Musk’s championing of “free speech” and culling of moderators at Twitter have seen some blue-chip advertisers abandon the site.

“He’s doing absolutely everything wrong," the employee said.