Twitter Desperation Surfaces As Elon Musk Calls For Engineers 'Who Can Actually Write Software'
A historic workforce reduction followed by mass resignation has put Twitter's new CEO Elon Musk on the backfoot, to the point of desperation, it seems. Tech journalist Zoe Schiffer got her hands on an emails sent out by Musk to the remaining employees at Twitter, asking "anyone who can actually write software" to report in the company's San Francisco based headquarter on Friday.
According to multiple reports, Twitter's offices have been closed and employee badge access has been revoked until Monday, while Musk was personally said to be patrolling the office premises with his close confidantes. This came after Musk gave employees a deadline to either commit to his Twitter 2.0 dream that will be all about hardcore engineering, or bid their goodbyes to the company with a three-month severance package in their hands.
Insider and Fortune reported that not many are willing to join Musk on his quest to reinvent Twitter, with anywhere between 1,000 and 1,200 employees calling it quits. It appears that Musk was not anticipating the mass departure, which has left Twitter with just over 2,000 employees, down from over 7,000 just a couple of weeks ago. It appears that Musk is growing anxious, calling the entire workforce to join on a team call — especially the coding talent — and also asked them to furnish the most relevant piece of code they have written at Twitter.
Coders, assemble!
Musk's email to employees asked them to join the meeting in person, telling them "if possible, I would encourage you to fly to SF to present, in person." What Is truly bizzare is that Musk asked the engineers to send the details of code they had pushed in the past six months, or arrive to the meeting with screenshots of the "most salient lines of code" they had written recently.
According to Reuters, Musk added in the email that he would be at Twitter's office in person until midnight and back again on Saturday morning. The mercurial CEO, who is currently staring at labor lawsuits and even a potential regulatory scrutiny, told employees that he will be green-lighting "short, technical interviews" to better understand the core system that keep the social media platform running.
Twitter is in a rather precarious situation right now however, and social media is abuzz with speculation that the platform might implode. Twitter is already calling back some of the employees that were fired in the first wave of massive restructuring days after Musk finalised the deal.
The entire board has vanished, top minds handling security and compliance have also left, content moderation staff has been drastically reduced, and teams handling core systems have been gutted. Musk, on the other hands, recently tweeted that he's not particularly worried as "the best people are staying."