Elon Musk Fires 1,200 More Twitter Employees: Will it Collapse?
The billionaire that has taken over every news outlet in the nation with his historic purchase of Twitter for a whopping 44 billion dollars has once again made an unprecedented move as CEO. Not only did his reign over the company begins with a back-and-forth between Twitter executives about factual reporting of their metrics and other important key issues within the company, but after his acquisition, things only continued to get messier.
Musk introduced subscriptions into his vision of Twitter and reworked the entire company by reducing their workforce significantly and essentially giving Twitter employees an ultimatum – leave the company on stay to fix it (a simple Google form with one answer choice – “Yes”). If employees failed to respond they were fired and would be given three months severance pay, a stipulation that lacked any detail. He insisted that employees began working in person immediately and desired to maintain a rigid work environment that showed no mercy or work-life balance for those who have already become accustomed to the remote nature of their job. After much backlash, however, he did become laxer about this in-person requirement.
Though, because of this and more, a major chunk of employees, over 1,200, decided to resign leading to one of the biggest issues the platform has faced yet: the lack of personnel to keep one of the most popular social media sites up and running smoothly. This sparked users of the site to panic about the future of the app, especially because it is one of the most used platforms for connecting with individuals and having community conversations on a scale never before seen.
With the loss of this massive group of employees, we will likely see the fall of Twitter as we know it. Without the workforce behind it, the app’s speediness, security, and polished nature will dwindle, though it may be slow and not all at once. Bug fixes and constant repairing of issues when the site goes down will become a thing of the past and users will soon find it difficult to navigate. Engineers will no longer be dedicated to fixing these issues which will be fatal to such a large app that holds huge amounts of information and a still-growing user base.
The reduction in employees after the transition to Musk and the firing of former CEO Parag Agrawal, has sent a ripple through the company that resulted in the majority of employees either being fired or resigned and making it difficult for those who remained to even know who to report to during these tumultuous times. It is unclear whether Twitter will be facing the tragic reality – a complete shutdown of the site – following Musk’s questionable decision-making process.
