For National Emotional Wellness Month, Twitter Inc. has filled employee inboxes with advice on self-care and balance. The outgoing messages, however, are frantic.
With Elon Musk’s deal to buy the company closing within a week, employees are bracing for layoffs — which Musk has told investors could cut 75% of staff, according to people familiar with the matter. This pain will coincide with potential changes in leadership, priorities and values under Musk.
This week was also a “focus week” at Twitter, periodic one-week stretches where employees do fewer meetings in order to get more done. Many staff members said they used the extra time to look for other jobs, as well as to consult with personal lawyers about severance and stock compensation.
Employee equity awards will be granted early next month, but there is confusion over whether the vesting date will change or happen. Concern is growing that share prices will not be paid, the people said. Twitter froze employee equity award accounts on Monday pending the closing of the deal with Musk, Bloomberg reported. Some employees are discussing and researching labor laws to make sure they get the right kind of severance, said another person familiar with the matter, who also asked to remain anonymous discussing private information.
Twitter and Musk are working to close the deal by October 28, after months of legal wrangling. But there’s still a chance something could get in the way — such as a potential national security overhaul by the Joe Biden administration, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
Employees are still going through their regularly scheduled performance reviews in the last three months of the year, albeit more informally, many people said. Employees submitted self-evaluations earlier this month, and this week managers rated staff on a curve, with only 3% of employees at a lower level. Next week, as the deal is set to close, employees will check in with their managers.
With or without Musk, Twitter’s tough economic position could make increases scarce. Several managers received an email this week from the operations team that included a “Nonmonetary Retention Playbook” on how managers could try to retain people without adding compensation.
The teams have continued with product planning and reviewing proposed changes to Twitter’s functionality. However, the mood is beginning to sour on Twitter’s engineering teams, people familiar with the matter said. Engineers are reluctant to start big projects that could eventually be canceled if Musk ends up taking over the company.
Musk has posted on Twitter that when he starts, “software engineering, operations and server design will rule the roost.” He also discussed the company’s return to “X,” an app for everything. “We don’t even know what this is,” one employee said.
On Blind, the anonymous employee discussion app, a Twitter employee asked if it would be possible to organize about 200 engineers to immediately leave and start a competitor, leaving Musk without an engineering team.
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