Is Twitter Really Dying?
The news out of Twitter on Thursday does not sound great. Multiple reporters are claiming the company has shut off access to its offices on the heels of mass resignations. That's just the tip of the iceberg as things have rapidly gone down hill after Elon Musk's takeover weeks ago.
On Wednesday, Musk sent an email to Twitter's staff claiming employees would "need to be extremely hardcore" to succeed. Those who chose to stay should expect long, hard hours of work. Employees would need to respond affirmatively to the email by 5 p.m. Thursday if they planned to stay. Anyone who didn't wish to remain with the company would be given three months' severance pay. It appears that ultimatum didn't go over well.
What I’m hearing from Twitter employees; It looks like roughly 75% of the remaining 3,700ish Twitter employees have not opted to stay after the “hardcore” email.
— Kylie Robison (@kyliebytes) November 17, 2022
Even though the deadline has passed, everyone still has access to their systems.
Update: Employee’s badge access has been disabled until Monday. It does seem like there will be … not much left of the company by then.
— Kylie Robison (@kyliebytes) November 18, 2022
Something I can now add: 10% of the 3,700ish remaining employees deemed critical were called to a meeting an hour before the 5PM deadline today. The invite was sent around midnight but got cancelled by noon.
— Kylie Robison (@kyliebytes) November 18, 2022
There's more:
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 (@ZoeSchiffer) November 17, 2022
Due to the decreased workforce, Twitter engineers have been predicting a major outage for days now. That could be on the horizon.
As a Twitter engineer working on a number of those microservices, I'm predicting a massive outage in the next few days if 80% are turned down https://t.co/0d1sBlMGH2
— Sheon Han (@sheonhan) November 14, 2022
It looks like we're truly facing the complete collapse of a social media giant. Musk completed his acquisition of the company on October 27, 2022. He vastly overpaid for it by agreeing to a $44 billion sale price then attempted to radically change the way the website -- and the company -- worked. Three weeks later things may be completely bottoming out.
It would truly be the end of an era on the Internet if Twitter went away. It's hard to see how Musk could turn the ship around at this point.