Unhappy Twitter Employees Unload on CEO About Musk Takeover
Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal found himself ducking employee anger on Friday during a company-wide meeting where employees demanded answers to how managers planned to handle an anticipated mass exodus prompted by Elon Musk’s $44B buyout.
The meeting took place after the Tesla chief executive repeatedly criticized Twitter’s content moderation practices and a top executive responsible for setting speech and safety policies once the deal had been announced. Musk has also been tweeting criticisms of Wellbutrin and random unfunny statements such as threatening to “put the cocaine back in Coca-Cola” or mocking liberals and then claiming he’s only kidding in the name of free speech.
Twitter executives said during the meeting that the employee attrition rate has not changed compared to the levels before the news of Musk’s interest in buying the company.
For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2022
While the deal hasn’t been finalized, Twitter employees still barraged Agrawal with questions about their future at the company. “Do we have a strategy in the near term on how to handle advertisers pulling investment?” one employee asked. “I’m tired of hearing about shareholder value and fiduciary duty,” said another. “What are your honest thoughts about the very high likelihood that many employees will not have jobs after the deal closes?” the employee asked Agrawal, in a question read aloud during the meeting.
The Venn Diagram of people cheering for Musk to make this a “free speech” platform and the people who are cheering for a corporation to be punished by a government for supporting LGBTQ rights is a perfect circle.
— Sleeping Giants (@slpng_giants) April 25, 2022
Agrawal answered that Twitter has always cared about its employees and would continue to do so. “I believe the future Twitter organization will continue to care about its impact on the world and its customers,” he said.
Convinced Musk’s offer to buy Twitter was a ruse in order to have an excuse to dump billions of dollars worth of his Tesla stock at $900 a share, before it falls to a much lower level. Now he’s being psycho on purpose to make the Twitter purchase fall apart & he’ll keep his cash.
— Tom Joseph (@TomJChicago) April 30, 2022
But Twitter users are echoing the same doubts as the employees.
This was a MASSIVE amount of stock dumped in two trading days.
Almost 10% of the Tesla stock that traded hands over two days was Musk selling.
If he had dumped that amount of stock over even a much longer period otherwise…
2/
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) April 30, 2022
Advice from a historian of propaganda: Don't fall for it! Musk is filling a space Trump used to occupy. His role/job is diff, but creation of more strife/garbage & swirling attention around himself, getting you to waste your time reacting to his ignorant opinions, is the same.
— Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat) April 29, 2022
.@DrJasonJohnson: "We all know why Elon Musk wants to control Twitter. We know why the right wants to control Twitter. They don't want to go to their own club… They want to go to the club where the cool people are." #TheReidOut pic.twitter.com/P3IpJVqHJ7
— The ReidOut (@thereidout) April 30, 2022