Elon Musk doesn’t get who really keeps Twitter running
Bruce Daisley, who worked at Twitter for eight years, reveals where the billionaire has gone wrong
The hashtags have been coming thick and fast – and getting more dramatic by the second. #Riptwitter #Twitterdown #Mastodon #Twittershutdown. “This is my last Tweet.” “Here’s how to use Twitter’s media downloader – before it’s too late”.
Where is this all playing out? On Twitter, of course. “What I might do is write tweets, then just photograph them and post them on Instagram instead. I’m there as @misterodman by the way” tweeted Richard Osman (1.2m followers). “My full mastodon handle is @martinlewis@vivaldi.net” tweeted Martin Lewis (2m followers). Deserting employees sent their goodbyes on the company’s Slack; even those who have opted to stay have now been locked out of their offices until Monday.
Elon Musk’s reputation was built on defying expectations, proving the world wrong with a smirk. As a result, his supporters are inclined to perceive him as playing 3D chess. With Twitter, the billionaire seems to have found himself playing a disastrous $44billion (£37billion) game of Jenga. It looks set to be a business case study for the ages: a testament to how hubris and arrogance can destroy a brand in a month. And that destruction doesn’t come from the departure of the likes of Osman and Lewis. It’s about the people who have helped to keep them there.
Social media platforms are like ecosystems. We all think social media is about the dopamine rush of someone liking our posts. It’s a lovely theory, but most tweets don’t get any engagement at all.
Twitter is about the thrill of revelation. It’s a platform for gossip; for the shock of drama; to discover what’s happening. People go to it to find out about World Cup selection rumours; to see if Musk has seen off the last employee yet. Ninety nine per cent of the Tweets consumed on it are created by one per cent of the users. This is why, for a long time, the one per cent weren’t shown ads. It was recognised that a happy Kardashian would keep Tweeting; annoying them with ads would put them off.
It’s easy to imagine that a software product like a website doesn’t need people. But it’s the employees who make sure the one per cent don’t see the ads. In fact, anything that has 250 million people using it daily requires constant intervention. Systems run into problems, processes hit capacity issues that need resetting, unresolved bugs often have human-operated workarounds while awaiting recoding.
In effective companies, it’s said that the secret of organisational success is a foundation of psychological safety: the ability to have frank discussion about challenges being faced. This enables us to share our concerns without fear of retribution. We don’t highlight a problem if it serves to get us sacked. Musk’s actions have undermined that candid conversation – in the last week it’s been reported that he’s fired dozens who have been seen to criticise him on internal or external channels.
I worked at Twitter for eight years, before leaving to write a book on resilience. Resilient cultures have one thing in common: a visceral sense that we’re all in it together. Company cultures can also exhibit this – a cohesive bond of employees, often intent on proving outsiders wrong. Social identities like this can give immense strength to employees, but can also be mobilised against those who are seen as opponents. Twitter culture was famed for being tightly bonded; employees often tagged their tweets #Lovewhereyouwork or #Oneteam. Musk made the mistake of mobilising this strong shared identity into a case of “him” versus “us”. A
Musk made the mistake of mobilising this strong shared identity into a case of ‘him’ versus ‘us’
powerful connection is being expressed by the departing workforce. Whole teams have taken the three months’ salary being offered to leave, rather than stay in an imploding atmosphere, committed to a “hardcore” culture of long hours and hard work.
Each day sees the outlook become bleaker for Twitter. Musk has lost not only the teams who maintain the product, but also the know-how to keep it working. This wasn’t how we expected Twitter to end – not with a bang, but with a 404 loading error. Maybe Musk has found a way to defy everyone’s expectations once again.
TWITTER faced the growing risk of a meltdown, experts warned last night as up to 1,000 staff quit and Elon Musk locked the company’s office doors.
The exodus is thought to have included some of Twitter’s most important engineers and coincided with a sharp rise in reported problems with its website, leading to questions about whether the service would stop working entirely.
Mr Musk announced yesterday that the company’s headquarters in San Francisco would be locked until Monday morning without an explanation.
He later added to the confusion by summoning software engineers to the office and ordering them to show him their best lines of code. The self-styled “Chief Twit” also relaxed a ban on working from home, telling staff that they could continue to do so if approved by a manager after previously saying all such requests had to be agreed by him.
Mr Musk’s efforts to transform the company since buying it last month for $44bn (£36bn) have been met with fury by many staff members. One apparent former employee projected insulting messages on to the side of Twitter’s office on Thursday night describing him as a “supreme parasite”, “mediocre manchild” and “worthless billionaire”.
Around 4,900 staff had already left Twitter or been sacked by Mr Musk even before the latest ructions.
He told the remaining workers they must sign up for “extremely hardcore” conditions or take a severance package with a deadline next week. Around 1,000 are thought to have quit – meaning the workforce has probably shrunk by around three quarters in just weeks.
In an apparent attempt to distract the media, Mr Musk posted yesterday that he has yet to make a decision about reinstating Donald Trump to the website. Three other banned users have been allowed back, including Jordan Peterson, an academic previously banned over comments about a transgender actor. Mr Musk said hateful tweets will be allowed but will be “deboosted” so they are harder to find.
However, that announcement failed to dampen speculation about Twitter’s own future.
The social media platform’s Down Detector recorded a surge in reports of problems with the website. Meanwhile, users complained of individual messages or even the entire Twitter website failing to load. Ben Krueger, a 20-year tech industry veteran specialising in keeping large websites online, told the MIT Tech Review any collapse of Twitter’s website is likely to be a gradual process rather than a sudden blackout.
He said: “The larger, catastrophic failures are a little more titillating but the biggest risk is the smaller things starting to degrade.”
Commercial pressures on Twitter are also growing after a top European Union official endorsed a rival site, Mastodon, while a major advertiser opened accounts on the rival website. Volkswagen, which suspended its Twitter advertising when the website made thousands of staff redundant, including many of its content moderators, has registered accounts on the rival micro-blogging service.
It said: “Mastodon is an attractive platform that we would like to try out.”
Even the German government is watching Twitter “with growing concern” and is considering removing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s presenceon the platform, according to his spokesman.
Meanwhile, the European Union’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, endorsed Mastodon as an alternative to Musk-owned Twitter. She told reporters in Madrid: “A lot of people talk about Mastodon, which is a German-developed service.
“I think (it has) a lot of the same features people tend to enjoy on Twitter,” she added.
“I find it very interesting how these events, so to speak, around Twitter have made many more people curious as to what other services could we potentially use.” Other businesses have sought to capitalise on the Twitter layoffs. Jaguar Land Rover said it is “opening a new jobs portal for displaced workers from the tech industry to explore career opportunities,” hoping to hire 800 new staff. Similarly, Barclays Bank said it is extending a retraining programme for aspiring start-up founders in the light of recent sackings at Twitter, Amazon and Meta, the Facebook owner.
Tens of thousands of tech industry personnel are expected to hit the job markets in coming months.
Mr Musk softened his earlier directive against working remotely on Thursday, writing in an email: “All that is required for approval is that your manager takes responsibility for ensuring that you are making an excellent contribution.”
The Tesla electric car and Spacex founder also ordered programming staff to send “a bullet point summary of what your code commits have achieved in the past six months” along with 10 screenshots of their “most salient lines of code”.
Engineers based outside the United States were encouraged by Mr Musk to “fly to SF to present in person”.