Musk turns to iphone ‘hacker’ as Twitter begins hiring again
ELON MUSK has said Twitter is hiring staff again after sacking more than 4,000 employees in recent weeks, as he turned to a well-known “hacker” to help fix the social network.
The billionaire told staff in a town hall meeting on Monday that the company is finished with laying off workers and is hiring for roles in its engineering and sales departments. Among his new recruits is George Hotz, a 33-year-old software engineer and entrepreneur who has signed up for a short mission to improve Twitter’s search function. He said on Twitter: “I will try my hardest to do it. I have 12 weeks.”
Mr Hotz previously attained fame among programmers – sometimes known as hackers – after he removed software restrictions on iphone and reverse engineered the Playstation 3 as a teenager. He later founded a company developing self-driving car software.
It comes after a tumultuous few weeks for the social media giant since the Tesla chief took control. Last week, Mr Musk locked the doors to the company’s office after as many as 1,000 staff quit. The exodus is thought to have included some of Twitter’s most important engineers and coincided with a sharp rise in reported problems on its website.
Mr Musk also told staff he would not move Twitter’s HQ to Texas, where Tesla is based, but admitted the company could be dual-headquartered in Texas and California. Mr Musk has also delayed the relaunch of his subscription service, Twitter Blue, which was supposed to take place on Nov 29.
The billionaire said he was “holding off ” until there was a “high confidence of stopping impersonation”. The subscription will allow people to buy a blue tick for £7 a month.
Separately it emerged that Sam Bankman-fried, the disgraced founder of crypto exchange FTX, reportedly owned a $100m (£84m) stake in Twitter before it was taken private and is still an investor.
Mr Musk personally texted Mr Bankman-fried asking him to back his $44bn takeover deal, Semafor reported.
Mr Bankman-fried had a wide web of investments, including a stake in US media start-up Semafor.