By the end of last week, when some of the initial dust around Elon Musk’s arrival as Twitter new largest shareholder had settled, Twitter employees tried to approach the situation with some gallows humor.

This one line was a common thread among the messages exchanged between Twitter employees, called “Tweeps”: Musk might be able to find a way for them to start receiving Tesla stock as a reward. Certainly, shares of the electric carmaker run by Musk had lately outperformed Twitter stock (by more than a factor of 10 in the five years before Musk showed up at Twitter’s doorstep).

“Everyone was trying to crack jokes about it,” says a person at Twitter who viewed the chats. “But then it’s like, ‘OK, what Does this mean for us?’”

That’s still not particularly clear because there’s quickly been several more twists in the corporate drama, which has proven surprisingly topsy-turvy in a short amount of time.

Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s CEO, announced that Musk had disclosed his 9.2% stake in the company on Monday. This move was a surprise to some Twitter users. They worried Musk, who has become one of the service’s most popular figures through controversial statements about everything from drugs to politics, would damage Twitter’s internal culture, according to conversations with approximately a half dozen current Twitter employees, all of whom spoke anonymously because they weren’t authorized to talk publicly. In the past 10 years, Twitter has earned a good reputation for being a great place to work. Twitter users often use #LoveWhereYouWork to show their appreciation. It is a contrast to the move-fast-and-break-everything mantra present at other Big Tech companies, which try to mitigate such hard-nosed behavior with lucrative salaries and lavish perks. Some Twitter employees feel Musk and all the uncertainty surrounding him have made their job more difficult. “It’s been chaos,” says a Twitter employee. “Chaos and confusion.”

These are just a few of the many factors that have been added to over these last days. Musk has now chosen to turn down the board seat he’d agreed to days earlier, informing Agrawal about the decision on Saturday morning (presumably pacific time). The importance of hour-byhour timing is surprising. Musk spent much of Saturday on Twitter throwing out increasingly wild suggestions for the $37 billion company—scrap ads, abandon the San Francisco headquarters—adding to already sizeable consternation among Twitter rank and file.

Musk gave the world front row seats, which is a departure from typical corporate protocols. Musk offered Twitter users an opportunity to be part of the action, giving them a first-hand chance. Musk sent two surveys to his 81,000,000 followers last week. One asked about whether or not they would like an editing function, and the other about changing their company’s name. The latter was presented with two affirmative-style answers, suggesting that Twitter could lose a consonant. Twitter’s name will be an inexplicable joke.

Musk was presented with an ultimatum by Agrawal on Saturday: Take …read more

Source:: Social Media Explorer

Author: Aaron