Twitter’s company culture? ‘Used to have an amazing culture, unsure of future’

This article was first reported on, and published by, Digiday sibling WorkLife

A total of 3,700 Tweeps were fired on Nov. 5. It was the end of an era for many Twitter employees, with some working there for more than a decade. There’s no question that it was a sad day for those who will no longer be employed by the social media platform recently acquired by Elon Musk, but what about the other half of the company that remains?

It’s inevitable that Twitter will never be the same again, which begs the question if those still employed should stay or leave. Musk already made decisions to say goodbye to “days of rest,” cancel the remote work policy and have staff return to the office full-time.

“He’s let go of half of a 7,500-staffed company, and that’s going to have a significant impact,” said S. Chris Edmonds, president, CEO and founder of the Purposeful Culture Group. “It goes back to what’s the strategy? What are you promoting? How are you communicating this saying this is our reason for being and here’s how these changes are going to help us get there? It doesn’t seem as if there has been a formalized strategy.”

“What you have to say is here’s where we’re going, here’s what we’re going to stand for, and here’s how we’re going to operate,” he continued.

Since the news that came at the end of last week, Twitter employees have taken to anonymous workplace community platform Blind expressing their concerns with the future of the company. “Used to have an amazing culture, unsure of the future,” said a machine learning engineer at the company. A software engineer wrote “recent changes in management are causing a lot of uncertainty and stress from people being let go or quitting.” Another person said “since Elon took over, everything is unpredictable, bad management and communication.”

An anonymous Twitter employee told Business Insider that “one of Twitter’s core values is — or was — transparency. All of our calendars were open. You could look at our former head of engineering’s calendar and see where he was having lunch that day. Documents were usually open and viewable. With a project, you could see who initiated the work, who was the assignee, who was in the chain of command. That’s all gone now.”

Twitter employees on Blind used to say things like “Twitter has this great culture of collaboration, it’s people first and I love that about it” and “Great compensation, great culture.” Now on Twitter, employees are using the hashtag #LoveWhereYouWorked to share stories of their memorable times at the company.

Business Insider reported that “staff at Twitter have been clocking much longer hours than usual since Musk took over, with his team assigning staff big tasks on tight deadlines.” CNBC reported that Twitter managers have told some staff to work 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, while The …read more

Source:: Digiday