Tweeting about Twitter, Twitter and the Deal with the Trade-Off: Comments on Musk’s Twitter Plan for the Takeover of the WeChat Company
Musk is expected to share more about his plan for Twitter with employees on Friday. Late Thursday evening, hours after the news of him firing execs first broke, he tweeted the following:
The execs received handsome payouts for their trouble, Insider reports: Agrawal got $38.7 million, Segal got $25.4 million, Gadde got $12.5 million, and Personette, who tweeted yesterday about how excited she was for Musk’s takeover, got $11.2 million.
After having moved his deposition from late September Musk was scheduled to be deposed on October 6th and 7th. He announced he’d honor the contract his lawyers negotiated after all just days before the deposition was to take place. That deposition was probably going to be uncomfortable; a judge found that Musk likely deleted Signal messages that were relevant to the case. The deposition was delayed as Musk and Twitter worked toward a deal; Musk even received a court order halting proceedings to allow the deal to close by October 28th.
“Day zero,” Calacanis texted Musk. “Sharpen your blades boys.” 20 percent of the staff would leave voluntarily if they had to return to offices, Calacanis wrote. Calacanis told Musk he wanted to be theTwitter CEO.
Twitter faces challenges to its free speech stance in court, as the Supreme Court agreed to take up two cases that will determine its liability for illegal content.
More broadly, Musk has talked about using Twitter to create “X, the everything app.” This is a reference to China’s WeChat app, which started as a messaging platform but has since grown to encompass multiple businesses, from shopping to payments and gaming. “You basically live on WeChat in China,” Musk told Twitter employees in June. We would be a great success if we could recreate that with the social media platform.
As of Thursday, Musk and Twitter had given no public notice of the coming layoffs. That’s even though the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification statute requires employers with at least 100 workers to disclose layoffs involving 500 or more employees, regardless of whether a company is publicly traded or privately held.
CNN obtained an email that states if your employment isn’t impacted, you’ll receive a notification through the social networking site. “If your employment is impacted, you will receive a notification with next steps via your personal email.”
The email added that “to help ensure the safety” of employees and Twitter’s systems, the company’s offices “will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended.”
Manu was not planning on doing anything like this initially, but they are participating in the suit. But… Look Ma I’m suing Twitter.”
No Notice for Employees to be Fired under the California WARN and the WARN Act. Plaintiff’s Action Sustained by CEO Shannon Shannon
The lawsuit alleges that there wasn’t enough notice for the workers to be fired, as mandated by the WARN and California WARN Act. These acts require that companies give employees at least 60 days of advance notice before a mass firing takes place.
Shannon said that she filed the lawsuit to make sure employees were aware they had a chance to pursue their rights.
This is not the first time Musk’s management style has led to class-action lawsuits. There are two former employees that have sued the company for violating the WARN Act.
If employees were laid off, the company said in the letter that they would be told by 9 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. The email did not say how many people would lose their jobs.
He took the company’s board of directors and installed himself as the sole board member. Many employees took to the social networking site to show their support for each other, using blue heart emojis to signify the blue bird logo.
The Employment Development Department of California hasn’t received any recent notifications from the social networking site, according to Barry C. White.
The layoffs are taking place at a difficult time for social media platforms as advertisers scale back and newcomers like TikTok are threatening older platforms.
Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, recently posted its 2nd quarter revenue decline which resulted in its shares trading at their lowest levels since 2015. Weak earnings reports from Microsoft andAlphabet followed Meta’s disappointing results.