> why would anyone actually stay?

People who are on a work visa would likely be hesitant to not click 'yes' at this point. Given all of the recent layoffs there are probably also some people who are afraid of being able to find another job and have medical/family/debt issues.

But yeah, if you're confident you could find another gig and have money saved up, the 3 months severance to escape that mess would probably look really good right now.

If I were on a work visa I would click "yes", then start looking for another job (if I weren't already looking). No need to start the clock on your visa expiring if you don't have to.

In any other situation, I'd take the 3 months pay and move on with my life.

The good ones will leave, the ones who fear they can't find anything else will stay.

Seriously, even if you're a true believer in Elon Musk's vision for humanity or whatever, the working conditions just sound miserable. Twitter will almost certainly lose a ton of their best workers now, and more in the coming months.

Yeah, I get why a younger version of me would click Yes working at spaceX and maybe even Tesla, but Twitter???

We should stop calling it working hard and call it wage theft instead

I can’t remember which investment bank suffered a revolt of their junior workers, but their line was, hard work will pay off, meaning the hardest workers get well paid jobs.

But these companies steal wages from the workers who put in hard work and overtime, but don’t get the job, or quit, or get sick.

These firms don’t discard the work done, it’s all used. And then they’ll be called quitters or unprofessional.

I was just reading about the musician behind much of Doom’s music got treated like that

Improving Twitter would improve the world. If people working there are as serious and dedicated as SpaceX employees, they are much more likely to succeed. Serious Twitter engineers and designers must be more excited than ever that playtime is over.

But it's not like improving twitter would improve the world like nuclear fusion, better batteries or a cure for cancer would. It's hard to even establish metrics for what "improvement" or even "success" looks like in the case of twitter. From Musk's standpoint "improvement"/"success" means he makes money (or at least doesn't lose a lot of money) on the deal. There are plenty of alternatives to twitter out there already and probably others being worked on.

>Improving Twitter would improve the world.

Man that's a massive bubble you life in, no one care's about twitter, especially not the "world"

Sure, but Twitter cares about you.

No why? I used it 10 years ago so my plant's could tell me when they need water...

I have Privacy Badger and all Anti-Social Block-list you can imagine ;)

I wish.

Are you speaking as a Twitter employee?

Get 10 journalists in a room and ask them what twitter experience is like. I know at least 1 that tells me they don't scroll twitter feed anymore, they only have lists they follow or tweet deck or something

Twitter has laid off, fired, and will likely continue to bleed out some of the finest minds working on highly resilient, performant, and distributed technologies. Product design was absolutely hollowed out by the first round of layoffs, and Musk has said that product design will take a backseat to engineering (albeit without engineers!), indicating that he thinks Twitter is a technical, not a product, problem (which neatly explains a number of the missteps of the past few weeks). In short, there are very few "serious engineers and designers" left inside Twitter, and it'll be a long and arduous process to find people with the appropriate skills and experience to replace them, especially now that it's clear that one's employment at Twitter is solely at the whim of a notably capricious owner.

Beyond that, demanding engineers engage in death-march efforts for a social media app is very, very different than doing it for electric cars or rockets, which are linear technical challenges with defined delivery endpoints; when does the death march for NuTwitter (or "X," or whatever) end? What's the vision? What's the goal? How does this improve the world, as opposed to protecting Musk's pledged Tesla shares? No answer to any of that.

Quite frankly, it's a testament to the work Twitter engineers have done to date that the platform hasn't already fallen over, though it's showing signs of creaking under stress. If Musk faces a mass exodus at the end of this week, then it may not survive the World Cup.

The word “serious” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this post…

Seriously.

> Why would anyone stay?

It surfaces both the desperate and the spies.

> Why would anyone stay?

Because moving suddenly is difficult? Because if you can work remotely your job may be pretty cushy? Because there have been a bunch of layoffs in the sector and jobs aren't just materializing for everyone anymore? etc.

Hunting for a job generally sucks no matter how good you are.

> Because if you can work remotely your job may be pretty cushy?

But Musk has already issued an edict saying that everyone will be in the office for at least 40 hours / week.

> Because there have been a bunch of layoffs in the sector and jobs aren't just materializing for everyone anymore?

Sure, but if someone has a decent emergency fund saved up + the 3 months severance that should get them through long enough to find work on the other side.

And if you’re a professional and don’t have an emergency fund that is somewhere between six months to two years of expenses then downsize your life until you do.

Your emergency fund is fuck you money and the bulk of your leverage when getting out of a bad work situation.

But that only means people will start to look for another job while working for Twitter. As soon as they find something, they quit. That's even worse than quitting suddenly (because the ones who are looking for a job somewhere else won't have their minds on Twitter anymore).

Can’t work remotely at twitter.

If a job is meaningful you can get people to stay because they believe in it. I've done it for two projects. That said, twitter isn't that. I imagine he just want to get rid of as many people as he can.

Key staff is probably identified by now with high certainty and those can probably negotiate a substantially better deal than what would be possible at old Twitter--if they know their worth... which is not trivial either i imagine.

That theory doesn't hold. If Musk doesn't have respect for other people's life (and time), why do you think he would offer them more money to stay? In Musk's view, "hardcore mode" is the "normal mode", so no room for negotiation.

For shares in a company that might rocket to the moon?

It's a private company now, I don't believe any Twitter employees are getting any equity.

I saw it mentioned somewhere that he's planning to offer some kind of share bonus similar to SpaceX.

How did they handle shares? I thought they just paid them out (or were going to) but it's not a public company anymore. I mean I guess you could still have shares internally if they wanted to go public again...

Ignoring the fact that it's a private company now with no publicly traded shares, Twitter loses $4 million per day. Before the buyout, most of its revenue (> 90%) based on ads. But now advertisers are leaving the site en masse and there's no real plan to replace that lost revenue, let alone make the company profitable.

Also the leveraged buyout saddles twitter with debt. It coats $1B/yr to service (interest). I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, but I hear a train.

A couple theories:

* You're a Musk fan boy and want to be noticed by him

* Lots of people leaving creates a power vacuum and (in theory) a chance to get that next promotion with less competition

* You're close to retirement/ you find the process of assimilating into a new company to be more exhausting than just sticking it out where you're at.

Suddenly working double hours aka 2 jobs (or more) for the price of one when close to retirement? That sounds pretty awful. Maybe if retirement is 1 December... still why not just quit in that case?

The new Twitter basically IS a new company. So you're going to have a learn a new company culture and new colleagues either way.

You own shares of the company and you want them to be worth a lot? You like your job and work long hours already anyway? You’re excited for the new vision and want to help make it happen?

It’s funny how many people here equate voluntarily sitting at a desk in a climate controlled room doing what you love and being paid for it with being oppressed.

There was a great article on here about someone who worked long hours at stripe and missed the deep sense of purpose and fulfillment it gave them. Life isn’t all about punching the clock in a job you hate and whining.

> You own shares of the company and you want them to be worth a lot? You like your job and work long hours already anyway? You’re excited for the new vision and want to help make it happen?

But none of the Twitter employees own shares now, right?

> It’s funny how many people here equate voluntarily sitting at a desk in a climate controlled room doing what you love and being paid for it with being oppressed.

If a person is working extra hours as a company owner and expects to be paid back by the company becoming more valuable, that makes some sense. But if the owner says "you will work double hours with no extra compensation, or will be let go", then a) that's not voluntary; b) you got a 50% pay cut, which also was not voluntary and would make me love my work about 50% less.

Two founders working their asses off is one thing. Forcing thousands of non-owner employees to work their ass off with no additional compensation is just wrong. If he said "Hey, anyone in a position to work their ass off will be paid time and a half for any hours over 40 a week", that would be reasonable.

Twitter plans to give stock options to everyone just like Tesla does. That includes factory workers with hourly wages at Tesla. Many workers have earned more from their options than all their paychecks combined.

Where are you getting “double hours”? Is everyone exaggerating “long hours” into “double hours” in order to justify irrational outrage here?

You also keep saying this is mandatory. Yet this article is about how employees have been given the option to accept a generous severance package instead. Any mention of Elon and otherwise critical thinkers seem to cease all critical thinking.

Maybe working at Twitter has been a complete doss these past few years and people realise they'd have to work twice as hard regardless of whether they stay or move elsewhere?

Let's be honest, it isn't as if Twitter is introducing new functionality on a regular basis. I log in once every few months and cannot think of the last time I saw a new feature.