It’s happening over at Twitter. Elon Musk, fresh off his purchase of the platform (which came with ownership of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a bonus) is dropping the hammer on the company’s spoiled, entitled employee base.
Twitter, one of the most famously unprofitable enterprises in existence, is going to see its workforce cut by up to 50 percent according to reports.
In other words, he’s going full Thanos for those of you that understand Marvel references. In fact, in hilarious fashion, Twitter employees have taken to calling the doomsday “the snap” on their Slack channels.
Here's the first official communication from Twitter's new leadership to its staff, a week after Musk took over: a fun game where you get to find out if you're laid off or not based by 9am tomorrow, based on whether the email pops up in your Twitter account or personal account. pic.twitter.com/tpJsAkiaHp
— Will Oremus (@WillOremus) November 4, 2022
All these far-left “tech reporters” losing their minds makes this even better. What did Oremus expect to happen? There are thousands of employees being laid off. Human resources couldn’t reasonably be expected to call them all to have a personal conversation. In this case, a letter works just as well. They are getting laid off all the same, and most of them very deservedly so given how bloated and inefficient Twitter’s workforce is.
Of course, the propaganda has begun to go forth. Here’s one employee taking a picture of themselves sleeping on their office floor because the conditions are supposedly so terrible, originally reported by Reuters.
Reuters wrote #Tweeps are forbidden to call team meetings or communicate directly with staff. Another says they feel like they now work for the #Gestapo. Many have stopped performing their duties altogether and are applying elsewhere out of fear of what will happen tomorrow.
— Joey Lowe (@JoeyaLowe) November 4, 2022
When you go to sleep, do you leave the lights on? Who took the picture so this woman could post it on social media? And remember, she is supposedly having to stay at work and can’t go home, but they just happened to have a sleeping bag handy. You know, because that’s totally a normal thing for managers at major tech firms.
Others raced to meet deadlines by Friday U.S. time, when they expected the axe to fall, another employee said. One manager tweeted of a photo of herself sleeping on the floor of the office in a silver sleeping bag.
While some worried about annual bonuses or how they would be notified of layoffs, others rushed to apply for jobs at other companies. International employees fretted about the status of their visas. One employee sought advice on Blind on whether it was worth mentioning Twitter on their resume.
Why would someone race to meet a deadline if they expect to get laid off? That doesn’t make any sense at all. As to the visa holders who may lose their status now, I sympathize with that, but the United States is not a charity. Work visas have stipulations, and eventually going back to a home country was always part of the deal.
The rest of the complaints make no sense. If layoffs are coming, then of course a freeze will be put on meetings and decision-making. Badges have been disabled because the company can’t have people sabotaging things on the way out the door.
I’ll say this. I’m not one to laugh when people lose their jobs unless it’s a politician or a media hack (i.e. Brian Stelter), but the reality is that Twitter is unsustainable as it sits. These cuts are necessary. No amount of crying to Reuters is going to change that, and those that remain need to accept that things will be different going forward. Working two hours a day while playing ping-pong and using frequent “rest days” is not actually working. It’s a fantasy, and it was just a matter of time before it ended, one way or the other.
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