Twitter has certainly been an interesting place since Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company. Verification has become a paid service, causing widespread panic among the privileged who want to keep their status symbol exclusive. Then there’s been the fact that the social media site now allows a wide range of opinions that were formerly disallowed, which has the left, in general, losing its mind.

But the most entertaining aspect of Twitter hasn’t been happening on the platform itself. Instead, it’s been happening among the company’s employee base.

Musk has already dropped the harmer, eliminating well over 50 percent of the bloated company’s workforce. Now, he’s whittling things down further, firing those who criticize him on internal slack channels.

It’s not clear how many people were affected; seems like it’s more than 10 people but I’m working to learn more.

More in @plaformer today; email me if you know something.

— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) November 15, 2022

It’s important to note that Twitter has long cultivated a culture of internal dissent: “Communicate fearlessly to build trust.”

No internal codes of conduct have changed since Elon took over. So this is all out of the blue.

— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) November 15, 2022

I love these stories so much because they are always framed as Twitter making some grave, tragic mistake as if no one has ever lost a job before. “This engineer was the greatest engineer in the history of engineering,” they proclaim, suggesting that the company will simply implode without overpaid partisans working 20 hours a week while doing yoga at the office. Never mind that Twitter has been overleveraged its entire existence and was an unsustainable mess before Musk took over.

Besides, where did this idea come from that an employee could trash their boss internally without facing repercussions? If this were decades ago and you printed out flyers stating everything you hate about the owner of the company to put on the bulletin board, wouldn’t you have been fired right away? That’s the same situation presented with a slack channel. Whatever Twitter’s prior policy was on internal strife, it wasn’t normal, and Musk obviously didn’t find it productive. The arrogance of these employees in the face of new ownership is a character flaw.

Naturally, Musk decided to dunk on those whining about his decision.

I would like to apologize for firing these geniuses. Their immense talent will no doubt be of great use elsewhere.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 15, 2022

The sense of entitlement that exists within the tech sector is not healthy. More importantly, it also isn’t producing results financially. The reason Twitter’s old board of directors sold to Musk despite a national outcry is because they knew the company was going to eventually collapse if it stayed on its current path. Musk is now making the moves necessary to save it, and those that don’t want to be a part of his vision are welcome to seek employment elsewhere.

That’s what this comes down to. Too many Twitter employees saw their jobs as a birthright. They saw their free meals, their “nap pods,” their work-from-home schedules, and fat paychecks as something they were entitled to. The real world has finally entered the chat, though, and Musk is taking the steps necessary to ensure Twitter still exists next year.