"During focus weeks, company-initiated nonessential meetings are canceled, and individual teams are encouraged to do the same, to give employees more uninterrupted time to finish projects.... 'Hey this is a focus week at Twitter, this is not helping,' one engineer for the company tweeted in response to Musk announcing his takeover offer.... Some workers have expressed disappointment and disdain at the news. 'Just go to therapy dude,' a team lead at the company wrote, referring to Musk. But other Twitter users joked about the potential takeover and the reactions to it. 'I’m going to leave Twitter if Elon Musk takes over is the new I’m going to move to Canada if Trump wins,' one user shared."
From "Twitter employees complain that Elon Musk ruined their calm 'focus week'" (Fortune).
That's kind of a junk article compared to what I was trying to find, which is something more like percentages of Twitter workers who hate the idea of Musk taking over and those who like it or are neutral. What proportion of Twitter workers have jobs devoted to the kind of censorship that Musk might seem to be about to eliminate? Are these people planning to quit? Do they think they might sway Musk to appreciate at least some of their moderating function? Are they just hoping to hold onto their jobs and ready to readjust to the new agenda? How passive and resigned are they? Is there some plan of action? Are they preparing sabotage?
Posts
60 comments:
I love it. I love that the employees of the Washington Post, (owned by Bezos), The New York Times(owned by Carlos Slim), Bloomberg, (owned by Mike Bloomberg), The Atlantic (owned by Steve Jobs wife) are all upset that Musk is buying Twitter, when they work for people JUST LIKE MUSK. They aren't upset that PROGRESSIVE billionaires own media, only people who actually believe in FREE SPEECH!!!!....Karma baby.
'Hey this is a focus week at Twitter, this is not helping,'
The sense of entitlement is breathtaking. (Revolting, too)
"company-initiated nonessential meetings are canceled" That should be a permanent change, followed by canning the people who think those things are important.
And apparently they don't realize that their responses are further evidence of their biases and negative impact on free speech.
If current tech workers are anything like the tech workers of the last 50+ years, most could not care less about politics or Musk or anything beyond their next assignment. They tend to be narrow diggers who focus on what's directly in front, but really good at those narrow tasks.
The rise of woke tech followed social media and the resulting high anxiety of some employees. They are likely a small squeaky-wheel segment. Many have been raised by single parents, raised by their friends, never attended churches or community groups, and who never had life-strategy training. Anxious people cannot function well and must communicate it with others -- in turn spreading the anxiety contagion to all.
My instincts tell me the women remember, oversimplify, and exaggerate the deepest concerns of their college professors. Males are less reactive, but often fully open to simple Jordan Peterson "Clean your room and face your biggest challenges" teachings. Most male tech workers seem to care far more about video games, watches, and cars than politics.
Managers almost always try to avoid rocking the corporate boat, and virtue signal in the fashion of the day. Be it the old school Christian virtues or the new school green/woke virtues.
NOT having company-initiated nonessential meetings
WHAT would be the point of coming in to work, without company-initiated nonessential meetings?
WHAT would be the point of Even working, without company-initiated nonessential meetings?
WHAT would be the point of EVEN Living, without company-initiated nonessential meetings?
THESE PEOPLE ARE F*CKING ELOI, AND MUSK IS THE MORLOCK!
Go musk! Where can we send money to sponsor your BBQ! I want Twitter ribs!
I'm curious what he can actually do, when I'm sure almost all the employees are against it. Burn the place to the ground, of course. But some way to force twitter to change without destroying it?
I heard talk of making their code open-source, that would be a big help.
Scott Ritter's very interesting article about how Twitter has been blocking his tweets about the war in Ukraine
Interesting questions, Prof. Althouse.
I would bet there are plenty of people there who think it’s a great idea and would welcome the changes. But they’re not the ones who know the journalists, they’re not the ones the journalists know to seek out, and they know they’d better keep their mouths shut for the sake of their careers - unlike the other side, who know they can be as loud as they want.
I’m betting it’s a little like academia, in other words.
Driving late last night I came across the BBC World Service. They announced Musk’s offer, then had an expert on to discuss why having no moderation at all would be a dangerous thing, enabling death threats and criminal conspiracies. I kept wondering where Musk said there would be no moderation at all. It’s one thing to say, You can’t call for someone’s death on my platform; another to say, Your disagreeing with him amounts to calling for his death, so you’re suspended.
If Musk did buy them and fired every one of them and replaced them with normal people in a state like Indiana it would be a culturally seismic event. Twitter service would continue and eventually improve which would demonstrate to other businesses (here’s looking at you Disney) that there is an alternative to allowing 25 year olds who are playing at adulthood to run a business .
This isn't about moderation. This isn't even about Trump. There is a deeper, underlying principle at play. See if you can spot it:
The NY subway shooter posted many "kill whitey" tweets over a two year period. He wasn't banned from twitter until he posted a meme mocking Dr Fauci.
"During focus weeks, company-initiated nonessential meetings are canceled, and individual teams are encouraged to do the same, to give employees more uninterrupted time to finish projects.... '"
Seriously, if all businesses, particularly the large corporate entities, took the time to cancel non-essential meetings, there would be such a rise in productivity among it's employees, they'd be stunned. But instead, they have meetings to talk about having meetings in which they will talk about productivity.
Truly these prima donnas who work for the large tech companies have no idea what work is like in every corner in the rest of the world. Those I've known who currently or used to work for one of the Big Tech firms, say they realize this, but I doubt that they do, as many of them only know Big Tech as the work world. I mean, an in-office Chef offering multiple food stations for lunch, nap-pods to recover from a hard hour, or cold-brewed coffee instead of that pot of 4 hour old 'service-man's brew' are not the norm around the world.
I hope Musk can get through the attacks- covertly directly from our own government, from foreign entities, and from other Democratic wealth pockets- and that he decides to move the HQ to Texas, bringing only those who are worthy to stay in the new Twitter. (and by worthy, I mean those who prefer free speech and not a progressive judgement board). Put a few Twitter ex-employees on the street and see who wants to hire them.
'I’m going to leave Twitter if Elon Musk takes over is the new I’m going to move to Canada if Trump wins,' one user shared.
So there’s at least one person at Twitter with a little perspective and humor.
"company-initiated nonessential meetings are canceled"
From what I read about SpaceX, that is company policy all day every day.
You're right AA, Musk is new Trump. Haters gonna hate. What's amusing is that Musk is a lefty on most other issues. Geez, the guy makes cars that discharge for a living.
Re: "During focus weeks, company-initiated nonessential meetings are canceled, and individual teams are encouraged to do the same, to give employees more uninterrupted time to finish projects..." Translation: "We are doing you the inestimable favor of canceling some of our time-wasting bull$hit meetings. In return, we expect that you will have cleared out your work backlog by the end of the week."
The more “inside Twitter” stories I see like this the more it seems like the sociopathy’s coming from the personnel as much as from the sick people who swarm online.
Given everything that is on the table, this "Musk takeover" may turn out to be another non-event. The pricing of TWTR ($45) indicates that traders are currently providing a substantial discount to its happening.
Why? All sorts of reasons. Is there really value that can be retained in a change of corporate control given the nature of TWTR's workforce? Will there be software sabotage? Will current users flee a "free speech" TWTR? Will the company ever be free of "direct action" from the Left? Will the forces of the government be unleashed against Musk? Will his past promotional statements about various ventures be successfully cast or recast as "materially misleading" statements made in connection with the purchase or sale of securities?
The most likely outcome is that Musk abandons his bid and sells his stake at a profit. TWTR remains a channel of communication approved by the regime, excluding many voices from the right, including the satiric, the provocative, and the questioning.
People learn from experience, but slowly. The American public, which seems to be abandoning the insights of the Enlightenment for the cheap thrills of Romantic emotionalism, needs a bit more experience. The last two years haven't slowed down the elites at all. The GOP appears to be continuing its fractured, incoherent flutterings. A generation coming up appears to embrace more Marx than Burke. The gods of the copybook headings bide their time.
The real reason why the non-essential meetings are canceled is that the managers wanted to leave early on Friday (or even Thursday) and enjoy a long weekend.
Glenn Greenwald
@ggreenwald
How dumb do you have to be to believe that journalists - who work at Bloomberg and the Bezos-owned WPost or Comcast or CNN - are worried about billionaires controlling media (🤣).
They're only petrified that the *wrong* billionaire, one who may not censor for them, might reign.
8:23 AM · Apr 15, 2022
I never joined twitter, not my thing. It went public in late 2013 at 41, shot up to 75 a month later abd now its at 45. 8 years of a hi-tech boom market and in that time theyve returned about 1% a year.
Those meetings dont seem to accomplish much.
Pass.
Are these people planning to quit?
Some of them, yes. Then they will go home and wait by the phone for a call that never comes; begging them to come back because Twitter can't operate without them.
Do they think they might sway Musk to appreciate at least some of their moderating function?
No, because they immediately jump to the absolute worst possible scenario; there will be no controls, Elon will be running around blowing cigar smoke in their faces whilst firing off guns, and they will be given the choice to vote Republican or die.
Are they just hoping to hold onto their jobs and ready to readjust to the new agenda?
Some probably are, but I have seen changes in CIO's/CEO's cause people to immediately jump ship; often needlessly because the new guy is an improvement over his predecessor.
How passive and resigned are they? Is there some plan of action? Are they preparing sabotage?
Probably fantasizing about it. It's easy to sabotage something like Twitter, but hard to keep it that way. It's not like blowing up a bridge that takes months or years to rebuild. Large computer systems have plenty of redundancy and disaster recovery plans that are designed to bring them back online quickly. And those are generally under the watchful eye of a third party who is going to do their damnedest to keep anyone from sabotaging it lest they end up losing their other customers.
This 55-minute TED talk is from yesterday, and Musk goes through quite a few aspects of the Twitter proposal, as well as speaking on Telsa and other issues - pretty interesting, although the interviewer is annoying. Note: There is a 'Plan B' if the stock offer doesn't go through, but Musk is keeping mum on the details.
It gets interesting at 27:30 when he starts in on the SEC's treachery.
Once you recognize activism as a virtue, you usually end up captured by activists in a feedback loop. Many give a pass to activists because of shared ideas like ‘democracy’, confusing freedom with liberation and seeing many Leftists as having some alternative after the destruction.
Many allow activists (best thought of as true-believers) to destroy institutions because of something like in group/out group dynamics and shared enemy thinking. They ignored/supported the attacks on anything religious/traditional/conservative/centrist/moderate etc because it lined up well enough with their maps. Too much good is being done. Until they’re enveloped in the fog and start being attacked themselves.
Well, some good was done for some people some of the time, but now you’re left with human nature and reality. And systemic problems.
I believe we have a few deeper problems yet, but the activism problems are serious enough.
Everyone at Twitter is replacable. The site has been set up and its now in Maintence mode. Anyone can be a Hall monitor, and computer programmers are a dime a dozen and can be replaced by willing Indians from the Subcontienent (sic).
Personally, I think musk is just doing this to make $$. His takeover bid will probably fail, and he'll sell his stock for a tidy sum.
Twitter is the most powerful medium in America, and it's not even close. Many still think it's a cutsey little toy for loudmouth losers.
Pay attention to the powers, both national and international, that join forces to defend twitter in it's present state. This isn't about pajama boys and pink haired cross dressers at twitter needing a safe space from the thought of Trump tweeting.
hard to sabotoge things at Twitter if Musk takes over. Its not the Federal Government. Anyone can get fired and replaced in two weeks.
It is harder to do and might be more expensive in the end, but Musk doesn't need the board's approval to buy enough shares to control the company. He probably doesn't even need 50%+1 of the stock to do so- 25% would probably be a big enough block, but it would take a while to change the board that way.
When libertarianish Kat Timpf (Gutfeld! last night) our and our classically liberalish hostess Althouse have essentially the same take, then it’s obvious that Twitter’s weird overreacting signals that a bunch of their employees are heavily invested in their roles as censors. Very heavily invested.
Malcontents.
I always thought that upon winning POTUS, Trump should have sent minions into every parking lot of every federal agency and fire every employee with an Obama or Hillary sticker on their car.
Throw in 'Coexist' and 'World Peace' for good measure.
I hope Elon is making a list of these babies to fire on his first day.
After all, if it's a private company, can't he do what he wants?
I've been told that those are the new rules...
'If current tech workers are anything like the tech workers of the last 50+ years, most could not care less about politics or Musk or anything beyond their next assignment.'
But they're not.
I was in what I would call the second wave of tech. After HP and Intel but before Facebook and Google.
We worked in little cubicles and made things (usually hardware back then) that we hoped people would buy.
Have you ever been in an office of a successful tech company?
It's like you've died and gone to heaven.
The level of pampering and pay is astounding.
I'm not bitter...God bless those folks.
But it's not your father's tech anymore.
At some point in the not too distant past employees began to feel comfortable telling management what to do and openly whining when things did not go their way. Bosses lost their nerve and began to show sympathy for the most stupid of causes thus encouraging more whinging.
Yancy Ward. There are any number of ways a board can thwart takeovers. But Musk can launch a proxy fight putting up his own slate of board members and let the current stockholders vote. The current board cannot stop him from trying.
If Musk succeeds in acquiring control of Twitter, he won’t even have to fire anyone. He’ll just move the Twitter office from San Francisco to Texas and all the woke folk will quit.
Twitter’s value has virtually nothing to do with its employees and everything to do with the fact that the world’s journalists, celebrities, and cultural figures produce Twitter content for free. If a significant portion choose to migrate to a replacement platform, Musk’s investment will be worth a fraction of what he paid for it.
Poor Twitter employees having their mellow harshed by that mean Mr. Musk.
This might be the first re-capture attempt of a major institution. The only way Wokeism works is by intimidation. Starve the intimidation avenues and free speech might have a chance.
@Amadeus "The most likely outcome is that Musk abandons his bid and sells his stake at a profit." I don't think so. The most likely outcome is that the board of directors refuses the author, many of the stockholders freak out and offer to sell to him at an enormous profit, and Musk buys all the shares that flock to sell to him at that price. Instead of owning 10% he suddenly owns ___.
Here is another article with perhaps more detail than the democracy darkening WaPo that I can't read. It is careful to point out that not only is Jason Tharp "straight" but also that he is "married" (Doesn't say whether to a man or woman)
The Let's Get Biden To Quit movement is also poking its nose in.
https://watermarkonline.com/2022/04/14/its-okay-to-be-a-unicorn-author-asked-to-exclude-book-from-presentation/
I would not mind if it were actually about LGBTQ, perhaps the kids could carry the message home with them. Unfortunately, like so much else, they are using LGBTQ in the corrupted sense of Lesbian Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer.
John LGKTQ Henry
Heard in the Valley: "Help me Obi-Wan Prince Alwaleed, you're my only hope."
Yancy, Michael,
I was wondering about this myself yesterday. Serious question, is there any legal reason why Musk can't simply go to his broker and say here's a wad of cash, buy Twitter stock until you run out. Don't pay more than $55/share"
In other words, just like you and I could do but on a bigger scale?
What does the board have to do with this?
That is a serious question, I really don't know what the laws are on this.
I agree that if the board says to shareholders "This is a good deal, sell to Musk" it makes it a lot easier. Or vice versa.
John LGKtQ Henry
Yancy, Michael,
I was wondering about this myself yesterday. Serious question, is there any legal reason why Musk can't simply go to his broker and say here's a wad of cash, buy Twitter stock until you run out. Don't pay more than $55/share"
In other words, just like you and I could do but on a bigger scale?
What does the board have to do with this?
That is a serious question, I really don't know what the laws are on this.
I agree that if the board says to shareholders "This is a good deal, sell to Musk" it makes it a lot easier. Or vice versa.
John LGKtQ Henry
"I heard talk of making their code open-source, that would be a big help."
Is the censorship algorithmic? I envision a lot of woksters sitting around reading tweets.
The Babylon Bee pounces.
"But Musk can launch a proxy fight putting up his own slate of board members and let the current stockholders vote. The current board cannot stop him from trying."
He can, but he may have already decided it isn't worth the trouble. I think he'll just dump his stock and watch the price tank as other investors lose faith in Twitter too.
Twitter's new icon
Is there a "safe room" at Twitter HQ for all their emotionally distressed employees?
Having been hostilely taken over by a large tech company years ago, this is pretty normal behavior and all a part of the process that many employees go through. The boarding pirates are considered evil, and the line staff are egged on by their leaders to resist, resist, resist. The vast majority hold their opinions very loosely, though, and any idea that there will be a peasant revolt after the takeover is really just fantasy. In the end, we work for a paycheck, not an idea or a man. I and my colleagues continued to work there for a period equal to or even greater than we would have had the takeover not taken place.
The Twitter employees will bitch and moan, wail and gnash their teeth, and still go in to work the next day.
This may be the most information-free article I’ve ever read. A handful of Twitter’s 8,000 employees claim to be “distracted” by the Musk story, and this is news?
I realize all magazines are dying, but, is Fortune always this vapid? If so, why would anyone read it? Does anyone read it? Or is it just an empty space where a magazine used to be?
Wouldn’t you be embarrassed to have your name on the byline of such a content-free article? (Perhaps not; after all, the author has an awesome 15 followers on Twitter)
https://muckrack.com/tristan-bove
The Nation howls: "We can't let billionaires control major communication platforms."
Self-awareness is not a thing at their publication, I guess.
The Nation howls: "We can't let billionaires control major communication platforms."
Self-awareness is not a thing at their publication, I guess.
rcocean at 9:21am - don't put your faith in the Indian Subcontinent. Several years ago a proposal showed up at my company to have everyone's personal social media posts graded (by whom? not clear), with financial bonuses going to the biggest proponents of social justice. This was suggested by a group of women techies in India, who seemed to think it would be implemented ASAP. It wound its way to US Legal and HR to be killed very dead with knives (can you imagine the lawsuits!? they were aghast). When Legal and HR have to step in as the voice of sanity to save you from the techies, we might have a problem.
Vonnegan said...
Several years ago a proposal showed up at my company to have everyone's personal social media posts graded (by whom? not clear)... This was suggested by a group of women techies in India, who seemed to think it would be implemented ASAP.
I suspect the women techies in India would have nobly volunteered to grade everyone's posts and you can bet your bottom dollar they would have found anyone not from sub-continent lacking in moral fiber. I have seen a number of such schemes come up during my 20+ year IT career and they always seem to come from that quarter.
Are they planning sabotage? Good question. I just wonder how many are at will employees and realize a regime change at Twitter may start at the top but not end there.
"If a significant portion choose to migrate to a replacement platform, Musk’s investment will be worth a fraction of what he paid for it."
It depends on how invested the users are in the Twitter "ban anything our snow flake staff doesn't like" culture. There are lots of people who don't really care one way or another. It's the app they use, everybody they know is on it, so why change.
As a straight business deal though, I don't see it as a money maker for Musk. The company operates at a loss and the current stock price is based on pixie dust. As you suggest, all it takes is people deciding to go elsewhere to make it vanish.
Good Friday meant exchange closed. Let's see what Monday brings to trading in the stock.
"Focus week" - when everybody gets their adderall script filled.
What, exactly, is "tech" about Twitter? It's a glorified chat room. The code it runs on was established years ago, and except for troubleshooting the occasional problem it shouldn't need much of an engineering staff.
There are probably more employees monitoring posts for impure thoughts than anything else. Maybe the advertising dept. is bigger.
I just wonder how many are at will employees
Every employee in California is an at-will employee.
Post a Comment