Zoë Schiffer
@ZoeSchiffer
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Managing Editor @platformer . Pre-order my book, Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter.
Oakland, CA
Joined December 2016
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Last Seen Profiles
NEW: Twitter just alerted employees that effective immediately, all office buildings are temporarily closed and badge access is suspended. No details given as to why.
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Lol: Twitter sent an HR email to every laid off employee acknowledging it's late getting people their separation agreements and release of claims. But the company messed up the BCC and it has become a reply-all catastrophe.
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NEW: The designers leading Elon Musk’s Blue verified project are out, along with the lead web engineer. Many Twitter employees who maintained critical infrastructure have resigned. This is going to look like a very different company tomorrow.
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Elon Musk is doing an all hands with Twitter employees. They got a one hour notice and he showed up 15 minutes late.
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NEW: Email from Elon to the engineering team: "Anyone who can actually write software, please report to the 10th floor at 2pm today. Before doing so, please email me a bullet point summary of what your code commits have achieved in the past 6 months" 1/
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NEW: Twitter has suspended the launch of Twitter Blue and is actively trying to stop people from subscribing "to help address impersonation issues," per an internal note. 1/
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NEW: Elon Musk is threatening to sue Twitter employees who leak confidential information to the press. He's asking staffers to sign a pledge indicating they've understood. Here's the email:
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NEW: A senior member of Twitter’s legal team just posted this message in Slack:“Everyone should know that our CISO, Chief Privacy Officer and Chief Compliance Officer ALL resigned last night. This news will be buried in the return-to-office drama. I believe that is intentional.”
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NEW: While Twitter is breaking, Elon Musk is holding meetings to interrogate engineers about why his engagement is tanking. On Tuesday, he publicly fired one for showing that the lack of engagement isn’t a bug — he’s just less popular than he used to be:
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New email from Elon Musk to engineers: “please be prepared to do brief code reviews as I’m walking around the office.”
That’s it — that’s the whole email.
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NEW: Elon Musk directed Twitter engineers to design a secret system to boost his tweets over everyone else's after his post about the Super Bowl did poorly compared to President Biden's:
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We're hearing this is because Elon Musk and his team are terrified employees are going to sabotage the company. Also, they're still trying to figure out which Twitter workers they need to cut access for.
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Offices will reopen on November 21st. In the meantime: "Please continue to comply with company policy by refraining from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere."
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I am having a difficult time believing this is real and I am looking at the emails.
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NEW: Elon Musk has sent another email to Twitter engineers warning them about code reviews. “All managers are expected to write a meaningful amount of software themselves. Being unable to do so is like a cavalry captain who can’t ride a horse.”
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NEW: Twitter hasn’t paid thousands of dollars in charitable donations that employees made in 2022, around the time of the acquisition. The money was taken out of employee paychecks but never reached the organizations. Benevity, the third-party platform that is used to facilitate…
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NEW: Twitter just announced it’s cutting holiday pay for its remaining contractors, starting this Thanksgiving.
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Twitter is sending laid off employees a legal notice warning them about a non-disparagement clause in their separation agreements. The company says this "applies to you whether you signed the agreement or not."
Curious if any labor lawyers want to weigh in!
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Wow. Elon Musk just told Twitter employees he’s not sure how much run rate the company has and “bankruptcy isn’t out of the question.”
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Elon Musk just told Twitter staff: “If you can physically make it to an office and you don’t show up, resignation accepted."
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Elon Musk is also asking for up 10 screenshots of the "most salient lines of code" from Twitter engineers 2/
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Ian Goodfellow, Apple’s director of machine learning, is leaving the company due to its return to work policy. In a note to staff, he said “I believe strongly that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team.” He was likely the company’s most cited ML expert.
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Yesterday, Twitter told employees the offices were closed and badge access was suspended until Monday. Employees are extremely confused.
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NEW: In an email for remote Twitter engineers, Elon Musk says he wants to speak to people on video ("only those who cannot physically get to Twitter HQ are excused") but "if possible, I would encourage you to fly to SF to present in person." He'll be at the office until midnight.
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Again, no context as to what this is about. We know Twitter's engineering teams have been gutted by layoffs and resignations. What's next?
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NEW: Twitter currently does not have admin access to some of its GitHub repos. These repos contain Twitter source code (much of it is open source; some is not). This includes code for companies Twitter acquired, like Smyte. 1/
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Elon Musk has not sent Twitter employees the “very significant” compensation awards he promised would be delivered today. People are not happy, to say the least.
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NEW: Twitter is cutting employee benefits starting this quarter. Commuter benefits, family planning, and meal allowances are all out. Coffee and snacks are staying, per an internal email.
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If you're a tech worker considering sharing information with the media, you have rights! The Tech Worker Handbook is a good place to start, and note that all conversations with me and Casey can begin completely off the record:
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So far no Twitter employees have been deactivated — even those who’ve publicly resigned. Musk and his team only collected the list of “yes’s” — employees who said they want to be part of Twitter 2.0. They’re still trying to track who is out.
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(I am choosing not to post the actual email as it's clear Twitter is doing everything it can to catch sources)
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NEW: Behnam Rezaei, Twitter’s head of product and engineering, and one of the last non-Elon Musk appointed leaders at the company, just resigned.
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“Elon has shown that his only priority with Twitter users is how to monetize them. I do not believe he cares about the human rights activists, the dissidents, our users in un-monetizable regions, and all the other users who have made Twitter a global town square”
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NEW: Twitter has lockdown it’s code base, freezing production changes to Twitter systems until further notice. Exceptions made if Elon explicitly says so, according to an internal email. 1/
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As evidenced by the many detailed leaks of confidential Twitter information, a few people at our company continue to act in a manner contrary to the company's interests and in violation of their NDA. 1/
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Musk says occasional slip ups are understandable "but breaking your word by sending detailed info to the media" with the intent to harm Twitter "will receive the response it deserves."
Employees have by 5pm today to respond.
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“Twitter is a remote-first workplace, and has operated as such for years. It is a fundamental change to our employment contracts to require a 40hr a week in-office requirement. I do not, personally, believe that Twitter employees have an obligation to return to office.”
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Wow the layoffs last night included a ton of surprises. Hardcore Musk loyalists (more on that soon…) and the founder of the newsletter platform Revue that Twitter acquired in 2021.
Waking up to find I’ve been locked out of my email. Looks like I’m let go. Now my Revue journey is really over 🫡
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NEW: Twitter is shutting down its data center in Sacramento and downsizing another in Atlanta by early Jan, likely as a cost saving measure. This means a huge amount of traffic will be shifted to its remaining data centers, which could result in increased instability.
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Now, Elon Musk's tweets get to bypass Twitter's filters designed to stop you from seeing a feed full of one person's tweets. And, they're boosted by a factor of 1,000.
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NEW: Twitter is planning to unveil a new policy as soon as this afternoon that only Blue subscribers will be able to use SMS-based two-factor authentication, according to company sources.
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Now he’s talking about making Twitter a peer-to-peer payments platform…
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This will be said only once: If you clearly and deliberately violate the NDA that you signed when you joined, you accept liability to the full extent of the law & Twitter will immediately seek damages. 2/
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NEW: Twitter is being sued by an advertiser who was overcharged for an ad by $5,950, according to court documents. The man was told he’d be charged max $250. “Plaintiff repeatedly attempted to get a refund from Defendant but the defendant refuses to give said refund.”
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“Over the last 2 weeks, Elon has shown that he cares only about recouping the losses he’s incurring as a result of failing to get out of his binding obligation to buy Twitter. He chose to enter into the agreement! All of us are being put through this as a result of his choices”
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NEW: Multiple Twitter sources say Yoel Roth is leaving the company.
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Just got confirmation that Esther Crawford, chief executive of Twitter Payments, is out.
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New: Twitter told employees that Slack was down for "routine maintenance." That's a lie — the company hasn't paid its bill. But weirder still, Slack didn't shut down Twitter's instance. Someone at Twitter manually shut off access:
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“I also remind all Tweeps (at least in the US) that we have an unlimited PTO policy. All Tweeps are able to take PTO. Perhaps today is a good day to take some rest and recharge.”
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NEW: Twitter engineers have received another late night email laying out Elon Musk’s expectations. Managers are expected to “identify low performers on a regular basis.” Those employees then have “up to” 4-weeks to improve or they’re out. 1/
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Tiny scoop: We learned today that Twitter’s revenue is down 40 percent year over year (& Musk’s first giant interest payment on the company is due at the end of the month):
Twitter’s staff spent years trying to protect the platform against impulsive billionaires who wanted to use it for their own ends — then one made himself the CEO.
@ZoeSchiffer
,
@CaseyNewton
, and
@alexeheath
report, in collaboration with
@verge
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NEW: Apple is tracking employee attendance (via badge records) and will give employees escalating warnings if they don't come in 3x per week.
ALSO: Elon Musk sent Twitter employees an email at 2:30am saying the "office is not optional" and noting SF was half empty yesterday.
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Twitter was supposed to match these donations but that also has not yet happened.
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NEW: Elon Musk sent Twitter staff an email with the subject line “a fork in the road.” He said: “to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mens working long hours at high intensity.” 1/
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NEW: Luke Simon -- one of Elon Musk's top lieutenants at Twitter -- appears to be out. He's been deactivated on Slack.
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He’s gone from communicating very little with Twitter employees to sending multiple one line emails to the whole company.
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The announcement was posted on Slack: "An update on what we did tonight: hid the entry point to Twitter Blue, added the 'official' label for ONLY advertisers. Note: here is at least one way for users to sign up for Blue. Legacy Blue users can go to subscriptions and upgrade" 2/
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The number of Twitter employees in Slack is dropping significantly — looks like more than 100 people were just let go.
NEW: Elon Musk is threatening to sue Twitter employees who leak confidential information to the press. He's asking staffers to sign a pledge indicating they've understood. Here's the email:
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NEW: Elon Musk's war on bots took an outrageous turn over the weekend when Twitter abruptly blocked traffic from 30 major telecom companies in the Asia-Pacific region, prompting hundreds of thousands of legit accounts to lose access:
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Now Musk says the top priority for the company this weekend is ensuring Twitter does an awesome job to support the World Cup, according to an all staff email.
This event has required a ton of work over the years from engineers and has prompted widespread outages.
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NEW: Twitter is refusing to pay its Google Cloud bills as its contract comes up for renewal this month, leading to a high-stakes conflict between the companies that could result in Twitter’s trust and safety teams being crippled:
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NEW: Email from Elon to Twitter engineers and designers: "Anyone writing software or doing design should be on the 10th floor of SF HQ. It is intended to be dense and intense. Thanks, Elon."
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Hearing that roughly 50 Twitter engineers were abruptly fired last night and dozens more received warnings:
On the evening before Thanksgiving, some Twitter engineers received an email saying they were fired because their “code is not satisfactory.” Others received “performance warning” emails asking them to “restore our confidence and demonstrate your contributions to the team”
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NEW: Apple employees were just barred from creating a Slack channel to discuss pay equity. Here's what Apple HR had to say about it: 1/
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Twitter has also disabled Blue from being purchased on Apple iOS. 4/4
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Twitter is closing its Seattle office and asking employees to work from home, per an email to staff. Looking more like the company is going to just have offices in SF and NY.
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Hearing that the Twitter layoffs last night were well above 50 and hit multiple departments including engineering. If you know more, get in touch.
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"Note 2: Existing Blue subscribers will still have access to their Blue features." 3/
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NEW: Twitter is delaying the relaunch of Twitter Blue as it tries to skirt Apple's 30% App Store fees. In the meantime, the company's ad revenue is down 49 percent or more week over week in key markets. My latest with
@CaseyNewton
:
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We’re hearing that only about 250 Twitter engineers are on the list to meet with Elon Musk today. We don’t yet know what this means in terms of how many people plan to stay at the company.
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NEW: Elon Musk has another alt account,
@e
, that he had Twitter transfer to him shortly after the takeover.
I'm told the person who owned the account did not want to hand it over (the account had been hacked and suspended before due to the high value handle, and the previous…
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New: For months, Twitter has maintained a list of VIP users, including LeBron James, Glenn Greenwald, Ben Shapiro, AOC, and Marc Andreessen, that it monitors and gives increased visibility to on the platform. 1/
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Why? Well, the company fired a bunch of employees who had access. On Slack, one engineer said the TwitterDev org on GitHub has 519 members, most of whom do not work at Twitter anymore. Some still have owner permissions — like the ability to rename or delete an org entirely. 2/
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Twitter doesn’t deploy from GitHub, and most of this is open source, so it’s not life or death. But having hundreds of former employees maintain access when current employees aren’t admins on some projects is…not great, from a security perspective. 3/
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NEW: Twitter’s head of brand safety and ad quality has resigned. Could be related to some changes in Twitter’s ad policy which I’ll share shortly.
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NEW: Twitter is down to 2,700 employees from 3,700 earlier this month. Not all the sales staff have been deactivated so the number will likely drop more. Over the weekend, the company continued to offer some engineers their jobs back.
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NEW: According to Twitter’s Slack, the company is changing its PTO policy. “Twitter management has decided that two weeks PTO leave is not acceptable,” a manager said. “It is expected that most of us will work through December.” Noted there will be downtown around Xmas & NYE
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But also "Truth is widely accepted as a complete defense to all defamation claims."
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Here are some other internal Slack channels that apparently do meet Apple’s requirements:
1. fun-dogs: 5k members
2. gaming: 3k
3. buy-nothing-new: Share anything you want to give away for free!
4. fun-cats: nearly 3k
5. dad-jokes: 2k
And of course
6. remote-work-advocacy: 7k
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NEW: Joe Benarroch, who joined Twitter with CEO Linda Yaccarino and seems to be functioning as a head of comms, sent his first company-wide email urging employees not to leak. He asked tweeps to report colleagues who are suspected of sharing confidential info. 1/
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Over the weekend, Elon Musk was complaining to Twitter employees about an account impersonating him that Twitter’s systems missed due to Smyte (the content moderation tool) being unstable. 4/
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Huh — Matt Taibbi is leaving Twitter after the platform blocked Substack links. He said the decision “will come with a price as far as any future Twitter Files reports are concerned.”
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Breaking: Netflix has fired the organizer of the trans employee walkout on suspicion of leaking internal metrics to the press.
The employee, who is Black and currently pregnant, spoke out about the leaks internally, with fears they might hurt the walkout movement.
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Twitter employees I’ve spoken to aren’t sure what’s going on. 3/3
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Breaking: Netflix has reinstated sr. software engineer Terra Field. The trans ERG has also planned a company-wide walkout on October 20th to protest statements made by Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos. Organizers say Field's reinstatement doesn't solve the larger issues at play.
Trans employees of Netflix plan walkout even as one activist is reinstated following suspension
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Three members of Twitter’s trust and safety council have resigned. “A Twitter ruled by diktat is not a place for us.”
Three of us resigned from Twitter’s Trust & Safety Council today:
@eirliani
@podesta_lesley
and me. Here’s why
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During a normal production freeze, engineers can commit code, they just can’t deploy it. This is different. 2/
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Another big loss for Twitter. I believe Yoshimasa has been at Twitter longer than anyone else at the company at this point.
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NEW: Twitter is desperately trying to boost revenue by offering advertisers “unprecedented” incentives. Those who spend >$500k will get 100% “value add” (additional impressions & matching ad spend). On Slack, a Twitter VP said it was “the most aggressive ad spend incentive” ever
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Here's the latest email from Musk to Twitter: "Everyone who can reasonably be at SF HQ is required to be unless an explicit exception is approved. We will not be using other offices in the Bay Area for now. Anyone writing software / doing design needs to be on the 10th floor."
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Elon Musk sent an email to Twitter employees telling them to write a one pager on what they accomplished in January, what they plan to accomplish in February, and "any ideas you have for improving Twitter." Twitter has also implemented another change freeze.
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Marc Benioff just told Salesforce & Slack employees he’s concerned they’re not being productive enough and asked if it was because of the flexible office policy. “New employees (hired during the pandemic in 2021 & 2022) are especially facing much lower productivity,” he wrote. 1/
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One of the founders that Twitter cut two weeks ago still isn't sure if they have a job:
Dear
@elonmusk
👋
9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees.
However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You've not answered my emails.
Maybe if enough people retweet you'll answer me here?
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Scoop: Twitter’s latest outage is the culmination of Elon Musk’s attempts to squeeze money out of the platform and his rampant firing of employees. Here’s the inside scoop on what went down and why links and images were broken this morning:
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