Twitter Employees Are Overburdened As Elon Musk Tries To Run Twitter With Fewer Staff
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Across the tech industry and many other companies, companies are trying to do more with less. Tech companies that have laid off recently include Google Alphabet Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and Salesforce Inc.
More layoffs
Elon Musk tries to run Twitter Inc. with fewer and fewer staff the company handled when it took over. Silicon Valley is watching to see if he succeeds.
Twitter's staff fell to around 2,000 from close to 8,000. It carried out more layoffs over the weekend.
There is a difference between running Twitter with 2,000 people now and running it with 2,000 people in 2013 or earlier, said Jason Goldman, one of Twitter's early executives who served on its board from 2007 to 2010.
Some of the bigger tech giants have cut more jobs in terms of total numbers, but Twitter's cuts, as a percentage of staff, are staggering by comparison. Twitter's workforce is the smallest in a decade and below the 2,712 employees it had in 2013 when it went public.
Other employees said they were trying to replace laid-off colleagues and were tasked with working on aspects of the platform they had never done before, as their colleagues who knew the tools well were no longer with the company. As a result, they said, it's harder to troubleshoot technical issues when they arise.
Financially loss-making Twitter reported a net loss of $221.4 million in 2021, the last full year it publicly reported financial results before going private. Musk said he believes Twitter will break even this year.
Slack issues
For many employees, a confusing moment came last week when employees said they were unexpectedly logged out of the Slack workplace messaging tool. Staff was informed that Slack was down for maintenance.
Losing Slack is a significant hit to productivity, said one employee.
One employee said it was frustrating as searching through old Slack messages was a way to find answers to technical issues, especially after so many engineers left and weren't around to help.
Twitter informed employees on Monday that maintenance had been completed and Slack would be restored.
History of technical errors
The social media company has a history of technical glitches that preceded Musk's acquisition. Almost three years ago, it was hit by an attack that allowed hackers to take over a number of accounts, including those of celebrities, politicians and billionaires.
A year earlier, the account of Twitter co-founder and then CEO Jack Dorsey had been hacked to send misguided and racist tweets.
Recently, many Twitter users were unable to access the social media platform for about two hours. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the matter. This followed an incident three weeks ago when users were unable to tweet and glitches during the Super Bowl halftime.
Current and former Twitter engineers say the continued operation of the platform is at least partly a testament to years of prior engineering work.
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Twitter share price
Twitter's last stock quote was at 53.70
SpaceX
On the other hand, from other Elon Musk companies
SpaceX launched a crew to the International Space Station early Thursday, a mission make-up flight that the company and NASA scrubbed off earlier this week due to a technical problem.
SpaceX and NASA canceled the launch attempt on Monday shortly before the flight was scheduled to begin. On Wednesday, the space agency said a clogged filter caused a problem that led to the flight being postponed.
The latest mission launched just after 12:30 p.m. EST Thursday, when the company's rocket blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center. Kennedy, Florida, according to a NASA live broadcast.
Source: wsj.com, finance.yahoo.com
