For national emotional wellness month, employees of Twitter have been finding their inboxes filled with tips on self-care and emotional balance. However the messages they are sending out are filled with panic and upset according to one report.
Now that Elon Musk is set to complete his acquisition of the company within a week, employees are bracing for a brutal tidal wave of layoffs, which Musk has been telling investors may take out 75% of twitter’s staff. At the same time, leadership priorities at the company, the senior leadership, and the very culture of the company are all also likely to undergo remarkable changes.
This whole period coincided with a Twitter “focus week,” a periodic period in which the company encourages productivity by reducing the number of meetings and other managerial functions, so employees can focus on work and getting things done. Many staff members however have said they have spent the time looking for new jobs, as well as conferring with lawyers to make sure they receive the stock compensation and severance packages they are entitled to.
Adding to the confusion is the fact that employee equity awards were due to vest early next month, but now given the takeover occurring at the end of this month, and many employees likely being laid off prior to that, there are questions of whether the vest date will change, or even occur. Employees are growing concerned that the stock awards may not be awarded at all.
Employee equity award accounts were frozen by Twitter on Monday ahead of Musk’s acquisition closing, according to a report in Bloomberg. That has led to employees conferring with labor lawyers, due to fears they will not be allowed to acquire compensation that was previously being offered to them.
Following months of legal back and forth, Musk and Twitter appear finally ready to close the deal. However now a new foil has developed, as the Biden White House is making grumblings about possibly blocking the deal with a national security review.
Employees meanwhile are undergoing regular periodic performance reviews in the final quarter. Employees submitted self-evaluations earlier in the month. Now managers are grading the employees on a curve this week, with 3% of the employees placed in a bottom tier. Next week employees will be meeting with managers, just as Musk is closing the deal.
Twitter engineering teams are reportedly beginning to see moods sour, as engineers fear their various projects and proposals are being pursued now, only to have Musk possibly scrap all of them and take the division in an entirely new direction.
For his part, Musk has tweeted that under his leadership, “software engineering, server operations & design will rule the roost.” He has also proposed turning the platform into the “ultimate app,” something he calls “X” however one staffer said, “We don’t even know what that is.”
The Daily Financial Trends
