The Twitter saga continues

There are a lot of rumors coming out Twitter HQ on… Twitter the past few weeks. Last night, it seemed like things were going to really hit the fan as people speculated that up to 90% of employees were going to quit.

#RIPTwitter was trending as people thought that the platform was going to go down overnight. Well… we all woke up and Twitter seems to be operating as normal.

There’s a whole lot to write about and discuss on the whole Elon Musk and Twitter saga, but I wanted to focus primarily on the “working extremely hardcore” part today. Musk had asked employees to continue working extremely hardcore or resign with severance.

To no one’s surprise, many people took the severance and decided to leave Twitter. I’m a bit conflicted by Musk’s decision to put this ultimatum out there.

On one hand, I do understand that Musk has been extremely insensitive to Twitter employees, many of whom have worked their asses off for the good of the platform. He’s handled everything poorly and has made a joke of firing people. That’s not how leaders should act.

On the other hand, I also understand that the company was probably running very heavy and there needed to be wholesale changes. There is nothing wrong with running a company with only people willing to work “extremely hardcore”.

I do think Musk overplayed his hand here by misunderstanding what he was working with. At Tesla and SpaceX, he was able to hire “hardcore” workers that were dedicated to the mission of space travel or eliminating gas cars. It’s much easier to find very driven people in these fields looking to make an impact on the world.

I can only imagine how opposite that may be at Twitter. While there are many that believe in the platform and the mission, it’s completely different running a social media than one in which you build state of the art rockets to send to space.

I hope Musk does succeed as I love Twitter as a platform, but I think he’s got a lot of work cut out for him.