Elon Musk starts 2nd week at Twitter with calling back some fired employees
Twitter calling back its fired employees is yet another dramatic development in Elon Musk's new era as the Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator (photo-DailyO)
As Twitter heads towards its second work week under Elon Musk's leadership, the company is surprisingly calling back dozens of employees with insiders claiming that some of them were even laid off "by mistake"! On Friday, the tech world was rocked with the news of nearly 3,700 Twitter employees (nearly 50 per cent) getting fired for either cutting down costs.
Multiple sources and Twitter Blind chats now saying that the company has begun to reach out to some people it laid off yesterday asking them to come back. Whoops! 🥴
— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) November 6, 2022
As Twitter's current Supreme Leader Elon Musk himself tweeted: "unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day."
Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2022
Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.
But now just in a matter of a weekend, the company is asking employees to join back for several speculative reasons even though Musk is yet to come out with a tweet (his equivalent of a press announcement).
Casey Newton, a writer involved with the Silicon Valley tech news outlet Platformer, has been procuring information from Twitter Blind chats, even quoting a message from the Twitter server on the team-messaging platform Slack: "sorry to @- everybody on the weekend but I wanted to pass along that we have the opportunity to ask folks that were left off if they will come back. I need to put together names and rationales by 4PM PST Sunday."
Twitter is …. Re-hiring!?
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) November 6, 2022
New jobs posted in past 48 hours (U.S) pic.twitter.com/frUMM59MB4
Update: A source at Twitter has told me the following about the LinkedIn job listings: 🤷♂️
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) November 6, 2022
Still a total farce and embarrassing if you ask me. But anyway: 👇 pic.twitter.com/OgAf7u0Nu3
Social media consultant and industry analyst Matt Navarra also tweeted a confirmation that Twitter is indeed rehiring some of its employees with his two major takeaways being, "Some were laid off by mistake. Some were let go before management realised their experience is needed to build new features Elon Musk is planning".
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) November 6, 2022
Reactions on Twitter are as diverse as expected. Some observers are wondering if this reflects poor decision-making on the part of Musk (who is singlehandedly representing the company's Advisory Board as of now) while others speculate that this is some sort of "loyalty test".
I wonder if Musk will be treating this like a loyalty test: if someone is willing to come back, then they are ok with being treated like garbage and yet still remain loyal to the mad king. They will regret it, most likely
— Andrea Kuszewski 🧠 (@AndreaKuszewski) November 6, 2022
Whether this "hiring-and-rehiring" approach was an intentionally eccentric decision on Musk's part or a mere accidental mass-firing, one thing is for certain: Musk is in the news again like usual. As of now, one of the most recent tweets on his timeline reads, "Twitter needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world. That’s our mission."
It's yet to be seen how he responds to these rehirings.