Unplanned weekend
I can’t help finding the Elon Musk car crash funny. Dude bounces in shouting threats and insults at his employees and guess what, most of them quit.
Twitter has told employees that the company’s office buildings will be temporarily closed, with immediate effect. In a message seen by the BBC, workers were told that the offices would reopen on Monday 21 November. It did not give a reason for the move.
The announcement comes amid reports that large numbers of staff were quitting after new owner Elon Musk called on them to sign up for “long hours at high intensity” or leave.
And they said “We’re already working long hours at high intensity so fuck you, we’re out.” Musk’s only option was to scream “Fine, then I’m closing the building!!”
Ain’t capitalism great?
I wonder what legal basis he had, if any, to demand employees modify their work contracts or be fired.
Many have wondered that.
Most don’t have contracts. The vast majority of employees are at will workers. They can quit whenever they want, they can be laid off whenever the employer wants. I am sure they sign nondisclosure agreements to protect trade secrets, and some of the most valuable management and development level people may have contracts that include non-compete provisions, but the average programmer is most likely at will.
And I don’t know about Twitter, but a lot of employees in the computer world are hired as contractors. They are even easier to get rid of then full time at will employees.
Aah – I did wonder about this, because when Brits & other Europeans hear of some American going into a company and shouting “You’re fired” the reaction is “Don’t they have employment law there?” You can’t fire people willy-nilly here -there is a whole process of consultations before issuing redundancies – I’ve been through a couple myself – otherwise the employer would be taken to an employment tribunal.
I am enjoying the IT folk giving two fingers to Musk – good IT people don’t normally find it hard to get a new job.
But for the rest of us twitter serfs, villeins and even freemen – alas, we can only await the whims of our new overload (ha! I meant overlord! – genuine typo).
It’s been reported that a lot of the staff who chose to remain at Twitter did so because they’re foreign nationals on visas that are tied to their job. If they took the severance, they’d likely have to leave the country, obtain a new job, and re-apply.
I can see long hours and hard work for something value. Twitter? Garbage.
Apparently, some of those laid off by Musk are suing him for violating California’s labor laws, so it’s not like there’s no protections at all for employees. (In this case, the claim is that while he has the right to institute layoffs, there’s a minimum time period between the declaration and the exeunt that is required.)
My favorite response to the whole mess was a former Twitter employee who was responsible for coding for the badges at the office building. According to the former employee’s tweet, when they tried to remove access for the ousted and departing employees, they also locked out the handful that remain, and so were asking him to come back to reset the system and get them into the building.