Triggered Twitter employees were left sniping on Slack Thursday after a virtual meeting with new boss Elon Musk, who showed up 10 minutes late, sent a warning to loafers, and called for quadrupling the platform’s audience.
The private, virtual meeting was the first all-hands session with the San Francisco-based company’s employees since the Tesla chief struck a $44 billion deal in April to take it private. Key moments were leaked shortly afterward, and included Musk’s comments as well as gripes and mockery from employees.
“The company does need to get healthy,” Musk reportedly said when asked if layoffs were on the horizon. “Right now, the costs exceed the revenue, so that’s not a great situation to be in.”
Elon Musk showed up 10 minutes late to his first meeting addressing Twitter employees, which is still ongoing. He dialed in from his phone handheld like this pic.twitter.com/UoZ4U9dDme
— Alex Heath (@alexeheath) June 16, 2022
“Obviously a significant contributor should have nothing to worry about,” added Musk, who was introduced by CEO Parag Agrawal, joined the call 10 minutes late by phone, according to The Verge deputy editor Alex Heath.
Comments on an internal Slack channel showed triggered employees mocking Musk for being late and singling out “exceptional” employees, sources told Bloomberg.
“Friendly reminder that you can show up 10 minutes late to a meeting that was announced to the world and still be exceptional,” one employee wrote on Slack.
Musk was asked about his political leanings, and described them as “moderate,” noting that he voted Republican this week for the first time in his life, casting a ballot for House candidate Mayra Flores in Texas, according to Project Veritas.
Other messages leaked online indicated that some outraged employees accused Musk of saying “all lives matter,” although the context was not clear. The Left considers that a racist retort to the phrase “Black Lives Matter.”
Musk dispelled concerns he was looking to walk away from the deal after squabbling with prior senior management about its reluctance to disclose data on spam and bot accounts. He also appeared to show flexibility on working from home, something he is not allowing at his auto making company.
“The bias definitely needs to be strongly towards working in person, but if somebody is exceptional, then remote work can be OK,” Musk was quoted as saying in Bloomberg.
That could be interpreted as a warning at Twitter, where few staffers have returned to its San Francisco headquarters, and employees have been caught on secret video admitting they don’t work very hard or care much about profitability. The company employs over 8,000 people.
Musk reportedly discussed revenue-boosting plans, such as authenticating users through Twitter Blue, the company’s paid subscription offering, currently rolled out in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Asked to define Twitter success within the next five to 10 years, Musk said he hopes to see daily active users raise from the current 229 million to 1 billion, according to sources cited by The Wall Street Journal. He said the company can learn from Chinese apps WeChat, used from everything from instant messaging to e-commerce, and TikTok, according to The Verge.
At the end of the 45-minute call ended, Musk turned off his camera to reveal an avatar of two hands shaping the number 69, a source told Reuters.