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Employees at Twitter Inc. were scheduled to take Monday off for the company’s monthly “day of rest.” However, Elon Musk made it difficult not to think about work. Musk, the billionaire who announced earlier this month that he had become the largest individual Twitter shareholder, backed out of a plan to join the company’s board of directors over the weekend. Days earlier, CEO Parag Agrawal had laid the groundwork for a cordial relationship by inviting Musk to join the board of directors. Musk was listed as a board member on the company’s investor relations website because the company was confident he’d accept. This week, Mr. Agrawal also hosted a question-and-answer session with Musk and employees. For some employees, the reversal signaled chaos: Musk planned to continue tweeting his criticisms of Twitter to the site’s more than 80 million followers, with no obligation to act in the best interests of the company. The Q&A session has been canceled.
Mr. Agrawal framed Musk’s surprise decision as good for Twitter in his late-Sunday announcement, but warned of “distractions ahead.”
Employees described the whiplash as “overwhelming.” Employees at Twitter are “super stressed,” with employees “working together to help each other get through the week,” according to some, who asked not to be identified because they were discussing internal company details.
Musk has recently tweeted product ideas ranging from eliminating advertising for subscribers to Twitter’s subscription service to converting a portion of the company’s San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter. There are no restrictions on how many shares he can buy or tweet now that he is not on the board; one employee voiced alarm that Musk was “just getting started, which is unfortunate.” Several employees described the situation as a “sh-t show.”
Some Twitter employees had mixed feelings about attending Musk’s “ask me anything” session. It could have clarified whether Musk intended to be friendly or hostile with his stake, but it could also have raised additional concerns about how to respond to his whims.
Musk’s immediate chilling effect bothered me a lot,” Rumman Chowdhury, a director on Twitter’s AI research team, wrote on the social media site.
Meanwhile, Musk’s Twitter followers have chimed in to criticize the product, following in his footsteps. “Twitter has a beautiful culture of hilarious constructive criticism, which I saw go silent as a result of his minions attacking employees,” Rumman Chowdhury said.
