In January 2020, thousands of Twitter employees gathered in Houston for a corporate summit called #OneTeam. During the event, Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive at the time, revealed that he had invited a surprise guest. Then, with a wave and a smile, Elon Musk appeared on giant screens above the stage. The crowd applauded, clapped and clapped. “We love you,” shouted an employee.
Today, on Twitter, surprising messages about Mr. Musk are circulating in different ways. Officials said they had largely stopped celebrating the world’s richest man since he announced his intention to buy Twitter this month, remove his content moderation policies and transform the publicly traded company into a private one. On Monday, Twitter announced that it had accepted Mr Musk’s offer to buy the company for about $ 44 billion.
As the takeover battle unfolded over the past two weeks, Twitter officials said they were disappointed to hear little from management about what this meant for them, even when Twitter struck a deal with Mr Musk on Monday morning. They asked their CEO, Parag Agraval. They asked Mr. Musk himself in questions sent to Twitter. Some even went to Charles Schwab, the financial firm that manages their stock options, to clarify the impact the sale of the company would have on them.
But they did not receive many answers before Mr Musk’s proposal succeeded, said 11 Twitter officials, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak in public, even when it became clear that they could soon be to report to Mr Musk.
On Monday afternoon, Mr Agraval and Twitter chairman Brett Taylor finally met with officials to discuss the deal. Compensation will remain largely the same with Mr Musk, Mr Agraval said, but he did not give the same assurances about Twitter’s policies and culture.
“We are constantly evolving our policies,” Mr Agraval said in response to a question from an official as to whether former President Donald J. Trump will be allowed back into the platform. “Once the deal is done, we don’t know in which direction this company will go.”
Silence over negotiations is routine in takeover battles, Mr Taylor told officials. While the board of directors consults with bankers, lawyers and expensive public relations firms, employees are often left in the dark. But for Twitter employees, a company that has claimed World Square, to find out what’s going on with their company primarily through Twitter, the service they built was particularly offensive.
Read more about Elon Musk’s Twitter offer
After years of quarrels with leaders, demands for change from investor activists and tweets to test Mr Trump’s borders, more than 7,000 Twitter employees have become accustomed to the upheaval. However, some of them claim that the billionaire’s takeover has hit them in a way that other corporate crises have not.
Officials said they were worried that Mr Musk would undo the years of work they have put into cleaning the toxic corners of the platform, increase their compensation for shares in the process of taking over the company privately and disrupt Twitter’s culture with its unpredictable management style and sharp proclamations.
But Mr Musk also has fans on Twitter, and some officials have welcomed his proposal. In an internal Slack report seen by The New York Times asking if employees were excited about Mr. Musk, about 10 people responded with emojis. A Twitter spokesman declined to comment.
If Twitter is worth buying, much of its value is in the employees who build and manage the service, said David Larker, a professor of accounting and corporate governance at Stanford University. “The wild card is, what if it becomes a very different company than they thought they were?” “It’s an awkward working relationship,” he said.
Mr Musk clarified some of his intentions in regulatory documents, tweets and public appearances: The company needs to remove almost all of its moderation policies that ban content such as violent threats, harassment and spam. It needs to provide more transparency about the algorithm it uses to increase tweets in users’ newscasts. And it must become a private company.
Twitter has been extending its content moderation policies since 2008, when its 25th employee was hired specifically to combat abuse on its platform. The teams that monitor moderation and safety have already grown to hundreds of employees.
Many Twitter employees feel personally invested in the company’s efforts to promote healthy conversation – even if they don’t work directly on moderating content – and have pressured executives to further fight hate speech and misinformation, six employees said. They see Mr Musk’s offer to return to Twitter’s early, loose approach as a rebuke to their work.
But other officials say in internal reports seen by The Times that their colleagues have strayed too far to the left of the political spectrum, making officials who support Mr Musk’s plans too awkward to speak. In a survey of nearly 200 employees on Twitter for Blind, an anonymous job review app, 44 percent said they were neutral about Mr Musk. Twenty-seven percent say they love Mr. Musk, while 27 percent say they hate him.
Although executives and employees on Twitter have agreed with Mr. Musk on changes to his algorithm, this work is at an early stage and may take years to complete. This may be something Mr Musk is not particularly known for – patience.
One of the main concerns among Twitter workers is whether they will receive a financial blow from the acquisition of Mr. Musk. Many Twitter employees make 50 percent or more of their total payout on Twitter shares. Some officials said they were afraid to miss the long-term value of their shares at Mr. Musk’s $ 54.20 share price.
At a meeting with employees on Monday, executives tried to reassure employees that they would not be reduced by Mr. Musk’s acquisition. Mr Agrawal told employees that their stock options would turn into money when the deal with Mr Musk was completed, which he said would take between three and six months. Employees will receive their same compensation packages for one year after the transaction is finalized.
In an earlier attempt to quell financial worries, Sean Edgett, Twitter’s chief adviser, told employees that any potential buyer would likely be required to keep employees’ equity “as is” or provide equivalent compensation, such as cash. reward.
Mr Edget, who commented before announcing the deal with Mr Musk, emphasized that officials should not see his guidelines as an insight into the deal. “This is to provide some reassurance and explain how these things usually work, not because we believe there will be one result against another,” he wrote in a statement to officials reviewed by The Times.
Twitter began hiring, spending $ 630 million on equity-based remuneration in 2021, an increase of 33 percent over the previous year. Twitter predicts in its earnings report in February that it will spend between $ 900 million and $ 925 million in equity-based compensation this year.
But Mr Musk’s campaign has also begun to undermine Twitter’s attempts to hire new employees, according to internal documents outlining the company’s recruitment efforts, which were reviewed by The Times. Prospective tenants have expressed skepticism about Mr. Musk’s plans to transform Twitter and change the moderation of its content, the documents said.
New recruits are also worried that the shares included in their letters of offer could quickly depreciate if Mr Musk makes Twitter private.
The problem of recruiting on Twitter could be exacerbated if current employees quit, as some have warned they would do if Mr Musk took office. Other officials were concerned about cuts or loss of work visas for Mr Musk and raised questions about these issues with Mr Agraval.
Recruitment managers were asked to monitor how many prospective employees turned down job offers due to concerns about Mr. Musk, according to internal communications reviewed by The Times.
Officials also wondered: could he also relocate Twitter headquarters to Texas, as he did with Tesla? Can it put an end to the company’s flexibility in returning to the office, which has become a selling point for employees and recruits? After all, Mr. Musk is fighting with California officials to keep his car factory open at the start of the pandemic.
Mr. Agraval tried to reassure his staff. In Monday’s Q&A session, he called on employees to “work with Twitter as always,” adding that “how we run the company, the decisions we make, and the positive changes we make will depend on us and under our control.” ”
The stress of mentioning Mr Musk is a stark contrast to welcoming his staff two years ago. Although some employees at the 2020 event said they were skeptical of Mr Musk, many listened carefully as he gave his advice on Twitter: The company needs to step up its moderation, he said, doing more to remove of bots and scammers from real people using the platform.
“By the way, do you want to start Twitter?” Mr. Dorsey asked Mr. Musk.
The assembled Twitter staff laughed. Mr. Musk did not respond immediately.
Ryan Mack and Mike Isaac contributed to the report.
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