- Twitter is looking at a future in flux under Elon Musk, from new leaders to fewer staff.
- Twitter’s CEO seems to have had little contact with Musk. An employee called him “a lame duck.”
- Another employee said staff are bracing for layoffs and suffering from “Elon derangement syndrome.”
Twitter succumbed on Monday to the largest technology leveraged buyout in history, led by the world’s richest person. The future is now in flux, with employees, investors and analysts expecting the debt-laden company to slash jobs and purge its executive suite.
Elon Musk is borrowing $25 billion to help him pay for the $44 billion takeover, and he’s made it clear big changes are coming when Twitter is due to become a private company later this year.
Many employees, former Twitter executives and investors expect layoffs. One staffer said colleagues are openly discussing where the reductions may come, with certain groups more worried than others. Trust and safety teams, for instance, which deal with Twitter’s efforts on content moderation, frequently pilloried by Musk, expect to be cut. Engineers seem less worried.
