At the end of October 2022, Elon Musk bought the social network Twitter. Since then, he has not only experienced problems on a financial level with shares of his main company, Tesla, but has also been involved in all sorts of controversies.
For one thing, Twitter users have disagreed with several new measures, such as enabling the verification check for anyone who pays for it. This has made the symbol for media outlets, sports teams, etc., have a verification symbol but in gold, to indicate that it is the official account.
But the biggest controversy that has put the business tycoon in the spotlight is his decision to fire many employees working for the social network for years. For example, The New York Times reported that since the CEO and Chief Engineer of SpaceX bought Twitter, he has fired a quarter of those who had been with the company for barely a year.
More recently, Elon Musk trended again on media for firing Eshter Crawford, creator of Squat and team leader in charge of the verification subscription and “Twitter Blue.”
Crawford went viral in November because of a photograph where she appears sleeping on the floor of the Twitter office, demonstrating that despite her busy schedule, she was committed to the social network. The chief of Twitter Blue, an option that allows users to have the blue check mark for a price of 8 dollars per month, wanted to show that she was “deeply proud of the team” she was part of.
When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork https://t.co/UBGKYPilbD
— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) November 2, 2022
The news quickly went viral on networks. The image was not well received by Musk, who decided to finally fire her. It is worth mentioning that Crawford had been with the American social media company based in San Francisco for 3 years. At the time, she was the CEO of Squad, a video chat app.
Layoffs with a significant remuneration
Since arriving at Twitter, the CEO and product architect of Tesla has decided to lay off nearly 10,000 employees. After a week at the helm of the social network, Musk got rid of nearly 7,500 workers at the headquarters (San Francisco) and in other branches.
In addition, others decided to leave on their own in the face of what seemed to be the end of Twitter. At one point, it was even suspected that the closure was imminent. Although the situation was overcome, it appears that Musk returned to “clean up” with this recent round that affected 10% of the remaining workers, i.e., those who were in the company before the investor became CEO.
According to The New York Times, the layoffs began on Saturday night (February 25) and ended on Sunday. Even before the firings, some employees began to see their accounts on the internal messaging service Slack cut.
Crawford had tried to downplay the image of her sleeping on the floor, stating that it was what she had to do for the team’s good due to management’s “round-the-clock pressure to meet deadlines.”
@muskrevolution Elon Musk Lays Off Thousands. #muskrevolution #elonmusk #musk #fyp #foryou #twitter #elonmusktwitter #elonmusklife #elonmusknews #unemployment #laidoff #fired #CapCut
On the other hand, as reported by The Verge, Elon Musk reportedly sent an email to these laid-off employees to inform them that they would receive a “very significant” reward based on stock awards by the end of March.
As for Twitter Blue, the new mode of the social network now owned by Musk, it doesn’t have the success it was thought to have. In the few months, it has been in action in the United States, only 0.1% of the social network’s users have paid for the service.