If Friday brought massive layoffs to Twitter<\/a>, Monday brought fresh evidence that the company will never be the same. Musk has discussed putting the entire site behind a paywall, Platformer<\/strong> has learned. Meanwhile, the company is scrambling to lure back employees who it laid off mere hours ago, and some workers say the economics behind its soon-to-relaunch Twitter Blue subscription could actually lose the company money.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n All of this took place against the backdrop of a company that still has yet to hear anything official from Musk, via email or a companywide meeting. As Monday began, after losing thousands of their colleagues days earlier, many employees didn\u2019t know who their managers are.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meanwhile, Musk\u2019s increasingly erratic leadership, coupled with his habit of tweeting in eye-watering bad taste<\/a>, gave many current and former employees I spoke with a sinking feeling about the future of their company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Today let\u2019s talk a bit more about how the company botched its layoff process, what happened inside Twitter on Monday, and what that paywall might look like.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Friday\u2019s layoffs had been brutal for all involved, including those involved in planning them \u2014 many of whom themselves lost their jobs. While the process varied by team, some managers were asked to submit to Musk\u2019s team two sentences about all of their direct reports: one sentence explaining what the employee did, and one sentence justifying their continued employment at Twitter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cYou were like, this better be a fucking good sentence,\u201d one person asked to write such a list told me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Managers agonized over the decisions and jockeyed with their peers in an effort to preserve employment for the most vulnerable among them: pregnant women, employees who have cancer, and workers on visas among them, a former employee told me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Some teams were cut more than others; several were wiped out entirely. As it turned out, though, the company went too far. As I was the first to report on Saturday<\/a>, within hours of the layoffs, some managers were already being told to ask select laid-off employees if they wanted their old jobs back.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It began as a rumor on Blind, the app where employees of various companies can chat anonymously with their coworkers. But within a day it was being posted in public Slack channels.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cSorry to @- everybody on the weekend but I wanted to pass along that we have the opportunity to ask folks that were left off if they will come back. I need to put together names and rationales by 4 PM PST on Sunday,\u201d one such message from a manager to employees read. \u201cI\u2019ll do some research but if any of you have been in contact with folks who might come back and who we think will help us, please nominate before 4.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI think we might use some Android and iOS help,\u201d the manager added. The company has been reaching out to both engineers and designers over the past day in an effort to get them back, Platformer<\/strong> is told.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Some employees are nervous that if Twitter can\u2019t get them to return voluntarily, the company will formally rescind the notice they received Friday laying them off. Under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, businesses with more than 100 full-time employees are required to give 60 days notice if they lay off 33 percent or more of the staff. At Twitter, that notice included a promise to pay people for the next 60 days and give them a month of severance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Now workers fear that if they refuse to return voluntarily, Twitter will fire them for abandoning their jobs, depriving them of what otherwise would have been three months\u2019 pay.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Some workers have begun to consult with lawyers over their options in the event that they are recalled. Others are in open revolt, tweeting public threads about various aspects of the organization that have been broken<\/a> after the ready-fire-aim disaster of Musk\u2019s layoffs process.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meanwhile, remaining managers are bracing themselves for a much higher workload than they were previously used to. One person I spoke with was told that any technical manager should expect to manage at least 20 individual contributors, while also spending at least half their time writing code. Others have been given much higher numbers of direct reports.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As today began at Twitter, there were essentially two groups at the company, one employee told me: those working on projects that Musk has been deeply involved in, such as the revamped Twitter Blue subscription, and everyone else.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe couple of teams that are on his pet projects are doing 20-hour days,\u201d one employee told me. \u201cBut the majority of the company is kind of just sitting around. No chain of command, no priorities, no organization chart, and in many cases, no idea who your manager or team is.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But the majority of the company is kind of just sitting around.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n To learn what they are supposed to do, employees looked to some unusual sources. After a number of celebrities and high-profile accounts began to impersonate him, Musk announced a new policy, via a tweet, that anyone found impersonating someone else would be permanently banned without warning<\/a>. That was news to what remains of Twitter\u2019s policy team, I\u2019m told, and afterward some employees began discussing how to implement Musk\u2019s edict.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meanwhile, the health team was told to listen to Musk adviser David Sacks\u2019 podcast for insights into why they had just lost half their colleagues, according to a former employee. Sacks, a venture capitalist who has been helping to manage the Musk transition, co-hosts the \u201cAll-In\u201d podcast with fellow Twitter adviser Jason Calacanis and VC Chamath Palihapitiya.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe most recent podcast covers the current layoffs happening across tech and provides some insight into why this is happening\/necessary,\u201d a vice president told employees. \u201cI think it is worth listening to in order to understand the macro environment we are operating in.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Most employees were more interested in their health benefits, which had suddenly become a question mark. The company\u2019s open-enrollment period was supposed to begin today, according to its global calendar, but no information was available in the company\u2019s human-resources system. Employees posted several questions about benefits inside Slack today, but all went unanswered by management.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n By the day\u2019s end, I\u2019m told, at least some teams had begun to hold meetings in which employees were informed who their managers are, what their organization charts look like, and what their priorities will be.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But several employees I spoke with were still wrestling with one overarching question: do Musk and his team have any idea what they\u2019re doing?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n On one hand, the company is telling advertisers that it is thriving, The Verge<\/em>\u2019s Alex Heath reported<\/a>, adding 15 million daily users since the end of the second quarter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But the rollout of Musk\u2019s first signature project, a new version of the Twitter Blue subscription that will allow anyone to get a verification badge, has been a disaster.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The company rolled out a new version of the app on Saturday with release notes that said the new Blue was now available<\/a>. (The copy, written by Calacanis, was widely derided for sounding like a phishing email.) The problem is that Blue was not available, and so those who did subscribe found that they had merely gotten access to the current version of Blue.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nI. The botch<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
II. The two Twitters<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
III. The Blue disaster<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n