Elon Musk, Plus a Circle of Confidants, Tightens Control Over Twitter

Mr. Musk’s work on changing Twitter’s verification program was reported earlier by The Verge.

At Twitter’s headquarters last week, Mr. Musk and his advisers met with top managers, two people involved in the meetings said. Those managers were asked to explain their teams and what their divisions did, the people said, including detailing how Twitter’s algorithms sort and serve up content, the relationships with key advertisers and how the advertising platforms work.

Twitter managers involved in the conversations said they felt as if they were being evaluated for their jobs. Some slept at the office on Friday and Saturday nights, they said.

The managers were also asked for lists of their teams and the “top performers,” said four people involved in the deliberations, adding that this was a way for Mr. Musk and his colleagues to determine who to keep and who to cut. Mr. Spiro and Mr. Birchall are crunching the numbers and looking closely at layoffs, two people said.

In the event of mass layoffs, Mr. Musk is required by the U.S. Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act to provide advance notice to the government and employees. Employees have not received any notification, four employees said. A spokeswoman for San Francisco’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development said that, as of Monday, the city had not received such a notice.

“There’s a lot of pressure to do it as quickly as possible,” Brian J.M. Quinn, a professor at Boston College Law School, said of job cuts. Mr. Musk “is under pressure almost from the get-go to reduce costs at Twitter. Revenues are obviously down.”

At least two Twitter employees, who were publicly critical of Mr. Musk and his takeover, were fired in recent days, said two people at the company.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/technology/elon-musk-twitter-control.html