Space X: employees fired for criticizing Elon Musk’s policy on Twitter

Nine employees of X spaceElon Musk’s space company, were fired for signing a letter in which they criticized his “harmful behavior on Twitter” after the controversial purchase of the company for 44,000 million dollars.

According to the New York Times newspaper, which cites several of the fired – some anonymous and others with first and last names – the signatories were publicly rebuked to the company for believing that their letter was an extremist act, and the vice president of Space X, John Edwards, he reminded them that Musk could do whatever he wanted in the company: “Space X is Elon and Elon is Space X,” he told them.

Soon after, They got fired.

The newspaper dedicates a long article to this story, which according to him highlights the difficulty of expressing agreement or dissent within the companies of Elon Musk, who in turn has shown little sympathy for the unionization attempts of his employees.

On Tuesday, the same newspaper published that more than two dozen Twitter employees had been fired for criticizing Musk, and also learned yesterday that he had given an ultimatum to the remaining workers of the network to show “outstanding performance”. from “working long hours at high intensity”otherwise they will be fired.

Likewise, the incident reveals another of the problems in Musk’s network of companies, such as the confusion between one and the other, which has manifested itself several times: the tycoon has not only sold Tesla shares (worth 4,000 million) to finance its purchase of Twitter, but it brought in experts from the other companies to redesign the social network’s new features.

The Twitter Exodus

This Thursday was a hurricane that hit Twitter: Hundreds of Twitter employees resigned from Musk, after the company’s new owner issued an ultimatum on joining a company “culture reset”: they began to post goodbyes on Slack, the company chat, and even goodbye emojis on social networks. The office is closed until Monday and all access is blocked.

Within hours, employees unfurled a marquee with slurs at Musk.

The new purge from Twitter’s ranks comes after Musk recently fired dozens of employees who criticized him in tweets and internal messages. Musk then set a Thursday deadline for all employees to answer “yes” to a Google form asking if they wanted to stay on what Musk calls “Twitter 2.0.”

Otherwise today would be their last day of work and they would receive severance pay. After the deadline passed, hundreds of employees quickly began posting goodbye messages and goodbye emojis on Twitter’s Slack, announcing that they had said no to Musk’s ultimatum.

The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind for the company: changes to Twitter Blue subscription (which meant losing the verification tick for accounts that already have it if they don’t pay $8 a month), new “official” certifications. for legitimate accounts, layoffs, Musk’s constant cross-referencing with employees on the social network, and more.

Twitter had about 2,900 employees left before Thursday’s deadline, thanks to Musk laying off about half of its 7,500-strong workforce when he took office and the resignations that followed.

Remaining and departing Twitter employees told The Verge that given the scale of this week’s resignations, they expect the platform to start crashing soon. One says he saw “legendary engineers” and others look up to leave one by one.

“It looks like all the people who made this place great are leaving,” the staffer said on Twitter. “It’s going to be extremely difficult for Twitter to bounce back from here, no matter how tough the people left try to be.”

Departing Twitter employees have been told they will receive at least three months’ pay, even if they haven’t yet had a chance to revise. their separation agreements.