Here’s full email that Twitter has sent to its employees:
Team,
In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday. We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.
Given the nature of our distributed workforce and our desire to inform impacted individuals as quickly as possible, communications for this process will take place via email. By 9AM PST on Friday Nov. 4th, everyone will receive an individual email with the subject line: Your Role at Twitter. Please check your email, including your spam folder.
If your employment is not impacted, you will receive a notification via your Twitter email.
If your employment is impacted, you will receive a notification with next steps via your personal email.
If you do not receive an email from twitter-hr@ by 5PM PST on Friday Nov. 4th, please email xxxxxxxx.
To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended. If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home.
We acknowledge this is an incredibly challenging experience to go through, whether or not you are impacted. Thank you for continuing to adhere to Twitter policies that prohibit you from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere.
We are grateful for your contributions to Twitter and for your patience as we move through this process.
Always fun to see real relationship language buried in messages that clearly treat your relationship as entirely transactional. I always wonder if there's anyone left naive enough to justify corporate double speak.
The other way around could have true. You could have had an amazing time at a company, and be grateful for everything they did for you during your tenure at a company, but due to life circumstances that force you to move somewhere else, or something personal in your life, you have to quit, while also being grateful for the impact a company had in your life.
Agreed. So, why pretend it's not purely transactional, other than to be manipulative? All the "were a family", "we care about you", yada yada language just tries to create false social constructs to hide the fact your relationship is only a business transaction.
"I always wonder if there's anyone left naive enough to justify corporate double speak."
I found The Gervais Principle[1] to be an interesting read on the subject. According to its author:
"the Sociopaths use Powertalk as a coded language with which to simultaneously sustain the (necessary) delusions of the Clueless and communicate with each other"
Also relevant was the article's description of the so-called MacLeod Life Cycle of organizations, wherein:
"A Sociopath with an idea recruits just enough Losers to kick off the cycle. As it grows it requires a Clueless layer to turn it into a controlled reaction rather than a runaway explosion. Eventually, as value hits diminishing returns, both the Sociopaths and Losers make their exits, and the Clueless start to dominate. Finally, the hollow brittle shell collapses on itself and anything of value is recycled by the sociopaths according to meta-firm logic."
So confused. Isn't the U.S. still on DST until this Sunday, meaning the correct timezone at the Twitter HQ is in fact PDT (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-7)? PST is Pacific Standard Time (UTC-8), i.e. "winter time".
Maybe they thought PST stands for Pacific Summer Time? Or this email was sent by someone from Europe, where DST ended last Sunday?
In my experience no one really uses ST/DT properly in the US in casual email… in fact I can’t remember the last time I received a human-written email referencing EDT or PDT. For some reason everyone just defaults to PST/EST.
I’ve given up even trying and just use “PT” and “ET” or even “NYC time” or “SF time” especially when interacting with those outside the US (who are less familiar with the custom and more confused when a mistake is made).
It's common to use the same time zone abbreviation throughout the year. E.g. in Europe you'd be on CET or CEST depending on time of year, but it's common enough to use "CET" for both that it's a de facto standard. Not a hill to die on at this point.
CET in this informal way means "CET OR CEST depending on which of them is current at the location at the given time".
This can give rise to ambiguity in places, but it's pretty rare that it does.
I always want to correct people on it. But unfortunately it resides in a funky middle-ground between (a) corrections being welcome / helpful and (b) corrections seeming nit-picky / pedantic.
Similarly to misuses (according to classical grammar rules) of "who" vs. "whom".
Both grate on me, but there's no acceptable way to get others to change.
Yeah, people working at a big tech company without personal email address, when they got the job initially they got notified via pigeon carrier, I guess they'll do the same now /s
If you need to halve your workforce for some unknown reason, what is the correct/best way to do it?
EDIT “you shouldn’t have to cut your workforce and a half” is not relevant discussion to this question. Say your market implodes, the Fed triples your interest rates and no one can afford to buy your stock of spec homes. nobody wants your buggy whips anymore, Apple won’t let you target people across the globe anymore, the FDA unexpectedly blocks your promising drug under development. I can come up with reasons on a long where this might happen, however it may be. I would include “bad management made bad decisions, and we are having to right the ship” as one of those items.
60 day pay, sure, but No way would I lay off that many people and let them back in the building. Mob mentality is a bizarre thing. Imagine the emotional burden or hostility between the retained staff and the terminated staff?
I think I would’ve taken a “slowly thin the herd” approach, but may be ripping the Band-Aid off is more emotionally acceptable. Also, your best employees, the ones who also have the highest opportunity elsewhere, will leave rather than wait to find out if they pass the mysterious retention test.
What sort of situation would lead to you thinking on 1 day that you don’t need to fire anyone, and thinking on the next that you need to halve your company size? It’s just not practical.
In a situation where you think a certain product has to go completely, you will likely spin it off to someone else. Even if you don’t get paid for it.
Of course, maybe if leadership changes. But if you think a company is being run so poorly that you think it can actually get by at half the workforce, you would never buy that company in the first place.
Which is exactly why Musk didn’t want to buy Twitter. But he ran his mouth too soon and so was trapped into doing so at a premium to an already inflated stock price.
What do you think Elon actually purchased when he bought Twitter? Why did he buy it? Elon was never looking for blue chip dividends, he’s buying it because he thought he could improve on operational efficiency and delete a lot of the BS (his view) occurring at the company.
I assume many companies will be doing the same in the incoming months with this economy. Elon just took the chance to get some free publicity from it from a lot of people who hate the media.
What an absolutely asinine situation. Attention all companies: don’t be at all surprised when your employees give fewer and fewer shits about you, your goals, and loyalty to any of it.
I usually advertise I am a mercenary (team and managers), when you pay me our contract is up. I will do what is best for me, and you will do what is best for you. No hard feelings. No loyalty. No confusions.
I always told my managers to text or email me so I do not have to get out of bed. I will send you my laptop and we good.
I am ... unique in this. I know that most people do not like this situation and would feel betrayed. You cannot have loyalty to corporations, they are there for their interest. You have to follow yours all the time as well.
I have been through enough companies that grow and layoff people to be immune from it. It would impact me, and I feel bad for the people that did get impacted by this. The writing on the wall for me was when Elon took over the company and told everyone to come in over the weekend and print their contributions. That to me signalled ok give me my package. It ended for me there. I know my self worth, and know working more hours per week does not make you a better developer. It does the opposite actually.
One of my initial managers when I started working almost 20 years ago said to me that developers and code is like artists. You cannot just tell someone sit down and write code, or you will get the Walmart paintings. Creativity cannot be turned on, bam write code for me. Make this piece of software.
The point that I am trying to make is that employment should be a transaction. That is why you sign the contract when you get hired. When it is not beneficial to you or the company that contract is terminated. I have no loyalty and always question if this is the best situation for me. Am I learning? How is the work I am doing benefiting me? How is the company benefits helping my family? It is selfish but I think that is the way to look at it, since the company is selfish as well.
They never will. Your company will dump you at any time to hit numbers. You should be willing to do the same. Whether you are at-will or not through law, you’re at-will unfortunately.
I got laid off but least I had the dignity of being told in person, given time to hand over my projects, allowed to remove my personal stuff from my work laptop (did not have any) and a generous severance package - it was about a month.
I once had my job ended (contract employee and they decided to end the contract) mid-commute home before. I worked there that whole day, and then I got a call on the drive back, pulled over to answer the call, and was told not to come in to the office next Monday, the company would mail me my belongings.
What do you gain from that. Could have just pulled me aside while I was there at the end of the day, stand someone next to me while I packed up my shit, and let me go home with my stuff at least. I don't remember if I actually did get that stuff mailed to me even (it wasn't a whole lot, at least).
"What do you gain from that. Could have just pulled me aside while I was there at the end of the day, stand someone next to me while I packed up my shit, and let me go home with my stuff at least."
They're afraid of people freaking out and making a scene... or worse.
For safety reasons it's better to prevent fired employees from coming in to work at all.
I understand the why, but most of the why is mitigated by having someone present and watching you and escorting you out of the building, which is why I said have someone stand with me.
I've had the other done to me (and have even been the escort at a few other layoffs before) at several other companies, and it's never been an issue (I've unfortunately been present for many company layoffs, I have a bad track record of joining a company while they are growing and within about a year of joining, or nearly so, they start missing targets or lose major contracts and start laying people off).
Seen this happen to at least 100 people at this point. No scene. I don't doubt that someone theoretically could make a scene, but it's not common enough to warrant the insulting nature of the other.
Like I would never work for that company again, and was tempted to leave them a bad Glassdoor review as a result (much more permanent than a brief outburst in-office). But other companies I was laid off from that let me gather my things in person I would at least consider going back to at some point.
However, for Twitter, this is such a mass layoff I don't really blame them for not doing it in person (most of the ones I was present for were like 20 people at a time at most). Plus there was clearly going to be layoffs ahead of time, if I worked there I would have already brought most or all of my crap home so it wouldn't matter much anyway.
Given the reaction of some employees prior to being acquired, I can only imagine what some would do when they are fired. It is probably best for Twitter that some of these employees are just cut off.
I fear it. The same way, as entertaining Donald Trump has been, he sort of normalized bad behavior. People think it’s okay to act like that.
It sounds scary, but companies may find what Elon is doing palatable and find it to be a new normal.
Elon is doing it in the most abrasive way, but what Stripe and Lyft have been doing is roughly the same level of action. Elon simply refuses to put lipstick on the pig.
When you hire a team, you have some responsibility for their livelihood (it’s not just money, the contract between the two sides is one of earning a living, to literally survive in the world). They are not just your little StarCraft units that you suddenly point to go in some other direction.
It’s completely inhuman, and this is coming from someone that admires Elon’s achievements. I’m saddened.
And no, it’s not cool to romanticize the retort of “he has the guts to do what has to be done”. No I think not, there’s enough money in the world.
I pray we never become this. It’s like watching a family member fall into drugs, they have become a different person.
Idk, tell managers to speak to their teams, have an online with everyone to explain the situation.
Literally anything that shows you remotely care about the situation is better than "You might or might not get an email in the next few days to let you know you're fired"
I know people who went though that and it's very dehumanising and stress inducing
> Notably, the layoffs will be global and take place across geographies.
IDK where Twitter has the most employees outside of the US, but in most countries in Europe you absolutely cannot do mass layoffs this way and if you try, you're in for a world of pain.
