Elon’s revamp team: Musk enlists 50 employees from Tesla as well as investors and friends to help complete his Twitter overhaul that includes $8-a-month blue tick fee: Comes after he dissolved board, sacked CEO and plans to lay off 25% of staff
- Musk is recruiting 50 of his Tesla engineers to review and work on Twitter code
- Soon after the takeover was complete, Musk fired several senior Twitter staff
- Musk has plans to release a quarter of Twitter’s staff in his first round of layoffs
Elon Musk has reportedly enlisted more than 50 of his Tesla engineers to review Twitter code, after completing his takeover of the social media company, dissolving the board, and firing senior employees.
According to internal records seen by CNBC, Musk has brought over 50 of his Tesla staff who were mostly working on the electric car company’s autopilot team, to review and work on code for Twitter.
The group includes over 50 members of staff from Tesla, two staff members from another of Musk’s ventures building underground road networks, the Boring Company, and one person from Neuralink, a company that develops implantable brain-machine interfaces.
New Twitter CEO Elon Musk was pictured leaving his mother’s New York City home to head back into Twitter’s NYC office for his second day after completing the acquisition.
As well as employees, Musk has roped in other investors and friends to for the overhaul. Jared Birchall, the head of Musk’s family office is now involved, as well as his angel investment and venture capitalist friends, Jason Calacanis and David Sacks.
A former Tesla engineer who has no involvement with Musk’s Twitter plans told the Washington Post that Tesla engineers would have difficulty understanding the social media platform’s code. The former employee said that someone used to coding Tesla tech would struggle to with the large spread-out social network code.
One significant difference is that Twitter runs using code written in Scala, and 18-year-old programming language, compared to the much older and less concise programming language Python used by Tesla.
Pictured: Musk following his security detail on Tuesday as he entered the back of Twitter’s NYC headquarters.
Musk, clad in red Samurai armor, showed up at Heidi Klum’s 21st annual Halloween Party at the Moxy Hotel in New York on Monday.
They former employee told the Washington Post: ‘The idea of Elon being flanked by his Tesla engineers reviewing Twitter code is laughable.’
It is not yet known if Musk’s new Twitter recruits will remain at the social media platform full-time or split schedules between the two companies.
Musk completed his $44 billion takeover of Twitter last week on October 28. Almost immediately, the tech billionaire fired several of the social media company’s top-level staff and dissolved its board.
Musk fired Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, general counsel Sean Edgett, as well as the policy and legal teams.
Musk will now take over as CEO, although publicly he has referred to himself as ‘Chief Twit’.
Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland and head of product Jay Sullivan have also announced their departures.
Parag Agrawal, CEO of Twitter, was fired from his job by Musk soon after the takeover was complete. Agrawal is pictured in July 2022.
Chief People and Diversity Officer Dalana Brand announced on Tuesday in a LinkedIn post that she had resigned last week as well. General manager for core technologies Nick Caldwell confirmed his departure on Twitter, changing his profile bio to ‘former Twitter exec’ by Monday night.
Twitter’s advertising chief, Sarah Personette, tweeted on Tuesday that she resigned following the exodus of nearly all the entire senior ranks.
It now looks like more Twitter staff could follow. Musk has plans to release a quarter of Twitter’s workforce in his first round of layoffs after his $44billion takeover, according to reports.
It comes as the new Twitter CEO allegedly issued an ultimatum to the social media platform’s engineers, telling them to revamp Twitter’s verification system in less than a fortnight or face the sack.
Celebrity lawyer Alex Spiro, a long-time Musk legal representative, led the conversations about the job cuts, according to the Washington Post.
Twitter’s advertising chief, Sarah Personette, tweeted on Tuesday that she resigned following an exodus of nearly the entire senior ranks.
Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland (pictured right) and head of product Jay Sullivan (pictured left) have also announced their departures.
Chief People and Diversity Officer Dalana Brand (pictured right) announced on Tuesday in a LinkedIn post that she had resigned last week as well. General manager for core technologies Nick Caldwell (pictured left) confirmed his departure on Twitter, changing his profile bio to ‘former Twitter exec’ by Monday night.
The first round of layoffs will impact almost every department, and are expected to specifically impact sales, product, engineering, legal, and trust and safety in the coming days, the Post’s source claimed.
Twitter had over 7,000 employees at the end of 2021, according to a regulatory filing and a quarter of the headcount amounts to nearly 2,000 employees.
Musk’s idea to revamp the verification process for Twitter has been controversial so far. This would see the social media platform charging for its verified checkmark. Musk’s plan will see and $8-a-month cost for the blue tick.
As he made the rounds in his new business, Musk explained his plan for Twitter’s verified system on the social media platform itself.
‘Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit,’ Musk wrote. ‘Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.’
Musk confirmed on Twitter that access to its verified program will go from being free to costing $8-a-month
A blue tick badge allows other Twitter users to verify that other users are who they say they are.
Musk added that those who sign-up for the system will get ‘priority in replies, mentions and search, which is essential to defeat spam/scam, ability to post long video and audio, half as many ads, and paywall bypass for publishers willing to work with us.’
The world’s richest man previously mulled a $20 per month blue tick verification fee, but appeared to lower the cost following criticism from horror author Stephen King.
Author Stephen King, who wrote The Shining, said he will leave the platform if Musk introduces a blue-tick verification charge.
Musk appeared to haggle with the horror author, suggesting the $8 price he ultimately decided on.
Twitter limits some content moderation tools just days before the midterms
Days after Elon Musk took over Twitter and just before the midterms in America, the social media site has limited some content moderation tools.
It may hamper staff’s ability to stop misinformation, as they will not be able to manually change or punish accounts.
The change is the latest implemented by Musk and comes after he made significant staff cuts and fired the Twitter board, making himself the sole member.
Those working in Twitter’s Trust and Safety organization are currently unable to alter or punish accounts breaking the platform’s rules on misleading information, offensive posts and hate speech.
According to insiders on the matter, they can only penalize people making posts that violate Twitter rules to the extent of real-world harm, according to Bloomberg.
They added that the team were manually enforcing those posts.
The change is the latest implemented by Musk, pictured at Twitter HQ, and comes after he made significant staff cuts and fired the Twitter board, making himself the sole member
At Twitter, staff have dashboards, called agent tools, in order to ban or suspend accounts that have breached policy.
Policy breaches can be detected automatically or flagged by other Twitter users.
However, only Twitter employees can remove or suspend accounts by using the dashboard.
But the tools have been out of use since last week, according to insiders.
It is alleged that this restriction has been put in place as Twitter transitions to Musk ownership in a bid to stop changes to the app being asked for by employees.
Sources at the company who asked to remain anonymous revealed that the high level of access to the tools given to employees has dropped from in the hundreds to just 15.
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