Extroverts and Lazy People With High Salaries: How Twitter Lived Before Musk
Chaos is happening on Twitter after the sale to Elon Musk: mass layoffs, infighting between employees and work in 24/7 mode. And although employees lament that the new owner ruined one of the best US employers, not everything in the company was perfect.
In early November, a photo of a woman in a sleeping bag and a sleep mask on the floor of an office building went viral on Twitter. “When you need something from your Twitter boss Elon,” Twitter product manager Evan Jones captioned the picture. Twitter director of product management Esther Crawford, who was the lead, commented: “When your team is working around the clock to meet a deadline, you sleep at work.”
Jones and Crawford were among the “lucky ones” who were not affected by mass layoffs - Elon Musk, who bought Twitter after long negotiations, fired 3.7 thousand specialists immediately after the completion of the transaction, that is, almost 50% of the entire team. The remaining “tweeps” (as Twitter employees call themselves) are trying to get used to the new owner’s rules: the founder of Tesla and SpaceX is famous for his unpredictability, love for unrealistic deadlines, as well as intolerance to remote work and any objections. And his approach is the complete opposite of what was on Twitter before. Employees recall that until recently, they had to work overtime only in exceptional cases, work from home did not raise any questions, and everyone in the team completely trusted each other. We tell how life in the company was arranged before the scandalous deal,
1. Hiring by the book
Twitter’s hiring process was typical for a large IT corporation. Applicants submitted resumes through the company’s career portal, then recruiters contacted the candidates they were interested in by phone. In addition to the standard set of questions for a screening interview (“Why are you interested in this vacancy?”, “What are your salary expectations?”, etc.), programmers at this stage were waiting for a task to test professional skills - a test on one of such platforms as HackerRank or Leetcode. Those who aspired to get into non-IT positions (marketing, HR, finance, etc.) were asked about work experience and professional achievements.
The next step is three to five interviews with the hiring manager and potential colleagues, during which the attention was paid mainly to testing professional skills. If the applicant applied for a leadership position, his managerial competencies were assessed during a separate round. And finally, at the final stage, the HR manager looked at whether the candidate would fit into the Twitter culture. The whole process usually took about four weeks.
In addition to staff positions, the company had several career development programs for students and recent graduates, such as 12-week #TwitterAcademy internships and a special research program for graduate students in the department of artificial intelligence development.
In May 2022, Twitter announced that it was suspending new hires for two months, and 30% of its recruiters were fired from their recruiting team. After the purchase of the company by Elon Musk and the reductions that followed the deal, new vacancies stopped appearing. According to Bloomberg, Twitter is now in talks with “dozens” of laid-off employees in an attempt to bring them back to the company.
2. “Days of rest” and “eternal udalenka”
“They pay well. At the level of the largest IT corporations, which is just crazy, given how little we worked,” said one of the former Twitter employees who left the company in 2021. According to the career portal Glassdoor, the starting salary of a Twitter software developer is about $162,000 per year, the average annual salary of a senior developer is $232,000, and a development manager is about $368,000. For example, at Amazon, the salaries of specialists in similar positions reach $153,000, $212 thousand, $329 thousand per year, in Google - $168 thousand, $235 thousand and $386 thousand per year.
But at the same time, Twitter offered a benefits package that employees of competing firms could envy. In addition to full health insurance, the company provided 20 weeks of maternity leave (US law does not require employers to provide paid parental leave) and unlimited paid vacation days. In addition, once a month they organized a “day of rest” - an additional day off introduced during the pandemic for all employees of the company. In the office, employees were offered free breakfasts and lunches, and the company also compensated up to $100 per month for sports.
However, employees considered the ability to work from anywhere in the world to be one of the main advantages of Twitter. The company is the first of the largest US IT corporations to announce the transition to “perpetual remote work” in 2020. In fact, Twitter began to prepare for this decision back in 2018, after the co-founder and former CEO of the social network Jack Dorsey decided to try working from home one day and found this option more convenient. In March 2022, Parag Agrawal, who replaced him, announced that the firm is switching to a hybrid mode and “twips” will be able to choose where it is more convenient for them to work. Everyone benefited: if young and lonely employees were happy to return to the offices, then their more experienced colleagues with families preferred to continue working from home.
However, now they have no choice. Musk, in his first letter to the team, announced that work from home is prohibited and starting Thursday, November 10, all employees must spend at least 40 hours a week in the office. “We have a difficult path ahead of us that will require hard work,” Musk wrote. He also canceled Dorsey’s “holidays” and free meals in offices. “Twitter spends $13 million a year to feed employees at its San Francisco headquarters. At the same time, attendance at the peak was 25% [of the entire team], and the average was 10%,” the entrepreneur commented on the decision.
3. “Very relaxed atmosphere”
“Processes were actually as transparent as possible, communication was open. Line employees knew what was going on in management. We have everything documented. A new specialist could come [to the company] and just read who is working on what at the moment. Of course, there was a hierarchy, but the culture was still quite democratic, ”a Twitter employee who wished to remain anonymous told Insider (formerly Business Insider). Now he is looking for a new job: in his opinion, the situation in the team will never be the same again.
Twitter really managed to create a strong culture where most of the employees were comfortable talking to each other, where there was a supportive atmosphere, and overtime tasks were rare. “Perhaps this is the job that brought me the most pleasure and was the most peaceful in my life. I had great opportunities [to grow] and I adored my colleagues. The balance of work and free time was just excellent, as was the salary, ”said a financial analyst from Los Angeles. “Friendly colleagues, amazing culture. Very relaxed atmosphere - great balance of work and free time. <…> For the most part, good leadership, and, for example, I was lucky, ”recalled another employee.
Now, the remaining employees in the company lament that Musk destroyed in a few days what was built over the years - trust in the team. Employees complain that now they get important news from the media, and not from management. Many do not want to openly criticize Musk, as they are afraid of losing their jobs because of this. So, the company fired the developer Emmanuel Cornet, who in his spare time drew cartoons on Twitter, including Musk.
“The cuts were rushed, and now there are so many teams destroyed that we may simply not be able to cope with the volume of tasks. Projects are made in haste and without adequate testing. Our old culture has been replaced by a culture of secrecy and perfidy. Nobody told us a word about the new organizational structure, new priorities, new projects. And the new owner didn’t even show up to meet us,” an SRE engineer from San Francisco described the situation.
5. The dominance of extroverts and lazy people
Even before the sale of the company, however, the environment on Twitter was not ideal. Oddly enough, the problems were largely due to the desire of the management to create a close-knit team and the most comfortable working conditions. Employees noted that it was necessary to correspond to a certain “type” in order to join the team and achieve career growth. “It felt a bit like high school. Fortunately, I didn’t have to play beer pong, but noisy extroverts are obviously valued in the company, and the results of work are no longer so important, ”one of the employees shared his impressions. Some add that political views also matter. “I consider myself ultra-left, so I had no problems. But, it seems to me, we have created rather harsh conditions for those who do not support the leftist ideology,” recalled one of the former employees. “One day I asked in our main Slack channel if we had any plans related to cryptocurrency (it was 2019). In response, I was hounded and called a climate skeptic. A stranger asked me in PM why I hate our planet so much, ”said his colleague.
Also, many noted that the atmosphere was “even too relaxed”: while some conscientiously worked all day, others took off and “just sat and got paid.” The corporation spent a lot of money and time on all sorts of activities for the team, but did not pay enough attention to the organization of work processes. As a result, many specialists simply did not see the opportunity for professional development and complained that the company was “standing still”. “Resources were so scarce that some team projects could remain in limbo for months or even years. In terms of technology, [Twitter] lagged behind other major IT companies,” said the San Francisco software developer. “Management is not inspiring and not involved. New products are rarely launched,” added his colleague.
In the second quarter of 2022, Twitter posted a $270 million loss on $1.8 billion in revenue.
According to some employees, changes were inevitable and the only alternative to cardinal reforms would be only the collapse of the company. “If it wasn’t for Elon (I think he’s a jerk), another financial jerk would have come along and bought and gutted Twitter, because it was absolutely horribly run,” one former employee noted.