Twitter staff and management are uncertain and lack faith in Elon Musk, company's leaked all-hands meeting audio suggests

• Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, which seemed far-fetched not too long ago, is now real.
• This has raised heckles and ruffled a lot of feathers at Twitter, both amongst the management as well as the company’s staff.
• Now, a leaked audio recording of the company’s first all-hands meeting since the buyout announcement has more or less confirmed the looming uncertainty amongst Twitter employees, as well as the concerns in the management.

With Tesla boss Elon Musk’s dramatic acquisition of Twitter, there have been several reports of dismay, lack of trust and uncertainty amongst a section of Twitter employees. Now, all of that and more has been more or less confirmed thanks to a leaked audio recording of Twitter’s first all-hands meeting since the acquisition.

According to the leaked audio recording by US conservative organisation Project Veritas, the questions on the minds of Twitter employees, and the management ranged from the vision and the future of the company going forward, and how the work that they have done so far will be impacted by the change in ownership.

The crisis at Twitter is palpable from the fact that the company had to lock down product changes to prevent disgruntled employees from making unauthorised changes to the core product.

Leslie Berland, Twitter’s chief marketing officer, said that the leaked audio clip doing the rounds on Twitter was “edited and misrepresented”.

Business as usual until the deal closes, says Twitter chief

Parag Agrawal, the current chief executive officer at Twitter, said that it’s business as usual until the deal closes, which could take up to six months.

“[Twitter] will continue making decisions as we always have, guided by the principles we’ve had, which doesn’t mean things won’t change. Things have been changing. I’ve been in this role for four months,” Agrawal said.


It is not clear exactly what this means, since the product changes have been locked down already. It could even be that the company staff remains on “maintenance” mode until Musk’s acquisition is formalised.

“Once the deal closes, different decisions might be made. For us to gain insight into that, we’ll be finding a way to have Elon talk with all of you at the soonest possible opportunity,” he further added, suggesting that Elon Musk would be the best person to address questions from employees, and the management itself.

Essentially, no one but Elon Musk knows what Twitter’s direction will be going forward, and how his vision for the social media giant will be implemented.

Some of the questions also touch upon job security, the day-to-day work activities, compensation and other things. Agrawal had added that there would be “no layoffs at this time”, which again points to the uncertainty involved. This, however, is not unique to Twitter’s situation, since these questions usually arise in case of major management or ownership changes.

Elon’s Q&A session with the company to clear most of the doubts and uncertainty

Understandably, Agrawal had to defer many of the questions raised by his employees to the fact that a future Q&A session with Elon Musk would be the best place to address them. This also suggests the lack of clarity amongst Twitter’s management.

Agrawal’s responses also hinted at a possible difference of opinion of the Twitter staff and management with Elon Musk.

He said he’d like to have a two-way dialogue with Musk to “inform and educate him on the work we have done, and the things we have learned along the way.”

Berland relayed a question from an employee, who said Musk’s acquisition was primarily due to the fact that he disagreed with Twitter’s moderation. “This puts Twitter Service, and Trust and Safety, as well as anybody who cares about health on the platform in a very difficult position,” the employee noted, in a question relayed by Berland.

To this, Agrawal’s response gave away the fact that he might be in disagreement with Musk. “I believe there is a lot of work we have to do to continue making that better. Sometimes that means more thoughtful moderation, sometimes that means making things simpler, sometimes that means changing product incentives to be able to solve problems through products, sometimes instead of policies,” responded Agrawal.

It remains to be seen how well Musk’s acquisition of Twitter goes, given that he might be walking into a place where he’s not very well received. Whether those who disagree with Musk are in the majority at Twitter or not is something that will be revealed once he takes over the control of Twitter.

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